Stand by Me

Rob Reiner’s 1986 film follows four friends walking out over the last long weekend of summer 1959 to find the body of a boy reported dead near their town. The frame opens in 1985, with the grown Gordie reading that Chris has been murdered. The walk follows a railway line, but incident is scarce: past the trestle, the junkyard dog and the leeches, almost all 89 minutes is conversation. Before shooting, Reiner put the boys through two weeks of Viola Spolin’s improvisation games, and the unforced campfire scenes owe that fortnight as much as the script. It is adapted from Stephen King’s novella The Body. Columbia changed that title in March 1986 because, said screenwriter Raynold Gideon, it sounded like a sex film, a bodybuilding film or another King horror story. The town scenes were shot in Brownsville, Oregon, and the railway trestle in north-eastern California. More than three hundred boys were seen, and River Phoenix auditioned for Gordie before being cast as Chris. It took one Academy Award nomination, for adapted screenplay, and lost. A good fit if you accept that the body turns up late and the real event is four boys talking round a fire. Not for anyone who finds the trestle and the leeches too thin a set of hazards and wants a faster adventure.