Travolta/Cage #2: The Boy in the Plastic Bubble/Rumble Fish (with Noel Murray)

Welcome to episode two of Travolta/Cage! This week, film and TV critic extraordinaire Noel Murray (AV Club, The Dissolve) joins us to discuss the next two films in Travolta and Cage’s oeuvre.

First up is 1976’s The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, a surprisingly effective TV weepie-of-the-week starring Travolta as Tod Lubitch, a boy with no immune system who has to live his life in — you guessed it — a plastic bubble. Will he find love with the relatable girl-next-door (Glynnis O’Connor)? Will he escape his life of isolation? And most importantly, will he finally get to jerk off in private?

Then, of course, there’s Rumble Fish, Francis Ford Coppola’s avant-garde followup to The Outsiders, a film that behaves like Ponyboy’s pretentious French cousin. While the bulk of the story follows teenage ruffian Ricky-James (Matt Dillon) flirting with teenage delinquency to impress his mysterious older brother Motorcycle Boy (sorry, The Motorcycle Boy) (Mickey Rourke), Nic Cage shows up in his uncles’ movie as the surprisingly perceptive gang member Smokey. It’s moody and beautifully filmed and sports a killer Stewart Copeland score, but can it keep all that atmosphere up for two hours?

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