STAND BY ME: 4K Blu-ray (Columbia, 1986) Sony Home Entertainment
Rob Reiner's Stand
By Me (1986) is a minor masterpiece that aptly exemplifies 'the little
gem' phase from the director's illustrious career. Reiner still refers to
this movie as his best work. With notable exceptions paid to Misery (1990
– another Stephen King adaptation) and When Harry Met Sally (1989 – and
still, the greatest rom/com of the latter half of the 20th century),
I am inclined to agree.
The camaraderie between this largely prepubescent cast is so richly
layered in truths about growing up, so completely genuine in its heartfelt
sentiment, we are haunted by the trials and tribulations that unfold; the
lump-in-your-throat finale, a reminder of the mysterious impermanence of life,
and, the sad reality that oft befalls and defeats even the best of us. Stand By Me is just one of those
movies that refuses to date. Despite changing times and tastes, its
coming-of-age philosophy is perennially satisfying; Reiner and screenwriters, Bruce
A. Evans and Raynold Gideon going for the instinctual ‘firsts’ in a young boy’s
life and the life-long impact these moments have on the later-to-be
fully-formed male subconscious. Based on Stephen King's The Body, Stand
By Me is an evocative, often poetic snapshot of adolescence, loosely
derived from both King and Reiner's childhood memories. These moments of
self-discovery have been effectively grafted onto a 'coming of age' story that
follows four friends in search of a rumored corpse lying somewhere along the lonely
rural railway tracks just beyond their small home town.
After Columbia
execs reasoned ‘The Body’ was a misleading title, the picture was
rechristened Stand By Me, drawing upon the strength of sentiment in the
time-honored Ben E. King song. It was actually Evans who got the ball rolling
on this one, sending a copy of The Body as a birthday gift to Karen, the
wife of his writing partner. Together, they contacted Stephen King’s agent,
Kirby McCauley to begin negotiations for the rights. While the asking price of
$100,000 was in line with the going rate for acquisitions at the time,
McCauley’s insistence on 10% of the picture’s gross was too far off the mark –
and too rich for Evans’ and Gideon’s blood. To massage this stalemate, the
writing team then approached director, Adrian Lyne to finesse the details. Lyne
was eager to partake of the picture. But this valiant trio could find no takers
to finance the project until Martin Shafer at Embassy Pictures stepped in with
an offer of $50,000 and a smaller share of the profits. Evans and Gideon, who
were also anticipating the chance to produce, spent eight weeks writing the
screenplay before Shafer teamed them with veteran producer, Andy Scheinman.
Shrewdly refusing to meet Lyne’s asking price, Shafer got Evans and Gideon to
give up their half of the profit-sharing to buoy the overage and bring Lyne on
board.
In Hollywood,
timing is everything, and Lyne’s commitment to his steamy drama, 9½ Weeks
(1986), followed by a badly needed respite, resulted in his quiet removal from
the project. Depending on the source consulted, Lyne either willingly withdrew
or was quietly ‘replaced’ as Shafter pursued other ‘cheaper’ prospects to get
the picture made. He found his candidate in Rob Reiner – then, best known for
playing Mike ‘meat head’ Stivic on Norman Lear’s trend-setting TV sit-com, All
in the Family (1971-79). Reiner had only begun to achieve notoriety behind
the director’s chair, thanks to a pair of minor comedies: This Is Spinal Tap
(1984) and The Sure Thing (1985). Despite his ‘novice’ appeal, Reiner’s
initial reaction to the script submitted for his consideration was that it showed
promise but "no focus." Notwithstanding his lack of
enthusiasm, Reiner signed on to helm the picture, distilling the initial
concentration on ‘four’ friends – also, developed in King’s novel – down to a
story, primarily seen through the eyes of one boy in particular – Gordie
Lachance (played with affecting sincerity as a child by Wil Wheaton, and
self-reflexive twinge of sadness as an adult by Richard Dreyfuss – a stand-in
for Stephen King). For Reiner, the
emotional crux of the movie was in Gordie’s childhood angst, stepping beyond
the shadow of a dominant father. Incorporating Reiner’s revisions into the new
script, Stand By Me’s incubation was momentarily delayed after Embassy’s
acquisition by Columbia Pictures, with the very real threat of being cancelled
altogether.
Once again,
kismet was on the picture’s side: TV producer, Norman Lear, a co-owner of
Embassy, forking out $7.5 million of his own money and citing faith in Reiner
and the script as the movie’s genuine assets. Moving swiftly, Reiner assembled
a memorable cast from a mostly prepubescent roster of gifted wannabe child
stars, auditioning over 300, then interviewing more than 70, before distilling
his choices down to a mere four, including the aforementioned Wheaton. “We
basically played ourselves,” Wheaton later reflected, “I was awkward and
nerdy and shy and uncomfortable in my own skin and really, really sensitive. River (Phoenix, who auditioned for Gordie
but eventually played Chris Chambers) was cool, really smart and passionate
and, even at that age, kind of like a father figure. Jerry (O’Connell, cast
as Vern Tessio) was one of the funniest people I had ever seen in my
life…and Corey (Feldman, as Teddy DuChamp) was unbelievably angry and in
an incredible amount of pain. He had an absolutely terrible relationship with
his parents.”
Satisfied with
his principal players, Reiner put his actors through two weeks of ‘games’ at
Viola Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater to build their characters and
camaraderie – the net result, a genuine friendship blossoming between this
foursome, adding yet another layer of verisimilitude to their on-screen
performances. After briefly considering
David Dukes, Ted Bessell, and Michael McKean as the adult Gordie, Reiner turned
to Richard Dreyfuss, whom he greatly admired.
Most of Stand By Me was shot on location; Brownsville, Oregon,
seemingly untouched by the passage of time, standing in for the fictional town
of Castle Rock, with Reiner hiring a hundred of its locals as extras. For the
pivotal moment when the boys are pursued by a steam locomotive along a trestle,
Reiner moved his company to McCloud River Railroad, above Lake Britton
Reservoir, near McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park in California, with
four adult female stunt doubles subbing in for the boys. To further ensure the
doubles safety, Reiner had his prop men lay plywood across the trestle for
added traction and support. He also employed a time-honored trick – telephoto
compression – to suggest the speeding train was actually a lot closer to the
fleeing doubles than in actuality.
We are first
introduced to the writer, Gordie LaChance (Richard Dreyfuss) as he blankly
stares out the driver's side window of his parked pickup truck. He is on a
remote country road, perhaps very much like the one he recalls from his
childhood, with a newspaper clipping on his lap that heralds the passing of
attorney, Christopher Chambers. Two young boys pass Gordie on their bicycles;
their camaraderie, the catalyst for Gordie's regression into his own past. We
meet Gordie (now played by Wil Wheaton), a pre-teen smoking cigarettes and
playing poker in a secret tree house on the outskirts of town with his buddies,
Chris Chambers and Teddy Duchamp. In King's story, Chris is the protagonist, a
self-appointed leader with a compassionate underbelly. However, in the film
Reiner shifts this focus, first to Gordie, then more to the ensemble - an
artistic license that makes the film much more of a collective experience.
After all, this is a story about friends.
Gordie likes
telling and writing stories. This escape into his own imagination is predicated
partly on the fact that his parents (Marshall Bell and Francis Lee McCain) have
never been particularly attentive - a condition worsened since the accidental
death of his older and more popular brother, Denny (John Cusack). Moreover,
storytelling fills Gordie's time, often spent struggling over his feelings
about Denny's loss. On the other hand, Chris is a tough scrapper, his defiance
desperate to mask insecurities about coming from the wrong side of the tracks.
Teddy is the adventurer of the group, but with a dark fatalist streak. This too
is a cover to shield his pain about a shell-shocked father, long since
committed to a mental asylum. The trio is eventually joined by Vern Tessio
(Jerry O'Connell), the unwanted fat kid who confides to his friends the
approximate whereabouts of the missing body of Ray Brower (Kent Lutrell); a kid
who disappeared from town three days earlier. Vern has gleaned this information
by eavesdropping on his older brother, Billy (Casey Siemaszko) while digging
for a jar of pennies hidden beneath the front porch of his family's house.
Billy belongs to the local gang of n'er-do-wells fronted by Ace Merrill (Kiefer
Sutherland). These older boys delight in terrorizing and taunting their
siblings at every chance. Learning of Ray Brower's whereabouts, Ace is
determined he and his gang should find the body first and become famous for its
discovery. At first, the goal of Gordie and his pals is the same. Yet, as their
journey progresses, each soon discovers that their soul is less involved in the
quest and more focused on learning who they are in relation to one another and
the outside world.
At a derelict
junkyard, the boys are threatened by owner, Milo Pressman (William Bronder) who
picks off their weaknesses one at a time, forcing Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern
to face their deepest inner fears head on. After narrowly escaping an oncoming
train on a trestle, the boys set up camp for the night. To ease their
anxieties, Gordie regales his friends with his latest story; that of an
overweight underdog named Lardass Hogan (Andy Linberg) who, after consuming a
pint of Castor Oil, enters a pie-eating contest just so that he can vomit on
his fellow contestants who have taunted him about his weight all his life. Taking
turns protecting each other throughout the night, Gordie and Chris share a
moment of quiet introspection while the others sleep. Chris exposes his darkest
fear to Gordie; that he will never amount to anything because the town has
already branded him a dangerous kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Gordie
reminds Chris that his life is not determined by the conviction of others but
by how he chooses to regard himself as either the victim or the hero of his own
life's story.
The next morning
the boys discover Ray Brower's body a few feet away from the train tracks. They
are all set to claim the body when Ace and his gang arrive, threatening to beat
the boys to a pulp unless they leave the scene immediately. Instead, Gordie
fires the gun that Chris brought with him into the air and then, pointing it
directly at Ace's head, assures Ace that he will kill him if he does not leave
them alone. Under the circumstances Ace complies, although he vows revenge once
they return home. Gordie tells his friends that to claim Ray Brower's body for
their own fame would be wrong. Instead, they elect to give Ray a proper burial
right there in the spot where he lays and never again to speak of his whereabouts.
Aside: the untimely death of actor, River Phoenix has given the ending of the
film an unintentional poignancy. The boys return to town before parting company
in preparation for their fall semester in high school. Gordie's narration
alerts us to the fact that after that summer he and Chris fell out of
friendship with Vern and Teddy, who never made much of their lives afterward.
Chris, so we are told, went on to become a successful attorney. While
attempting to break up a botched hold up in a restaurant, he was mortally
stabbed in the neck; the accompanying image of River Phoenix (still a boy)
wandering away from Gordie and into the distance, before suddenly vanishing
into thin air.
As for Gordie,
he is glimpsed once more as an adult, sitting behind his desk writing the
memoir of his friendship with these boys. He is interrupted by his own son
(Chance Quinn) and his best friend (Jason Naylor); approximately the same age
as Gordie was when the story he has been writing took place. "I never
had as good a friend as I did at that age," Gordie concludes, "Does
anybody?" In that final revelation Stand By Me achieves a sort
of timelessness probably responsible for the picture’s endurance as a perennial
family favorite since. Raymond Gideon and Bruce A. Evan's screenplay is true to
life, if peppered with a tad more profanity than I recalled from my initial
experience of seeing the film theatrically. That is more of an ‘aesthetic’
criticism. These characters live, partly because their dialogue is so
hard-edged. The other attributing factor to the overall success of the piece is
the ideal casting. Realizing that, at this age, boys lack the aptitude to truly
feel the emotional content of their characters, Rob Reiner has hired according
to type and the result is the line between reality and fiction effectively
blurred. Curiously, the death of River Phoenix has restored the original intent
of Stephen King's novel to the film. King always saw his story with Chris as its
central figure. Reiner chose Gordie instead, shifting focus to the ensemble for
his movie, a decision King embraced as 'right for the film'. Yet,
knowing what we do about Phoenix now serves to make the film more uniquely his.
We sympathize more with Chris today because we recognize the conflict within
Phoenix that made him such an enigmatic and genuine presence on the screen.
As the picture
wrapped and Reiner began the editing process, he was confident some of his best
work to date had emerged from this seemingly ‘little’ story. Alas, since
Embassy was to have also distributed the picture, Stand By Me now stood
at a dubious crossroads, with enough capital to finish shooting and editing,
but with no production house to act as its distributor. Screening a print for
Michael Ovitz, the mogul of Creative Artists Agency, won the picture props and
an ardent supporter. But even with Ovitz’s clout, Paramount, Universal and
Warner Bros. all passed on the option to release the movie. Mercifully, Columbia
Pictures’ production head, Guy McElwaine, felled with the flu, elected to
screen the movie at home – the reaction from his young daughters convincing him
Columbia should distribute it. In the
end, McElwaine’s foresight, rather than his initial reluctance, was well
rewarded. Despite initial mixed critical reaction, Stand By Me was a
runaway box office crowd-pleaser, grossing $242,795 in its limited release alone,
and a whopping $3,812,093, that ranked it the #2 release of the season. Better
still, it earned a slew of Oscar and Golden Globe nominations – though,
ironically, and rather disappointingly – not a single win. In the end, it drew
a hearty $52,287,414 virtually eclipsing its $8 million outlay. Stephen King
was impressed with the picture too, informing Reiner, “That's the best film
ever made out of anything I've written…which isn't saying much. But you've
really captured my story. It is autobiographical.” In the last analysis, Stand
By Me remains a movie true to its origins. It is decidedly different than
the King novel. Then again, the best movie adaptations from his books generally
are. And like King's story, the film strikes just the right chords of our ability
to collectively sentimentalize childhood, while discounting adult regrets.
Sony Home
Entertainment's 4K UHD Blu-ray (with HDR10) easily bests its Blu-ray release
from 2011, marking a startling departure towards a more natural color palette
that is refined and fully saturated in vibrant hues. Thomas Del Ruth’s
cinematography – shot mostly on location – is a sumptuous feast for the eyes. Fine detail abounds, down to the most minute
texture. Perhaps the biggest difference of all – contrast. Whereas the Blu-ray
often appeared to lose the deepest blacks, the 4K evokes all of the subtle
transitions between dark, velvety grey and completely dark and wonderfully
rich blacks. Wow! What a gift and a treat to see this movie again – though
seemingly, for the first time in ultra-hi-def. Stand By Me was
originally released in mono in theaters. But Sony went back to the drawing
board for a 5.1 DTS on the Blu-ray. They have now revisited even that effort
with a newly remixed Dolby Atmos and the results, while subtlety improved, are
monumentally impressive. Jack Nitzsches’ score is delivered as an immersive
experience, and dialogue and effects are presented with the utmost sensitivity.
Sony augments the 4K offering with a handful of deleted scenes totaling less
than 7 minutes. The rest of the extras are only available on the standard
Blu-ray and include the hour-and-a-half picture-in-picture audio commentary by Rob
Reiner, Wil Wheaton and Corey Feldman prepped for the 25th
Anniversary Blu-ray edition, plus, another exclusive track from 2000,
featuring Reiner only. From 2000, we also get the half-hour featurette, Walking
the Tracks: The Summer of “Stand By Me” co-hosted by author, Stephen
King and Reiner, and, featuring sound bites from the cast, plus the ‘Stand By
Me’ music video from 1986. Bottom line: another gorgeous 4K release from Sony.
This is becoming a habit with them – one, we wholeheartedly encourage and
sincerely promote herein. Very – VERY – highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out
of 5 - 5 being the best)
4.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
3.5
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