Stand By Me: 20 Things You Never Knew About The Stephen King Classic

We recently rated Stand by Me as the third greatest ever Stephen King Adaptation, but whatever you think about its position in our top ten, there’s no doubting that it’s absolutely brilliant. We’re sure that many of you will have seen this classic 80s film a number of times, but how much do you really know about it?

Here are some facts about the 1986 classic coming-of-age drama that you might not have known…

20. It’s based on a Stephen King short story from the same collection as The Shawshank Redemption

As much as Stand by Me had a big impact on the careers of all those involved in the film, it also changed things for writer Stephen King.

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King was a prolific best-selling author by the mid-80s, and there had already been a bunch of high profile films based on his novels and short stories.

However, King was still thought of as first and foremost a horror writer, a perception that Stand by Me helped to alter.

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Stand by Me is based on Stephen King’s story The Body, taken from his 1982 collection Different Seasons.

The film’s success helped audiences and critics realise there was a lot more to King than ghosts, monsters and murder.

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Interestingly, Different Seasons also contains the story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, which would later be adapted into acclaimed 1994 drama The Shawshank Redemption.

19. Sean Astin and Ethan Hawke were considered for the movie

As with any movie, casting the central actors wasn’t the quickest and easiest process on Stand by Me.

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The filmmakers looked at a great many young up-and-comers before settling on Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell.

Among the scores of actors who came close to landing one of the King adaptation’s central four roles, there were a few who went on to huge success later in life.

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One of these was Sean Astin, who had previously co-starred with Feldman in 1985’s The Goonies.

Another was Ethan Hawke, who had co-starred with Phoenix in another 1985 release, Explorers.

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There was also Stephen Dorff, who would ultimately make his film debut in 1987’s The Gate.

18. A producer financed it himself when the studio pulled the plug three days before shooting began

The producers of Stand by Me had struggled to get the film off the ground for some time – then, mere days before production was due to start, it almost fell apart completely.

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Embassy International, the production company behind Stand by Me, was sold to Columbia Pictures, who didn’t want to make the movie.

With the funding abruptly pulled, Stand by Me seemed like it was going to be over before it began.

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However, Embassy producer Norman Lear believed in the project enough to put up the entire budget himself and make the film independently.

Writer Raynold Gideon recalls, “Norman said, ‘I like the script. I like Rob. I like the boys.’ And out of his pocket he gave us seven and a half million dollars to make the film.”

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As an independent production, Stand by Me was later offered to all the major studios – and, perhaps ironically, they wound up selling it to Columbia Pictures after all, as the studio executives loved it.

17. The actors didn’t see ‘the body’ until they shot the scene

The central crux of Stand by Me is the journey four friends undertake in search of the dead body of a local teen hit by a train.

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So when the boys actually find the dead body they’re looking for, it’s obviously a pivotal moment in the film.

Director Rob Reiner and company were keen to ensure they got the most natural, believable responses possible from their young actors.

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Because of this, River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell were not allowed to see the ‘body’ beforehand.

It was hoped that this would build a level of tension and anticipation similar to that which the actual characters would have experienced – and this approach seems to have paid off.

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Corey Feldman had experienced something similar (but far less downbeat) shooting The Goonies, when the young cast were forbidden to see the pirate ship until shooting the scene when they discover it.

16. It was the childhood favourite film of Jerry O’Connell’s future wife

Though he was cast as the overweight kid in Stand by Me, Jerry O’Connell surprised many by growing into a hunky actor in adulthood.

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However, Stand by Me remains the actor’s most celebrated work – and it seems to have done him some favours romantically.

O’Connell has been married to actress and former model Rebecca Romijn (X-Men) since 2007.

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And it just so happens that O’Connell’s wife’s favourite movie growing up was – that’s right – Stand by Me.

O’Connell recalls, “About three months into dating… I went (with Romijn) to meet her high school friends.”

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“… her high school best friend said to me, ‘you know, Stand by Me is Rebecca’s favorite movie of all time. You know she had posters of it all over her room growing up.’ She never told me that.”

15. The leech scene really happened to Stephen King

Stephen King has confirmed that the sequence in Stand by Me and The Body when the boys swim in a forest pool is based on an actual childhood experience of his own.

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The memorable scene sees what seems like a casual spot of swimming turn into a nightmare when the boys realise they’re covered in leeches, prompting Wheaton’s Gordie to faint.

Of course, no real leeches were used in the filming of the sequence, but latex creations made by the props team.

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However, this is not to say that the pool that the boys shot the scene in was necessarily that pleasant to work in.

Rather than shooting in a real lake, the crew built a pool specifically for the scene – but it was still in a real forest location, where it stood for two weeks before the scene was shot.

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As a result, Corey Feldman recalls, “all the worms and the bugs and the leaves and the raccoons, they were all in there. Nature took its course.”

14. Phoenix was ‘a total wreck’ by the time filming ended

River Phoenix originally auditioned to play the part of Gordie, which ultimately went to Wil Wheaton.

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However, Rob Reiner and co. recognised that the young actor had far more in common with the part of Chris.

Apparently Phoenix came to feel much the same way, and by the time shooting was over his emotions were all over the place.

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For one of Phoenix’s stand-out scenes, when Chris tells the story of being accused of stealing, director Rob Reiner told the boy to think of a time when an adult let him down.

Phoenix – who had suffered very real childhood traumas – burst into tears for real shooting the scene, and struggled to regain his composure once the scene was over.

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The young actor is quoted as saying that he identified so much with his character, that if he didn’t have his family to go back to he would have needed a psychiatrist.

13. Rob Reiner suggested the title and made Wil Wheaton’s Gordie the focal point

When Rob Reiner came on board to direct Stand by Me, he recognised the potential of the project, but had issues with the first draft of the script.

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The initial script by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon adhered closely to Stephen King’s short story The Body, which presented all four of the central boys with equal importance.

Reiner recognised that the audience needed a singular figure to identify with, and felt that this had to be Gordie.

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Reiner recalls, “once I made Gordie the central focus of the piece then it made sense to me: this movie was all about a kid who didn’t feel good about himself and whose father didn’t love him.”

“And through the experience of going to find the dead body and his friendship with these boys, he began to feel empowered and went on to become a very successful writer. He basically became Stephen King.”

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Reiner also suggested Stand by Me as the title, knowing he intended to use Ben E. King’s song over the end titles. No one liked the idea of calling the film The Body, and Raynold Gideon said that Reiner’s suggestion was “the least unpopular option.”

12. Richard Dreyfuss was the fourth actor approached to play adult Gordie

One performance that’s every bit as significant as those of the four central kids is that which provides the film’s narration, from the adult Gordie.

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Though the fully grown counterpart of Wil Wheaton’s character is only briefly shown on camera, the performance has a major impact on the film’s tone.

The actor who landed the part was Richard Dreyfuss, a 1978 Oscar-winner for The Goodbye Girl, but best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg: Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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However, before Dreyfuss was cast in the role, at least three other actors were looked at to provide Stand by Me’s narration.

David Dukes was the first actor cast, but after recordings were made it was agreed that his voice wasn’t quite right.

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Next Reiner tried Ted Bessell, and Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap star Michael McKean, but no one really nailed it until Dreyfuss came along.

11. The cigarettes actually contained cabbage

Stand by Me is one of a number of films made in the 80s to show children doing things we wouldn’t necessarily expect to see today.

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On top of using large amounts of profanity and handling a gun, the boys are all seen smoking cigarettes.

Concerned viewers should be happy to learn that none of the young cast members were given real cigarettes in these scenes.

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According to Corey Feldman, the other young actors and himself were given imitation cigarettes made from cabbage leaves.

Feldman says this was a demand made by director Rob Reiner, “an avid non-smoker who campaigned for anti-smoking laws in California.”

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Feldman also remarked that he later came to “regret the cigarette smoking image that we may have projected to kids at the time.”

10. Michael Jackson was approached to contribute to the soundtrack

Stand by Me is set in 1959, and uses era-appropriate music – although things were almost different.

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At one point the filmmakers were hoping to use music from the biggest pop star of the time, Michael Jackson, for the Stand by Me soundtrack.

Corey Feldman, who was a friend of the troubled music legend, recalls hearing from Jackson after the film’s rough cut was first screened.

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Feldman recalls, “(Jackson) sent me a message, saying, ‘Hey I just saw your movie. Great work.’

“They were asking if they could use one of my songs in the film or he was going to write an original song for it, and it was around that time that they decided to go with an all-50s soundtrack.”

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Ironically, the Ben E. King song from which the film takes its name wasn’t released until 1961 – two years after the story takes place.

9. The young cast pulled a lot of pranks, accidentally ate marijuana cookies

It’s only fitting that a film about young boys sharing a coming of age experience would see some coming of age experiences occur on-set.

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River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Wil Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell got up to plenty of tomfoolery befitting males of their age group.

Their pranks included throwing furniture into a pool, covering Kiefer Sutherland’s car in mud and tampering with arcade games so they could play them for free.

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Kiefer Sutherland has said that one day the cast and crew attended a fair and bought some cookies to eat, but didn’t learn until afterwards that these contained marijuana.

It’s said to have taken the crew two hours until they managed to find Jerry O’Connell sitting alone crying, struggling with the drug’s effects.

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It has also been widely reported that River Phoenix lost his virginity during the shoot, whilst Feldman – who would later struggle with addiction – recalls having his first drink and drug experiences, as well as his first kiss.

8. The young actors were all uncannily like their characters

According to Gordi actor Wil Wheaton, the main reason the ensemble cast of Stand by Me is so effective is that the young actors were so close to their characters.

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Wheaton remarked in a 2011 interview, “Rob Reiner found four young boys who basically were the characters we played.”

“I was awkward and nerdy and shy… River [Phoenix] was cool and really smart and passionate and even at that age kind of like a father figure to some of us.

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“Jerry [O’Connell] was one of the funniest people I had ever seen in my life, either before or since.

“And Corey [Feldman] was unbelievably angry and in an incredible amount of pain and had an absolutely terrible relationship with his parents.”

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Jerry O’Connell expressed similar sentiments speaking to The New York Times around the film’s 1986 release: the 11-year-old actor said, “I think I was Vern that summer.”

7. Wil Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell are crying for real in the train scene

One of the most memorable and heart-pounding sequences in Stand by Me comes when the boys are walking along the rails of a massive elevated railway line, and a train comes up behind them.

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It looks like a terrifying and traumatic experience for anyone to live through, young or old – and it seems Rob Reiner made efforts to ensure this.

The director thought that Wil Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell didn’t look scared enough, and after shooting numerous takes they still hadn’t got the scene right.

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Finally, Reiner lost his temper and roared at the young boys in a threatening manner. This had the desired effect, as Wheaton and O’Connell are visibly afraid and upset in the footage used in the film.

However, as alarmingly realistic as the sequence may appear, the boys were of course in no real danger at all during the train scene.

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A telephoto lens was used to make it look like the train was right behind them, when in reality it was on the far side of the bridge.

6. The ‘vomit’ was actually cottage cheese and blueberries

One of the funniest and most repulsive parts of Stand by Me comes when Gordie tells his friends a story he’s written around the campfire.

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The story, treated almost like a film within the film, concerns an overweight young man cruelly nicknamed ‘Lardass’ (Andy Lindberg).

The character enters into a pie-eating contest with a plan to get revenge on the townsfolk who have bullied him all his life.

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Memorably, this results in the character vomiting all over his bullies, and setting off a chain reaction of vomiting all over the place.

Still, as repulsive an idea as this might be, in reality the artificial vomit used in the movie probably didn’t taste too bad at all.

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It was in fact a specially made blend of cottage cheese and blueberries. Sounds rather healthy!

5. Kiefer Sutherland bullied the kids for real

Much as the young central quartet were very close to their characters in reality, Kiefer Sutherland went to efforts to make a personal connection to his character.

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Sutherland, who would later reunite with Corey Feldman on 1987’s The Lost Boys, appears in Stand by Me as adolescent bully Ace Merrill.

In the hopes of promoting a greater sense of tension with his co-stars on camera, Sutherland would continue to pick on them when cameras weren’t rolling.

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Jerry O’Connell, the youngest of the cast members making his acting debut, recalls being genuinely terrified of Sutherland.

However, O’Connell says that the older and more experienced Wheaton, Phoenix and Feldman took it in their stride.

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The years that followed would see Sutherland become a big star in Hollywood, and he would again work with Rob Reiner on 1992’s A Few Good Men.

4. Stephen King considers it the best film based on his work

When Stephen King saw the film for the first time, he said it was the best adaptation of his work he had ever seen.

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The author hasn’t always had the best relationship with movies based on his books; most notoriously, he strongly dislikes Stanley Kubrick’s film of The Shining.

However, King’s response to Stand by Me was wildly different, as director Rob Reiner explained in a 1986 interview with critic Gene Siskel.

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Reiner recalls, ”We showed the film to Stephen King alone in a screening room, and when it was over he was pretty broken up. He excused himself for about 15 minutes. When he came back he said, ‘That’s the best film ever made out of anything I’ve written.'”

The author told the director, “you’ve really captured my story. It is autobiographical. All that was made up was the device of the hunt for the body.

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“I was the writer… and my best friend was the guy who actually did instill the confidence in me to become a writer. And he actually was killed as a young man.”

3. It started a professional relationship between Rob Reiner and Stephen King

Stand by Me was such a positive experience for Reiner and King that it proved to be the first of many times the filmmaker would tackle the author’s work.

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Reiner showed his gratitude to King in 1987 when he founded production company Castle Rock Entertainment.

Castle Rock is the name of a fictitious town in Maine where King sets many of his stories, including The Body (although Stand by Me changed the setting to Oregon).

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Then, in 1990, Reiner directed his second film based on King’s writing: Misery, which won Kathy Bates the Best Actress Oscar.

Castle Rock Entertainment has since produced six more King adaptations: Needful Things, The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Claiborne, The Green Mile, Hearts in Atlantis and Dreamcatcher.

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Castle Rock Entertainment has also produced a slew of non-King related hits, including Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally…, City Slickers, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet and Miss Congeniality.

2. Rob Reiner took the director’s chair when Adrian Lyne dropped out

When you think about what a sensitive and heartfelt film Stand by Me is, it’s not really the first thing you’d expect to see from the director of Flashdance and 9½ Weeks.

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However, that’s very nearly what we had, as director Adrian Lyne was the first person attached to call the shots on the film.

Lyne wound up dropping out early on as he wanted to take a long vacation once work on 9½ Weeks was complete.

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It was then that producer Andy Scheinman approached Rob Reiner, who at the time was still best known as an actor on 70s sitcom All in the Family.

Reiner’s directing career was just taking off, though, after the success of his first two movies, This is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing.

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Once Reiner signed on to direct the film (still tentatively entitled The Body at the time), he set about reworking the script, which he felt had “no focus.”

1. It was a critical and commercial success

In many ways, Stand by Me may have seemed a risky venture. It’s centred on children, but rated R; it’s based on Stephen King, but it’s not a horror movie.

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However, it was made in a time when the film industry wasn’t quite so risk-averse as today, with a modest budget of only $7.5 million.

Happily for all concerned, Stand by Me made an impressive return, making over $52 million at the box office.

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On top of this, the film was also very well received by critics. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called the film “one of those treasures absolutely not to be missed,” whilst Carrie Ricker of Philadelphia Enquirer dubbed it “a small, quiet film that walks tall and resonates long after.”

For evidence of how well regarded Stand by Me is, look no further than its current Rotten Tomatoes rating of 91%.

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