A little more than 40 years ago, a tiny metal sphere darted through the heavens, either scaring the hell out of politicians and plain Americans or inspiring them to reach for the heavens. October Sky is the story of four boys, from a dirt poor coal mining town who preferred to dream. Cranky sat down with Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Owen, William Lee Scott and Chad Lindberg, the actors who played the real life "Rocket Boys" for this edition of StarTalk.

CRANKY CRITIC: As 90s kids, tell us about getting into the mind of a 50s kid.
CHRIS OWEN: I have to say the wardrobe helped a lot.
WILLIAM LEE SCOTT: Yeah, the clothes create the posture which creates the attitude. It's a cool process.
CHRIS OWEN: When you dress like that, you get the feel for it. [laughs] It's all in the details. You can't "high five" and stuff...
CHAD LINDBERG: It was interesting because people treated people differently back then. It was very clean and honest, it seemed. It was very real. Simple. Joe [Johnston, the director] would have to tell me to stop being so "contemporary" and I'd have to remember that we were back in the old days. The respect and politeness; a lot different than it is today.

CRANKY: Is the real life Jake anything like the real life Homer?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: [laughs] Nah. I was never good at science so I could never relate to the character in that way. Homer, himself, taught me a lot about rockets and rocket building. But I've never really been a science guy.

CRANKY: It's one thing to build a character from a script, what's it like when the real person is there?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: Well since it's a real story, it puts a little pressure on me portraying the character. The character that I created and who Homer is are two different people. Different in many ways and similar in many ways, too. Homer was there almost every other week. It's really hard, when you're trying to portray something that happened in real life, with its ambiguity
and irony and put that into a character. There were times in the shoot when I had to go up to him and ask "Homer I'm a little confused at this point. I really want to know what you were feeling." There were moments where I would go up to him and ask him, make him specify it for me.

WILLIAM LEE SCOTT: I just portray the character. It was mine to do what I wanted to do with. I didn't meet Roy until three four weeks after shooting began. My character was established by then.

CRANKY: Chris, were you anything like the geek you play onscreen?
CHRIS OWEN: It's kind of strange because in real life I was never that interested in school. Every report card I got said 'Chris could do better if he applied himself.' It was always that kind of stuff. I was never into school. It bored me. So it's kind of funny that I always play the intelligent character.

CRANKY: Why do you think rockets are such a big thing for us guys?
CHRIS OWEN: [laughs] I never really got into rockets myself. I was more of a GI Joe / Transformers kind of kid. I watched my cartoons and played with my Legos. As I got older, for a time I lived out in the desert and all you could do was ride your bike around.
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: I think there's something inspirational about watching any object fly that high into the air and knowing in some ways that you played a part in it. It's the metaphor of the dream, I think.

CRANKY: and you get to blow things up . . .
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: well, when you're making movies you don't get to do all the blowing up. You get to do the lighting [laughs]. It was really fun to blow things up. I think we all had a good time lighting things on fire and getting blown up by them, too. All of that stuff is really dangerous, when it comes down to it. You could be seriously hurt. But it was great fun.

CRANKY: Did you take anything away from doing this job, you city boys working among real life coal miners...
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: It is an incredibly honorable job and profession to be a coal miner. And there are so many people who love it so much. We had men who had worked in the coal mine working with us, showing us how to walk and how to hammer; I think that what I came back learning is that, if that's what you love to do (and that's what John, Chris Cooper's character loved to do) y'know that in itself is an inspiration. Just because Homer didn't want to be a coal miner doesn't make it in any way a less honorable job. I think that, in the end, that's what is said. John wants his son to be a miner because he loves it so much. What John feels for the mine, Homer feels for rockets and at the end they understand that. Hopefully everyone will get that.