This is one of my all time favarite movies.
October Sky is a 1999 film produced by directed by Joe Johnston, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper and Laura Dern. It is based on the true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner’s son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father’s wishes, and eventually became a NASA scientist.
Title
“October Sky” is an anagram of “Rocket Boys”, the title of the book on which the movie is based. It is also used in a period radio broadcast describing Sputnik as it crossed the “October sky”. Homer Hickam stated that women over 30 would not go to see a movie titled “Rocket Boys”, so Universal Pictures changed the title to be more inviting to a wider audience. The book was later re-released with the name October Sky in order to capitalize on interest in the movie. The movie takes place in the late 1950′s after Sputnik is launched.
Plot
The film is set in Coalwood, West Virginia. The coal mine is the town’s largest employer and almost every male living there works, or will work, in the mines. John Hickam (Chris Cooper), the mine superintendent, loves his job—despite its headaches and inherent dangers—and hopes that his boys, Jim (Scott Miles II) and Homer (Jake Gyllenhaal), will one day join him working there. When it appears that Jim will receive a football scholarship to attend college, however, that leaves Homer to fulfill his father’s dream, although the boys’ mother, Elsie (Natalie Canerday), hopes for more for her son. It is not long before a prominent event gives him that chance.
As the townspeople gather outside one starry October night, they see the Soviet satellite Sputnik race across the sky. Filled with awe and a belief that this may be his ticket out of Coalwood, Homer sets out to build rockets of his own and enter the science fair. Of course, most everyone thinks he is crazy, especially when he teams up with Quentin (Chris Owen), the school math geek who happens to know a thing or two about rocket science. With the aid of friends Roy Lee (William Lee Scott) and O’Dell (Chad Lindberg), however, the four begin experimenting with their new passion. With the help and encouragement of some local townsfolk and their science teacher, Miss Riley (Laura Dern), who hopes that Homer and his friends will enter their work in a science fair contest, the boys begin their tests, but quickly run into several obstacles. First, they do not really know what they are doing, and their initial tests are disastrous. When they figure out that air bubbles in the propellant are causing their rockets to blow up, they get pure alcohol from a local moonshine operation, and mix up a propellant that works. Their successful launches eventually get them into hot water with the local authorities when they are accused of having started a fire several miles away with a rocket that had gone astray. That, coupled with John’s not understanding nor supporting his son’s “hobby”, soon derails the “rocket boys’” dreams.
The entire rocket-making operation is shut down, and the boys burn down their testing shed at the launch site, as their dreams fizzle. Homer drops out of school to work in the mine when his father is injured and cannot work (he does eventually recover).
Homer, however, is inspired to look at a rocket science book Miss Riley had given him, and learns how to calculate rockets’ trajectories. This shows him that their lost rocket could not have caused the fire, as it was unable to travel as far as the site of that fire. In fact, this lost rocket is recovered from a stream bed, just about where it should have landed. The boys visit the authorities, and it turns out that the offending projectile was not theirs at all, but a flare that must have come from a nearby airport.
With their names cleared, Homer and his pals set out to prove that they can build a rocket that will soar unimpeded into the sky, proving that they have what it takes to leave the confines of their predetermined, coal miner lives.
Homer wins the local science fair, and is going to be sent on to the national fair in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father is upset that Homer does not want to work in the mine. John is then shot at by someone outside, but the bullet misses. He tells the boys, who are angry at the person who shot at John, to not worry about it, telling Homer angrily to “go look for the suitcase” (which is what Homer had been doing a moment before).
Homer finally cannot take anymore and gets into an argument with his father, saying what is happening is not Homer’s fault, that if he wins the science fair he can get to college and maybe get to go work at Cape Canaveral, and that the town is dying along with the mine and John is the only person who does not know it. John tells Homer that if he wants to leave so badly, then leave. Homer yells that he will, and will never come back. He leaves.
Homer goes to Indianapolis and enters the fair. His display goes over very well, but when he steps away for a moment, someone stole his display. His mother convinces John to send Homer more stuff for rockets, saying that if he does not help Homer, she will leave him. When asked where she will go, she says, “Myrtle Beach,” which is where they spent their honeymoon. John sends Homer all the things he needs. Homer wins the top prize and is besieged with scholarship offers from colleges. He also meets Wernher von Braun, a man by whom he is inspired, but he does not learn who he is until after von Braun is gone.
Homer returns to Coalwood a hero, and visits Miss Riley, who is now ill with Hodgkin’s disease, in the hospital. He shows her the medal he has won, and she responds touchingly.
A launch of the largest rocket yet is the last scene of the film. Homer’s father finally shows up for a launch, and is given the honor of pushing the firing button. As the rocket streams upward, we view it from the perspectives of many characters.
A series of vignettes tells the later lives of the real characters upon which the movie was based.
