47 – Stand By Me

Y’all may not know this but I was f’in OBSESSED with Stephen King books in my teens. From when I was fourteen to when I was seventeen I read Carrie, The Shining, Christine, IT, Danse Macabre, Night Shift, Firestarter and parts of Salem’s Lot, Bag of Bones, and Misery. I was a teen obsessed. Out of all the books I’d have to say Carrie was my favourite, or at least the one that resonated with me the most. I’ll spoiler you by saying that the 1976 film adaptation is not on my list – and it was my first experience with an adaptation that failed to live up to the book (do not get me started on The Shining either). I never read the anthology that today’s film comes from, and I knew very little about the film when I watched it. I was as surprised as most to discover that it came from a Stephen King book. And I didn’t watch it until I’d entered my twenties. After finishing it, I even went “why the hell didn’t I watch this earlier?” – because this would have been the perfect coming of age story for me to relate to (even if I wasn’t a teenager in 1950s Oregon). Four different young boys opening up and showing their vulnerability…I could have learned the ‘men can be vulnerable’ lesson five years earlier dammit! But even though my love of reading Stephen King slowly died off as I became less angsty, it doesn’t mean I can’t love his work in other ways.

While his novels were big sellers, Stephen King published the occasional anthology featuring collections of smaller tales. And a surprising number of these ended up becoming his best known adaptations. Children of the Corn became a franchise with a whopping eleven installments, and it’s just one short story from Night Shift. 1408 was another short story, this time taken from Everything’s Eternal and it ended up getting hailed as one of the scariest King adaptations ever. A few of the stories were kept short and thrown together in an anthology film called Cat’s Eye. The beloved masterpiece The Shawshank Redemption even came from one of these. The same in fact that Stand By Me comes from.

Different Seasons was King sort of flirting with a different type of story – in the same way that Pocahontas was Disney testing something new out. While there were horror elements – one story ending with a woman getting decapitated while in labour and still managing to give birth! – the stories were a bit more dramatic than scary. Rob Reiner pretty much dropped a few minor things – a curse that causes each of the friends to die horribly after finding the body – and turned the story into a straight-up coming of age drama. And the marketing decided not to play up the Stephen King angle – clearly afraid of making people think it was a horror movie. The adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and Dolores Claiborne did likewise.

The movie in fact opens in 1985 where we see a man called Gordie reading a newspaper article about a lawyer being stabbed to death. This makes him flash back to the age he was when he first saw a dead body – and we’re taken to 1959, where Gordie is now twelve and played by Wil Wheaton. He lived in a small Oregon town called Castle Rock where:

“There were only 1281 people but to me it was the whole world.”

I forgot how awesome this narration was. And this was before we got Morgan Freeman to narrate everything. As all nostalgic period pieces are contractually required to, the scene is set with an of the day pop song. In this case Bobby Day’s “Rockin Robin”. Yes I lost about three minutes YouTubing it and dancing like a white guy. No you cannot have a video of it.

One of Gordie’s friends is this firecracker – Teddy, played by noted child star of the day Corey Feldman. Out of the quartet that makes up our protagonist, I feel that he gives one of the strongest performances. He’s great at being troubled, dickish and pitiable all at the same time. Teddy is indeed the dickhead of the group and that’s a hard role to play if you want the character to be engaging. Years later he said that out of all his characters, Teddy was the closest to his real personality. Corey doesn’t give the top performance in the movie because that honor goes to…

I keep telling myself that I need to stop glorifying dead artists. Dying young does not make them better dammit! But let’s face, it Marilyn Monroe had a beauty and charisma that was unmatched. James Dean really was something special. Aaliyah captivated people in ways that few have been able to replicate. And River Phoenix was truly amazing. Pretty much all I knew of him before I saw this film was his little cameo in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade but g-darn it I sure knew who he was after this. I’ll gush more about his acting as the review goes on but let me assure you between when I first watched this movie and now – only one child actor has come close to moving me with a performance as much as he did.

Gordie’s narration tells us that Teddy was the craziest kid they knew. He came from a household where his father had the ‘going to hold your ear against a hot stove’ category of domestic abuse. River’s character Chris likewise comes from a troubled home, and everyone has made up their minds that he’ll turn out the same way. The fourth friend Vern forgets the secret knock to get into their clubhouse – so he’s clearly the butt monkey of the group. I feel as if he is the only one who should come with before and after pictures.

Granted I only knew Jerry O’Connell from Scream 2 but my eyebrows did that whole vertical motion thing when I discovered he was Vern. Vern himself has some news that’ll make the other three do the same vertical motion with their eyebrows – a missing boy called Ray Brower was found dead on the side of the train tracks. The four friends decide they’ll make a little trip out to see the body!

I actually didn’t get the significance of this on my first watch. And the real meaning behind this didn’t come to me until one of my mother’s friends was talking about how desensitized we are to tragedy today:

“A few years ago if a kid got killed, the whole country practically shut down.”

I can remember one case in particular from my own childhood – Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared when I was around eleven. The news reports played throughout the whole summer, and their deaths weren’t confirmed until late August. For me that was the first time experiencing the idea that something like that could actually happen. The age of eleven and twelve is when a child starts to become more aware of the world around them – and it marks the first steps towards leaving childhood behind. Our lives can be split into two neat little segments – the one where we didn’t believe things like that could really happen, and the one where we’re so used to it that another dead child case doesn’t faze us. And there was always one case or incident for each of us that marked the transition.

Returning to the plot, the kids hope to get famous by being the ones to find the body. Gordie doesn’t have quite as much enthusiasm, since he’s already experienced death. At this point in time his older brother Dennis has been dead for four months. We get to see in flashback that Dennis was a loving brother, which makes his death all the sadder since Gordie now has to put up with two unbelievably rotten parents.

The parents have been ignoring and neglecting Gordie ever since Dennis’s death. They lost their perfect son and have to make do with the other one. They even blatantly say they want Gordie to have better friends like Dennis had. Daddy dearest says that Chris stole money from a teacher so that makes him persona non grata. Chris admittedly doesn’t help his case when he shows up for the trip with a gun he borrowed from his father. But said gun might come in useful considering who they run into.

Oh, Kiefer, you always give me something to talk about (do not mention the hair…do not mention the hair!) but thankfully I can do so positively this time. Unlike Dark City this movie knows how to make good use of its Kiefer Sutherland. He’s a bully called Ace, and Chris’s brother is his beta. They establish themselves as nasty pieces of work by holding Chris down to the concrete, and even worse – they take the cap Dennis gave to Gordie!

The boys set out on their trip along the train tracks. If you think that sounds dangerous, you’re exactly right; when a train starts coming Teddy stays on the tracks claiming he’s going to wait until the last minute before jumping out of the way. You would think a child actor then miming shooting at imaginary Nazis would end up looking silly, but didn’t I tell y’all how good Corey Feldman is? Chris prevents Teddy’s possible suicide by dragging him off the tracks.

The boys stop by a junkyard – ignoring the ‘No Trespassing’ sign – to use a pump to refill their canteens. After a friendly banter scene set to the apropos “Let The Good Times Roll” by BB King, Gordie loses a coin toss to go and get food for the trip. The man in the shop recognises him as Dennis’s brother, but sadly for Gordie this prompts another flashback. This one demonstrates that his parents were equally as neglectful before his brother died.

Gordie arrives back at the junkyard just in time for the owner to discover the trespassers. He takes the time to insult Teddy’s father – and naturally much profanity, screaming and conveying of murderous intent ensues. Teddy is seriously ready to go to town on a man three times his age, which adds even more heart breaking layers to his character. Even though his father beats him and nearly burned his ear off, he won’t tolerate any disrespect towards him. It makes you wonder that Teddy justifies the abuse because of what his father accomplished in World War II.

The adults’ attitude was sadly pretty widespread in the 50s. The soldiers who had fought in World War II returned to a world that was pretty much trying to pretend the horrors overseas hadn’t happened. You’ll see that in greater detail in another film much further down the list.

The scene now gets set with “Lollipop” by the Chordettes, as the boys start walking again. Teddy and Vern discuss such hard-hitting topics as whether Mighty Mouse could beat Superman in a fight – while Chris and Gordie have a talk about school. They’ll be starting junior high soon, meaning they’ll be split up for different classes. Chris believes that Gordie will make a lot of new smarter friends – because he’s destined to be a great writer one day. Regardless of what his parents think.

River, you left us way too soon buddy.

We’re now charmed with the angelic sound of Buddy Holly (and not ‘Holiday’ as I mistakenly called him for years) – “Rollercoaster” plays as the boys come to a point where the tracks turn into a bridge. Even though they have no way of knowing when the next train is coming in, they walk across anyway. So guess what happens.

Rob Reiner found that Wil Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell weren’t giving the reactions he needed for the urgency of the scene. So he basically had to scream at them. Don’t worry – they hugged it out afterwards.

When the boys sit around at a campfire, Chris suggests that Gordie tell them one of his stories. And he comes up with one about a teenager who is bullied for being overweight, nicknamed ‘Lard Ass’. Essentially he gets his revenge by entering a pie-eating contest and vomiting on every single person there!

Gordie knows his story’s a good one when the other boys ask what happened next. I speak from experience – I once sent an actress a script and she replied asking if I’d sent the whole thing because she wanted to know if anything else happened. Something else happens in the woods though – as they hear the sounds of coyotes howling. So each of them must take turns standing guard with Chris’s father’s gun.

Gordie has a nightmare about his brother’s burial where he imagines that his father says “it should have been you, Gordon” – which to be fair is something the old coot would probably say. He can’t sleep, so he keeps Chris company on the guard. Suggesting that Chris take some college prep courses like him in middle school prompts…well you know…

THAT scene.

It was at exactly this point that Chris became one of my favourite characters ever. A kid from the wrong side of the tracks who has such a bad reputation he’s presumed guilty before he’s even thought about doing anything wrong. I feel as if this is what a lot of fan fiction writers go for when they create a Draco In Leather Pants. I won’t argue that a character who’s thought bad but wants to be good is compelling as hell. But there’s no denying that a lot of people miss the nuances to this character and just go for the ‘bad boy who has a heart of gold’ traits – which are only surface level. It’s why Elsa from Frozen is a much more compelling character than remake Maleficent, who is an obvious knock-off of her – because she’s a fundamentally good person who gets misunderstood and is driven to do bad things because of her situation. While the latter just has a sympathetic backstory plucked out of nowhere, and every other character has to be demonised just to prop up her heroism. Stephen King and Rob Reiner know exactly how a character like this ticks, and the result is one of the strongest characters in a coming of age story ever.

When filming this scene, Rob Reiner felt that River Phoenix wasn’t giving him the right reaction. He thankfully didn’t scream at him like he did for Will and Jerry in the train scene. He just took him aside and told him to think about a time in his own life when an adult had let him down. The resulting take was used in the finished film, and River was still so emotional afterwards that he needed to be comforted. He apparently also lost his virginity during the shoot too.

As the film has been going on, we’ve been cutting back to scenes with Ace and his gang being typical hoodlums. They may have seemed insignificant but the payoff comes when Ace hears about Ray Browers’s body too (Vern had overheard two of his gang members talking about it earlier in the film). They’ve also got a car, which means they’ll definitely catch up to the four boys – who at this point have a stream to cross…

The horseplay turns quite sour once the boys realise they’re covered in leeches! After they’ve pulled the majority off, Gordie discovers something that’s especially terrifying if you have a Y chromosome.

After a Rebel Without A Cause inspired scene of Ace and his gang playing chicken on the road, the boys are nearing their destination. And Vern sees something through the trees:

“The kid wasn’t sick…the kid wasn’t sleeping…the kid was dead…”

In some ways this is quite the anti-climax – and I’m right there with that. As children we tend to imagine these milestones in our lives as being grand spectacles like in a movie. We expect mood music, swelling camera angles or something dramatic. But when I found out that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were dead, it was from a news report in the background. Life went on and me and my brother probably went back to doing what we were doing – but we watched plenty of the news events detailing the girls’ lives. My dad wrote a letter of condolence to the families, and we took part in a charity tribute for them. And in some ways, life just wasn’t quite the same anymore.

Gordie is also the most shaken by seeing the body. Chris quietly gets the other two to leave so he can be alone. And he returns the favour from Gordie comforting him the previous night. Poor Gordie thinks that his parents hate him and wish he would have died instead of Dennis. This lovely moment gets interrupted by Ace and his gang. He pulls a knife and scares away everyone except Chris – who’s heavily implied to have a death wish anyway. But then a literal Chekhov’s Gun shows up.

Yes, actual quote from the movie.

Ace and his gang back off (though the novella says they got even as soon as the friends came back home) and the friends decide they’ll just send an anonymous phone call to the police about the body instead. After they get back to town, adult Gordie’s narration tells us that he saw less of Teddy and Vern as the years went by. Vern got married, had four kids and became a forklift operator. Teddy failed to join the army, spent some time in jail and now does odd jobs around town. Chris fears that’s his fate too.

But Gordie’s narration tells us that he did enroll in the college courses, and eventually became a lawyer. But just last week he was involved in an incident in a diner, and was stabbed to death. That was his death Gordie read about at the start of the film. This is punctuated by a sadly prophetic shot of Chris just fading away.

Back to the present, Gordie is revealed to have a son. And unlike his own father, he goes off to spend some time with him and his friend. And now is the time for Ben E King’s “Stand By Me” to play.

Rob Reiner says he saw Stephen King shaking at a private screening of the film – and the writer later said it was the best adaptation of his work he’d ever seen. That statement has considerably more weight since we got 1408, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery, The Dead Zone and of course last year’s IT. But these days he considers it to be the first great adaptation anyway. While the film is indeed a great story with solid performances and well-rounded character, it’s considerably more than just that.

The 1950s is often viewed nostalgically as a peaceful wholesome time. After the horrors of World War II and before the gloom of Vietnam – the theme park version of the 50s is one of tame-yet-fun music, diners, drive-in theatres, greasers and wholesome conservative housewifes. The 50s was far from a stable time in reality though; the soldiers who had fought in World War II were trying to readjust to civilian life in a world that did not want to talk about what they went through, everyone was living in fear that humanity would nuke itself out of existence and there was that whole Korean War thing. But compared to the decade that came before it, and the one after, it was an optimistic time. So by the 70s and 80s, a lot of filmmakers who had grown up in the 50s released work that nostalgically looked back on the decade. It’s just like how these days we’re seeing lots of nostalgic throwbacks to the 80s and 90s. Indeed Stephen King’s own IT had the child portions taking place in the 50s, while the film updated it to the 80s. But the brilliance of both these stories is that it involves adults looking back on their childhood and realising that the times weren’t as innocent as they remember. Lindsay Ellis discusses this in her great video analysing the 30-year-cycle of nostalgia in media.

I’m convinced that in a few years we’ll start to see nostalgic period pieces looking back on the early 2000s as a fun flamboyant time before the recession (conveniently ignoring the Iraq War). A great example of a film subverting this nostalgia is Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day. It was based on a book written in the 1930s, so the adaptation is a throwback to the Screwball Comedies of the time. It’s an hour of screwball fun until a scene where war planes fly over a house – reminding viewers that World War II is on the way. Rob Reiner choosing to set Stand By Me in 1959 instead of the novella’s 1960 perfectly shows what a transitional time the 50s were. Gordie and Chris’s coming of age during this time marks the transition to a decade full of hippies, counter-culture and second wave feminism. And it reminds viewers that the wholesome 50s small town was still massively conservative, the kids of the era were descended from traumatised WW2 vets and the greaser gangs were violent delinquents instead of fun rebels. Overall the film’s message is that while the nostalgia is comforting – Gordie lamenting that he never had friends like he did when he was twelve – it’s better to live in the present and live your life. Gordie has a good life and a good relationship with his son, so he really doesn’t need to escape into the past for too long. And neither do we.

No I won’t be afraid. Just as long as you grade, grade by me.

*Story? A fantastic coming of age narrative that also deconstructs the hell out of the wholesome nostalgia of the 50s. A+

*Characters? Four very different, well-rounded young boys each with their own issues and personalities. Chris especially is one of my all-time favourites. A+

*Performances? Although I harp on about how great River Phoenix and Corey Feldman are in this film, let it be said that Wil Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell nail their characters too. They all make a perfect ensemble. A+

*Visuals? The decision to give the film a bright look – as if everything is bathed in sunlight – perfectly illustrates the nostalgic feeling Gordie has towards his childhood. Notably the first time we see a sunset is after they’ve found the body. A

*Anything Else? It’s hardly the first or last film to use music to set the tone and period, but it sure is one of the best! A

Moving onto something else that’s practically perfect in every way, Mary Poppins is next.