welcome to the uh show uh i've seen your movie and i've read the book it's great fun you know
thank you it's like we were talking to magic about it it's it's a true story and and i know it's been
enhanced here and there but nonetheless you're confident that what you see there more or less
actually took place and it's it's a it's fun too isn't it it's wonderful yeah tell the folks what
this film's about it's uh it's about it's a true story about a a guy named homer hickam
who uh built rockets in 1957 after seeing sputnik go up into the got very excited
about space and got very excited about space and decided that with his friends they would
start building amateur rockets uh with uh the help of a scientist that was a friend of theirs
with mathematics and science and that sort of thing yeah and it became more
than just a little hobby it became a a struggle for them to get out of what was
not a very promising future because of coal mining that's right it's a great uh and uh and you play
i play the guy who sort of ignites the passion of the boys the the story is written by a guy
named homer hickman and i play him and in the book actually the rocket boys homer hickman and
maybe you know this maybe you don't know homer hickam taught me to scuba dive i do know that
i do know that and i can't tell you how crushed i was that that's not in the film
homer tried to get it in in fact he wanted me to tell you that he's extremely sorry yeah well he
ought to be by god but now uh there was a scene that we shot actually a love scene actually in
the water now wait a minute hold it hang on and it was cut out unfortunately thank goodness but
um when you're reading the book the exciting thing for me other than the human real-life
drama the exciting thing was the actual building and launching of these rockets what great fun that
must have been and toward the end of their little rocket club they had things that were going 30 000
feet in the sky weren't they yeah i mean i i think uh indirectly i i had absolutely nothing to do
with that well that's the question i wanted to ask you yeah where where did in the film where did you
guys get those rockets because they looked like the real deal to me when you were setting them off
from the prop guys it's basically it's based from the prop guys and they were building rockets well
you're out there filming they're working in the back with gunpowder and stuff exactly actually
homer helped them build the rockets is that right yeah he helped them and that was when i was
developing the character i was trying to figure out who this guy was i i wanted to get like a
specific characteristic that i could get he has a little bit of a lisp i wanted to get that or maybe
something and then i watched him with the rockets and when he was building him we were launching him
and it it's his passion that's the major aspect and he went on and worked for nasa yep yep he's
retired now he retired in february last february so and he's now scoop diving actually he's scuba
diving so did uh do you mind if i ask you about your last name did i get it right is it gyllenhaal
gyllenhaal but it's spelled with a g isn't it without g but the phonetics are like j i l l i n
and is it a uh uh a european name is it swedish swedish and it actually it's it's it's a strange
story about how we got our name and my great great great great great great great great great who i am
father um was a butterfly catcher in catalog oh he was not now come on nope don't lie to me son
how dumb you think i am and he uh and he he he cataloged butterflies and so he was actually asked
by the king or queen of sweden queen christina i'm not sure if it was a king or a queen or if it was
a christina or if it was something and uh and he was asked by by him to catalog butterflies for the
kingdom and he put him in the golden hall right outside of the castle and um and he ordained him a
the court butterfly catcher and gave him a coat of arms and now we're named golden hall
gyllenhaal gyllenhaal is golden halls wow that's a that's a nice story we're actually i was stupid
it's too bad my mother's my mother's my mother's side are all scuba divers so it's if you would
have been able to work the word hydraulic into that you'd have gone home with 400 bucks well i
hope it's a big big hit thank you very much nice meeting you say hello to homereporter i will you