Stand By Me

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed!

Stand by Me (1986), which shares its title with the great Ben E. King song, was directed by Rob Reiner and is based on a story by Stephen King (two kings make a great pair here). The tale takes place in the summer of 1959 in the form of a reminiscence by the narrator who is The Writer (Richard Dreyfuss). He thinks about the first time he saw a dead body after reading about a death in the newspaper. Even though it’s been many years since he was twelve years old, the memory has haunted him his whole life.

The main characters are young boys who are in a transition period between being children and becoming adults. The Writer is the grownup Gordie Lachance (Will Wheaton). They play cards in a tree house as kids will do, but Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy DuChamp (Corey Feldman) smoke cigarettes, showing they are rebelling against childhood norms. The screenplay is effective as they engage in trashy put-down comments which fit their age group. The Writer notes that “finding new and preferably disgusting ways to degrade a friend’s mother was always held in high regard.” The Writer comments that Teddy acted crazy for a reason because his violent father almost burned off the boy’s ear once. Chris, their leader, came from a “bad” family also, and according to The Writer, was expected to have a “bad” life (unfortunately true for the actor River Phoenix, whose early death was a shocker). The film suggests that external factors can abnormally thrust children out of their carefree innocence.

One of the boys’ crew, Vern Tessio (Jerry O’Connell) enters the treehouse with news. While searching for where he buried his coins under the house porch, Vern overheard from his brother, Billy (Casey Siemaszko) and his pal, Charlie Hogan (Gary Riley) the location of a young dead boy, Ray Brower, who went missing. The older teens stole a car and that was why they were near the train tracks where they found the dead boy. Since Billy and Charlie are staying clear of the police, the younger boys think they can get credit for finding the body. Youths enjoy pretending to be heroes and these boys sing the title songs of old TV shows that told cowboy stories, which shows that desire.

As the kids concoct alibis to free them up for their quest, The Writer notes that his mother (Frances Lee McCain) and father (Marshall Bell) were traumatized by the death of Gordie’s older brother, Denny (played in flashback by John Cusack) in a car accident, another initiation into the harshness of the world. Gordie’s dad is disappointed in Gordie for not having friends as admirable as Denny’s pals. So, these boys have something to prove to themselves, let alone others, that they are not losers.

Chris catches up with Gordie on their way to meet the other boys. He took his dad’s handgun, and Chris accidentally fires off a round into a trash can behind a restaurant. The firearm holds adult fascination for the boys, but its explosive deadliness also is frightening, which again stresses their cusp of adulthood predicament. The boys encounter Chris’s older brother Eyeball (Bradley Gregg), and Ace Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland), who overpowers the younger boys and steals the New York Yankees cap Denny gave to Gordie. That act is particularly hurtful to Gordie who loved his brother, and Ace’s theft is a desecration of Gordie’s memory of Denny. The preteens wish they were older and bigger so they could defend themselves (a foreshadowing), which stresses their in-between stage of growth. (There is a short later scene where Ace and the other teenagers drive a car and knock mailboxes off their posts with a baseball bat. Subsequent scenes with these older boys show that the next stage of maleness is full of rebelliousness, egotism, obsessions over sex, foolishness, and danger).

The boys follow the train tracks with their gear and are supposed to travel around twenty or thirty miles, quite a stretch for these youths. They act like adventurous men, but are not responsible enough to remember to bring any food. Vern says he remembered to bring a comb, which is funny, but also stresses immaturity. A locomotive approaches, but Teddy wants to play “dodge train,” waiting for the last moment to get off the tracks. He pretends he is meeting the enemy at Normandy on D-Day. The scene is reminiscent of playing “chicken” in Rebel Without a Cause, where the adolescents head to a cliff in cars and are supposed to jump out at the last minute. Here is the same combination of adult male bravado and youthful recklessness. Teddy’s father, who was a hero in the war at Normandy, went insane, possibly due to war trauma, and is now in a mental institution. There may be a subconscious desire to prove his bravery so he can measure up to his father’s war heroics. Chris saves Teddy from himself by pulling him off the tracks.

The young boys flex their rule-breaking potential by scaling a junkyard fence despite the warning not to trespass. They use the water pump there to hydrate and then goof around. The child in each of them still watches The Micky Mouse Club, but their budding manhood focuses on Annette Funicello’s breasts. Gordie loses the coin toss, and he has to go to the store nearby for food. The grocer recognizes Gordie as Denny’s brother. He also lost a brother, only in Korea. He quotes the Bible that says death is there amid life. Tragedy seems to be something that we never outgrow.

The grocer talks about what a great football player Denny was. That remark triggers a dinner table memory where Gordie’s father is obsessed with Denny and his ball playing. Denny goes out of the way to talk about how good a writer Gordie is, but the father ignores the praise for his other son. Older males, like Mr. Lachance and the grocer, don’t see writing as masculine, so they focus on the athletic, muscular nature of sports.

By the time Gordie returns to the junkyard, the owner, Milo Pressman (William Bronder) has returned, and the rest of the boys are on the other side of the fence. Gordie runs with all his might and climbs over the barrier just in time to escape the junkyard dog, Chopper. The animal was supposed to be this fearsome creature, but he turns out to be not that threatening. The Writer says it was his first revelation about how myth did not measure up to reality, another growth moment.

After getting upset when Pressman recognizes him and ridicules his father, Teddy says he is spoiling his friends’ fun. But the maturing Gordie says maybe they shouldn’t be treating their journey as a “party” since they are going to “see a dead kid.” So, this journey is a symbolic one, a rite of passage which leads away from childhood.

Chris gives Gordie a speech, similar to the one Ben Affleck gives Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, about how Gordie has to use his brains and take academic courses while his pals are in shop classes. Chris realizes Gordie’s writing potential, unlike Gordie’s dad. Chris says, “God gave you something, man, all those stories you can make up.” He says that it’s like God is telling Gordie not to lose those tales as he grows up. (And he doesn’t since it is the grown Gordie who is telling this story). Chris is more of a father figure here and is actually more mature than Gordie’s real dad. At the same time, Teddy and Vern talk about who is stronger, Superman or Mighty Mouse. These contrasting conversations further stress how these boys are in a maturity transition.

The boys come to another challenge as they approach a trestle. To not go far off their route they must cross it without any room to avoid a train that might be coming. Vern loses his comb, which is sort of a child’s safety blanket. They start to walk over the tracks when Gordie spots the smoke coming from the stack of an approaching train. Chris and Teddy make it to the other side. The overweight Vern is not as quick as the others and Gordie tries to urge him to move faster. They jump off onto the dirt embankment, just in time to avoid the train. They have leapt over another hurdle on their perilous road to adulthood.

At a campfire, the boys want Gordie to tell a story. His tale is about a heavy boy who has sustained ridicule for his size. The town calls him Lardass (Andy Lindberg). He gets his revenge at a pie eating contest before which he consumed a bottle of castor oil and a raw egg. After eating several pies he initiates a cascading vomiting scene to exact his revenge on the nasty citizens. The story fits the mindset of these boys, and vicariously allows them to feel justice since they, too, feel like outsiders. But, Teddy’s demons rise again and he wants a better ending where Lardass goes home and kills his father, and then joins the Texas Rangers. His reaction shows his pathology which has sprung from his divergent feelings about his father.

After falling asleep, howling coyotes awaken the boys. They take turns standing guard, and despite Teddy’s acting like a military sentry, and Vern’s exaggerated startle response to every sound, the scene is disturbing since they are pointing Chris’s handgun. The next scene depicts the outcast feelings of Gordie and Chris. Gordie has a nightmare where he pictures himself at the grave of his brother and his father tells Gordie it should have been him in the casket. He wakes up and joins Chris, and suggests to his friend he can also take college classes. Chris says that the community considers his family dangerous lowlifes, and presume they are guilty instead of innocent if a transgression takes place. He stole the school milk money, implying that being law-abiding would not better his family reputation because of the residents’ prejudices. But he gave the money back to the teacher who showed up with a brand-new skirt she had been eyeing. Chris begins to cry since he found out how crushing it was to find that even a schoolteacher can be so devious. It is an example of losing innocence and moving toward cynicism concerning life’s realities. Chris says he wishes he “could go someplace where nobody knows me,” which would allow him to live without others unfairly judging him.

There is a scene where Gordie is alone sitting on the train track rails. A doe comes out of the forest, pauses, and the boy and the animal exchange looks. Stephen King said that the story is about discovering the world, and this moment is magical for Gordie, since he says he never shared it with anyone before. It appears that Gordie is feeling a oneness with nature. Since it is a young deer, perhaps it is on the same journey of learning about life. Both are shedding their past lives.

The older boys led by Ace find out about the dead boy from Billie and Charlie. Ace decides that they will get the praise for finding the missing boy. On their drive, Ace races against a group of boys in another car. When a truck hauling lumber heads straight at him, Ace refuses to exit the lane. The trucker goes off the road to avoid a collision, losing his cargo. Ace says, “I won,” as if beating death is a contest. Ace’s toxic masculinity will most likely grow stronger as he gets older, and the scene shows the destructive road men may travel down because of the macho attitudes that society fosters.

Meanwhile, the kids, abandoning the safety of the train tracks that can represent civilization, cut through a forest as a shortcut. In literature, writers have used forests as the places where unlawful or dangerous activities take place (think The Scarlet Letter, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Princess Bride). They misjudge the depth of a river they cross and find themselves in water up to their shoulders. Teddy starts to be mischievous and dunks Vern. Chris tells him to “act your age.” Teddy rightfully says he is acting his age. The boys, except for the anti-party Gordie, start dunking each other. They are in a perilous situation which calls for adult thinking, but they are still playful children in that place. When they discover that leeches have attached themselves to their bodies, the serious nature of their quest sobers them up as they pull the creatures off their bodies.

They finally find the body of the Brower boy off the side of the train tracks they reconnect with after their shortcut. The boy was hit by a train. The Writer says the boy was not asleep, not sick, which is what the boys experienced in their previous youthful life. He is dead, which ushers them into the next stage of their maturity. Encountering this brutal end of a life prompts Gordie to question why bad things happen to some people. After all, they dodged trains twice on this trip, but Brower couldn’t escape the danger. The low self-esteem that Gordie’s father instilled in the boy causes Gordie to tearfully tell Chris (they have now exchanged sorrowful confessions) that he deserved to die instead. Chris consoles his friend in a compassionate parental way (unlike Gordie’s real dad) by telling him he’s wrong, and accurately states that Gordie has a life ahead of him being a writer.

At that moment, Ace and his gang show up and threaten to beat up the youngsters if they don’t give up the body. Chris will not back down. Ace starts to cross that legal line that the remote forest removes, and pulls a knife. As he is ready to cut Chris, Gordie shoots off a warning shot from the gun, playing its part as the equalizer, which Chris brought. Gordie aims his wild card weapon with a steady hand at Ace, who decides to fold. But, Ace issues a warning about the boys’ futures (a foreshadowing).

After besting the older boys, the younger ones probably feel the quest was what was important and they no longer have the need to get credit for finding the body. They leave it there and decide to make an anonymous phone call to have it found. They head back to their town, which, according to The Writer, “seemed smaller.” They have grown up some on their journey and things aren’t as large or magical when one revisits a childhood place.

The Writer says that Gordie and Chris didn’t see as much of Vern and Teddy as they grew up. Many of us lose track of friends who we bonded with when younger as life’s situations place us on divergent roads. Vern settled into the grownup world, getting married, having four kids, and working as a forklift operator. Teddy couldn’t get into the military because of his vision defects and ear injury, courtesy of his father. He was also in jail a few times. Some sins of the father can’t be erased from the marks they leave on the children. Chris did escape the judgment of the town, going to college and becoming a lawyer. But he went into a fast-food restaurant, tried to break up a fight, was stabbed in the throat, and died. He couldn’t escape that knife that threatened him in his youth. It was his death that Gordie was reading about that initiated the memory of finding the body. The Writer, the adult Gordie, has a boy of his own now, as the cycle continues, is finishing typing the memoir we have been hearing. He had not been in touch with Chris for over ten years, but he knows will miss his best friend “forever.”

The last lines he types say that he never made friends like the ones he had when he was twelve, and asks, “Jesus, does anyone?” Don’t we all hold onto those days when we shared our early years with precious others while we were in that state of becoming?

The next film is Donnie Darko.