The joys and the sadness of youth: “Stand by Me”

These days I suspect Stand By Me is best known as a song, one of those ageless ballads with which almost everyone can connect. It’s a paean to loyalty and friendship, which of course makes it perfect for campfire singalongs. It was recorded in 1961 by Ben E. King, who co-wrote it along with the invaluable popsters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. When I hear “Stand by Me,” it puts me in a mellow mood, remembering back to memories—both happy and sad—of my own past.

 Today it also revives in me bittersweet memories of the late director Rob Reiner, for whom this was an early film project, just after This is Spinal Tap (1984) and just before The Princess Bride (1987). Based on a novella by horrormeister Stephen King, Stand by Me recounts the story of four young small-town pals who set out on a trek to see a dead body. (Their town, Castle Rock, would become the name of Reiner's own production company.

 The four leads were played by talented young actors just coming into their own. In the story, they are pals largely because all of them suffer from various forms of trauma. Sensitive Gordie (Wil Wheaton) is mourning the loss of his older brother, his parents’ favorite, in an accident. Chris (River Phoenix) is used to having his natural intelligence and leadership qualities overlooked because he comes from a family of scofflaws and ne’er-do-wells. Teddy (Corey Feldman) is the oddball son of an Army vet with serious mental issues. Vern (Jerry O’Connell) is a good kid, but the doofus of the group. Most of the film details their overnight trek to locate the body of a missing classmate who apparently was hit by a train. They figure that if they announce to the world where the body can be found, they will be accepted as heroes.

 What they aren’t counting on is the gang of roving teens, led by the always scary Kiefer Sutherland, who have their own dibs on the body. Sutherland and his cronies are just one of the jeopardies the four pals need to face down. There are leeches in the local stream, and very real danger from an oncoming locomotive. The four are also grappling with impending maturity and their own challenging pasts. What happens to them in the long run is established by the film’s narrator (Richard Dreyfuss) who opens and closes Stand by Me. Once one of the four, he’s now an established writer retelling his own story.  

 One of the things that makes Stand by Me fascinating to today’s viewers is the real-life fate of those involved. Kiefer Stuherland, of course, has had a rich acting career that rivals the success once enjoyed by his late father, Donald. Richard Dreyfuss has starred in blockbusters (yes, Jaws!) and won an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl. John Cusack, who plays Gordie’s older brother in some brief flashbacks, became beloved for his romantic turn in Say Anything.

 For the film’s four main boys, career success has been a sometime thing. Jerry O’Connell has had a long career but few standout roles. Wil Wheaton now mostly limits himself to voiceover work. The irrepressible Corey Feldman still performs, at 54, but has struggled with drug and alcohol abuse. River Phoenix, a 1988 Oscar nominee for Running on Empty, died of a drug overdose in 1993, at age 23. 

 And of course Rob Reiner himself died on December 14, 2025 when he and wife Michele were allegedly stabbed to death by their son Nick. Life can sometimes be very, very sad.

 

 

 

When You’re Strange: “The Lost Boys”

I recently spent five days in Santa Cruz, California, visiting members of my extended family. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the classic boardwalk and the nearby redwoods, I didn’t spot a single vampire. And now I’m just a wee bit disappointed. Perhaps I should explain: last night I watched a cult classic shot largely in Santa Cruz, though in the film the town goes by the name of Santa Carla. The Lost Boys, directed by Joel Schumacher in 1987, is a horror film of a rather whimsical sort. It posits that each evening the venerable beachside fun zone is overrun with scruffy young biker types who sleep all day, hanging upside down from the ceiling of a convenient seaside cave, and choose to drink something that looks an awful lot like blood.

 Schumacher’s contribution to vampire lore is a fascinating one. I believe he and his writers fudged, just a bit, the classic rules of vampire evolution: I haven’t run into other vampire stories in which you can remain in a half-vampire state until your first kill, with the possibility that you can return straightaway to being fully human if the head of the pack is somehow bumped off. This is part of the optimistic streak that makes The Lost Boys actually endearing. The project began with a smart writer cogitating on the gang of “lost boys” surrounding J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Living in the wild without conventional families, these youngsters formed themselves into a tribe that was ready for anything. And they proved to be desperate to find themselves a mother.

 All of this subtly finds its way into a contemporary story that takes advantage of Santa Cruz’s reputation for a laid-back post-Sixties vibe. Set against the creepy biker guys, led by a spiky-haired young Kiefer Sutherland, is a wholesome family group. Mom Dianne Wiest, trying to recover from a painful divorce, has brought her two sons to live with their curmudgeonly grandfather (Barnard Hughes, who has one of the film’s funniest lines). Hunky Michael (Jason Patric) is clearly restless, looking for a way out of the tight-knit family unit. When a gorgeous young hippie-type in a filmy outfit (Jamie Gertz) wafts by on the boardwalk, he’s a goner. Younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) loves his brother and his dog, and just wants to live out the summer at Grandpa’s in a comfortable way. He doesn’t know what he’s in for when two intense young comic-book mavens named Edgar and Alan Frog (the indispensable Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) decide to educate him about vampire lore. Suddenly, when he sees his big brother start to wear dark glasses indoors, Sam realizes there’s a problem afoot. Set against all of this is Wiest’s amiable Lucy, trying to keep her family in line while pursuing an oft-thwarted romance with a buttoned-down boardwalk shopkeeper played by Edward Herrmann.

 Schumacher himself has credited the film’s long-term success to the casting of brilliant young actors who were just starting their careers. Though Kiefer Sutherland had already shot Stand by Me, it had not yet been released when he went before the cameras in The Lost Boys. Jason Patric had previously made only one film, something called Solarbabies, before The Lost Boys turned him into a heartthrob. Teenagers Corey Haim and Corey Feldman became household names because of this movie, as well as best friends. They later appeared together several times on screen; an A&E reality series titled The Two Coreys (2007-2008) sadly chronicles how their lives went downhill over the years. (Haim died at age 38.) Fame, it seems, is even more dangerous than vampires.