Full Attention - Stand by Me (1986)

Cody comments on every minute of Stand by Me.

In Full Attention articles, I will be giving my full, undivided attention to a movie - and proving it by making some kind of comment about every single minute in that movie. I don't claim to have invented this concept, this is just my version of it.

I know that running times can vary depending on regions and formats, so to help readers keep track of where I am in the movie I will talk about what's going on in certain minutes, but a description of events will never be the only thing I have to say about a minute.

00:00 - 01:00

Shots of Gordie Lachance (Richard Dreyfuss) sitting alone in his car on the side of a country road while a beautiful orchestral version of the song "Stand by Me" plays on the soundtrack immediately set up the fact that this film is going to be tugging on the heart strings. But you might notice that Gordie is very obviously not Dreyfuss the first time we get a glimpse of his face. That's David Dukes, who was initially cast as the character but replaced during production. The recasting worked out, if only because it allowed Dreyfuss to provide the film's narration, and Dreyfuss has the perfect narrator voice.

01:00 - 02:00

A newspaper informs us that it's September of 1985 and attorney Christopher Chambers has been fatally stabbed in a restaurant. We don't know Chris Chambers yet, but by the end of the film we're going to love him and mourn him, as Gordie is currently doing.

Stand by Me doesn't have an opening credit sequence, kind of rare for a movie released in 1986, so it doesn't tip the viewer off to the fact that the source material for this heartfelt drama was a novella written by horror legend Stephen King. The first line of dialogue, however, is very King: "I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a dead human being."

Then the film transitions back to the summer of 1959, where we meet the twelve year old version of Gordie, played by Wil Wheaton, who lives in the small town of Castle Rock, Oregon. Across the country from the usual King setting.

02:00 - 03:00

Stand by Me has a great soundtrack of oldies rock songs. The first one we hear is Bobby Day's "Rockin' Robin". Gordie joins his friends Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) in their treehouse hangout, and we find out that this film is going to have a very realistic portrayal of young kids. These youngsters are smoking cigarettes, swearing, and telling vulgar jokes.

What's really great about this group is the fact that each role was cast perfectly. These young actors don't come off like they're kids just having fun getting the chance to smoke and swear on screen, they fully inhabit their characters.

03:00 - 04:00

Narration from the adult Gordie informs us that Chris and Teddy both come from bad families. Being a Chambers makes everyone assume Chris is going to turn out to be a criminal, and Teddy has an abusive father who has maimed one of his ears. It's the '50s, but these kids certainly aren't living in the world of Leave It to Beaver.

Teddy informs us that a pile of shit has a thousand eyes, one of the many lines from this film that pop into my head frequently.

04:00 - 05:00

The fourth member of this group of friends is hapless dweeb Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell), who has arrived to set the story in motion... once he can get his friends to actually pay attention to what he's trying to tell them. "Do you guys want to go see a dead body?"

O'Connell does an adorable job of making Vern an endearing dork.

05:00 - 06:00

Everything we need to know about what sort of character Vern is, we see right here. At the beginning of the school year, he buried a quart jar of pennies under the porch of his home and drew a treasure map to where the jar was. His mom threw the map out. Having no idea exactly where he buried the jar, Vern has spent the last nine months digging under the porch, desperately trying to locate it.

Being under the porch is how Vern was able to overhear his hoodlum older brother Billy (Casey Siemaszko of Young Guns) talking to his friend Charlie Hogan (Gary Riley of Summer School) about the fact that they had seen the body of a kid named Ray Brower, who appeared to have been hit by a train. Brower was a young kid who went out to pick blueberries and disappeared.

I have liked Siemaszko and Riley in other movies they've been in, but there is nothing likeable about their characters in this one. These guys and the people they hang out with (we'll meet them soon enough) are just pure trash.

06:00 - 07:00

Billy and Charlie can't tell anybody they found Ray Brower because they had taken a stolen car out to the area. That gives Vern and his friends a chance to be the ones to officially discover the corpse.

Director Rob Reiner made a cool stylistic choice when showing Vern eavesdropping on Billy and Charlie. Vern is under the porch, spying through lattice with diamond-shaped holes in it, and we see Billy and Charlie through his point of view - which has the two teenagers in the center of a diamond shape. Since the diamonds are big enough that both of Vern's eyes can fit into the shape I don't think he'd really see a diamond around his brother and his pal, but that's the beauty of artistic license.

07:00 - 08:00

Vern and his friends have a chance to get on TV and to get their pictures in the paper for finding Ray Brower! With that sort of payoff, who wouldn't go on a quest to find a dead body?

The kids put together a plan that will keep parents from wondering where they are until "dinner tomorrow night". Only Chris expects to get in trouble from a parent when everyone finds out what they were really up to, but he feels it's worth it.

08:00 - 09:00

Now we learn Gordie's sad back story. His beloved older brother Denny (John Cusack) died in a car accident four months earlier and his parents (Frances Lee McCain and Marshall Bell) have been neglecting him ever since.

All of these kids have reason to be miserable, except for Vern. The worst things Vern has going on are a lame brother and missing pennies. The fact that they're almost all troubled brings extra emotional weight to the entire film, with Gordie's story adding a melancholy tone to several scenes.

09:00 - 10:00

Gordie goes into Denny's room and has a flashback to his brother giving him a baseball cap. I was a young kid when I first saw Stand by Me... and rewatched it many times... and this may not be a King horror story, but King, Reiner, and screenwriters Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans still managed to disturb me to my core with this Denny aspect of the story and the cold way Gordie's parents treat him after Denny's death.

10:00 - 11:00

Gordie's dad asks why Gordie can't have friends like Denny's, and writes Chris, Teddy, and Vern off as "a thief and two feebs". We'll soon care deeply for all of these kids, and it's sad to see them put down like that.

The role of Gordie's asshole father will always be the one I think of first when I see the name Marshall Bell - even after seeing Bell play a high school gym teacher who gets stripped down and towel whipped in the shower by Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

11:00 - 12:00

Oh, Chris is a thief after all. He has stolen a loaded .45 from his dad's bureau. Then again, Chris figures that his dad will think he used up all the bullets himself shooting at beer cans while he was drunk, so maybe it's safer for everyone that the gun is with Chris instead.

Gordie thinks the gun is empty and then both he and Chris are scared when it actually fires a bullet into a trash can. The shot of these two yelling "Jesus!" in unison seems to be one of the most famous moments from the film.

12:00 - 13:00

Gordie thinks Chris pulled a trick on him with the gun, and Phoenix gets the first chance to show the depth of emotion he was capable of when Chris swears to Gordie that he didn't know the gun was loaded. Phoenix did some great work after Stand by Me, but I think this always remained his best movie and his best performance.

Kiefer Sutherland's hoodlum character Ace Merrill enters the film by stepping out of a bar with Chris's no-good older brother "Eyeball" (Bradley Gregg, who had a run-in with Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) and snatching the baseball cap Denny gave to Gordie off of Gordie's head.

13:00 - 14:00

Chris gets angry with the older kids for taking Gordie's hat, and this is another disturbing scene to me. Ace bullies Chris, throws him down on the ground and threatens to burn his face with a cigarette, while Chris's brother Eyeball just stands back and watches, smiling. Brother stuff in this movie really troubles me. Maybe it's because I have an older brother who watched Stand by Me with me from time to time when I was a kid, so that really drove home the Denny aspect of the story for me. And I knew a brother isn't supposed to let his friend burn your face with a cigarette.

Even worse, the scene ends with Eyeball wearing Gordie's baseball cap as he and Ace walk away. It has always bothered me that Gordie doesn't get that cap back.

14:00 - 15:00

Reaching the spot where Ray Brower was hit by a train will require Gordie and his friends to follow the train track, the quickest route, for twenty to thirty miles. I wouldn't want to be part of this quest anyway, I have no interest in seeing a dead body, but I'd really be opting out of it when I found out I had a walk like that ahead of me. Especially if I was one of the kids wearing Converse. I have Converse, I like wearing them, but they're not walking shoes. These kids are going to have blisters on their feet real soon.

Teddy acts like he's going to hit Vern in the face, and when Vern flinches Teddy hits him twice in the arm. "Two for flinchin'." This is a game I tried to integrate into my own group of friends when I was a kid and it didn't go over well.

15:00 - 16:00

The camera moves along beside the kids as they walk down the tracks through a scenic country location. There's nothing around them but hills, grass, and trees. I hope there aren't any houses messing up this spot now, but thirty-plus years later there probably are.

16:00 - 17:00

An argument breaks out when the kids realize nobody brought anything for them to eat. Vern did bring a comb to make sure their hair will look good when they're getting press for finding Ray Brower. Vern has a short haircut, so Teddy throws out the funny line, "What do you need a comb for? You don't even have any hair!"

Then the kids count the money they have with them, and of course Vern has the least because he can't find those damn pennies.

17:00 - 18:00

A train is coming, and Teddy decides it'd be a really neat idea to stand on the tracks and wait until the last possible second to dodge it. My mom worked at the railroad and was an engineer for many years, so this is another moment where my homelife affects my perception of a scene. It was made very clear to me how stupid it is to mess around with trains. If Teddy were to get killed by this train, that wouldn't be the only tragedy. The engineer honking the horn to try to get him to move would have to live with the memory of the time they hit a stupid kid. The image of that would be burned into their minds.

18:00 - 19:00

Chris pulled Teddy off the tracks, and Teddy is pissed that his friend saved his life. He "don't need no babysitter", he could have dodged it. It's obvious here that Teddy has psychological issues, which makes sense given what we know about his dad.

Cut to one of the most well remembered scenes, Eyeball driving a convertible down a country road with Billy and Charlie in the backseat and Ace hanging over the passenger door with a baseball bat in hand, playing "mailbox baseball". This is the first time we see Sutherland and Siemaszko together here; they would be reunited for Young Guns.

Jerry Lee Lewis sings about "Great Balls of Fire" on the soundtrack. Now that I think of it, I think someone played mailbox baseball down the road I lived on at one point in the '80s. I have a childhood memory of hearing about messed up mailboxes.

19:00 - 20:00

Charlie and Billy have been acting odd since finding Ray Brower, or as Ace puts it, they've been "acting psycho all day". They're so disturbed that Billy doesn't even want to play mailbox baseball anymore, but Ace and Eyeball are determined to finish the game. They take their sports very seriously.

What we learn in this scene: busting a wooden mailbox is a strike, failing to knock a mailbox completely off its post is a foul. What we aleady knew: mailbox baseball is illegal.

20:00 - 21:00

Gordie and his friends will be making a pit stop at the Castle Rock Salvage junkyard, a property patrolled by Chopper, "the most feared and least seen dog in Castle Rock". This is another thing that sticks with viewers, the legend of Chopper, the dog who has been taught to "sic balls". The narration provided by Dreyfuss informs us about this, and Dreyfuss manages to sound high-brow even while saying "sic balls".

Teddy is acting so hyped up and out of control as they trespass in the junkyard, Chris bets he won't live to be twenty.

21:00 - 22:00

The train dodge wasn't the first time Chris saved Teddy's life. He also caught him once when he nearly fell out of "the tree". Sometimes he dreams that he missed catching him, but Gordie says, "Chris Chambers never misses." Chris agrees, "Not even when the ladies leave the seat down." Chris then gives a visual representation of his ability to pee directly into the toilet bowl by making a circle with his thumb and forefinger and spitting through it. I remember copying that move when I was a kid, for some reason. This movie really got into my brain.

They might be talking about Teddy falling out of their treehouse when they say "the tree", but that thing is only maybe seven feet off the ground.

Chris and Gordie smile and hug after racing each other. Sweet kids.

22:00 - 23:00

Now the "sweet kids" are discussing the fact that they've noticed Mickey Mouse Club star Annette Funicello is starting to develop breasts. Well, that's the sort of thing you talk about when you're twelve.

23:00 - 24:00

The kids flip coins to decide who has to make a food run before the junkyard opens at 3 and Chopper arrives with the owner. The first flip results in four tails, which scares Vern. That's a "goocher", bad luck. It has been said that some older kids who got killed in a car accident came up with a goocher right before they got in the car. Heavy stuff to Vern. Baby stuff to Teddy.

This conversation reminds me of sad news I would hear too frequently as a kid, reports that local teens had died in some tragic way. It seems most of us have to deal with the death of at least one peer growing up, even if we're fortunate enough not to be directly impacted by it.

24:00 - 25:00

Teddy lets out a mad cackle and mocks Gordie when he comes up the loser in the second coin flip. Gordie tells Teddy to shut up, which leads to the others saying in unison, "I don't shut up, I grow up, and when I look at you I throw up." Gordie adds a new ending to it: "And then your mother comes around the corner and she licks it up."

Yes, these lines were quoted by me as a child.

25:00 - 26:00

The shopkeep Gordie buys food from recognizes him as Denny's brother, and proceeds to reminisce about Denny's football skills while also quoting Bible verses and trying to bond with Gordie over the fact that he also had a brother who died. Gordie really doesn't want to be hearing any of this. I don't think many people would want someone rambling to them about a lost loved one like this.

A flashback to a Lachance family dinner shows us that Gordie was being neglected by his parents even when Denny was alive. Denny got all of their attention.

26:00 - 27:00

It's not that Denny wanted all of that attention, in fact he tried to pass some of it over to Gordie. While his dad is talking to him about football, Denny attempts to change the subject by asking his dad if he has read the "really good" story Gordie wrote. Their dad doesn't answer the question, he just gets upset that Denny isn't completely focusing on football.

Denny assures Gordie that he did like the story. Everyone seemed to think Denny was a great kid, and from what we see of him it does appear that he was. These flashbacks are really sad, and the Lachance parents really suck.

27:00 - 28:00

Gordie returns to the junkyard to find that the owner has arrived early and his friends are already escaping over the fence. The owner spots Gordie - and sics Chopper on him. Gordie runs for his life. Or more accurately, he runs for his balls. Even though the owner does not actually say "sic balls".

There's a shot of Gordie running in slow motion while the narration tells us he heard "sic balls", then a cut to Gordie in normal speed as he lets out a scream. The way this was shot and edited provides an amusing moment.

28:00 - 29:00

Chopper does not live up to the legend, so Teddy mocks him through the face, waving his butt in the dog's face. This is where Teddy and I part company, as I can't stand it when people tease dogs. So I don't feel so bad for him when the owner comes up and turns the mockery back on him, making fun of the fact that he has a looney for a father.

29:00 - 30:00

The junkyard owner pressed the right button, because Teddy gets incredibly upset when he hears his father being referred to as a looney. Teddy still loves and respects his dad even after the guy stuck his ear on a hot stove, and looks up to him as a hero who "stormed the beach at Normandy". Gordie is baffled that Teddy can care so much about his dad when he doesn't care about his own, who has never been physically abusive. But as we've seen, Gordie definitely has reason to dislike his dad.

I wasn't alive anywhere near the 1950s, I was born in the decade this film was released in, but that doesn't hold me back from being able to relate to these characters and their family situations. The story deals with issues that are timeless.

30:00 - 31:00

The walk continues, but it takes a while for the kids to recover from the intense confrontation with the junkyard owner. Vern tries to move on by singing the theme song from the TV show Have Gun - Will Travel... Terrible timing.

Feldman did a great job handling the emotional, dramatic side of his character as well as Teddy's usual wacky side. A couple years after this, Feldman would lose something when he started playing to the camera and dressing like Michael Jackson.

31:00 - 32:00

Teddy feels like he's spoiling everyone's good time, and this is when the kids realize that maybe they shouldn't be having much fun on a trip to find a dead body anyway. The somber reality of the situation hadn't struck them before this moment. Their quest is quite disturbing when you think about it, and now they're thinking about it.

32:00 - 33:00

Ace and his gang are apparently called the Cobras, because while they hang out listening to The Monotones' "Book of Love" they're carving the word Cobras into each other's biceps with razor blades. Real badasses, who spend the next minute proving they're also real idiots.

Radio station KLAM interrupts the song with a news break on the search for Ray Brower, basically making a big deal of an update that says there's no sign of the missing twelve-year-old yet. Mention of Brower gets Charlie and Billy acting psycho again. Billy tries to keep Charlie from revealing the information they have, while Charlie makes an unrealistic bet with Eyeball over whether or not the kid is ever going to be found.

33:00 - 34:00

Eyeball bets Charlie $2000 Ray Brower won't be found, and Ace finally gets them to shut up by saying he'd kill them both if they actually had $2000. When he says this, it's completely believable that he would actually go through with that threat.

The Chordettes' "Lollipop", one of the songs I most strongly associate with this movie, helps the transition to the next scene of the younger kids making their way down the train track. It's easy to see why I associate "Lollipop" with Stand by Me; Teddy and Vern are actually singing and dancing to the song as they walk. Teddy is now in a much better mood than the one we saw him in a couple minutes ago.

Chris lets Gordie know he has some cigarettes for them to smoke after supper, since that's when cigarettes taste best. Of course it is.

34:00 - 35:00

Gordie asks Chris a question that has concerned many youths over the decades. "Do you think I'm weird?" This is a question I still ponder in my thirties.

Chris does think Gordie is weird, but "everybody's weird".

Their conversation then turns to school, and the fact that Chris thinks Gordie should start taking college courses while he and the others have to resort to shop class. Gordie doesn't want to split from his friends.

35:00 - 36:00

Chris shows a depth of care and concern for Gordie that is truly beyond his years. He doesn't want Gordie to let his association with him, Teddy, and Vern to drag him down. He believes Gordie should become a writer, even though his father's coldness toward his writing has convinced him it's a stupid waste of time.

While Chris and Gordie are having their serious talk, Teddy and Vern are debating who would win in a fight between Mighty Mouse and Superman, which is more on the level of the personal conversations I come up with.

Trying to convince Gordie that he should embrace the gift he has been given, being able to write stories, Chris even goes so far as to say "I wish to hell I was your dad," not something you tend to hear from a kid. But Phoenix pulls it off.

36:00 - 37:00

This conversation between Chris and Gordie is one of Phoenix's greatest moments in the film. With his performance, he makes Chris the definition of an old soul, there is so much depth and wisdom to this young kid. It's really emotionally effective and fascinating to watch him deliver these lines.

The talk is slowing Chris and Gordie down, so Teddy and Vern have to tell them to pick up the pace. "By the time we get there, the kid won't even be dead anymore."

And then another song that always makes me think of Stand by Me kicks in, Buddy Holly's "Everyday".

37:00 - 38:00

The kids reach a bridge that takes the train tracks across a river and debate whether they should take a detour. Leaving the tracks at this point means they would have to go five miles out of their way to cross the river, then walk five miles back to tracks. Teddy is determined to just keep walking across the tracks - and when the others return from their ten mile detour he'll be waiting on the other side of the river, relaxing with his thoughts.

Gordie asks, "Do you use your left hand or your right hand for that?" Since I was a young kid when I was first watching this movie, that makes Gordie's quip one of the first masturbation jokes I ever enjoyed.

38:00 - 39:00

Teddy has convinced everyone to keep walking along the tracks, across the bridge. We're told it's a 100 foot drop down into the river... and since Vern decides that crawling on his hands and knees is the best way to get across the bridge, the comb he brought slips out of his shirt pocket and gets dropped 100 feet into the water.

Reiner chooses camera angles that show how high the bridge is above the water, but to really drive home how far of a drop it is, you need to have something fall or get thrown into the water. The fact that the comb is the object that falls gives the viewer a laugh while also establishing how dangerous this bridge crossing is.

39:00 - 40:00

Vern informs Gordie, "I lost the comb." He sounds so sad, even though nobody cared about having a comb on hand and he doesn't even have enough hair to use it himself. I was an overly sensitive kid, so I actually shared his sadness over losing his comb.

Gordie is the one paying the most attention to whether or not a train is coming, so he's the first one to see that there actually is one chugging along in their direction. The sight of a train coming around the bend behind them, followed by Gordie screaming "Train!" to his friends, is the beginning of the most famous moment in the film.

40:00 - 41:00

The kids run for their lives as the train speeds toward them. Gordie and Vern are slowed down substantially by Vern's crawling; Gordie has to scream at Vern and force him to his feet to get him to start running. Reiner gave the editor plenty of footage and angles to choose from to make it seem like it's taking the kids forever to get across the bridge, the train getting closer and closer. There are points when it looks like they're not going to make it.

Chris and Teddy do make it to the end of the bridge with time to spare, which means they're forced to watch Gordie and Vern continue to run for their lives. The train gets so close that Gordie has to grab Vern and jump off the bridge with him. It looks like they're taking the same 100 foot drop the comb took; this is why we had to see something fall from the bridge earlier.

41:00 - 42:00

Gordie and Vern didn't fall 100 feet, they were at the end of the bridge and landed on the ground - right at the edge of the 100 foot drop. The group isn't too traumatized by what just happened, they immediately start cracking jokes about it and Teddy is impressed that Gordie and Vern just pulled off the all-time train dodge.

The bridge sequence pretty effectively shows the dangers of walking on train tracks - take note, you might not be as lucky as the Stand by Me kids if you walk across a train bridge. Ray Brower had the more likely ending.

Night falls and the kids make a campfire so they can have some dinner and continue cracking jokes at each other's expense. Especially at Vern's expense.

42:00 - 43:00

As the kids have their after dinner smoke and cherish the moment, Gordie is asked to tell them a story. We didn't have to wait long after the train sequence to reach another of the most famous scenes from the film.

Teddy wants to hear a war story, which makes sense since he's fixated on the the fact that his dad stormed the beach at Normandy. Vern just doesn't want to hear one of Gordie's horror stories, indicating Gordie takes after his creator Stephen King.

43:00 - 44:00

Gordie starts setting up the story he wants to tell, which centers on a kid called David "Lardass" Hogan, who is relentlessly mocked and bullied because he is extremely overweight due to a glandular problem. Vern has heard about such a thing, as he has a cousin who is around 300 pounds due to a faulty "highboy gland".

Gordie should have picked 300 pounds or more for his story, but instead he says Lardass is around twelve years old and weighs 180. A number way too low for the sort of character Lardass is supposed to be. I was around 180 when I was his age, packing a belly but certainly no Lardass.

44:00 - 45:00

Gordie's story comes to life on screen. It takes place at a small town pie-eating contest, where Lardass plans to get his revenge on the people who have made his life miserable. It's a set-up reminiscent of the prom in Carrie, but thankfully everyone is going to get out of this one alive.

The contestants include a celebrity guest, the radio DJ we hear at other points in the movie, Matt Williams as Bob Cormier from the radio station KLAM. Cormier greets the audience with a display of his motormouth abilities; "From the racks and stacks, it's the best on wax! How 'bout another double golden oldie twin spin sound sandwich from K-L-A-M in Portland?" This line lives in my brain and rises to the surface way too often.

We get our first look at Andy Lindberg as Lardass, and it's quite clear that the production achieved his "lardass" look simply by stuffing Lindberg's shirt with padding. It's not very convincing.

45:00 - 46:00

As Lardass takes the stage, we see exactly why he wants revenge. The contest's four-time champion trips him and threatens him, telling him not to even try to win; people in the audience yell out insults; elderly men make sound effects like Lardass is shaking the earth with every step. All of these people will get their comeuppance - and this segment really does feel like it's something a twelve-year-old would come up with.

46:00 - 47:00

The pie eating commences, the contestants shoving their faces into blueberry pies. Lardass gets off to such a strong start that the M.C. advises him to pace himself, and the crowd even starts to show support for him... by chanting "Lardass!"

A full minute of watching people shove their faces into pies makes me start to crave some pie. Competitive eating doesn't appeal to me much in general, but the idea of a pie eating contest is kind of enticing. Even if all of these contestants quickly become a total mess, blueberry filling smeared all over their faces.

47:00 - 48:00

Gordie drops the twist: Lardass isn't interested in winning the contest. Moments before taking the stage, he chugged down some castor oil and chased it with a raw egg. If it weren't for Stand by Me, I would have no concept of what might happen if a person were to chug castor oil.

As Lardass tears into his fifth pie, he begins imagining that he's eating "cow flops and rat guts in blueberry sauce". You can see where this is going.

48:00 - 49:00

A "strange and scary" sound starts building in Lardass's stomach. He stands up and projectile vomits five pies worth of used blueberries directly into the face of the contest's reigning champion. The person present who most deserved to get some vomit launched into their face.

This sets off a chain reaction of vomit. Bob Cormier vomits on Principal Wiggins (Art Burke), who must be the principal of the school Gordie and his friends attend. Of course a kid would want to put their principal in a story about people getting vomited on. Wiggins vomits on the next contestant, the M.C. vomits on his wife, and when the smell of vomit reaches the audience everyone in attendance also starts to vomit.

This is the example we get in the film of Gordie's writing talent. A grossout story about kids barfing on their parents and a "fat lady" barfing in her purse. The most fun option possible.

49:00 - 50:00

The vomiting continues while Lardass sits back and enjoys the barf-o-rama he created.

Gordie's friends cheer the story, and that brings the storytelling to an end. The Lardass segment is a great little interlude that kicks off the second half of the film in a very entertaining way.

The story had the perfect ending, but Teddy wants it to go further, suggesting that Gordie have Lardass go home, shoot his father, then run off to join the Texas Rangers. A note up there with some of the worst tales I've heard of meddling studio execs supplying nonsensical notes.

50:00 - 51:00

Vern has a question he really needs an answer to - did Lardass have to pay to get into the contest? Teddy's note and Vern's dimness really causes Gordie's storytime to sputter out in the end. If only they could have kept their thoughts to themselves after cheering.

Thankfully, they're able to get The Fleetwoods on the radio right after.

51:00 - 52:00

The kids discuss various topics. What would they pick if they could only eat one food for the rest of their lives? The $64,000 Question. Wagon Train. And the most mind-boggling question of our time: if Pluto is a dog, what the hell is Goofy? Pluto is a dog that acts like a dog, but Goofy is a dog that can speak and drive a car. Why are two dogs so far apart in intelligence and ability?

52:00 - 53:00

Never mind dogs, there's now a pack of coyotes howling near the camping site... although the kids show some concern that they're hearing the screams of a ghost, not the howls of coyotes. Now the kids have a use for the gun Chris brought along - they take turns standing guard with the gun, ready to protect their friends if any coyotes come along.

Guard or not, if I were spending the night outside and heard coyotes nearby, that would kill any chance I had of getting some sleep.

53:00 - 54:00

Teddy imagines he's in the military while he's on guard duty. When it's his turn, Vern is scared out of his mind, swinging the gun in the direction of every sound he hears. It's embarassing to admit it, but between these two I am definitely more like Vern.

54:00 - 55:00

While Chris stands guard, he notices that Gordie is having a nightmare. We then get to see what Gordie is dreaming about, and it's another one of those deeply disturbing scenes that deals with the loss of his brother. The blue-soaked, unnatural visuals of the dream are very unnerving, as we see people gathered around Denny's grave while his casket is lowered into the ground.

55:00 - 56:00

The dream gets even worse. Gordie's dad places a hand on his shoulder and says, "It should have been you, Gordon." I don't think Gordie's dad ever actually said that, but the words match the way we've seen the man treat his surviving son. It's bad enough to make Gordie wake up as if something was attacking him in his dream. When I was younger I thought this dream was also a flashback, making it all the more devastating.

56:00 - 57:00

Gordie joins Chris on guard duty and suggests that he should take college courses with him when the new school year begins. This begins another serious conversation between the pair, with Chris expressing the pain he feels over everyone looking down on his because he's a Chambers. His dad's a drunk, his brother is Eyeball, it's easy to understand why people would think the Chambers family is a lost cause, but we know Chris deserves better than to be lumped in with his relatives.

57:00 - 58:00

Chris got a three day suspension from school when he was accused of stealing the milk money. He admits to Gordie that he did take the money, like everyone thought he did. But there's a twist involving a teacher Chris calls Old Lady Simons. Chris is struggling with his true nature, that of a good kid, and going along with the bad behavior everyone expects of him. It's heartbreaking, and Phoenix flawlessly conveys his character's tormented emotions.

58:00 - 59:00

Chris starts crying over the thought of Old Lady Simons stabbing him in the back. Phoenix was an incredible actor for his age, and Reiner has said that Phoenix brought the tears to this scene by thinking of a time an adult had let him down in his own life. He never revealed what the situation with that adult was, but it worked.

59:00 - 60:00

Chris breaks down in sobs and Gordie does his best to console him.

The sun rises and Gordie has woken up before anyone else. I guess it's his time on guard duty, but he doesn't have the gun in hand, he's just hanging out. It reminds me that this was often my problem when I had sleepovers as a kid; I was the last to want to fall asleep and the first to wake up. At least Gordie has a comic book to read while he waits for the others - no one thought to bring food, but at least they packed reading materials. As Gordie sits with comic book in hand, a deer comes walking up very close to him.

60:00 - 61:00

The deer encounter was a special moment for Gordie. The Dreyfuss narration informs us that he never told the others about the deer, never spoke or wrote of it until telling this story.

The narration also tells us that the idea of seeing Ray Brower's body was becoming an obsession for Gordie as the kids get closer to their destination. Now it strikes me that Gordie did not see the corpse of his own brother, even though Denny died and the funeral was held just a few months earlier. He said, "I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a dead human being." And that human being wasn't Denny. Interesting. Apparently Denny had a closed casket funeral.

61:00 - 62:00

The kids reach a point where they'll save time if they leave the train tracks and cut across a field to take a shortcut through a woods. Vern's not into that idea, and I wouldn't be either, but he has to follow the others as they head off into the wilderness.

Cut to a shot of a pool table as "Get a Job" by The Silhouettes starts on the soundtrack. The "Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip" of the song makes for a great sound to accompany a scene transition.

62:00 - 63:00

After thirty-six hours of keeping their secret, Charlie and Billy reveal the info on where Ray Brower can be found to Ace and Eyeball. They have their buddies swear not to tell anybody else, but of course Ace and Eyeball spill the beans to the whole gang soon after. We've only spent a couple minutes with Ace and Eyeball and we're quite aware that they're not to be trusted, I'm not sure why Charlie and Billy can't see that even though they're around them all the time.

Ace puts together a plan to go find Ray Brower's body under the guise of going fishing in the river that's near the corpse and the train tracks. The gang is hoping to get a lot of press for making the discovery, the same hope the younger kids have. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame.

63:00 - 64:00

Ace forces Charlie and Billy to go on the body finding trip with him... And when we cut back to the younger kids, they're getting ready to experience another one of the mobie's classic scenes. A shortcut through the woods is one thing. I wouldn't want to do it, but I might be persuaded to. But taking a shortcut through a patch of swamp? There's no way I would step a foot into that nasty water.

64:00 - 65:00

The kids do step foot in that nasty water, and within a few steps they're up to their necks in it. They take this disgusting turn of events in stride and start splashing around in the muck. Chris tells Teddy to act his age and Teddy replies, "This is my age. I'm in the prime of my youth, and I'll only be young once!" There was a time when I could relate to that line, but the prime of my youth has since been left behind. Thanks to the magic of movies, Teddy and his pals are still kids thirty-plus years later.

65:00 - 66:00

Things take a serious turn when the kids emerge from the water and realize they're covered with - Teddy yells the word to drive it home - "Leeches!" Leeches have attached themselves to their arms, legs, torsos, necks. They're covered. I've never seen a leech up close, and Stand by Me is as close as I ever want to get to one.

66:00 - 67:00

The horrific idea of being covered in leeches like these guys were was already enough to make this scene one that will stick with the viewer forever. But then things go a step further. Gordie looks into his tighty whities to see that a leech has attached itself to the body part a male would most hate to have a leech attached to. He reaches into his underwear and pulls the leech out, his hand covered with blood. And he faints. Understandably.

67:00 - 68:00

The leech ordeal was so traumatic, Chris and Vern start talking about turning back and going home. Teddy mocks them as pussies, and for once I have to agree with Teddy. I wouldn't want to go through anything they have gone through, but at this point they've gone too far to just give up. They have to finish the journey.

68:00 - 69:00

Vern knocks Teddy down and starts beating on him while saying repeatedly, "Two for flinching!" I may have been on Teddy's side in this argument, but it's still good to see Vern stand up for himself.

Gordie has been spaced out since fainting, but now he breaks up the fight and tells the others he's not turning back. He continues on into the woods, and the others follow without comment.

We cut away to Ace and his gang to see that they're still on their way to Ray Brower's body, too. The song they're listening to now is "Yakety Yak" by The Coasters, a song I associate not only with Stand by Me but also my childhood in general. Although the song was released in 1958, I feel like I heard it quite frequently when I was a kid in the late '80s / early '90s. That and Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash", which was also released in 1958 but is not on the Stand by Me soundtrack.

69:00 - 70:00

Ace and his lackeys are loaded into two cars, and we see how dangerous Ace can be when a race between these two cars segues into Ace playing chicken with a logging truck. Ace, of course, wins this game - the truck has to swerve to avoid hitting him, spilling its load of logs out onto the road. Ace is completely calm. King really had a knack for writing this sort of lunatic teenager character.

70:00 - 71:00

Gordie and his friends have reached their destination. Vern is the first one to spot Ray Brower. His legs are sticking out from behind a bush on one side of the train tracks. This discovery is not a happy occasion. If the kids acted excited and flippant about this, the movie would lose me. But that's not the case. They're taking the situation very seriously.

71:00 - 72:00

Ray Brower's shoes are no longer on his feet. The train knocked him out of his Keds "just like it had knocked the life out of his body". The kids take a look at the corpse; they have to, it's what they've come here for. But there are no smiles or wisecracks. Seeing this has an emotional impact on them, and mournful music from composer Jack Nitzsche helps get that across. The kids decide to build a stretcher so they can carry Ray Brower out of the wilderness.

72:00 - 73:00

Understandably, Gordie is the one who is most affected by the sight of the dead kid. As Teddy and Vern look for branches to make the stretcher, Chris consoles Gordie while he has a breakdown. Gordie wonders why his brother had to die, feels like it should have been him, and believes his dad hates him.

I like Wheaton, but throughout the film it seems like if there is a weaker link among the four child actors at the center of the film, it would be him. That said, he handles his role well enough and here he does a great job with Gordie's breakdown. When Gordie starts crying, it feels real.

73:00 - 74:00

Chris assures Gordie he's going to be a great writer someday, and jokes that he could even write about their group of friends if he gets hard up for material. It's funny, because we know Gordie is writing about them now, that's why we're able to see this story play out. But it's not because he was hard up for material, it's out of nostalgia and grief.

74:00 - 75:00

Ace, Eyeball, and their buddies reach the site of the body and the two groups of youths have a standoff. Four preteens against seven teens who are much larger than them. It's a tense moment, because we've seen that Ace is not a stable person. Gordie and the others could be in real physical danger here.

75:00 - 76:00

The kids may be about to get hurt, but Teddy isn't quick to back down from a threat. He hilariously mocks Charlie directly to his face, making fun of the conversation Vern overheard him having with Billy.

Ace puts his focus on Chris, and ends up pulling a switchblade on the kid, telling him, "You're dead." As Ace advances on his younger brother, Eyeball makes a half-hearted, scared attempt to stop him by simply saying, "Ace, come on, man." He's just going to stand by and watch as his friend kills his brother. As far as brothers go, Eyeball is the opposite of Denny.

King can sometimes go over-the-top with his human villains, but Ace is played just right. Sutherland's demeanor here is chilling.

76:00 - 77:00

Ace reaches Chris and puts the switchblade to his neck, bringing to mind the news article we saw at the beginning of the film about Chris Chambers dying from a stab wound. That is his fate, but he doesn't get stabbed here. Gordie still has the gun, and he stops Ace by firing a shot into the air.

Gordie stands next to Chris, gun in hand, and it's like a callback to the moment earlier when Gordie accidentally fired a shot into the trashcan while Chris stood behind him. But now the stakes are life and death.

Facing off with Ace, Gordie is able to convince him that he is willing to shoot him. Especially once he drops the insult, "Suck my fat one, you cheap dime store hood."

77:00 - 78:00

Shooting Ace would be doing the world a favor, nothing good is going to come out of this guy, but of course we don't actually want Gordie to kill him. Homicide isn't a good look. Surprisingly, Ace has enough sense to leave the scene and take his buddies with him. He throws out some more threats as he goes, but he goes.

78:00 - 79:00

Coming down from the standoff, Gordie decides that they shouldn't be trying to become heroes by finding Ray Brower's body. They make an anonymous phone call instead.

I actually wouldn't have minded if the kids did go ahead with the idea of getting celebrated in the newspaper for locating the body, but the decision to keep their journey secret and make an anonymous phone call really fits the somber tone of the film.

79:00 - 80:00

Our heroes walk back to their hometown of Castle Rock, and when they get there the place feels "different, smaller". About 78 minutes earlier, Gordie's voiceover told us that Castle Rock had a population of 1281 people, but to him it was "the whole world". Gordie's experience has made him realize that the world is much larger than he had previously realized.

80:00 - 81:00

The kids have a whole new world ahead of them - when they return to school, they'll be attending Junior High. It's the day before Labor Day, and they say they'll see each other in school. It's kind of surprising to hear that school isn't already back in session before Labor Day. I guess that's the way it used to be, but these days school years tend to begin a month before Labor Day.

As the group splits up, Vern finds a penny on the ground. He may never find that jar he buried, but maybe he can start a new one.

81:00 - 82:00

Gordie's voiceover provides the information that he and Chris saw less and less of Teddy and Vern as time went on, and eventually they became just another face passing by in school. It's sad to hear that they drifted apart, but I'm sure most of us can relate to that. Friends who were important for a period of time sometimes just disappear from our lives.

We also hear that Teddy had a troubled life when he grew up, while Vern became a family man.

82:00 - 83:00

Things went better for Chris. Surprisingly good, in fact. He wasn't destined to a life of being a Castle Rock criminal like everyone expected. He enrolled in the college classes with Gordie and eventually became a lawyer. His life went well, right up until September of 1985, twenty-six years after his trek into the wilderness to see the body of Ray Brower. He tried to break up a fight between two men in a fast food restaurant and was stabbed in the throat. "He died almost instantly." A tragic end for a great person, and the sadness of that tragedy hangs over the entire movie.

83:00 - 84:00

We catch up with the Richard Dreyfuss version of Gordie as he's typing the last lines of this story into a computer. "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" Well, Gordie apparently hasn't done that well with friendships, but some of us are lucky enough to have great friends beyond childhood.

And Chris was awesome, but I don't see why Gordie couldn't have had friends as good, if not better, over Teddy and Vern at some point down the line.

Gordie has a son who's probably around twelve, and he and a friend are waiting for Gordie to finish writing so they can go somewhere. The friend is getting tired of waiting and complains, in a very whiny voice, about Gordie to his kid, right in the room with Gordie. Not cool.

84:00 - 85:00

Gordie switches off his computer and goes off with his son and the son's friend as the end credits begin and the Ben E. King song "Stand by Me" kicks in on the soundtrack. "Stand by Me" wasn't released until 1961, so it's not a song that Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern could have been listening to the year they went to find Ray Brower, but it makes sense that Gordie could have heard it later and related it to his 1959 journey and the friends he had when he was twelve.

The King novella this film was based on was simply titled The Body; Stand by Me is certainly a more interesting title than that.

85:00 - 86:00

The credits for the film's fantastic child cast, and the supporting cast. The owner of the store Gordie got food from was named Mr. Quidacioluo (played by Bruce Kirby). I believe this is the only movie I've ever seen a Quidacioluo in.

86:00 - 87:00

The older Gordie isn't credited as "Older Gordie", "Gordon", or anything like that. He's "The Writer". His son, however, is credited as "Gordon's Son". The son's friend, "His Friend".

The reigning champion of the pie eating contest was played by Dick Durock, who is best known for playing Swamp Thing in Wes Craven's film and the Jim Wynorski sequel The Return of Swamp Thing. I didn't recognize him without the mossy makeup.

87:00 - 88:00

"Stand by Me" is a really beautiful song. It'd be one of my favorites even if it wasn't part of this movie, but its association with the film certainly gives it a boost.

The music credits scroll by, listing over a dozen great oldies.

88:00 - 89:00

The final seconds. Acknowledgments of filming locations and the copyright notice. "Stand by Me" fades away, leaving me both glad that I have just sat through a terrific movie, but also a bit melancholy due to the tone and subject matter.

During the first year of Life Between Frames, I wrote a Film Appreciation article on Stand by Me that I was never entirely satisfied with. Now hopefully these two articles work together to convey how much I enjoy and appreciate this movie. Stand by Me is up there with the greats as far as I'm concerned.

I'm hoping the Full Attention series will be rather interactive, as I'm open to receiving suggestions on what movies I should cover. If there's a movie you would like to see me write about minute by minute, let me know by leaving a comment or sending an email. All suggestions will be considered, although those that are meant to be endurance challenges are less likely to be accepted.