Some of Tim's Stories (8 page)

How did the last two pages of
Rumble Fish
reinforce the overall point you wanted to make with the novel
?

All through the book Rusty-James is saying, “I'm just going to be like the Motorcycle Boy.” By the end of the book, he's staring at a body of water; he goes deaf for a minute; he's not seeing; he's not feeling. He has become the Motorcycle Boy, but it's not what he thought it would be. My point: do not identify with something you don't define, because you may be getting it all wrong.

After
Rumble Fish
was published, one critic declared you a brilliant novelist. What was your husband's reaction? He'd been your primary reader for the book
.

David's the only one I let read works in progress—usually. He's a mathematician and doesn't really like to read. I'm a writer and don't like to add. But I can always count on David to say, “That's nice, honey,” when I show him my stories. After the critics liked
Rumble Fish
, he said, “Aren't you kind of surprised that
Rumble Fish
is getting such good reviews?” And I'm like, well, no.

All of your young adult novels seem to stand out for you in different ways. What makes
Tex
your personal overall favorite
?

I just loved being that character. I began writing
Tex
when I was still working on the galleys for
Rumble Fish
. By the time I was finished with Rusty-James, I felt like I'd been pounding my head against a wall—a stone wall—and I wanted to be somebody happy for a change. And Tex and his brother and his friends were all characters I had actually used in grade school or middle school for a completely different story and setting. It took me over three and a half years to write. I'd get busy and then realize I'd gone sixty pages off on a tangent. I'd put the book in the drawer for a long time, then pull it out and start writing again. It's the only one of my young adult novels I have ever thought I might like to write a sequel to, maybe using one of the Collins kids as a narrator.

You've described Tex as the least tough of your characters. Why is he still so admirable
?

He's the least tough, but he's the strongest. He's not going to let things break him. I think of Tex as the counterpoint to
That Was Then, This Is Now
. Tex learned a bad truth about his family, and it could have turned him against his brother forever, but he didn't let it.

Mark, your troubled character from
That Was Then, This Is Now,
reappears in
Tex.
What unfinished business did you as a writer need to take care of with him
?

I really believe that, even though I didn't realize it at the time, I was writing a different version of
That Was Then
,
This Is Now
, showing another road not taken. Something made me put Mark in as the hitchhiker in the story; it's done very subtly. Even though Tex and Mark are half-brothers, they live in separate worlds.

All your novels seem to revise our conventional definitions of family. How does Tex's encounter with Mark help you build on that theme
?

Mark and Tex are very much alike—so much so that Tex even says the hitchhiker reminds him of somebody, but he can't think who. They came from different backgrounds but had the same genetic material. There was just something about Tex, though, that was stronger—maybe not so self-indulgent. Mark showed no regret for the way his own immediate family had been lost, whereas it devastated Tex to learn that the man he thought was his father really wasn't. But he learned to forgive and accept much more than his brother, who actually was Pop's biological son.

Critics have pointed out that Jamie in
Tex
is one of your most fully developed female characters. Did you consciously work on building her persona, or did she evolve naturally
?

Naturally. I think girls who have a lot of older brothers are, most of the time, pretty spunky. They've got to hold their own, and Jamie was making the point that she had a lot more common sense than the guys, so it wasn't fair that she couldn't have a motorcycle, too. I felt the same way.

You set
Tex
in a fictional suburb outside of Tulsa rather than in the city itself. Did that provide you with some flexibility
?

I spent a lot time in the country when I was a kid—my grandmother had a farm out in Nowata, and I loved being on that farm. When I was writing
Tex
, I was living in Bixby, and to a certain degree, it's a suburb. In small towns there's a difference. Not that the kids don't get into their little groups, but economically everybody's about the same. So the Collins family is an anomaly in
Tex
.

How closely does Tex's devotion to his horse parallel your feelings for your own animals
?

Negrito in
Tex
is based on my horse Toyota. I raised him from a colt and broke him to the saddle. I was always one of those horse-crazy little girls, but I had to wait until I was an adult to buy a horse of my own. I was twenty at the time and spent the last seventy-five bucks I had in the bank to buy this four-month-old colt. He still needed milk supplements. When we moved to California, I took him with me and put him with a regular trainer. He turned out to be a champion jumper. I just let him decide what he wanted to do. He died at twenty-three, and I was right there holding his head.

Are horses still as much a part of your life as they were back then
?

Not quite as much, because I don't have the time or the energy. After twenty-five years of showing and riding around the ring, I bought myself a little trail horse.

Not only have you loved horses, you became an accomplished jumper. What makes the sport worth the risk to you
?

I like an adrenaline rush. I like challenges. Even as a kid I was braver than I should have been. When I was going to New York to do the publicity for
The Outsiders
, I'd never been on a jet, but I wasn't scared. Any time you try to start a new book, it's damn scary. But there's something about me that likes to push that button in me that's scared.

You've described your fifth young adult novel
, Taming the Star Runner,
as a horse story and a love story. Would you agree with novelist Jane Smiley, herself a horse lover, that all horse stories are love stories
?

There's something special about girls and horses, because horses are so big and so powerful, yet they'll befriend you. They want to know what you want them to do.

You discovered you were pregnant right after you started
Taming the Star Runner.
What did that do to your writing schedule
?

I wrote my editors, told them I wouldn't be able to do the book for a while, and asked if they wanted their money back. But they told me just to write the book whenever I felt like it, so I mentally retired with my box of chocolate-covered peanuts and a book of baby names, never giving the novel another thought until Nick was about four. I enrolled him in a preschool, where he went three days a week from nine to two, and I rented an office on the same block. I still had my outline for the book, and the characters were in my head. I identified a lot with Travis, because he was a writer, and we'd had some of the same experiences. He sold his first book when he was sixteen, and there's nobody at home to tell but the cat. People think it's autobiographical, but it's not really. Travis seems especially self-centered.

He's trying to figure out who he is. That's the way you are at that age. He's a good-looking kid; he knows it and is constantly checking in the mirror, but by the last page of the book he's looking out the window at other people. So he's maturing. Basically I think
Taming the Star Runner
is about an artist trying to learn discipline. Travis watches Casey, who's very talented. She understands the importance of discipline as she works to transform a horse into a wonderful piece of art. By the end of the book, Travis realizes what they've got in common—he's sitting at his typewriter waiting for his next book, and she's waiting for the artistic challenge of her next horse.

Did you realize as you wrote
Taming the Star Runner
that it would be your last young adult novel for a while
?

I didn't. I was so identified with the genre, I didn't even think about that at the time.

Unlike your other early novels
, Taming the Star Runner
is in third person. Do you think you might have been subconsciously distancing yourself a little bit
?

When I'm writing a first-person narration, I really have to become my narrator, and I have to be totally involved with, that narrator. My son was only four years old at the time, and I was emotionally involved with him. I didn't have anything to spare to become Travis at that point. But I did think I could write a book about Travis. As a writer, I wanted to prove to myself that I hadn't lost it. It had been eight or nine years since I'd written
Tex
. But in that time, I had worked on the movies, and I'd had my child and worked on him.

And the book's dedicated to Nick
.

Actually it was supposed to be dedicated to Nick and David. David's been in all my dedications since
That Was Then, This Is Now
, but the editor left out the comma between “Nicholas” and “David.” “Nicholas David” is Nick's full name, so for lack of a comma, a dedication was lost.

As
you think through all your young adult novels, do you see a character-writer progression? For example, did you need to write as Ponyboy in
The Outsiders
before you could ultimately write about Travis in
Taming the Star Runner?

Definitely. Ponyboy is so much like me. But as you get older, you appreciate other qualities in people or hidden qualities in yourself. Travis is very different from me, and he's certainly different from me as a teenager, though some of his thoughts on writing and some of his experiences in getting his book published were very similar to mine. As a mature writer, you realize there are other people/characters in the world besides you.

Where do you think Ponyboy, your alter ego, would be today
?

Ponyboy would be writing mystery novels under the name of P. M. Curtis.

Like you, Ponyboy Curtis in
The Outsiders
loves movies. What extended role did movies play in your life when you were growing up in Tulsa
?

As a kid I was just interested in seeing a good story. I can't tell you how many times I watched
Old Yeller
. The first movie I ever saw in my life was
Peter Pan
. I was five, and my mind went berserk with all those images, all that story. I developed a huge crush on red-headed boys all through grade school. I used to think of myself as a movie buff, but later in life I met movie buffs, and I lag way behind. But I've always been interested in movies as a form of storytelling.

What were some of your other favorite movies when you were a teenager, Ponyboy's age
?

I liked
Lawrence of Arabia
, but I was a little older than Ponyboy when I saw that. And
Bye Bye Birdie
—I thought it was great. Then, of course Disney movies, especially the documentaries on animal life. In my twenties I had a couple of traumatic movie experiences, one with
The Godfather
. Little did I know that Mr. Coppola and I would have a relationship one day. But I got so involved with the movie that, when it got violent, I came out of it shaking. And very shortly afterward, I saw
In Cold Blood
. I had read the book but didn't expect the flashback to the actual murders. I was so traumatized I quit seeing movies for a couple of years. I've always liked sci-fi; Bruce Dern's movie
Silent Running
is still one of my all-time favorites. I also like good scary movies—
The Haunting, The Others
.

When I was younger I was more intrigued with movie stars than movies; I have the feeling it was just the opposite for you
.

When I was in grade school, I was totally entranced with Little Joe Cartwright. I couldn't have cared less who Michael Landon was, but Little Joe Cartwright was such a hottie. As I grew older, I wasn't the kind to form actor crushes, but I really like actors. I've found that they talk like writers, except there's absolutely no sense of competition, so you can have a good conversation with them.

Ponyboy “loned” it at the movies, because he felt that going to the movies with friends was like having someone read over your shoulder. Do you ever “lone” it at the movies
?

Occasionally. I did with
Brokeback Mountain
. I ran out of people to see it with but wasn't through seeing it myself. I was going to see it once a week for a long time.

When you were writing your early novels did you see them as movies in your mind's eye
?

I just saw them as books. I wasn't even sure, especially with
The Outsiders
, that I wanted them to be movies.

Why do you think
Tex
was the first of your books to make it to the big screen
?

My fans helped me with
Tex
. Tim Hunter, who later directed
Tex
, had done a screenplay called
Over the Edge
, and he told me later that whenever he asked kids on the set what they read, they said S. E. Hinton. Matt Dillon, who was one of the actors in
Over the Edge
, even said, “Like, man, if you ever do get an S. E. Hinton movie going, I want to be in it.” Disney was going into PG movies and called me. At first I didn't want Disney to do the movie—I mean,
Tex Meets the Seven Dwarfs
. The next thing I knew, an executive from Disney was on my doorstep wanting to go to lunch.

On your doorstep in Tulsa
?

On my doorstep in Tulsa! We went to lunch, and he offered me the standard amount for a young adult film; I told him the money was okay. He asked if I'd like an expense-paid trip to Disneyland, and I said sure, I loved Disneyland. But I was still just staring at him, and he finally asked what else it was that I wanted. I said, “I've got a horse that's perfect for the horse part.” My horse got the role, and Disney got the book. Toyota played Tex's horse in the movie and did a wonderful job. He loved the movie-making process. He just knew all of those cameras and lights were for him. And he adored Matt Dillon, Tex. Matt came in early, and I gave him riding lessons for a couple of weeks. I also taught Matt to always have carrots in his pocket. There's a scene in the movie where Toyota is nuzzling Matt's pockets, looking for his carrots.

A lot of writers aren't even allowed on the sets of their films
.
How involved were you with
Tex?

The director, Tim Hunter, came to Tulsa and asked if I wanted help scout locations. I drove him to the Camelot Inn, across the street from where Tex tried to make a phone call after being shot by a drug dealer. And I drove him out to Bixby, where I lived, and showed him the area. Scouting locations is so funny. You just drive around until you see something you like, walk up to the door, and say, “We'd like to put your house in our movie.” It's amazing. People always say, “Yes, take the house! You like the dog, take the dog; you like the kid, take the kid!” Then he had me help on wardrobe; he let me in on everything. One day when he was shooting a scene from a big, high angle, there wasn't room for anybody but essential crew on the platform, but Tim got me on, and I got to watch that shot.

You said in a previous interview that
Tex
is your favorite of your young adult novels. Was it hard, even though you liked Tim Hunter, to turn your story over to him
?

After I talked to Tim, I wasn't afraid of him, but after my first meeting with Matt, I was scared to death of him. Tim had told me: “I've got this kid. He's going to be big, and he wants to do
Tex
.” So, I'm in New York, imagining Little Bixby Cowboy, when up walks this street punk, who says, “Hey, S. E., I thought you was a man!” And I thought,
Oh, dear! I hope this kid's a good actor, 'cause he can't play himself
. Matt later told me one of the hardest things for an actor to do is to act innocent when he isn't. I still think Tex is one of his best performances.

How did you come to make your acting debut in the film
?

Tim asked if I'd do a cameo. After weeks of watching other actors, I thought it looked easy, so finally I said okay. He cast me as the typing teacher, and at first I got nervous, but it worked great. The typing teacher is supposed to be a wreck; the kids had put caps on the typewriter keys. I ran in, hit my marks, and said my lines without even glancing down—did it in a couple of takes.

What was it like seeing
Tex
in the theater for the first time
?

It was great, especially since it opens with a long montage—Matt riding Toyota. Anytime I think of Toyota now, I can get out the DVD and see him in his prime.

Did Toyota develop a star complex at all
?

He had a big ego to begin with—he was a champion jumper—but for months after the movie I couldn't get him to move without yelling “Action!”

What sort of synchronicity brought Francis Ford Coppola into your life
?

A group of kids in California wrote Francis a letter, telling him
The Outsiders
was their favorite book and asking him to please make it into a movie. Francis was intrigued—he really does love kids—and had his producer get in touch with me. For years I'd had people calling me, saying they were interested in doing
The Outsiders
, but I was afraid it was going to end up being
Ponyboy Meets Beach Blanket Bingo
. So I was reluctant to hand over
The Outsiders
to anyone until I realized I was talking to Francis Coppola's studio. Just a couple months before, I'd seen
The Black Stallion
, and had thought that if that movie had been based on one of my books, I would have been thrilled.

Since you were such a fan of Coppola's work, were you nervous at all about meeting him
?

Francis was holding huge casting calls all over the country, one in downtown Tulsa, and I went to the auditorium. I was nervous about meeting him, and as I walked down the aisle, I realized he was kind of nervous about meeting me. So I walked up, shook his hand, and told him, “Mr. Coppola, I do have a problem with your doing
The Outsiders. The Godfather
is better than the book, and
The Black Stallion
is better than the book. Are you going to do that to me?” He laughed—and relaxed. So did I. After I drove him around some Tulsa neighborhoods, he decided he wanted to shoot on location. He asked me to help with the script and with the wardrobe. I was going, “Yeah, I can do this; I'm experienced.”

How well did you and Coppola work together when you actually started developing the screenplay? To borrow Ponyboy's phrase again, you'd pretty much “loned” it as a writer
.

Francis took a copy of the book, outlined the introspection in one color, the action in one color, the dialogue in one color. Then he cut it up and literally pasted it on sheets in the form of a screenplay and had someone type it up that way. By the time he handed it to me, it was the size of a phone book, and he asked if I minded cutting it for him. I hadn't done any writing on the script for
Tex
, except once in a while, when Tim would say he needed transition lines. But I'd learned a lot about movies from watching what Tim did with the script. He always said you cannot have actors saying more than three sentences or it sounds like they're giving the preamble to the Constitution. So I was interested in keeping
The Outsiders
moving.

You were in your thirties when you were working on the screenplay. How did it feel coming back to your story as an older writer
?

I had learned to accept a lot of the book, partially because of the response to it. But I couldn't help coming up with better lines and dialogue. Francis had no problems with anything I cut, but if I changed a line, he'd ask if that was how it had been in the book. And I'd say, “No, but it's better.” Then he'd remind me that we were making the movie for the readers and needed to keep it like it was.

Many of the film stars—Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane—went on to become show-business superstars. Did you see that potential in them as you watched them on the set
?

I don't know what virtue there is in being able to see talent in front of your face, but it was obvious that they were going to be great. I actually got Francis to ask Matt to read for Dallas, because I thought he would be perfect for the part. After Matt's first reading, Francis told him to go home, and Matt thought he'd blown it. He didn't find out until later that Francis was saying, “You've nailed it; go home!”

You'd also worked with Emilio Estevez before, on
Tex.

Emilio was very professional, but he was so good at improv. The whole scene in
The Outsiders
where he looks like he's going to help Ponyboy clear the table but takes the chocolate cake and a beer and sits down in front of the TV—that was total Emilio. Another time when Two-Bit, Johnny, and Ponyboy were walking home from the movies, a hat blew by, and Emilio grabbed it and put it on. It had blown off the head of a cameraman. Emilio just used it as an opportunity.

You mentioned how closely you collaborated with Matt on
Tex.
How closely did you work with the actors on
The Outsiders
to give them new insight into the characters
?

I worked with the actors quite a bit. They were turned loose here in Tulsa with no adult supervision, and I immediately took it upon myself to be their mother. Rob Lowe even called me “Mom” half the time. I'd run lines with the boys. They were really sweet kids. I tried not to go to the hotel where they were staying very often, because I knew, even as a mother, there would be only so much that I could do, and I really didn't want to know what was going on. The night the Socs were drowning Ponyboy in the movie, the other cast members, in a show of camaraderie, were pretending to drown each other in the hotel fountain. A few years later, I went back to the hotel and the fountain was gone. I think I know why.

C.
Thomas Howell played Ponyboy, the character you say is most like you
.

Yes, and he had the flu—bad—the night we were drowning him in the fountain. It was in the upper thirties. We did have heaters around, but by the time you were dragged out of that fountain and put in front of a heater, you could get pretty cold. Tommy toughed it out, though. Nobody whined.

Have you stayed in touch with the cast
?

I've stayed in contact with Matt more than the others. He lives in New York, and I visit the city a lot. As for the rest of us, we can go years without getting together, but when we do, we pick up where we left off, so that's nice. Emilio and I e-mail once in a very great while. Tommy Howell and Ralph Macchio came back to Tulsa in 2006 for the premier of
The Outsiders: The Complete Novel
, the new DVD edition of the movie. And that was so much fun. They hadn't changed a bit. Between interviews we took the limo that was at our disposal and visited our old haunts where we'd shot the film—the park, the Curtis house. Johnny's house had a pig on the porch, which was kind of startling. The same man who lived in the Curtis brothers' house during the shoot is still living there. He came out on the porch and talked to us. He said people from all over the world come to take pictures of that house.

How important was it to you for the movie to be shot in Tulsa
?