We caught up with author S.E.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Happy 50th anniversary toThe Outsiders!
Can you believe it’s been this long?
Warner Bros./ Everett Collection
HINTON:No, I can’t.
I can’t believe I’m this old!
You started writing the book when you were only 15, so you’re not actually that old.
Warner Bros./ Everett Collection
But I have taken to saying I wrote it when I was 6.
[Laughs]
How did this book come about?
The first is I just like to write.
I’ve been writing practically since I learned to read.
So by the time I wroteThe Outsiders, I’d been writing for about eight years.
It was actually the third book I’d written.
It’s just the first one I ever tried to get published.
Wait, what were the first two books?
Oh, somewhere in the sixth grade, I think, I wrote one about the Civil War.
I havenoidea what I thought I knew about the Civil War.
Okay, back toThe Outsiders.
What sparked the idea for it?
That story turned out to be about 40 pages long, single-spaced jot down.
And I just kept going back over it and adding more details and flashbacks and so forth.
The draft the publisher saw was about the third draft I’d done.
So you had done a lot of self-editing.
But another reason why I wrote it is that I wanted to read it.
There was nothing realistic being written for teens at that time.
It was all, like, “Mary Jane Goes to the Prom.”
And I’d been to a few proms, and that was not what was happening.
I really wanted to read a book that dealt realistically with teenage life as I was seeing it.
What was your writing process like when you were 15?
Were you working on it after school?
Some kids liked to play tennis, I liked to write.
What was your relationship with your editor like?
How do you think it affected your career to have success so young?
My success was slow.
My first royalty check was for $10.
The only thing that overwhelmed me was the realization that there was an audience out there.
Was that a good realization?
No, it gave me writer’s block for four years.
My husband, bless his heart, he was my boyfriend at the time.
He said, “You’ve got to get over this.
I’m tired of you being dreary and gloomy and depressed.
Just write two pages a day.
Nobody ever died of two pages.”
Which is spoken like a true non-writer.
So that was my big motive for my second bookI wanted to go out.
I’m still getting the same letters, the same responses.
I get so many letters from people saying, “You changed my life.”
The rest of ‘em, I just wrote, butThe Outsiderswas supposed to be there.
How do you feel about people creditingThe Outsidersfor creating the whole genre of YA?
It’s basically true.
Oh, well the Greasers loved it.
And a lot of the Socs took a second look at themselves.
And he’d been a Greaser.
How did you come up with some of the names?
Did people really have names like Sodapop and Ponyboy?
Or when Veronica Mars said, “Stay cool, Sodapop.”
If I’d named them Jim and Bill, all this wouldn’t have happened.
You spent a lot of time on theOutsidersmovie set.
What memory stands out the most?
Tommy [Howell] was 15, and Rob Lowe had his 18th birthday on the set.
Matt [Dillon] had just turned 18.
Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez were just 19.
Ralph Macchio was the oldest at 20.
I loved watching that.
What’s it been like to watch their careers?
And I’ve stayed in touch with all of them.
Rob used to call me Mom half the time.
Who are you closest to now?
Well, I’m still really close to almost all of them.
Matt and I take a stab at get together whenever we’re in the same town.
Last time I saw him was in Vancouver.
I visit Vancouver twice a year to visit theSupernaturalset, so I was up there for that.
Matt said, “Oh, you need a bottle of water or something, Suze?”
and I said, “No, I’ve got one already, thanks, honey.”
And then I looked at him and said, “I’m sorry.
You’re over 50.
I should quit calling you that.”
And he said, “I want you to call me honey until the day I die.”
That’s rightI forgot you were a bigSupernaturalfan.
But it’d be hard to hoax your email address."
It turns out he’s one of those “I changed his life” fans.
So he got me a set visit, which I immediately jumped on.
I had a really good time, and I got an invitation to come back.
And that’s evolved into, I go usually twice a year and stay for a shooting week.
Have you ever done a cameo?
I got killed in the diner by the evil Leviathan Sam and Dean.
I’m sitting there in the diner and they decide to kill everyone.
He just thought it was hysterical that he scared me.
I was the nurse there, and I was a typing teacher inTex.
Talk about an obsolete profession nowadays!
And I was a hooker inRumble Fish.
But I always played a professional.
Something you said last time I interviewed you has stuck with me.
You said,“I could never be that unselfconscious again.
“What exactly did you mean by that?
I wasn’t thinking about any kind of audience for it.
An adult writer I think [would say], “Gosh, it’s emotionally over-the-top.
It’s so dramatic.”
But that’s the way you feel when you’re that age.
I could never do that again.
It’s one of the reasons I’ll never write a sequel.
A version of this story appears in the April 28/May 5, 2017 issue ofEntertainment Weekly.
