Stand by Me is a 1986 American coming of age drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell. Based on the novella The Body, written by Stephen King, the title is derived from the Ben E. King song of the same name, which plays over the end credits. The film tells the story of four boys who go on a hike across the countryside to find the dead body of a missing child.
Plot
In 1985, after reading a newspaper article about the death of his old friend, author Gordie Lachance recalls a childhood journey to find the body of a missing boy near the (fictional) town of Castle Rock, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend in 1959. Young Gordie was a quiet, bookish boy with a penchant for writing and telling stories. He is rejected by his father after the death of his football-star older brother Denny, who had paid more attention to Gordie than his parents did.
Gordie spends his time with three friends: Chris Chambers, who is from a family of criminals and alcoholics and is usually stereotyped accordingly, even though he does not conform to the perceptions and stigmas attached to his family; Teddy Duchamp, who is eccentric and physically scarred after his mentally unstable father held his ear to a stove; and Vern Tessio, who is overweight, timid, and often the target of bullying.
Vern overhears his older brother Billy and his friend Charlie Hogan talking about finding the body of Ray Brower, who was killed after being struck by a train while picking blueberries in the woods. Brower was a boy whose disappearance and subsequent police search was a big news story in Castle Rock. Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern decide to embark upon a hiking journey following the local rail line to see if they can find Ray's body and become local heroes.
The boys set out, first encountering Milo Pressman and his dog Chopper when they pause to fill their canteens from a well located in Milo's junkyard. They then walk along a train bridge and Vern and Gordie are nearly run over by a passing train. At the end of the day, the boys set up camp and Gordie tells the boys a story that he made up about a fat boy that nobody likes named Davie "Lard Ass" Hogan who gets revenge on everybody for being mean to him by making them barf on each other during The Great Tri-County Pie-Eat. Later on in the night, Chris reveals to Gordie his fear of being stereotyped as a criminal and never making anything of himself. The next morning, the boys continue by taking a short-cut through a swamp only to discover that it is infested with leeches. While desperately removing them from each other, Gordie faints after finding one in his underpants, causing the other boys to wonder if they should go on. Gordie ends up being the decisive one, knowing that they have put in too much work not to see the body.
They locate the body and it reminds Gordie that his father liked his brother better than him. At this point, local bully "Ace" Merrill and his gang consisting of "Eyeball" Chambers, Vince Desjardins, Charlie Hogan, Billy Tessio and two other hoodlums show up in their cars to take the body, but Gordie threatens Ace with a handgun that Chris brought. Gordie decides that no one will get credit for finding the dead body and reports it via an anonymous phone call to the authorities. The boys hike back to Castle Rock and say goodbye to each other.
Gordie states that Vern later married straight out of high school, had four boys and became a forklift driver at a local lumber yard. Teddy tried to join the Army, but was denied entry because of his poor eyesight and ear injury. He eventually served jail time and now was doing odd jobs around Castle Rock. Chris was able to stick it out and get by in the advanced classes with Gordie and later moved out of Castle Rock and became a lawyer. However, as revealed in the opening scene, Chris was stabbed in the throat and killed when he attempted to intervene in a fight in a fast food restaurant the week before the present day took place. Gordie then finishes his memoir, and takes his son and his son's friend swimming.
Cast
- Wil Wheaton as Gordon "Gordie" Lachance (aged 12)
- River Phoenix as Christopher "Chris" Chambers
- Corey Feldman as Ted "Teddy" Duchamp
- Jerry O'Connell as Vernon "Vern" Tessio
- Kiefer Sutherland as Jonah "Ace" Merrill
- Bradley Gregg as Richard "Eyeball" Chambers
- Casey Siemaszko as William "Billy" Tessio
- John Cusack as Dennis "Denny" Lachance
- Richard Dreyfuss as Gordie Lachance (adult; credited as "The Writer")
- Gary Riley as Charlton "Charlie" Hogan
- Marshall Bell as Mr. Lachance
- Frances Lee McCain as Mrs. Lachance
- Bobby McCarthy as David "Lard Ass" Hogan
- Bruce Kirby as Mr. Quidacioluo
- Jason Oliver as Vincent "Vince" Desjardins
- William Bronder as Milo Pressman
- Kent W. Luttrell as Raymond "Ray" Brower (the body)
Production
In a 2011 interview with NPR, Wil Wheaton attributed the film's success to the director's casting choices:
Rob Reiner found four young boys who basically were the characters we played. I was awkward and nerdy and shy and uncomfortable in my own skin and really, really sensitive, and River was cool and really smart and passionate and even at that age kind of like a father figure to some of us, Jerry was one of the funniest people I had ever seen in my life, either before or since, and Corey was unbelievably angry and in an incredible amount of pain and had an absolutely terrible relationship with his parents.
Parts of the film were shot in Brownsville, Oregon, which stood in for the fictional town of Castle Rock. Scenes that include the mailbox baseball and the junkyard scenes were filmed in Veneta, Oregon. The junkyard is still in operation. The campout/standing-guard scene was filmed in Eugene, Oregon, just a few miles from Veneta. The general store is in Franklin, Oregon, just north of Veneta. Scenes along the railroad tracks were shot near Cottage Grove, Oregon, along the right-of-way of the Oregon, Pacific and Eastern Railway, now used as the Row River National Recreation Trail. The scene where the boys outrace a locomotive across a trestle was filmed at Lake Britton on the McCloud River Railroad, near McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, California.
Title
In March 1986, Columbia Pictures, concerned that the original title The Body was misleading, renamed the film Stand by Me. According to screenwriter Raynold Gideon, "...it sounded like either a sex film, a bodybuilding film or another Stephen King horror film. Rob came up with Stand by Me, and it ended up being the least unpopular opinion."
Music
The film's musical score was composed by Jack Nitzsche. On August 8, 1986, a soundtrack album was released containing many of 1950s classic rock songs featured in the film.
- "Everyday" (Buddy Holly) â€" 2:07
- "Let the Good Times Roll" (Shirley and Lee) â€" 2:22
- "Come Go with Me" (The Del-Vikings) â€" 2:40
- "Whispering Bells" (The Del-Vikings) â€" 2:25
- "Get a Job" (The Silhouettes) â€" 2:44
- "Lollipop" (The Chordettes) â€" 2:09
- "Yakety Yak" (The Coasters) â€" 1:52
- "Great Balls of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis) â€" 1:52
- "Mr. Lee" (The Bobbettes) â€" 2:14
- "Stand by Me" (Ben E. King) â€" 2:55
Reception
Box office
Stand By Me was a box office success in North America. The film opened in a limited release on August 8 1986 in 16 theaters and grossed $242,795, with an average of $15,174 per theater. The film then had its wide opening in 745 theaters and grossed $3,812,093, with an average of $5,116 per theater and ranking #2. The film' widest release was 848 theaters and it ended up earning $52,287,414, above its $8 million budget.
Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 91% of 53 surveyed critics gave the film a positive rating; the average rating was 8/10.
Stephen King was very impressed with the finished result, and indicated, on the special features of the 25th anniversary Blu-ray set, that this was the first successful translation to film of any of his works.
Accolades
Nominations
- Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture â€" Drama
- Golden Globe Award for Best Director (Rob Reiner)
- Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Raynold Gideon & Bruce A. Evans)
- WGA Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Raynold Gideon & Bruce A. Evans)
- Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Rob Reiner)
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
- "Lollipop" â€" Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers â€" Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) â€" Nominated
Legacy
In 1987, following the success of Stand by Me, Rob Reiner co-founded a film and television production company and named it Castle Rock Entertainment after the fictional setting of the story.
On July 24, 2010, a 25th Anniversary Celebration of the filming of Stand by Me was held in Brownsville, Oregon. The event included a cast and crew Q&A session, an amateur blueberry pie eating contest, and an outdoor showing of the film.
The opening track to Welsh Post Hardcore band Funeral for a Friend's seventh album Chapter and Verse makes reference to Stand By Me with the line 'I've sat and watched Stand By Me for the millionth time, it's a lifeline. I wish I was Chris Chambers, but in truth I'm more like Vern'
References
External links
- Stand by Me at the Internet Movie Database
- Stand by Me at AllMovie
- Stand by Me at Box Office Mojo
- Stand by Me at Rotten Tomatoes
- Brownsville, Oregon Stand by Me film locations from Brownsville Chamber of Commerce
- Stand by Me at 25 â€" The Stars' Oral History of Their Beloved Classic
- Film study lecture of Stand by Me
