Through our eyes: A Recreation of the Scenes from the Outsiders Movie.
By: Olivia Cannon
The last quarter of eighth grade is a hectic mess and an intense rush to the finish line as you fight to finally leave behind the middle school and move on to the unknowns of high school. For many, this period of time is marked by end-of-year dances, messy friendship breakups, and the belief that you are way more grown-up than you actually are. But for me, the end of eighth grade will forever be remembered as the first time I read The Outsiders.
When The Outsiders was plopped down on the desk in front of me, I in no way expected it to become one of my favorite books. If anything, I thought it would just be another boring assignment, but it was so much more than that. This heart-wrenching story about a gang of boys in our own hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, stuck with me in a way that no other book I had read at the time had done before. The way that S.E. Hinton wrote these characters at only 15 years old is amazing; each character feels so real, like an old friend. The way she wrote these emotions is so real you can feel their pain bleeding through the pages in a way that will stick with you forever.
Since the first time I was handed this book, I have read it four times and watched the movie countless more. That brings us to where we are today. Forty-four years after the movie was filmed, I returned to the places in Tulsa where it was shot to recreate the scenes from the film.
I brought with me my two younger brothers, Mason and Grayson Cannon, as well as my fellow Trojan Torch member and friend, Audrey Jones, and her younger brother, Lawson Jones, who helped act out the scenes we created.
On our journey, we got to meet two real-life "greasers” who grew up in the same neighborhood where the story takes place. Joey Kelm and Joe Cervantez both appeared as background actresses in the movie, and Cervantez even took his own photos behind the scenes on set, which he sells at the gift shop at the Outsiders House Museum.
I would like to give a special thank you to the owners of the Outsiders House Museum, who generously let all five of us in for free, shared stories about their experiences, and helped us take some of the photos.
The first photo was used as a promotional shot for the movie. This is the original car that was outside the curtisis house in the movie which is parked in the yard of the museum. In our recreation we have Grayson playing Dallas Winston, Mason playing Poneyboy Curtis, and Lawson as Johnny Cade. We did not have the photo when we were recreating this and one of the staff members helped pose us so I do apologize for Lawson staring off into I don't know where.
The opening scene of the movie is Ponyboy Curtis walking out of Circle Cinema movie theater after watching The Hustler. The top photo is the original and the bottom photo is our recreation where we have Mason playing Ponyboy with a shot of the movie theater at a slightly different angle because I would have to stand in the middle of the road to get that angle and I was not in the mood to get run over.
After Ponyboy gets Jumped on his way home from the movie theater his gang of friends run to his rescue, this shot is from after they scared the soches off and all return to the Curtis house. Dally is hanging on the fence talking to Johnny and Ponyboy about his time in jail. The wall that you can see in the background of the original no longer exists. In our recreation we have Grayson playing Dally.
Now there is a major jump in time where they go to the drive-in movie theater, which we could not go to because it was not open when we were able to take photos, and then Johnny stabs Bob at the park, which we could not create this scene because the fountain they used for the movie was temporary and does not exist there anymore. Next, Pony and Johnny run away to a church in Windrexfill, Oklahoma. We did not re-create any scene in Windrexfill because we were focusing on parts of the movie that were filmed in Tulsa.
The morning after Ponyboy returns home, Twobit comes over for his breakfast of chocolate cake and beer, which he eats on the curtis living room floor while watching Mickey Mouse on their TV. Grayson played Tobit in this scene with the plastic chocolate cake and bottle that the Outsiders Museum keeps.
On Ponyboy’s first day back, Twobit takes him to visit Dally and Johnny at the hospital, and then they go to the bus stop outside of the Boston Avenue United Methodist Church. In this photo, Grayson is playing Twobit, and Mason is playing Ponyboy. The bus stop that they are sitting at does not exist anymore in the same spot, so in order to get the sitting pose, we had a mason sitting on the side of a flower bed, so the photo may not be at the exact same angle, but he had to sit somewhere.
After the big rumble, everyone goes back to the Curtis house except Dallas and Ponyboy, who head to the hospital to see Johnny. While they are at the hospital, Johnny dies, causing Dally to run out of the hospital and leaving Ponyboy to find his own way home. This scene is from when Ponyboy finally makes it home and is telling everyone that Johnny is dead and Dally ran off. In this scene you can see Darry, Soda, and Steve reacting to hearing this news. We have Grayson playing Darel, Mason playing Steve, and Audrey playing Sodapop.
After Dalas leaves the hospital, he robs a convenience store in order to have the police called on him. While he is running from the police, he calls the Curtises and tells them to meet him at the park. This scene is at the park where Dally will pull out an empty gun on the police and get shot at, and die. The scene that we were trying to recreate was Dally running across the park away from the police and towards his group of friends, but we had an accident trying to recreate this photo, so it's not quite perfect. In this scene, Grayson is running across the park pretending to be Dally while I was standing down the street on the sidewalk, preparing to take photos of him running. I was looking through the camera view, trying to get the right angle, when suddenly he tripped and fell completely down. I ran across the street to the park to see if he was okay, but by the time I got across the street, he was back up and running. So the photos were from a way closer angle, but that is mainly because Grayson's face planted and refused to try running across the park again.
While in the hospital, Johnny had his nurse get a copy of Gone With The Wind, the book that Ponyboy found and was reading while at the church. Inside that book, there was a letter that Johnny left to Ponyboy. This scene is the final scene in the movie, in which Mason is playing Ponyboy who is reading Johnny's letter for the first time.
