Shooting Off My Mouth About “Young Guns”

Recently I’ve been catching up on classic films about young men in trouble. Perhaps I’ve been inspired by the spectacular new TV production of Lord of the Flies. In any case, I’ve now seen  Stand by Me (1985), River’s Edge (1986), and The Lost Boys (1987), the last of which has just become a Broadway musical hit.  Each of these flicks features young and mostly white males who are still children—or barely out of childhood—cut off from the adults in their lives and learning to cope with their world on the most violent terms.

  In 1988 along came Young Guns, which is often rather sneeringly referred to as a Brat Pack western. The designation of course refers mostly to a cluster of young actors (among them Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, and Demi Moore) who starred in the teen angst movies written and directed by John Hughes in this era. The young actors reportedly hated the “brat pack” designation, which came out of David Blum’s 1985 story in New York magazine in the wake of Hughes’ St. Elmo’s Fire. Emilio Estevez, who had figured prominently in the Blum piece, is the central figure in Young Guns, playing an embellished version of the Old West’s William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid.

 To be honest, this is not a story that can easily be tracked. But it apparently takes off from actual historic events: a young Englishman named John Tunstall came to Santa Fe in 1876 to get into the cattle business. His success as a rancher and store-owner put him at odds with local interests, and he was eventually murdered. In the film Tunstall (played by the always interesting Terence Stamp) is an older man, serving as a father figure to a number of wayward teenagers who work for him and are tutored by him in reading and social graces. After his sudden death, they dub themselves The Regulators, and are briefly deputized to take down his killers. But corrupt forces in the vicinity soon have them on the run.

 Estevez’s film role as Billy the Kid is the most interesting: he’s smart, brash, and always itching for a fight. Also memorable is Kiefer Sutherland, who—though scary indeed in Stand by Me and The Lost Boys—here plays a character with a sentimental side. (As “Doc,” he’s a gunslinger who’s also a would-be poet. Eventually he rescues a pretty Chinese concubine who’s being kept in thrall by the evil Jack Palance. Yes, it’s that kind of movie.) Smaller roles are filled by Estevez’s real-life brother Charlie Sheen, by Lou Diamond Phillips (as the all-purpose Native American in the gang), by Dermot Mulroney as the slob of the group, and by Casey Siemaszko as a love-sick gang member who makes some unfortunate choices. Some veteran actors, including Brian Keith, Terry O’Quinn, and Patrick Wayne (yes, he’s John’s son), also have key roles in the proceedings.

 As action movies go, this one has much to recommend it. There are a lot of horses, a lot of bad guys, and a lot of blood to be shed in picturesque outdoor surroundings. The climactic siege of a house to which Billy and the gang have been lured contains some dramatic moments, though it doesn’t fully match up with the actual historical episode. I was rather taken, in fact, by the filming of this episode: the up-close and slo-mo camera work here serves, I’m convinced, to glamorize violence, and to make us eager for more. Which is why there was a lucrative 1990 sequel, and talk of other sequels to come.  

 

 

Skirting the River’s Edge

At first I had River’s Edge confused with The Lost Boys, which came out a year later, in 1987. Both are set in California towns with a great deal of wild scenic beauty. (River’s Edge was shot in the Sacramento area, while The Lost Boys famously takes place in Santa Cruz, renamed Santa Carla for filming purposes.) Both involve packs of wild young men (and a few young women) who decisively turn their backs on conventional middle-class morality.  Both showcase fractured family units, and give juicy oldster roles to Hollywood veterans (Dennis Hopper, Barnard Hughes) while also featuring attractive young newcomers (Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland). Both contain material that can surely be considered disturbing. Both were shot on low budgets, but made a fair amount of money at the box office.

 One big difference, though: The Lost Boys (now a musical hit on Broadway) is about vampires. The film’s supernatural element, along with some particularly eccentric characters—like the vampire-hunting Frog brothers—ensure that audiences will chuckle as well as shiver.  In River’s Edge, though, there’s no such release from the film’s built-up tension. It opens with an androgynous looking pre-teen flinging a doll into a river. (It turns out he’s figured out a great way to torment his little sister.) From there we move to another spot at the river’s edge, where a young man stands shell-shocked over the naked corpse of the co-ed he’s just strangled to death, because (as he later explained) she was talking shit.  

Though the film’s main characters are mostly male, their treatment of girls and women is central to the story. Some, like the hyperkinetic Layne (Glover) seem to have no use at all for the female of the species. Layne is overtly excited by the killing, and takes it as his mission to protect the killer. The physically and mentally wounded druggie played by Hopper cherishes a life-sized sex doll who eerily resembles the dead girl. Reeves’ character, Matt, is the only central male figure who makes a choice to do the right thing, though this leads to him being harassed—and accused of participating in the crime—by a particularly nasty local cop.

 Authority figures in River’s Edge don’t come off much better than the young. There’s that malicious cop, first of all, who is clearly a bully and a sadist. A youngish high school social studies teacher thinks he’s reaching his young charges by romanticizing the political activism of the Sixties, but he doesn’t have a clue as to what they’re thinking.  Most of the film’s young men don’t seem to have intact families, or any families at all. Matt’s mother, Madeleine, is an attractive nurse who does show some concern about the welfare of her brood, but she’s also shacking up with an idler who clearly thinks the kids are a nuisance. Madeleine, like the other parents we see, can merely helplessly shrug her shoulders when her youngsters stay out till all hours, or fail to come home at all.

 Reeves’ Matt, as the one young man with something of a conscience, is rewarded by the opportunity to hook up with the prettiest of the gang’s gal pals, played by Ione Skye. (This was her first film, and—as the daughter of the singer Donovan—she was still using her surname, Leitch, in her billing. It would be two years before she became everyone’s dream girl in Say Anything.) But even the nicest of the young people in this film are not so very nice. If you like your films dark, this one’s for you!

 

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.

 

 

 

An Ode to the Elastic, Electric Donald Sutherland

I first knowingly encountered the late Donald Sutherland in 1968, in an odd little British film called Joanna. Then and now, I’ve been unsure if Joanna was intended as an ode to Swinging London (the miniskirts! the casual sex!) or a morality tale or a spoof. It did have a very pretty leading lady, a score by Sixties fave Rod McKuen, and several hunky young men. It also had Sutherland as the wealthy but terminally ill Lord Peter Sanderson, who hosts Joanna and her groovy friends at his sumptuous home in Morocco. When he came on screen, I thought I had never seen such a weird-looking person. There was a fey quality to him that had me completely baffled: was there some sort of comment being made about his sexuality? I didn’t know, but I didn’t much care. Joanna was a movie that didn’t invite hard thinking.

 It took a while to realize I’d seen Sutherland a year earlier in a vastly different role, that of a not-too-bright Southerner named Vernon Pinkley who hilariously steps in to impersonate a general in a World War II action drama, The Dirty Dozen. That was the thing about Sutherland: you couldn’t pin him down. Even his nationality seemed flexible: the Canada-born Sutherland played British and American roles with equal conviction.

 It was in 1970 that Sutherland had his big Hollywood breakthrough. Though for fans of the long-running TV series, Alan Alda will always be the REAL star of M*A*S*H, Robert Altman’s original film starred Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce. He and Elliott Gould as best buddy Trapper John McIntyre found stardom as two young battlefield surgeons who cope with the horrors of the Korean War by way of outrageous antics. One year later he played the title role in Klute, a neo-noir thriller best remembered for Jane Fonda’s Oscar-winning role as a prostitute being stalked by a killer. Sutherland’s role is that of a detective who becomes Fonda’s protector and then her lover. The powerful connection between Fonda and Sutherland,  which allegedly spilled over into their personal lives, led to Sutherland’s deep involvement in Fonda’s crusade against the Vietnam War.

 Another intensely dramatic role for Sutherland was opposite Julie Christie in 1973’s psychological thriller, Don’t Look Now. The eerie Venice-set drama, brilliantly directed by Nicolas Roeg, focuses on young parents trying to get past the accidental death of their young daughter. In the midst of their all-consuming grief,  there’s a sex scene that raised many eyebrows for its convincing eroticism, leaving some viewers certain that the intimacy on screen was genuine.  (Sutherland has staunchly denied this.) He was also a grieving father in Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning Ordinary People (1980), though most of the film’s accolades went to Mary Tyler Moore and young Timothy Hutton, who played his wife and his surviving son. But none of this should imply that Sutherland only took on somber roles. He played everyone from heroes to goofballs, like the pot-smoking professor in National Lampoon’s Animal House. He was even a stuffy British patriarch (and Keira Knightley’s father) in Joe Wright’s 2005 version of the Jane Austen classic, Pride and Prejudice, as well as the chief villain in The Hunger Games. Though Oscar nominations eluded him, the Academy in 2017 granted him an honorary Oscar “for a lifetime of indelible characters, rendered with unwavering truthfulness."

Today son Kiefer (named after Donald Sutherland’s very first director) carries on the family commitment to screen acting. But it’s unlikely he’ll ever top his father’s long and varied list of achievements.