While directing One from the Heart, Francis Coppola received a letter from a class of schoolchildren in the American Midwest. The children said, since he was such a good director (they had all enjoyed Apocalypse Now), would he please consider tackling their favourite literary work, a book called The Outsiders, by the children’s author S. E. Hinton. Coppola agreed. While shooting The Outsiders, Coppola decided to make a second film back-to-back with it - a smaller, more personal work. The result was called Rumble Fish, and it, too, is based on a book by S. E. Hinton.