The Perfect Adaptation: A Stand By Me Script Analysis
One of my favorite stories from Hollywood lore is about the time Rob Reiner screened his 1986 film Stand by Me for Stephen King, whose novella, "The Body," served as the source material. The way it reportedly went down was that after the film, King was silent and had to briefly leave the room to collect his thoughts. Reiner initially took this behavior as dissatisfaction, but when King returned, he simply told Reiner that it was the best adaptation of his work he had ever seen (something that King still believes to this day). This is pretty surprising considering that King’s work has been adapted into some of the best films ever made (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Shining). So what exactly is it about this 89-minute film about four boys walking in the woods, based on one of the shortest King publications (short stories aside), that made it resonate with him so much? And why is such a simple movie still brought up in conversations about the coming-of-age genre? One answer might be that in adapting a novella, rather than a novel, the screenwriters were allowed to expand on the author’s original ideas, rather than condense them. Another answer might be that Reiner and the screenwriters all perfectly understood the tone, setting, and characters of the novella that they were able to properly execute it in a movie format. Or maybe it was just that King happened to write something that already felt like a movie in its pacing, plot, and length, and adapting it was the natural next step. Regardless of whether or not it’s all three of these things or none at all, I’m here to say that Stand By Me can be argued to be the absolute perfect film adaptation of a book.
OPENING IMAGE
The film opens with a shot of a man, Gordon Lachance, sitting alone in a parked car on a beautiful day with a newspaper draped across his lap (the original script had it be a rainy day as Gordon waited for his son to get dropped off, but these changes make sense as the film goes on). The newspaper headline is about a local attorney who was recently stabbed to death in a restaurant, and by Gordon’s face, it was someone he knew well.
SET UP
The narrator takes us back to the year 1960 in a little town called Castle Rock, where we find a twelve-year-old Gordon (then going by Gordie) playing cards in a treehouse with his hoodlum friends Chris Chambers and Teddy Duchamp. The three of them smoke cigarettes and talk shit, like all kids do, and take in the final week of summer vacation together.
We quickly learn that Teddy is the crazy one in the group. Not by any of his own faults, though. His father, a WWII veteran who’s now being held at an insane asylum, would beat him regularly and even once held his ear to a stove as a means of punishment, nearly burning it off. Chris, on the other hand, is the “leader” of the group. He was by far the toughest, but had a certain level of sensitivity that set him apart from everyone else. His family was known for being the worst in town, so everyone who lived in Castle Rock assumed he must be bad too, including Chris. Part of this can be attributed to Chris infamously getting caught stealing the milk money from school one day. He’s been labeled as a thief ever since. And Gordie, an aspiring writer, is the smart, quiet one. If any one of these guys ever had a chance of finding their way in this world, it was him.
INCITING INCIDENT
The inciting incident occurs almost right away when Vern, a chubby, schmucky boy (the black sheep of the group), excitedly enters the treehouse with some news.
The Narrator goes on to explain how Vern came upon this news of a dead body. While digging under his porch one morning, looking for the pennies, he overheard his older brother, Billy, and his pal, Charlie (two kids from the older gang in town), talk about having discovered the body of Ray Brower that day. Ray Brower was a young boy from their area who had gone missing, and the search for him was the big news event of the summer. Billy and Charlie had stolen a car for some joyriding when they stumbled upon the body a few towns over, so they decided that not telling anybody was the best course of action. Having overheard this entire conversation, Vern was now one of the only people in town who knew where Ray Brower’s body was.
DEBATE
When Vern tells the boys about it, they all become psyched immediately, but he’s having second thoughts.
The debate doesn’t last long, though. Some quick and aggressive peer pressure from the other three boys gets Vern back on board, and the plan is set in motion.
As all the boys go their separate ways to prep for the trip, we find Gordie grabbing a canteen out of his brother, Denny’s, room.
It becomes clear that Gordie’s parents only really cared about Denny and have very little approval for Gordie’s friends, his interests, or even him as a person. Thank God he has his friends.
Gordie begins his trek to meet up with his friends when Chris is dropped off next to him by a pickup truck. Once they’re alone, Chris takes Gordie aside to show him what he took for their adventure: his dad’s .45.
They go running down the street where they bump into Chris’s older brother, Eyeball, and his buddy, Ace. Once again, these two kids are from the older, rougher gang in town, and Ace is their leader.
They want to fight back, but Gordie and Chris have neither the strength nor the time. They’ve got an adventure to go on.
BREAK INTO TWO
The four boys begin their long walk along the railroad tracks, with expectations that it’ll take about two days. But they don’t want to hitchhike, they don’t want to give up, they want to do this.
FUN AND GAMES
A couple of hours into their walk, the boys realize two things: they’re going to have to break into the junkyard to get water (and avoid being attacked by its legendary guard dog, Chopper), and they’re going to have to send someone to the store to pick up food (because none of them thought ahead enough to bring something to eat).
At the same time as the boys figure out their food situation, Ace and his gang are playing mailbox baseball, destroying the property of dozens of homes. Charlie and Billy are just barely hanging on to their secret.
When we cut back to the boys, they’ve found themselves at their first stop: Milo’s Junkyard. It hasn’t opened yet, so Milo and his beast are nowhere in sight. They should at least have a couple of hours to drink water and relax until it’s time to go. After a few minutes of talking shit and hanging out, they finally decide to flip coins to see who’s going to run over to the store to grab the food. Naturally, Gordie loses.
When Gordie gets to the market, the owner recognizes him as Denny’s little brother, which prompts a flashback:
It’s obvious that Denny was Gordie’s rock, and now with him gone, Gordie relies on his buddies to be his support system, especially Chris.
Gordie makes his way back to the junkyard, but right when he gets to where he left the fellas, he notices they’re gone. Then, he hears Vern’s voice from the other side of the fence.
Gordie sprints for his life with Chopper close behind him, barking and chomping away.
He hits the fence, climbs as fast as he can, and leaps over to the safe side along with the rest of the gang. When he turns around, he discovers that Chopper isn’t the huge monster they’ve heard stories of, but rather a perfectly common, medium-sized mutt. The boys all get a kick out of this and begin teasing the animal through the fence, which prompts Milo to march over and give them a piece of his mind.
Teddy begins to scream and cry, defending his father from the disrespect brought on by Milo. He throws such an emotional fit that the boys have to physically drag him away to stop the madness.
They’ve hit their first emotional hurdle on the trip, which leads to them realizing the weight of what they set out to do. It’s not just a walk in the park.
MIDPOINT
The midpoint of the film finds the two gangs at a crossroads. Ace’s gang is still keeping tabs on the Ray Brower search (with Charlie and Billy almost giving up their knowledge at every opportune moment), but mostly spending their time sitting on their asses and talking about girls. Gordie and the other boys, however, are actually doing something about it. And as they get closer to Ray Brower’s body, they each end up facing problems in their own lives.
They keep moving.
BAD TO WORSE
The boys continue their march when they discover that the train tracks they had been following lead directly onto a very narrow, rickety bridge that towers 80 feet above a river. The danger is clear, but after all they’ve been through so far, they just want to get there already–and going around would add ten miles to their journey.
They decide to take the risk. Chris and Teddy make their way across comfortably, but Gordie and Vern are much farther behind (mainly because Vern decided to crawl across, and Gordie got stuck behind him). Then, everyone’s fear becomes reality…
Gordie tries his best to drag Vern off of his feet and get him moving, but in all the chaos, Vern keeps falling back down. The train’s gaining on them, and they’re nowhere close to the edge. Chris and Teddy scream at them from the other side. They start running as fast as Vern will let them, but when Gordie looks back over his shoulder, he realizes that making it to the end is no longer a possibility, but they can get close. Just before the train is about to hit them, Gordie tackles Vern off the tracks and into the embankment, where they land with a thud into rocks and dirt. Painful? Yes. But they’re still in one piece, and they’re still alive.
BREAK INTO THREE
The boys have one final night of comfort camping around a fire before it’s time to find the body. They talk shit and hang out when somebody asks Gordie to tell a story. Finally, the audience is able to get a glimpse into Gordie’s creative mind when his latest tale plays out on screen as he tells it. I won’t dive too deep into it here, but it does a great job of illustrating Gordie’s isolation and how he feels in his hometown after his brother died. Check it out on Page 61 if you’re curious.
Anyways, they spend the night in the woods, with each boy taking a different shift to stay up and guard the campsite with Chris’s gun. At one point, when both Chris and Gordie found themselves awake at the same time, the two had a heart-to-heart about what really happened that one time with the lunch money.
He starts crying, Gordie comforts him, and they decide to call it a night. The next morning, the boys wake up for the final leg of their adventure.
FINALE
We cut back to the older kids gang, where almost simultaneously, Billy and Charlie both finally crack and spill the beans on Ray Brower.
Right away, Ace gathers up the gang to drive out to Ray Brower’s body.
At the same time, Gordie and the boys are nearing the finish line, but have to cross a swamp to make it to their destination. Believing it to be only a foot or so deep, they all carelessly stroll in, only to immediately flop completely under the water.
They chaotically rise and fight their way through the muck, but when they make it to the other side, they find their bodies completely covered in leeches.
After clearing off the leeches from their bodies, Gordie looks down into his underwear and discovers one more in the absolute worst of places, causing him to faint.
The guys start arguing about whether or not it’s finally time to call it quits, but Gordie comes to and says that heading home is out of the question. They’ve come too far to turn back now.
They walk a little bit further down the tracks until finally, Vern spots something in the bushes.
As they all stand there and stare at the body silently, Gordie becomes overwhelmed with grief: the thought of losing his brother, losing his friends next year, and losing his childhood every year he gets older. Ray Brower’s body represented all of these things, and seeing him in real life served as a reminder to Gordie that his worries weren’t imaginary; they were real, too.
Right in the final moments of the quest, everything comes to a screeching halt. Ace and his gang are here now, and they’re going to take the body, claim the credit, and there’s nothing the boys can do about it. When Chris tries to intervene, Ace gives him two options: 1) let him take the body, OR 2) he beats the shit out of him, and then he takes the body. Bravely, Chris still refuses to move.
Just as Ace is about to strike Chris with the blade, Gordie comes to the rescue.
Ace thinks it’s a bluff at first, but something about Gordie’s eyes tells him he’s serious.
Hesitantly, the older gang backs off and goes home. Whatever they thought they’d gain in finding this body wasn’t worth getting shot for. And for Gordie, protecting the innocence of Ray Brower was something worth killing for.
In the end, they leave the body and call the authorities. Just getting there was all Gordie and his friends really needed, after all.
CLOSING IMAGE
The boys finally make it back to Castle Rock the next morning, where they find themselves at a literal crossroads. One by one, each boy says their goodbyes and walks their own path home, with the narrator giving an update on their lives as they do so.
When Chris and Gordie are left alone, they share one final moment of vulnerability with each other before going their separate ways.
Finally, we cut back to present day, where it’s discovered that the man narrating is now a middle-aged Gordie writing a book about that time he and his buddies went on an adventure to find a dead body. He struggles to come up with the final sentence when his own son, about 12 years old, enters the room with his buddy. They want to go swimming and have to wait for Gordie to finish before they can do so. Gordie tells them he needs one more minute and to wait outside. As the boys run outside, Gordie sees them playing on the front lawn and is once again reminded of his own childhood buddies. He goes back to his computer and finishes his book.
WHY IT’S GREAT
Not only did Stand By Me nail everything that made the novella so great, but it expanded on the ideas presented in the book through its use of music, marvelous acting from each of the main cast, and execution of the 1960s small town setting. As I mentioned before, one of the reasons Reiner and the screenwriters might have been able to pull this off so well was due to the fact that the source material wasn’t very long. This allowed them to perfect every detail of the characters and plot, and leave out very little. Additionally, something that might have helped them through this process was the subject matter of the source material itself. Anyone who has read The Body understands that one of its central themes was how writers become inspired. While the film only contained one of Gordie’s stories (which is still an excellent scene), the novella included several. And in each of these stories, King implements subtle details of Gordie’s own life to show how personal his writing is to him. Obviously, this is something that King himself can relate to, especially in this book, which may be why he felt emotionally attached to Stand By Me. While I am, admittedly, getting into meta territory, I believe that adapting a book that emphasizes writing allowed the filmmakers to focus on the importance of writing as an art as they made the film. All people are products of their experiences, and Stand By Me highlights the struggles of every child depicted in the movie. The kids aren’t just goofy one-dimensional characters going on an adventure; they’re real people being actively affected by their hometown, friends, school, community, and family. And through Gordie’s writing and narration, we’re given insight into how these experiences morphed the child characters throughout their eventual adult lives. That’s why it’s a great coming-of-age movie, and that’s why I’m not afraid to call it the perfect adaptation.
