TULSA, Oklahoma — This summer season, it was Leonardo DiCaprio. Then it was Inexperienced Day. A tiny museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, devoted to a film traditional and run by an entertainer, is drawing large names within the Heartland.
The Outsiders Home Museum was created by Danny Boy O’Connor, previously of the hip-hop group Home of Ache. It’s been a labor of affection for O’Connor, who purchased the home a number of years in the past and renovated it.
The modest white bungalow with a large entrance porch was used as a central set within the 1983 movie “The Outsiders,” which was based mostly on S.E. Hinton’s traditional 1967 novel of the identical title.
“That was our ‘Gone with the Wind.’ That was our ‘American Graffiti.’ Each technology finds the cool archetypes of who we could possibly be, and that for me was the film,” O’Connor stated in a latest interview inside the home. He stated guests have ranged “from 8 to 80 — to every part in between. It’s often the entire household. It’s a household museum.”
Director Francis Ford Coppola shot the movie in Tulsa with a younger forged of future A-listers, together with C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise.
The museum additionally consists of memorabilia from the movie set, together with furnishings, pictures, posters and the leather-based jacket worn by Dillon’s character, Dallas Winston.
“The Outsiders” takes place in Oklahoma within the Nineteen Sixties and options rival teen gangs: the Socs, quick for Socials, and the Greasers. The home was house to the Curtis brothers and a hangout for his or her Greaser pals.
The constructing was in disrepair when O’Connor purchased it again in 2015 after visiting the tenants and monitoring down the proprietor. Earlier than he launched into the venture, he hadn’t been certain what he was going to do subsequent, having plowed by way of most of his financial savings.
Nonetheless, when he would crisscross the nation on excursions or simply touring, he’d all the time make a beeline for Oklahoma.
“That is phenomenal. And I imply that within the true sense of the phrase. I didn’t know what I used to be doing. I noticed a home from one among my favourite motion pictures,” stated O’Connor, 52.
He began a GoFundMe to lift cash for repairs and restorations.
“Tulsans helped me,” he stated. “Folks from the film helped me. Okies helped me.”
DiCaprio, who was in northeast Oklahoma for filming of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” confirmed as much as the Outsiders Home throughout enterprise hours and took a tour in July. He has since been photographed at different museums within the space, together with the Oklahoma Metropolis Nationwide Memorial & Museum.
“He stated anytime he does a film, he tries to see a museum,” O’Connor stated, including that the actor had as soon as learn for a TV model of “The Outsiders.”
Quickly different actors from “Killers of the Flower Moon” stopped by as effectively.
Inexperienced Day, in Tulsa for a shock present at Cain’s Ballroom, additionally referred to as and requested to cease by. “They got here by way of and have been followers as effectively,” O’Connor stated, noting that frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has ties to Oklahoma — his mom is from the Sooner State.
Different guests have included Hinton.
O’Connor shares pictures of celeb visits on social media.
Now, O’Connor is making ready for a exhibiting of a 4K Blu-ray version of the movie, a part of a weekend of occasions Sept. 25-26. A plaque shall be devoted at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema, with remarks from O’Connor, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, and California librarian Jo Ellen Misakian, amongst others.
Misakian, many say, was the impetus for the Hinton novel turning into a film. She despatched Coppola a letter signed by over 300 college students explaining that the guide was cult studying amongst teenagers.
“The sequence of miracles that needed to occur for him to get the letters is unbelievable,” O’Connor stated.
IF YOU GO: The Outsiders Home Museum is at 731 N. St. Louis Ave. in Tulsa. It’s open weekends from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $10; personal excursions $25. www.theoutsidershouse.com