Remember The Outsiders?

I don't normally write about specific novels or movies on Nostalgia Fridays but reading Rob Lowe's autobiography made me realize just how much came out of one little movie. Most of the stars I grew up watching got their start here...making it pretty amazing, when you think about it, that one day in 1982 a group of fairly unknown actors gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma to shoot a film that would change their lives forever.

The novel The Outsiders was based on was written by a 15-year-old girl. It soon became required reading in middle schools, at which point a group of sixth graders were so excited about the book that a librarian at their school contacted Francis Ford Coppola and suggested he make a movie about the book. Surprisingly, Coppola took her up on the suggestion.

And so, the book became a movie.

Among the actors who were gathered in Tulsa were Rob Lowe and his friend Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise (who was at the time living with the Sheens while pursuing an acting career), C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, and Ralph Macchio.

Interestingly, just a few years earlier Estevez's father, Martin Sheen, had spent 13 months with Coppola filming Apocalypse Now. He had a heart attack while filming in the jungle (he was 37 at the time) and had to crawl to a road to get help. When he returned from the ordeal, as Rob Lowe put it, he was "not the same."

Yet these young actors signed on anyway. How could you not, with one of the best filmmakers of our time in charge? They arrived at the hotel to find the actors playing "greasers" in the film were on one floor while those playing the "socs" (pronounced "soashes") were on another. The socs were given leather-bound scripts and luxury accommodations, while the greasers were left to slum it. This was to create a feeling of jealousy that he hoped would translate to the screen.

Not only did The Outsiders launch all those careers, it grossed $25.6 million and several of its actors won Young Artist Awards. A version that was truer to the novel was released in 2005, with 22 minutes of never-before-seen scenes left out of the original.

As for the novel, the outrageous popularity of the novel gave S.E. Hinton a bad case of writer's block for three years. She finally snapped out of it to write such hits as Rumble Fish, Tex, That Was Then, This Is Now, and Taming the Star Runner. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband. Her son was a sound effects recordist on Ice Age: The Meltdown. She can be seen in several films, including a role as the nurse in Dally's room in The Outsiders: