STAND BY ME - DVD review

In his commentary, director Rob Reiner throws off this little tidbit of rock 'n' roll history: "Stand By Me," by Ben E. King, remains the only song to reach #1 twice—once when it was originally released, and again when the exact same recording was re-released to coincide with the premier of the film.*

It's not surprising. That song, coupled with the film's epitaph—"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"—has a powerful resonance, especially after spending 88 minutes with Gordie Lachance, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio. There's no shortage of coming-of-age books or films, but "Stand By Me" is perhaps the most memorable. It captures the full, paradoxical range of behavior that characterizes 12 year olds trying to find out who they are apart from their parents—which is why "Stand By Me" is also one of the few coming-of-age films to merit an "R" rating. It's not exactly role-modeling behavior they display—sneaking cigarettes, "borrowing" Dad's gun (while he's too drunk to notice), swearing their little fannies off, leaving home for two days, dodging freight trains, and locking horns with older teen bullies who happen to have switchblades. Then there's that dead body.

Two for Flinching!

"Stand By Me" is a classic quest tale, but the grail for these boys is the corpse of someone their own age—a boy named Ray Brower who was struck by a freight train. It was all over the news that police were still trying to locate the body when Vern (Jerry O'Connell) overhears his older punk brother talking about how their gang had a fix on the location and they were going to try to get to the body and make headlines themselves. So it becomes a race against time, in every sense of the word. As the younger group of boys move closer to that body and an inevitable confrontation, they leave more and more pieces of their innocence and childhood selves behind.

Chopper, Sic Balls!

This episodic '50s-era film is full of incidents and lines that stick with you, even many years later. As Gordie, Chris, Vern, and Teddy (Corey Feldman) grab their bedrolls and start their journey, one of their first stops is a junkyard rumored to be guarded by a dog trained to go right for the testicles. Mytho-dramatic moments like these are woven together with typical boy behavior that runs the manic-depressive gamut between hysterical horseplay and tears shed over their home lives and fears about their own shortcomings. Though they travel light, the foursome carries a ton of baggage. Gordie's older brother (and parents' favorite) died, leaving him feeling more alone than ever. Chris is the son of a drunken petty criminal whom everyone expects will grow up to be a loser himself. Vern is the fat kid that everybody picks on, and tired of it all. And the erratic Teddy is the son of a "looney." But in their little group—whether it's spending time in their treehouse or on adventures—they offer support, and never push the teasing to the danger point. What's incredible about the film is that the actors were all relative newcomers and needed to have on-the-set classes just to teach them the basics of acting, Reiner says. But with limited rehearsals, he was able to film many of the scenes with single, unbroken shots.

Leeches!

"Wow, you're the first person I've met who's fainted," Vern says after Gordie removes a big fat leech from his little privates—something we learn from Reiner that actually happened to author Stephen King, whose story, "The Body," was adapted for the film. Reiner says that the film's memorable dialogue exchanges come right out of the book, with the only major change he made a shift in focus. While the book gave more center stage to Chris (River Phoenix, in the film), Reiner wanted to use Gordie as the point-of-view character in order to better exploit and explore his own childhood memories—meaning, of course, that Reiner identified with Gordie (Wil Wheaton).

Hey Lardass, Chow Down, Wide Load!

It's interesting to hear Reiner say how he's not sure about the "barfarama" gross-out story that Gordie tells around the campfire to amuse his friends. Neither am I. It always seemed just a bit low-brow for a film that towed the line with more sophistication. But it was in King's book, Reiner says, and gross as it is, the story is certainly typical of what a 12-year-old boy might come up with, and it's certainly memorable. So, I would guess, is the image of the punk teens speeding along in their convertible playing "mailbox baseball," knocking mailboxes off their posts with monstrous swings of the bat. Though, of course, the most memorable scene from the film is where the boys attempt to cross a long railroad trestle that spans a 100-foot river gorge, with no place to escape if a train should happen along.

But as much as any of the memorable episodes, what sticks with you about this film is the right-on portrayal of boys interacting. There's the "your mom" insults, the merciless teasing, the gross-outs, the pinky swears and "skin its," and those non-stop conversations that ranged from the serious to the silly ("Who do you think would win in a fight? Mighty Mouse or Superman?"). The screenplay (which King said was the best adaptation of any of his books, to date) is superb, the acting is first-rate, the scenery and cinematography is gorgeous, the soundtrack is infectious, and the editing flawless. Ignore the barfarama scene which seems out of character for Gordie to narrate, throw in Kiefer Sutherland as head thug Ace and John Cusack as Gordie's dead brother (shown in dream and memory flashbacks), and it makes for one practically perfect film.

*Except that I checked the Billboard charts, and while virtually all of the songs show up on the list of top-singles for 1957 and 1958, I couldn't locate "Stand By Me." That's because, as it turns out, Ben E. King's ode to friendship topped the R&B charts but never made it to number one on the pop charts.

Video: I compared the Special Edition and Deluxe Edition and found them to be identical in quality, though the Deluxe Edition claims to be mastered in High Definition. That means that the remastering is so slight an upgrade in quality that most people won't notice, or else the initial transfer was "High Definition" though the term wasn't used then for marketing purposes. In any event, the quality is fine—not 2005-sharp, but clear and crisp for a film made almost 20 years ago. The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen with a 1.85:1 ratio that stretches to completely fill a widescreen television.

Audio: The soundtrack is still surprisingly Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (dual information relayed to main speakers), with additional audio options in French, Spanish, Portuguese and soundtrack only, and subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai. But the film doesn't suffer all that much because of the Mono presentation, since the songs are all from the Fifties and Digital Mono has a resonance that Mono on vinyl never had. But be prepared to crank up the sound. It was recorded at a lower level than current DVDs.

Extras: The Special Edition of "Stand By Me" is still in print, and as far as I can tell this new Deluxe Edition contains the exact same disc plus an eight-song CD and a 30-page color booklet. Disc one from the Deluxe Edition has the same etched design on the DVD as the Special Edition, the same animated menu screens, and the same features—even, surprisingly, down to the bonus trailers (which are still "The Karate Kid" and "Fly Away Home"). Video and audio options are the same, the single making-of feature is the same, and Rob Reiner's commentary is the same—opening with the same joke about the Columbia logo looking more like Annette Bening these days.

So it boils down to this: for five dollars more on the suggested retail price, the Deluxe Edition has a bonus CD featuring eight of the ten songs from the original CD soundtrack. Included are "Everyday" (Buddy Holly), "Let the Good Times Roll" (Shirley & Lee), Come Go with Me" (The Del Vikings), "Yakety Yak" (The Coasters), "Lollipop" (The Chordettes), "Great Balls of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis), "Mr. Lee" (The Bobbettes), and "Stand By Me" (Ben E. King). Missing are "Whispering Bells" (The Del Vikings) and "Get a Job" (The Silhouettes). The booklet is a handsome color, perfect-bound (glued) affair which includes original color promo and movie poster shots, a two-page intro that spotlights differences between the King novella and the film—including location. King lives in Maine, where "The Body" took place, while "Stand By Me" was set and filmed in Oregon. We're told that the town of Brownsville was converted to the fictional Castle Rock with very few changes, and that other locations included four northern California towns and an instantly recognizable railroad trestle that spans the McCloud River in the Mount Shasta area. The booklet then features a page for each principle actor, quoting from the 1986 theatrical press kit and providing a 2005 postscript. Given that the full soundtrack retails for $11.98, spending an extra five bucks for eight of 10 songs and getting a color "time-capsule" booklet isn't a bad deal at all—if you want those extras.

Reiner's commentary is quite good, and he never tries to talk over a scene while talking about it. He'll wait for a moment to end before commenting, which makes for a much more enjoyable experience. The "making of" feature is also quite good, and thankfully includes King and Reiner talking on camera about the project—and King, for example, saying that he had so many threads of memories, some sad and some funny, that he wanted to connect and created the body-quest as a way of linking them together. There's also a Ben E. King music video of "Stand By Me," and cast info.

Bottom Line: It's especially poignant watching voiceover narrator Richard Dreyfuss flash back to his days with the old "gang," because the trigger for his reminiscence—and the thing that sets the film in motion—is a headline announcing that local attorney Chris Chambers was killed while trying to break up a heated argument between two men at a local restaurant. It's poignant, of course, because the young actor who played him also died too young and way too senselessly of a drug overdose at an L.A. club.

Like "A Christmas Story," "Stand By Me" cobbles together moments from an author's childhood that ring true for anyone who grew up during that era. I did my share of "pinky swears," and got punched more than a few times for flinching. Reiner said that this film marked his own professional coming of age, because it was the first film that he made that was truly reflective of his personality. It shows . . . and in an incredibly good way. This is one movie that continues to get better with age.