Danny O’Connor became a household name when he lept to superstardom as part of the hip hop group House of Pain. The group’s most popular single, “Jump Around,” was released in 1992 and became one of the most common hip hop songs of all time, topping out at number 3 in the U.S. and getting featured on television and in movies like Mrs. Doubtfire.
It was several years later, while touring with a new supergroup La Coka Nostra, that he finished a performance at Cain’s in Tulsa and suddenly realized why Tulsa seemed so familiar: it was the home of his favorite movie of all time: S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders.”
O’Connor, who grew up in what he calls “a very disfunctional Irish Catholic family,” says that he didn’t read the book in seventh grade like most kids.
“I never read the book in seventh grade, I was lucky I made it to high school, but I was just hanging out in front of it, I never really went inside,” he told Sapulpa Times during an interview this week.
Instead, his first experience with the Tulsa-based book that kickstarted the young adult genre was when a friend invited him to go watch the movie.
“It was just an invite to a movie that I didn’t know anything about,” he said.
“And as soon as the screen came up and they started walking up that street, you know, said ‘what do you want to do, it’s early,’ and ‘nothing legal man, let’s get out of here,’ I was like ‘oh, this has to be good.'”
O’Connor says the old greaser-versus-socs story is reminescent of some of his best-loved movies and shows. “I always love old school stuff, like ‘American Graffiti.’ The Fonz was the coolest guy on the planet when I was a kid.”
All of these books and movies have one thing in common, that Danny O’Connor says got him through the toughest times in his life: a sense of community. A place to belong.
“I was a latchkey kid in the 80s where your mother basically put a key around your neck and said ‘don’t lose it.’ So I thought my mom was cool, but in reality she was overwhelmed by life. My father was in prison, most of his natural life, until, until he was murdered when I was 17, So I never really had a dad around, and a mother who just trying to keep this all afloat. So, when I see these guys, they suffered from the same thing that I did—not having a solid foundation—so they try to recreate it on the streets. This is what why people join gangs, why people join bike clubs, why sports are great.”
That sense of community, of belonging, became a catalyst for nearly every big move that Danny O’Connor made from then on, joining House of Pain, and later starting his own design company and finally, coming full circle back to Tulsa, to start the Outsiders House Museum.
“Fools rush in, you know. I was that fool,” O’Connor says.
Purchased sight unseen in 2015 for $15,000, O’Connor had to sneak in through a window to see what he’d just purchased. The house had been trashed, and O’Connor was worried he’d made a mistake.
“The day I broke in that window and saw what I really bought, I was like, ‘I’m in big trouble. This is not fixable. It’s not safe.”
But again, the community came through. “I thought, ‘am I the only guy on the planet that loves this movie this much?’ I was wrong,” O’Connor said. Fans came out of the woodwork to restore the house, which O’Connor says had to be stripped down to the studs and rebuilt from the ground up to replicate how the house was depicted in the movie. Props, memorabilia and other items have been purchased or given to the museum as well.
The Museum, located at 731 N St Louis Ave, in Tulsa, has breathed new life into the area, and spurred a slew of new explorers to find the locations of the other movies from Hinton’s books, including “Rumble Fish,” which had major parts of its movie filmed into downtown Sapulpa.
Rumble Fish was filmed back-to-back with The Outsiders by the same director, the acclaimed Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Mickey Rourke and Matt Dillon, Rumble Fish deals with the relationship between Rourke’s character—named Motorcycle Boy—and his little brother, Dillon’s Rusty James. James idolizes his brother and wants to be just like him, but Motorcycle Boy is trying to leave the gang life for a more peaceful one.
Though the movie is set in Tulsa, certain scenes are filmed at several locations in downtown Sapulpa, including the Iowa Building on Dewey between Water and Park Streets, and the Westfall Building at the corner of Dewey and Park, currently the home of Isabella’s collection. In the movie, it was a Rexall Drug store.
O’Connor is working to get the Sapulpa-based movie locations featured in an upcoming app he’s having developed for the hardcore Outsiders fan, which will take them through all the locations for each of the four movies by the time it’s completed. Sapulpa will hopefully get a few commemorative plaques, identifying the spot as a location for a movie scene and depicting the scene being performed. Other enhancements might also include a mural.
For Danny Boy O’Connor, it’s about connecting people with that sense of community surrounding the cult following of S.E. Hinton and what it means to call the Tulsa area home. “I’ve been around the planet a hundred times and I never felt at home. But this is different. It’s the calming feeling. It’s the sunsets. It’s the train horn in the distance.”
Hm. You know, that sounds a lot like Sapulpa, too.
