October Sky is a 1999 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Joe Johnston, from a screenplay by Lewis Colick. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Chris Owen, and Laura Dern. Based on the book Rocket Boys (later published as October Sky ), it tells the story of Homer H. Hickam Jr., a coal miner's son from Coalwood, West Virginia, who takes up amateur rocketry with several friends. Hickam would later become a NASA engineer.
Filming for October Sky took place in rural East Tennessee, including Oliver Springs, Harriman, and Kingston in Morgan and Roane Counties. The film was a moderate box office success and received very positive critical reception. It continues to be celebrated in the regions of its setting and filming.
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." The book was later re-released with the name in order to capitalize on interest in the film.
In October 1957, the Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. Witnessing Sputnik as it passes over the mining community of Coalwood, West Virginia, 17-year-old Homer Hickam is inspired to build his own rockets. His family and friends are skeptical of his ambition, especially his father John Hickam, who wants Homer to work in the coal mine that he manages.
Homer recruits his friends Roy Lee Cooke and Sherman O'Dell, as well as the social outcast Quentin Wilson, to his rocketry team. Their teacher, Freida J. Riley, supports their endeavors as they launch their first small rockets. When one rocket lands near John's office and nearly injures some workers, John warns Homer not to launch rockets on company property again.
The boys begin launching rockets beyond the borders of the coal company's property with the help of Ike Bykovsky, the manager of the mine's machine shop. John continues to oppose Homer's rocketry and sends Bykovsky to work in the mine as punishment for helping the boys. After several of their rockets explode, the boys finally get a rocket to fly.
The rocket launches attract the interest of the community, but the boys are forced to abandon their pursuits after they are accused of starting a wildfire with a stray rocket. After a mining accident injures John and kills Bykovsky, Homer is devastated, as he feels responsible for Bykovsky's death. However, John tells Homer that Bykovsky was not forced to stay in the mine, so Homer is not to blame for his death. Homer drops out of high school to work in the mine, contributing to his family's income as his father recovers.
Homer is inspired by Miss Riley to read a book on applied rocket science, which teaches him how to calculate a rocket's trajectory. He and Quentin use this knowledge to locate their missing rocket and prove it could not have started the fire. The boys present their findings to Miss Riley and the school principal, Mr. Turner, who later determines that the fire was caused by a flare from a nearby airfield.
Homer leaves the mines and returns to school and rocketry. The boys win the school science fair, which allows Homer to attend the National Science Fair in Indianapolis. Homer's presentation on rocketry is well-received at the National Science Fair, but someone steals a key piece of his equipmentâÂÂthe de Laval nozzle. Homer makes an urgent call to his mother Elsie, who enlists the new machine shop manager, Mr. Bolden, to build a replacement nozzle.
The nozzle is shipped overnight to Indianapolis. Homer wins the top prize in the competition, after which he is bombarded with college scholarship offers. He returns to Coalwood triumphant and visits Miss Riley, who is dying of Hodgkin lymphoma.
Many Coalwood citizens come to watch the launch of the boys' final rocket, including John, who had not attended any of the previous launches. The rocket, named Miss Riley, reaches an altitude of . During the closing credits, it is explained that Miss Riley died soon after the launch. It is revealed that all the boys went to college, and Homer went to work for NASA.
Principal photography began on February 23, 1998, and took place entirely in East Tennessee. Producer Larry J. Franco explained that because the film takes place over the course of a school year, the crew needed a location with a flexible enough climate to support scenes occurring in autumn, winter and spring. Film crews reconstructed the sites to look like the 1957 mining town setting the movie demanded. The weather in East Tennessee gave the filmmakers trouble and delayed the production of the film. Cast and crew recalled the major weather shifts and tornadoes in the area during the filming months, but Joe Johnston claimed, "Ultimately, the movie looks great because of it. It gave the film a much more interesting and varied look." For the underground scenes, the crews also recreated a mine, with Johnston expressing that the mine took on a "villainous" appearance in the film. More than 2,000 extras were used in the film. A small switching yard allowed the filmmakers and actors to film the scenes with the boys on the railroad and gave the freedom to do as they pleased, including the tearing apart of tracks. The locomotive used in the film was Southern Railway 4501. Filming concluded on April 30, 1998.
The film's star, Jake Gyllenhaal, was 17 years old during filming, the same age 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.
October Sky opened on February 19, 1999, in 1,495 theaters and had an opening weekend gross of $5.9 million. At its widest release, 1,702 theaters were showing the film. It had a total lifetime gross of $34.7 million worldwide.
October Sky received generally positive reviews. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 90% out of 72 critics gave the film a positive review. The website's critical consensus states: "Rich in sweet sincerity, intelligence, and good old-fashioned inspirational drama, October Sky is a coming-of-age story with a heart to match its Hollywood craftsmanship." Metacritic gave the film a score of 71 out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A" on scale of A to F.
Roger Ebert said the film has "deep values", and he praised its nuanced portrayal of a father-son relationship. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly and Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide thought the film's highlight was the acting of Gyllenhaal and Cooper. James Wall of The Christian Century described the film's concentration on the father-son relationship as "at times painful to watch. There are no winners or losers when sons go their separate ways. October Sky does not illustrate good parenting; rather, it evokes the realization that since parents have only a limited vision of how to shape their children's future, the job requires a huge amount of love and a lot of divine assistance."
The Christian Science Monitor pointed out that some viewers may question "the movie's hero-worshiping treatment of Homer's role model, Wernher von Braun, who's depicted as an all-American icon with no acknowledgment of his earlier career in Nazi Germany." During World War II, Braun was a member of the Nazi party and the Allgemeine SS. In addition, the ballistic weapons that he developed for the Nazi regime were largely constructed by concentration camp prisoners who faced inhumane conditions, with many dying due to their brutal imprisonment.
October Sky won three awards, including the OCIC Award for Joe Johnston at the Ajijic International Film Festival 1999; the Critics' Choice Movie Awards for Best Family Film in 2000; and the Humanitas Prize 1999 for Featured Film Category.
The film was praised for its portrayal of 1950s Appalachia despite several major and minor differences from the book on which it is based.
There are two annual festivals in honor of the Rocket Boys and the film. One is held in Coalwood, West Virginia where the real-life events depicted in the book and film took place, and the other is in Tennessee where the film was shot. The real-life Rocket Boys often visit the Coalwood festival, which is also called the "Rocket Boys Festival".
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.
Hickam has claimed that the ' episode "" was based on October Sky, and there are obvious references to the story in the episode.