'The Outsiders' fan Danny Boy O'Connor celebrates 40th anniversary of movie 'Rumble Fish'

When Danny Boy O'Connor was 13, he had a life-changing cinematic experience while watching the movie "The Outsiders."

But the founder and executive director of the Outsiders House Museum admits that he wasn't ready as a teenager for Francis Ford Coppola's avant-garde follow-up film, "Rumble Fish."

"I love 'The Outsiders' so much that nothing will ever take the place of that. But 'Rumble Fish' and 'Outsiders' were filmed basically back-to-back: Coppola came here, filmed 'The Outsiders,' wrapped it in '82; two weeks later, they were in downtown Tulsa filming 'Rumble Fish,'" said O'Connor, who has been a loyal Tulsa resident for about five years.

"Originally, I may have caught 'Rumble Fish' on cable TV, and I would only catch it in parts, meaning I never watched it through. It was a little too sophisticated for my 13-year-old or 14- year-old mind. ... Coppola's intent was to make an art film for kids, which would have completely went over my head at a 14-year-old level."

In March 1983, Coppola's modestly budgeted "The Outsiders," adapted from Oklahoma author S.E. Hinton's seminal 1967 coming-of-age novel and filmed in her hometown of Tulsa, made its successful bow in movie theaters.

The film's popularity has only grown over the past 40 years: Just as Hinton's "The Outsiders" helped establish the young adult (or YA) genre of literature, Coppola's screen version is sometimes credited with launching the 1980s "Brat Pack" movies. The teen drama featured future movie stars C. Thomas Howell, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Matt Dillon.   

But fewer people remember that Coppola's second movie filmed in Tulsa and based on a Hinton novel debuted in theaters a few months later, on Oct. 21, 1983.

Lensed in high-contrast black-in-white and featuring a Golden Globe-nominated score by The Police drummer Stewart Copeland, "Rumble Fish" was a more experimental and less mainstream movie that floundered at the box office but has been buoyed by its own faithful fan base, including some, like O'Connor, who didn't quite get it when the movie initially debuted.

"It would be years later, after buying the (Outsiders) House when I decided, 'You know what, this movie has never made sense to me. Let me read the book.' And I read the book, and all of the pieces fell together and I was like, 'Ah,' he told The Oklahoman. "I watched the movie with new eyes, and then I understood a lot better what they were going for."

'The Outsiders' super fan Danny Boy O'Connor is organizing a 'Rumble Fish' anniversary exhibit

A founding member of 1990s hip-hop hitmakers House of Pain, O'Connor is organizing "The Rumble Fish 40th Anniversary Exhibition," a three-day pop-up event where film fans can celebrate the legacy of the often-overlooked classic movie.

The exhibit will be on view from 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 6 and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 7-8 at 810 E 3, in a currently vacant storefront in the East Village District of downtown Tulsa, near where some of the filming on "Rumble Fish" took place. Admission is free.

"Hopefully, it'll excite people about how good this thing really has been for Tulsa, even 40 years later. We're still talking about it; it's still worth celebrating. And it still brings so many eyes and attention to not only the author and the actors and the directors, but to Tulsa, Oklahoma, itself," O'Connor said.

The exhibit will feature acclaimed photographers David Burnett and Joe Cervantez's never-before-seen photographs chronicling the making of "Rumble Fish" as well as selections from O'Connor's own growing collection of "Rumble Fish" memorabilia, including the actual wardrobe worn in the movie by Dillon, who starred in "Rumble Fish" after playing a key role in "The Outsiders."

Although often overshadowed, 'Rumble Fish' has carved out its own legacy

Inspired by her experiences at Will Rogers High School, Susan "Susie" Eloise Hinton penned "The Outsiders," a tale of two rival Tulsa gangs — the poor Greasers and the privileged Socs (pronounced Soshs) — when she was still a teenager. She published her debut novel under her initials to keep male reviewers from knowing she was a woman and immediately dismissing her work.    

Hinton has said that she suffered from writer's block for a few years after "The Outsiders," but she eventually penned other YA novels set in her home state, including 1975's "Rumble Fish."

Renowned for his 1970s films like "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II" and "Apocalypse Now," Coppola was struggling after the flop of his 1981 musical drama "One from the Heart" when he received a package from a California school librarian, Jo Ellen Misakian. Her students at Lone Star Elementary School in Fresno had voted, and they wanted Coppola to adapt their favorite book, "The Outsiders," into a movie.  

For years, the director had worked with Oklahoma City native Gray Frederickson to make his movies. With "The Outsiders," Coppola would be making a movie in his producer pal's home state.  

Once in Tulsa, Coppola was so drawn to the themes of Hinton's 1975 book — particularly the tale of a younger brother who worships his older brother — that the filmmaker and author co-wrote the screenplay to "Rumble Fish" on Sundays, their day off from shooting on "The Outsiders."

The Oscar winner retained much of the same crew and key members of the cast, including Dillon and Lane, to film his second Tulsa movie.

Dedicated to Coppola's older brother, August, "Rumble Fish" follows Rusty-James (Dillon), a ready-to-rumble Tulsa gang leader who worships his older brother, The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), a local legend who left town after brokering a truce between his gang and their rivals. The enigmatic Motorcycle Boy rolls back into Tulsa at a pivotal moment in Rusty-James' life and tries to steer his younger brother toward a more peaceful path.

The film received a 2017 Blu-ray and DVD release through the prestigious Criterion Collection.

“It’s incredible to think how far Oklahoma’s film and television industry has come since the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Rumble Fish’ nearly 40 years ago,” said Oklahoma Film + Music Director Jeanette Stanton in an email to The Oklahoman.

“This production is not only part of our state’s collective film legacy and cultural impact, but it really helped lay the early steps of what would later become the foundation of telling authentically Oklahoma stories in our state, which continues to see the impact from these films and continued interest to this day.”

Like "The Outsiders," "Rumble Fish" features a cast of talented up-and-coming actors, including Dillon, Lane, Rourke, Laurence (then credited as "Larry") Fishburne, Vincent Spano, Chris Penn and Coppola's nephew, Nicolas Cage.

Both movies include cameos by Tom Waits — Hinton recently revealed on the site formerly known as Twitter that the iconic musician and actor wrote his barkeep character's "Rumble Fish" monologue about time — as well as by the author. (Hinton played a nurse in "The Outsiders" and made a brief appearance as a prostitute in "Rumble Fish.")

"I have friends that are a couple of years older than me that say, 'Danny, "The Outsiders" was cool, but it was too juvenile for me at 17, yet "Rumble Fish" hit the mark perfect because it was sophisticated.' ... It has a completely different following, yet there are people who love both and all of the works of S.E. Hinton," O'Connor said.

"Because both movies were filmed here, people's heartstrings are attached. ... So, they're special, all of those movies."

Danny Boy O'Connor hopes 'Rumble Fish' exhibit will help him launch a new S.E. Hinton museum

"The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish" weren't the first movie versions of Hinton's books to be made in Tulsa: "Tex," an adaptation of Hinton's 1979 novel that also starred Dillon, along with Jim Metzler, Meg Tilly and Oscar-winning Oklahoman Ben Johnson, was released in theaters in 1982.

The drama was Walt Disney Productions' first PG (as opposed to G) release.

"I can't tell you how many times people say, 'Oh, I love that scene in "The Outsiders" where you can see the old Camelot Hotel.' ... But the Camelot Hotel appears in her film 'Tex,'" O'Connor said.

"To break up the monotony of collecting and searching constantly for 'Outsiders' stuff, I started to go, 'I wonder how much "Rumble Fish" stuff is on the market?' And 'I wonder how much stuff I could collect of "Tex?"' So, I started to just collect that in between my full-time collecting of 'The Outsiders' — and you'd be amazed what you can do when you set your mind to something and you stay with it."

Since he opened the Outsiders House Museum in 2019, celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Brendan Fraser and Green Day have visited, along with thousands of regular folks and schoolchildren on field trips.

Given it was an actual filming location — it stood in as the modest home of protagonist Ponyboy (Howell) and his older brothers Sodapop (Lowe) and Darry (Swayze) — the Outsiders House Museum, 731 N St. Louis Ave., has a fixed footprint and limited space for his growing collection.

So, O'Connor hopes "The Rumble Fish 40th Anniversary Exhibition" will provide a platform to launch a larger project similar to the Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan centers that have proven so successful in Tulsa.

"My hope is to make a bigger museum with all of S.E. Hinton's works, somewhere that's a brand-new build that would be somewhere in North Tulsa but in a commercial district where I could bring people en masse, students en masse," O'Connor said.

"It could serve as not only a pop culture and historical S.E. Hinton museum collection, but it could also inspire the kids of today, who 20 years ago, if they were interested in any of these fields would have had to go to New York or L.A. to pursue their career. Today, we don't have that problem, we can do this right here, and they have, if not an equal shot, a better shot."

'The Rumble Fish 40th Anniversary Exhibition'

• When: 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 6 and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 7-8.

• Where: 810 E 3, Tulsa.

• Admission: Free.

• Information: https://www.facebook.com/theoutsidershousemuseum.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: 'The Outsiders' follow-up film 'Rumble Fish' marking 40th annivesrary