Stand By Me (1986)

Housekeeping note: It wasn't my intention to take four months off from the blog, but I have continued at least the reading part of this project. With a new job, a new year, and hopefully a fresh new perspective on things in general, I plan to get this blog back up and running. Thankfully I'm just a handful of books and movies behind. The posts may be a little shorter for a little bit as my memories are a little less fresh and because I really want to get caught up again. All right, that's it. Now where was I?

Of the three Different Seasons movies, the irresistible power of nostalgia and the relative lack of gory content propelled "The Body" to the silver screen first, under its new name, Stand By Me. This should have been an obvious clue that the movie was going to deviate from the source material. For some reason I had it in my head that this was the "faithful" adaptation and that Shawshank was the rebel. It turns out that is quite the opposite.

First off, this movie is about 90 minutes long, while "The Body" is the longest of the four stories, so something is going to end up on the cutting room floor. For a lot of reasons this is a good thing. Nobody needed an adaptation of Gordie's "other" story (the one that was not about Lardass), that may have been the most depressing thing Stephen King even wrote. Speaking of depressing, I was fine with not learning the fates of Vern and Teddy in their adult lives. On the other hand, some character development was lost. Ace in particular went pretty flat. He was far more menacing in the story, and believe me, he was not going to let the incident at the tracks just slip past him.

Secondly, director Rob Reiner decided to double down on the nostalgia. The soundtrack really carries the movie, so much so you need to remind yourself the Walkman hadn't been invented yet and that portable radio just knew the right song to play at the right time. Another change for the sake of nostalgia is bumping the year back from 1960 to 1959. That way it makes it a 50's movie rather than a 60's movie, more Happy Days and less Wonder Years. Other changes I cannot explain. Why Castle Rock was moved from Maine to Oregon is past me, for example.

Naturally the casting was a huge stroke of brilliance, though that observation is rooted in pure hindsight. Some of them (Corey Feldman, Keifer Sutherland) were known quantities going in, while Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix had their breakthrough roles in this film. Jerry O'Connell was the late bloomer, and for playing such a hapless character, probably turned out the best of the bunch (unless you identify as high nerd, in which case that goes to Wil Wheaton). If you have some time, check out their Wikipedia headshots and not one of them looks much of anything like they did in the movie. People change, but wow.

On a personal note, this is not only one of the first (if not the first) Stephen King movie I ever saw. It also is one of the first (if not the first) R rated movie my parents let me watch.