Stand by Me (film)

Stand by Me

American theatrical release poster, August 1986
Directed by Rob Reiner
Produced by
Written by
  • Bruce A. Evans
  • Raynold Gideon
Based on The Body 
by Stephen King
Starring
Narrated by Richard Dreyfuss
Music by Jack Nitzsche
Cinematography Thomas Del Ruth
Edited by Robert Leighton
Production
company
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release dates
  • August 8, 1986 (1986-08-08)
Running time
 88 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Budget $8 million[2]
Box office $52.3 million[2]

Stand by Me is a 1986 American coming-of-age comedy-drama adventure film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connell. Based on Stephen King's novella The Body, the title is derived from the Ben E. King song of the same name, which plays over the opening and end credits. The film tells the story of four boys in small town Oregon who go on a hike across the countryside to find the dead body of a missing child.

Plot

Author Gordie Lachance (Richard Dreyfuss) writes about a childhood incident when he and three buddies undertook a journey to find the body of a missing boy near the town of Castle Rock, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend in 1959.

Young Gordie (Wil Wheaton) is a quiet, bookish boy with a penchant for writing and telling stories. His parents, grieving the recent death of Gordie's older brother, neglect their youngest son. To cope, Gordie spends much time with his friends: Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), whose family are criminals and alcoholics; Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), an eccentric and physically scarred boy; and Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell), who is overweight and timid, often making him the target of bullying.

Vern overhears his older brother, Billy (Casey Siemaszko), and Billy's friend, Charlie Hogan (Gary Riley), discussing Ray Brower, a young boy who was reportedly struck and killed by a train. They want to search for the body; but Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern decide to follow the local rail line and find Ray first, making them local heroes. Chris steals his father's M1911 pistol; and he, Gordie, Vern, and Teddy head out on the train tracks.

The boys stop at a nearby junkyard to get a drink using a pump. The junkyard owner is notorious around Castle Rock for being the owner of a vicious and rarely seen dog, Chopper, famous for being able to attack certain parts of the human anatomy. They hang out in the junkyard for a while when the boys send Gordie out to buy food at a nearby general store. When Gordie returns, he sees the other three boys jumping the fence. Gordie walks over to join them; but Milo Pressman (William Bronder), the junkman, spots him and sends Chopper after him. Gordie runs and jumps the fence with Chopper in close pursuit, barely escaping the dog. The boys discover that Chopper is a small dog and could easily be overthrown by an adolescent. They tease Chopper; but Pressman arrives and calls Teddy's father a loony, inciting Teddy's rage and causing the other boys to keep him from killing Pressman. Teddy is saddened by the insult; and Vern, Chris and Gordie help him.

At nighttime, Gordie tells the other boys a story of Davie "Lard-Ass" Hogan (Andy Lindberg), an overweight boy who is constantly teased and bullied. He was born with a glandular condition which caused him to become obese, resulting in other kids and family members ridiculing and teasing him. Hogan enters a pie-eating contest; but his main goal was not to win, but to exact revenge. Prior to the contest, Hogan had consumed castor oil and a raw egg, working as emetics, planning to vomit on one of the other contestants, triggering a chain reaction of every witness vomiting, the majority being the bullies who had abused him earlier. After eating a fifth pie, he vomits, inducing the vomiting of all the crowd members, resulting in humiliation and embarrassment of his tormentors. The boys are impressed with the story but disappointed with the end.

After a series of misadventures and much self-revelation, the boys locate the body. However, local hoodlum "Ace" Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland) and his gang including Chris' older brother "Eyeball" (Bradley Gregg), Billy, Charlie, Vince Desjardins (Jason Oliver) and two other gang members arrive in cars to claim the body and the credit for finding it. When Chris refuses to step aside, Ace pulls out his switchblade with intent to kill him and the youths, but Gordie intervenes and threatens to shoot Ace with the pistol from before. Outmatched, Ace and his gang retreat, but not before Ace vows to exact revenge on the boys. The boys agree to report the body via an anonymous phone call to the authorities. They hike back to Castle Rock, bid each other farewell until they see each other in a few days at Junior High School.

The present-day Gordie writes that the friends drifted apart shortly thereafter. Vern married immediately after high school, has four children, and drives a forklift at a local lumber yard. Teddy tried enlisting in the army but was turned down because of his ear injury and impaired eyesight. He had served some time in prison and now does odd jobs around Castle Rock. Chris went on to college and became a lawyer. When attempting to break up a fight in a fast-food restaurant, he was fatally stabbed in the neck.

The film ends with Gordie finishing his memoir after his son asks him again if he is going to take the boys swimming. After he types the last words of it into his computer, Gordie goes outside of his opulent home, driving away with his son and his son's friend in his Land Rover, indicating the author has enjoyed financial success in his life.

Cast

Production

In a 2011 interview with NPR, 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.[3]

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" game 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 option."[4]

Music

The film's musical score was composed by Jack Nitzsche. On August 8, 1986, a soundtrack album was released containing many of the 1950s and early 1960s classic rock songs featured in the film.

  1. "Everyday" (Buddy Holly) – 2:07
  2. "Let the Good Times Roll" (Shirley and Lee) – 2:22
  3. "Come Go with Me" (The Del-Vikings) – 2:40
  4. "Whispering Bells" (The Del-Vikings) – 2:25
  5. "Get a Job" (The Silhouettes) – 2:44
  6. "Lollipop" (The Chordettes) – 2:09
  7. "Yakety Yak" (The Coasters) – 1:52
  8. "Great Balls of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis) – 1:52
  9. "Mr. Lee" (The Bobbettes) – 2:14
  10. "Stand by Me" (Ben E. King) – 2:55

Reception

Box office

The film was a box office success in North America. It opened in a limited release on August 8, 1986 in 16 theaters and grossed $242,795, averaging $15,174 per theater. The film then had its wide opening in 745 theaters on August 22 and grossed $3,812,093, averaging $5,116 per theater and ranking #2. The film's widest release was 848 theaters, and it ended up earning $52,287,414 overall, well above its $8 million budget.[5]

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.[6]

King, whose story this film was adapted from, was very impressed with the finished result[7] and indicated, on the special features of the 25th anniversary Blu-ray set, that he considered the film to be the first successful translation to film of any of his works.

Accolades

Nominations

Legacy

In 1987, following the success of Stand by Me, Reiner co-founded a film and television production company and named it Castle Rock Entertainment, after the fictional setting of the story.[7]

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.[11]

The opening track to the seventh album of the Welsh post hardcore band, Funeral for a Friend, titled 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".

The song "Rows of houses" by Dan Mangan is based on this movie

In Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow, Stand By Me is the film playing on the television set at the player character's house. The description reads, "There's a movie on TV. Four boys are walking down a railroad track." This reference is retained in the remakes Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen if the player's character is male; if the player's character is female, the TV is instead playing The Wizard of Oz.

References

  1. ↑ "STAND BY ME (15)". British Board of Film Classification. September 12, 1986. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Stand by Me". The Numbers. Retrieved 2015-01-06.
  3. ↑ Wheaton, Wil (August 6, 2011). All Things Considered. Interview with David Greene. National Public Radio. WNPR. Meriden, Connecticut. Retrieved August 6, 2011.
  4. ↑ Stand By Me DVD Booklet, Columbia TriStar Home Video, 2000
  5. ↑ "Stand by Me (1986) - Box Office Mojo".
  6. ↑ "Stand by Me (1986)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2015-01-06.
  7. 1 2 Herman, Karen. Interview with Rob Reiner. Archive of American Television (November 29, 2004).
  8. ↑ AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs Nominees
  9. ↑ AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers Nominees
  10. ↑ AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) Ballot
  11. ↑ Paul, Alex (July 10, 2010). "‘Stand By Me’ festival slated". Albany Democrat-Herald. Retrieved December 7, 2012.

External links

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