Reception
In his book Cult Movies III, Danny Peary notes that "many critics who loved the book would later accuse Kaufman of doing the novel a disservice...But Price would disagree: "I love that picture. It's not my book, and I don't care. The spirit is right, and the way Phil Kaufman directed it showed me another way of looking at my own book.""
Although it was not a box office success upon its theatrical release, The Wanderers gained popularity and cult status over the years because of its sensitive depiction of teenagers coming of age. The gangs named in the movie, though fictionalized, are based on real gangs encountered by Price in his childhood, growing up in a housing project in the Bronx. Real names of Bronx gangs (1950s-1960s) are used. "The Wanderers" was the name of an actual gang located in South Brooklyn that was part of the larger South Brooklyn Boys gang. The movie depicts the end of a more innocent time (1950s to early 1960s.), reflected by the violent death of Turkey (a former Wanderer), the recruitment of the Fordham Baldies into the Marines (a subtle foreshadowing of the Vietnam War), the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the imminent marriage and domestication of Wanderers leader Richie, the departure of Wanderers Joey and Perry (who drive off to California), and a scene depicting then-rising folk singer Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village performing his song "The Times They Are A-Changin'". Kaufman later said, "When I was shooting Goldstein, we came out on the street one day and I saw people were staggering down the street crying. We were walking around with our cameras and saw a bunch of people standing around a store window, looking in and crying. That was how I found out that JFK had been killed. We duplicated that in The Wanderers with the people looking in the department store window at all the TVs, watching the news that JFK had been assassinated. I love that moment when Ritchie (the protagonist) sees this transition happen and he decides to go back to the old neighborhood and stay in the old world, instead of going to see Bob Dylan with the Karen Allen character and joining the new world.."
Read more about this topic: The Wanderers (1979 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
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