Movies can’t ruin books. They can only ruin movies.

S.E. Hinton on movies. (The Commonplace Book Project)

You can find all the posts in The Commonplace Book Project here:

“Movies can’t ruin books. They can only ruin movies” — S.E. Hinton

I was in the sixth grade at Kettering Elementary School. We all trooped into the auditorium to watch The Outsiders projected onto a big old pull-down screen.

That would have been 1983, the year it was released.

I remember it for two reasons.

It was the last time I held hands with a friend on my way — anywhere. My friend Stacy and I held hands on the way between our classroom and the auditorium — I remember our arms swinging.

And some asshole saying something weird and rude about girls holding hands. Were we babies? Were we gay?

The end of innocence, I swear.

And I remember that day because The Outsiders completely sucked me in. I fell in love with Johnny — even when I was eleven, I aligned with the underdog.

It was the first time I remember poetry engulfing me so completely. One of the only times.

I begged my mother to stop at the library on the way home that day. I checked out The Outsiders and read it in big, aching gulps.

And that weekend, I went to the library myself. On a city bus. And I checked out Gone With the Wind — the book that PonyBoy reads to Johnny. The librarian made me read some to her out loud, to prove that I could. I sat at the bus stop and read.

And read.

And read.

I kept waving the bus on, because I couldn’t stop.

My mother finally came looking for me and found me on that bench, the book up to my nose because it was almost dark. I was in so much trouble and it was so, so worth it.

I love Hinton’s quote above (and I hope it was here, I couldn’t find a source.) I agree with it one hundred percent. I love to watch a movie version of a book that I love. I know that a lot of people prefer to read the book first, and sometimes it works that way for me because I’ve read the book by the time the movie comes out.

But not always. I’ve never had a movie ruin a book for me. I have had a movie save a story for me. I couldn’t stand the book version of Divergent, but enjoyed all the movies, for instance.

And I’ve had books ruin movies. Breakfast at Tiffany’s used to be one of my favorite films. And then I read the book — and it’s so dark and delicious and so much more than the movie. I would have missed the opportunity to really love the movie for a while if I’d read the book first.

S.E. Hinton was 15 when she started writing The Outsiders and 18 when it was published. It’s still a bestseller. Ten year old girls are still falling in love with it, after all these years.

My 14-year-old daughter and her friends spent the entire summer after sixth grade calling each other Two Bit and Ponyboy and Johnny. Lilly and Taylor would come to Ruby’s soccer games and yell “Do it for Johnny!” from the sidelines. They read Gone With the Wind that summer.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like, to create your most lasting, impactful work when you’re so young. Nothing Hinton has written since has come close to The Outsider’s success.

I was very (very) pleasantly surprised to find that Hinton owns the movie rights to The Outsiders and will never allow it to be remade.

I also really enjoyed this article about The Outsiders staying power.

And here’s a collection of her writing advice.

If you’ve never read The Outsiders — please put it on your reading list. I really don’t have any idea if you have to be a certain age for it to really affect you, but if that’s true and you missed the window? Well, the best time to read it might be in the sixth grade. The second best time is now.

I pulled out my DVD of The Outsiders film while I wrote this post. Johnny was my crush when I was eleven, but man. Darry. Patrick Swayze in his pre-Dirty Dancing days. If I’d been a little bit older in 1983, it would have been all about Darry.

Today’s Poem:

I’ve shared this one, I think — but there isn’t another poem I can pair with a post about S.E. Hinton and The Outsiders.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf’s a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.

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Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.