Stand By Me
/JERRY O’CONNELL, RIVER PHOENIX, WIL WHEATON, COREY FELDMAN
So let's just say that I stole the milk money, but Old Lady Simmons stole it back from me. Just say that I told this story. Me, Chris Chambers. Kid brother to Eyeball Chambers. Do you think that anyone would've believed it?
~ Chris Chambers
Quick fox: A | Silver
Stand By Me is an instant classic, driven by powerful performances of the four child actors and a brilliant script that balances out the sadness in life with simple moments of compassion and humor.
winding dragon
For a band of young boys in Castle Rock, Oregon, their small town is a slow wait for death. They might not all realize it, but their town is squeezing the childhood out of them one traumatic event at a time. Told as a reminiscent story from adult Gordie’s memories, Stand By Me follows the harrowing adventure of four kids who learn the location of a missing boy’s corpse. Twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his friends decide to find the body to become local heroes. They're a rowdy and emotional gang — Gordie (Wil Wheaton) s still grieving the death of his older brother, Chris (River Phoenix) feels worthless because the town expects him to be a criminal like his family, Teddy (Corey Feldman) has an abusive father who once burned him ear on a stove, and Vern’s (Jerry O’Connell) general personality is to be a doormat/punching bag for his friends. Following an epic journey of self-discovery and standing up to Ace (Kiefer Sutherland), local town bad boy, the kids learn a valuable lesson or two about friendship and death.
Stand By Me was always one of those cinema classics that I knew about, but kept telling myself I’ll get around to it later. I think the tipping point was when I watched Rick and Morty straight up do a parody episode of four kids journeying to their own mortality that I realized I should probably make “later” happen now. Well, it’s finally later and now I wonder why I let this gem pass my attention for so long.
Based on Stephen King’s novella The Body and borrowing its title from Ben E. King’s eponymous song (two Kings for the price of one, I guess), Stand By Me has Rob Reiner’s distinct style written all over it: reminiscent storytelling, characters with a deep irreverence for life, and a sharp gallows humor.
I find it strange how this film made me feel nostalgic for a decade I never lived in. Maybe it was background props like empty Coca-Cola bottles or the classic American symbol of walking by the train tracks, but the tone of Stand By Me is always bittersweet reminiscence. Sure, some of the timelessness of Rob Reiner’s story owes itself to the popularity of coming of age ’80s flicks and the tragedy of River Phoenix’s early death. (Of course, never underestimate the power of a young, suave Kiefer Sutherland). But even 30 years later, watching it for the first time, the uniqueness of the story is striking — particularly, the treatment of childhood trauma.
In many ways, Stand By Me is a fantasy. Maybe not in the same fashion of Rob Reiner’s cult classic featuring R.O.U.S. and resurrecting people from being “mostly dead”; instead, Stand By Me embraces a realistic account of fantastical escapism. The children treat the journey to discover the missing boy’s body like they’re re-enacting a Mark Twain novel: defiant against adult rules, victimized by parent abuse, exploring natural landscapes to discover inner meaning. It’s very poetic; yet, they spend most of the time talking about Mighty Mouse comic books, enthralling themselves with Gordie’s “barf-o-rama” tale about a pie-eating competition, and hurling a lot of unsolicited dick insults.
The feeling of Stand By Me is a strange juxtaposition between irreverence and solemnity that works because of the ensemble performances from the four kids. (River Phoenix, especially, gives the performance of his life, and it’s easy to tell that he incorporated some very personal issues within his role. There’s actually a lot of behind the scenes information out there concerning Phoenix’s traumatic experiences and how they very closely shaped his character in Stand By Me.) But their adventure forces the kids to confront their traumatic experiences. Each event is a test: the first railroad track (when Teddy stages a suicide attempt), the junkyard, the convenience store, the second railroad track (Gordie’s and Vern death escape), the campfire pie story, Chris’s confession about the stolen milk money, the leeches, and finally discovering the missing boy’s corpse… they reveal a little bit about who these kids are and who they will eventually become.
Gordie gets out of the town; he’s the the pseudo Stephen King of this story.
Chris Chambers becomes a lawyer who gets stabbed to death trying to break up a bad fight; his death is actually the catalyst for Gordie to write about his childhood friends.
Teddy goes to jail after his burned ear and bad eyesight prevents him enlisting in the military.
Vern gets married, has a few kids, and never leaves Castle Rock.
It’s not the fact that the kids go their separate ways that creates a beautiful, poignant narrative; it’s the dedication to giving he audience time to understand these kids. I could talk about each of these kids at length, but I’m going to focus on Vern because of the four, he’s usually the one least appreciated as a character.
Each of the friends’ personalities complement the others (like a classic rock band — the Beatles or Queen), but Vern’s arc particularly works as a foil to Gordie. There’s the big moments, of course — on the train tracks, as their gruesome death is choo-chooing closer, it’s Vern who gives up rather than try to escape while Gordie is behind him screaming to get running. And from that experience, I can’t help but wonder later, the campfire pie story where a fat kid vomits his way to revenge, if Gordie is telling the story for Vern’s benefit. The fat kid in Gordie’s tale stands up for himself in an angry outburst similar to Vern snapping and punching Teddy several times after being called “pussy” one too many times. But it’s the smaller things that are more revealing about Vern’s character. After discovering the dead body, Gordie’s reaction is shock, repeating to himself “It should have been me” — a breaking point in his survivor’s guilt of his brother’s memory. Vern’s reaction to Gordie is to say, “I seen something like this in The Twilight Zone once,” which is more than insensitive, it highlights Vern’s fundamental inability to understand Gordie’s grief.
The more I learn about the making of Stand By Me and place it in context of the story, the better this film grows in my eyes. It’s a wonderfully crafted piece that connected with me that still is kind of surprising. It’s beautiful and poignant, and all I really want is for everyone to give this movie a chance.