Standing By ...

Sometimes, not often, but perhaps just when you need it, something good comes on the tube on a Friday night. This night, this Friday, it was 'Stand by Me'.

I can remember seeing this movie when it came out, back in 1986. I had to see it, since my then girlfriend's Uncle trained the dog in the movie. Not much of that dog made it on screen, but the Uncle was an ace trainer so I am guessing a lot got left on the cutting room floor (they still cut tape back then).

When I saw the movie, I was 31. I was just about in the age group the movie was aimed at, and the movie was a box office success. It spoke of our childhood to many of us, and reminded us of simple, exciting times when the world was very big and our futures unknown. The movie also reminded us of just how good the friendships we made then were.

'Stand by Me' was based on the Stephen King novella, 'The Body'. It's one of his best - I'd say the best, excepting perhaps 'The Long Walk' (written as Richard Bachman). And the movie is arguably the best adaptation ever of a work by King. Better even than the excellent 'The Dead Zone', and ahead of 'The Shawshank Redemption' by virtue of less pathos and more cultural relevance.

The movie also happened to be the watershed of it's director, Rob Reiner. Sure, he'd already done 'This Is Spinal Tap', and he'd yet to do 'When Harry Met Sally', but only the most rabid Tap and Meg Ryan fans would assert those pictures were better than 'Stand by Me'. This is his best work. Light hands on the reigns, excellent casting (River Phoenix, Will Wheaton, Corey Feldman - excellent here, and a host of others, including Kiefer Sutherland), and a keen sense of the essence of King's story. Reiner nailed it, and if there's any justice in this world, he will at the very least be remembered forever as the best adaptor of King ever.

But more to the point, the movie was faithful to Stephen King's story of four kids going on a quest to find the dead body of a boy their age. And what a story. One kid is 'the invisible boy' since his better-liked, successful, football star brother died and his parents can't adapt. Another is the son of a brutal, but tortured father (who we don't see, but seem to know), a man he loves despite the pain he inflicted on him. There's the fat, goofy kid, who may be truly clueless or may be acting that way to fit in. And then there's the 'bad' kid, from a troubled family, who's trying to rise above his lot - and just might, with the help of his friend, the invisible boy - who's a budding talent as a writer, and perhaps an analog of King himself. All these kids are different, but they are all friends, if just for a time, a summer, an adventure.

There's also 'The Body' - the dead kid, killed by a train. In the climax of the movie, his body is fought over by our gang and an older group of JDs headed by 'Ace' (Sutherland). His sad end started the whole journey and fueled the story, but had little to do with it, except perhaps as a presaging of the future of at least one of our heroes.

The novella and the movie seem to say 'you can't escape fate, but you can play with it a little'. There's some wiggle room in all of our lives, but making the most of it doesn't always lead to a happy ending.

I find this movie more arresting now than back in '86. The nostalgia overwhelms me now in ways it never could, when I was still 'young'. I had no kids of my own then.

'Have Gun Will Travel, Is the Card of A Man' ... indeed.