October Sky

October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys, the title of the 1998 memoir upon which the film is based. It is also used in a period radio broadcast describing Sputnik 1 as it crossed the "October Sky". Homer Hickam said that "Universal Studios marketing people got involved and they just had to change the title because, according to their research, women over thirty would never see a movie titled Rocket Boys."[6] The book was later re-released with the name in order to capitalize on interest in the film.[7]

In October 1957, news of the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 reaches the town of Coalwood, West Virginia, where most male residents work in the coal mines. As the townspeople gather outside to see the satellite orbit across the sky, Homer Hickam is inspired to build his own rockets to escape the tedium of Coalwood. His family and classmates do not respond kindly, especially his father John, the mine superintendent, who wants Homer to join him in the mines.

Homer teams up with math geek Quentin Wilson, who shares an interest in aerospace engineering; with the support of friends Roy Lee Cooke and Sherman O'Dell, and their science teacher at Big Creek High School, Miss Freida J. Riley, the four construct small rockets. While their first launches fail, they experiment with new fuels and designs. When one of their rockets lands near the mine and nearly injures some workers, John angrily tells Homer not to let him catch him on company property with any rockets again. The boys hike 8 miles to the edge of the coal company's property, where they find "Cape Coalwood" and eventually succeed with the help of some local townsfolk, including the mine's machine shop manager, Ike Bykovsky, who is punished by John for helping the boys and sent to work in the mine.

The rocket launches begin attracting townsfolk from Coalwood and the local paper runs a story about the boys. Afterward, they are accused of starting a wildfire with a stray rocket and are arrested. After John picks up Homer, Roy Lee is beaten by his abusive stepfather, Vernon. John intervenes and rescues Roy Lee, warning Vernon that he will protect Roy Lee as Roy Lee's late father would have. In the aftermath of the arrest, the dejected boys abandon rocketry, destroying their launch site. In a mining accident, John is injured rescuing others, and Bykovsky is killed, devastating Homer. Homer drops out of high school to work in the mine and provide for his family while his father recovers, and continues working even when John is able to return to work.

Homer is soon inspired by Miss Riley to read a book she had given him on applied rocket science, learning to calculate the trajectory of a rocket. Using this, he and Quentin locate their missing rocket and prove it could not have caused the fire. The boys present their findings to Miss Riley and the school principal, Mr. Turner, who determines the cause was a flare from a nearby airfield. Homer tells his father he is returning to high school and no longer wants to work in the mine, expressing a desire to go into space. The boys return to rocketry and win the school science fair. When the opportunity arises for one of them to participate in the National Science Fair in Indianapolis, they elect Homer. The miner's union goes on strike against the coal company, angering John. While the family eats dinner, Vernon shoots into the kitchen but misses John, who dismisses his family's fears, leading to a heated argument with Homer. With the mines set to close and resenting his father's pressures, Homer storms out of the house, vowing never to return.

At the national science fair, Homer's display is well-received, and he enjoys popularity and some sightseeing. Overnight, someone steals his machined rocket part model – the de Laval nozzle – and his autographed picture of Dr. Wernher von Braun. Homer makes an urgent phone call home to his mother Elsie, who implores John to end the ongoing strike so that Mr. Bolden, Bykovsky's replacement, can use the machine shop to build a replacement nozzle. John relents when Elsie, fed up with his lack of support for their son, threatens to leave him. With the town's support and replacement parts quickly sent to Indianapolis by bus, the boys win the top prize and Homer is bombarded with college scholarship offers. He is also congratulated by Von Braun himself, though not realizing his idol's identity.

Homer returns to Coalwood as a hero and visits Miss Riley, who is dying of Hodgkin's lymphoma. Preparing for the launch of their largest rocket yet, Homer approaches his father and asks him to come, and then tells him that Von Braun is brilliant, but is not his hero--implying John is his true idol. At the launch of their rocket, which is named for Miss Riley, almost all of Coalwood turns out to watch. John shows up at the last moment and is given the honor of pushing the launch button. The Miss Riley reaches an altitude of 30,000 feet (9,100 m) – higher than the summit of Mount Everest. As the town looks up to the skies, John slowly puts his hand on Homer's shoulder and smiles, finally showing Homer that he is proud of him.

An epilogue, using home movie footage, reveals the real-life outcomes of the main characters' lives, noting that Miss Riley died of her illness, the mine eventually closed, and all four Rocket Boys went to college, going on to have successful careers, with Homer eventually working at NASA.

Filming began on February 23, 1998, almost a year before the movie's release. Although the film takes place in West Virginia, Tennessee was the location of choice for filming in part because of the weather and area terrain. Film crews reconstructed the sites to look like the 1957 mining town setting the movie demanded. The weather of east Tennessee gave the filmmakers trouble and delayed production of the film. Cast and crew recalled the major weather shifts and tornadoes in the area during the filming months but Joe Johnston claims, "ultimately, the movie looks great because of it. It gave the film a much more interesting and varied look."[8][9] The crews also recreated a mine for the underground scenes. Johnston expressed that he felt that the appearance of the mine in the film gave it an evil look, like the mine was the villain in the film and felt it ironic because that is what gave the town its nourishment. More than 2000 extras were used in the movie. A small switching yard allowed the filmmakers and actors to film the scenes with the boys on the railroad and gave them freedom to do as they pleased, even tear apart tracks. The locomotive used in the scene was Southern Railway 4501 re-lettered as Norfolk and Western No. 4501. Filming concluded on April 30, 1998.[8]

The film's star, Jake Gyllenhaal, was 17 years old during filming, the same as Homer Hickam's character. In an interview in 2014, Natalie Canerday recalled that Gyllenhaal was tutored on set because he was still in school and taking advanced classes.[9]

October Sky opened on February 19, 1999 in 1,495 theaters and had an opening weekend gross of $5,905,250. At its widest theater release, 1,702 theaters were showing the movie. The movie has had a total lifetime gross of $34,675,800 worldwide.[2]

The movie was praised for its portrayal of 1950s Appalachia despite several major and minor differences from the book on which it is based.

• Homer Hickam is the main character's name; in the book and in real life he was nicknamed "Sonny".[21][22]
• Homer Hickam Jr.'s father was not named John. This was changed in an effort to keep the audience from being confused.[22][23]
• There were actually six "rocket boys" rather than the four in the movie. Some of the movie's representations of the characters are combinations of the real-life boys. Their names were: Homer Hickam Jr., Quentin Wilson, Jimmy O'Dell Carroll, Roy Lee Cooke, Billy Rose and Sherman Siers.[21][22]
• The Rocket Boys did not steal railroad parts as in the film; however, they did attempt to grab a cast iron pipe under the tracks and, according to Homer's website, this almost got him killed.[21]
• While the boys were accused of starting a fire, they were never detained. The police soon realized that their rockets could not have traveled over 3 miles and the boys were exonerated. Homer never had to prove their innocence, as his character did in the film.[22]
• Homer never dropped out of school to work in the town's mine. He did, however, work in the mine the following summer, as described in Hickam's book Sky of Stone.[21]
• Homer never met Wernher von Braun - as it turns out, von Braun was looking for the Rocket Boys' exhibit when Homer was looking for him; and they missed each other.[22]

There are two annual festivals in honor of the Rocket Boys and the film. One is held in West Virginia where the real-life events depicted in the book and film took place, and the other is in Tennessee where the movie was actually shot. The Rocket Boys often visit the festival in West Virginia, which is also called the "Rocket Boys Festival", while the festival in Tennessee focuses more on the filming locations. The Tennessee festival's site claims that the festival is "a celebration of our heritage."[4][5]

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, saw a screening of October Sky in 1999. In a subsequent conversation with the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, Bezos commented that he had always wanted to start a space company. Stephenson urged him to do so. Bezos then started the private aerospace manufacturing and services company Blue Origin, and Stephenson became one of the company's early employees.[24][25]

The author of Rocket Boys claimed that the Star Trek Enterprise episode Carbon Creek was based on October Sky, and there are obvious references to the story in the episode.[26][27]

Wikiquote has quotations related to October Sky.

• Homer Hickam's Official Website
• Information and Photos of Filming Locations
• Photo gallery from the filming of October Sky in East Tennessee
• October Sky at IMDb
• October Sky at the TCM Movie Database
• October Sky at Box Office Mojo
• October Sky at The Numbers