Stand By Me
Words by Will Sikich
Director Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, based on Stephen King’s novella The Body, has a sharper angle on growing up than most stories. Like King’s original work, it highlights the fragility of innocence using the story of four twelve-year-old boys who set out to find the body of a missing kid. Semi-autobiographical, it reflects King’s own experiences through a young writer named Gordie and communicates his thoughts on the bittersweet realities of growing up. The music and setting evoke the childhood images of a writer formed by rural 1960’s America, and we get the sense King has mixed memories of this time in his life; friendships were stronger and life more carefree, but pulling through it traumatized him all the same.
The four boys — Gordie (Will Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman), and Vern (Jerry O’Connell) — learn the location of a local boy’s corpse from Vern’s older brother. Under the porch one day, looking for hidden treasure as all boys should, Vern overhears his brother talking about discovering a body while hiding a stolen car. He passes this intel on to his friends, and the gang starts out along the railroad that killed the boy to recover his rotting corpse. Despite their grave purpose, they make an adventure out of their long, train-side quest. They are uniquely aged to enjoy both imagination and partial independence, so they make the most out of their time together.
The story focuses very specifically on the notion of being twelve years old in the era of Stephen King’s childhood. “Yakety Yak” and “Lollipop” flavor suburban summer days spent in treehouses, summoning back the years when there was more time to be a kid. The story also features a group of older boys — friends, if you like stretching definitions — who decide to claim the body for themselves. Unlike our boys, however, they go by car to their morbid destination. They don’t run together through the woods, they don’t spend the night under the stars, and they don’t narrowly escape the savage ball-siccing of a junkyard dog. They’ve lost all likeness to children since who knows what age and Reiner wants us to recognize that Gordie and the gang haven’t yet hit that age. They still see through the uninitiated eyes of the innocent.
“Maturity, education, and eventually six feet of earth separate our bright-eyed heroes, but not before they enjoy what may be the best friendships of their lives.”
When the boys finally reach the body, they leave their boyish light behind. Ace, leader of the older kids’ gang, attempts to take the body from them, knife in hand. All seems bleak until Gordie saves the day with a loaded gun; the same little boy who had entertained his friends with fictional pie contests the night before now aims a pistol in defense of a corpse. The upbeat music is gone, all sense of fantasy abandoned. What remains is fear, the weight of the body, and the long walk home.
After a moment of thought, the boys decide to leave the body and tip off the cops anonymously, sealing their maturity. It seems they skipped whatever devilish phase Ace and his goons struggle to leave behind. We then see Gordie, now grown and a bonafide writer, typing about his memories of that time. He wonders whether anyone ever had friends as good as the ones when they were twelve. Reiner — and of course King — thinks not. Stand By Me takes a group of young friends and forces them to grow up overnight. Their experience with the body turns them towards the dusk of childhood, and we’re left considering Gordie’s final thoughts. Maturity, education, and eventually six feet of earth separate our bright-eyed heroes, but not before they enjoy what may be the best friendships of their lives.
