This August will mark the 30th anniversary of the timeless classic Stand by Me. It has been 30 years since this low-budget film was released into select theaters across the nation and was deemed the summer of 1986 "sleeper hit", as it ranked up a total of $52 million during its run.
Stand by Me was actually based off Steven King's novella The Body. (It's been said that many of the events are based roughly on King's childhood). The movie starts off in the fictional town Castle Rock, Oregon, in 1959, with a group of friends-- fragile Gordie (Wil Wheaton), tough-guy Chris (River Phoenix), unbalanced Teddy (Corey Feldman), and scaredy-cat Vern (Jerry O'Connell)-- embarking on a journey to uncover a dead body. Wanting to be seen as good and heroes in their hometown's eyes, for their uncovering of the teenage body, they instead find themselves encountering on self-discovery.
Before production of Stand by Me, Rob Reiner was most well-known for directing This Is Spiral Trap and The Sure Thing. He was not only the director of this heartwarming film, but the master-mind behind it too, as he made several changes from the novella to on-screen. He decided to change the title of the movie to Stand by Me, in correlation to Ben E. King's song 'Stand By Me'. This song relates to the idea of friendship and staying true to one another, the moral behind this film. Even though the title was a significant change, the most drastic change Reiner made was making the story from Gordie's point of view. In Stephan King's novella, at the end when the four of them are having a show down with the gang of older boys it was originally Chris who picks up the gun and shoot it. Wanting to stick with the idea of it being Gordie's journey it was changed to Gordie shooting of the gun instead. When the scene was screened for King, he said,"When you had Gordie pick up that gun, I thought, why didn’t I have that?"
Even though Wil Wheaton's character played the main role in this film, River Phoenix stole the audience's hearts with his moving performance as "on of those low-life Chambers kid". Phoenix's most touching moment was when Chris told Gordie the story of him stealing the milk money, then returning it, but only to find out that the school never got the money. When this scene was first shot Reiner was not emotionally moved by Phoneix's performance as he had hoped. Reiner had a quiet word with River, asking him, "Is there a moment in your life where you can recall an adult letting you down, and betraying you in some way? You don't have to tell me who it is. I just want to you to think about it". By the second take, River delivered a performance that felt like an open wound that established him as a true actor.
Though Stand by Me is now a critically-acclaimed classic, it struggled deeply to make it on the big screen. Right before shooting began for the motion picture, the film was cut off from it's funding. With no financing in place, and a steep $7.5 million budget, Alan Horn the chief financial officer of Embassy funded the seven and a half million dollars out of his pocket to run the film. Now that they had their funding, Reiner was becoming frantic that there would be no distributor for their film, as Paramount, Universal and Warner Bros. all passed on the script. Columbia Pictures were their last hope, but the studio had already passed on it, however there was a new head of the studio. Guy McElwaine, the new head, did a private showing of Stand by Me at his house and after seeing it he said, "I just want this picture. I don’t know if it will make money or not". Stand by Me opened up in theaters a couple weeks later on August 8, 1986.
Stand by Me is unique and rare story of friendship and growing up. It won the hearts of many for it's heartwarming chemistry between the four friends and it makes you realize, just like that movies says,"I never had any friends like the ones when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
