Friday, August 8, 2014

Mock Squid Soup: Stand by Me

MOCK! and The Armchair Squid are proud to introduce Mock Squid Soup: A Film Society.  Each month, on the second Friday, we shall host a bloghop devoted to a particular movie.  We invite others to watch the same film and post their own reviews.  This month's movie is...
via Wikipedia
Title: Stand by Me
Director: Rob Reiner
Original Release: 1986
My Overall Rating: 5 stars out of 5

It was the summer of 1986.  I had just endured the seventh grade, quite possibly the most difficult year of my entire life.  Not only was I attending a new school but most of the friends I'd had in elementary school went to entirely different junior high schools.  To be completely honest, I was at the wrong end of the pecking order at my old school, too.  The long-term outlook was not exactly encouraging.

But the summer of 1986 changed everything for me.  The most obvious changes were physical.  I grew six inches.  When you're 13, the difference between 5' and 5'6" is a lot more than half a foot.  My voice dropped an octave, too.

I was growing in other ways.  I went on a trip away from my family for the first time, to the Philosopher's Island (though he wasn't a philosopher yet - see here).  I also went to overnight camp for the first time: basketball camp at Penn State (If you were there, too, that summer and went by the nickname "Wisconsin," please get in touch.  I'd be very curious to know whatever happened to you.)  The universe was handing me opportunities to reinvent myself, though I never would have thought of it in those terms at the time.

Then one night in August, I went to see a movie.  Stand by Me was on the radar for kids my age even before it was released.  After all, it was a story about us.  Adventure tales were plentiful in the mid-'80s but none quite like this.  Four twelve-year-old boys growing up in a small town set off in search of a dead body, hoping to get their names in the paper.  No dragons.  No light sabers.  No biblical relics.  Just four boys walking on a train track.  They swore.  They told disgusting stories.  They sang TV show theme songs.  They ate garbage.  In short, they were real.

They also had problems bigger than mine.  Gordie's (Wil Wheaton) parents ignored him most of the time and belittled him whenever they did acknowledge his presence.  Teddy's (Corey Feldman) father had been institutionalized after maiming his son.  Vern (Jerry O'Connell) was an easy target because he was too nice to stick up for himself - actually, that wasn't too far off from me.  Then there was Chris Chambers (River Phoenix).  Poor Chris - labeled a bad kid too early in life because of a rotten older brother, with no idea how he was ever going to live down the stigma.

Through all their troubles, they survived on friendship.  Chris, in particular, was Gordie's savior and champion, the sort of best friend we all need when we're 12... or 24 or 36...  Together, they found the body and stared down the town bully - Kiefer Sutherland's Ace Merrill was way scarier than any dragon.  Without a doubt, Stand by Me came into my life at precisely the right moment.  I walked out of the theater with a euphoric, uplifting tingle, knowing I had been changed by the experience.  But I had a problem: I'd gone to see the movie with my grandmother.

Grandma and I always went to see a movie when I went to visit her in Cleveland.  Usually, it was something family-friendly but I took a chance suggesting Stand by Me because I was really eager to see it.  I didn't know going in that the language would be as over the top as it was.  The swearing didn't really bother me - I'd heard worse at school.  The only part of the movie that pushed the limit for me was the Lard Ass Hogan, mass vomiting scene.  But I knew the language would bother my grandmother and that I was going to hear about it.

Grandma and I were very close.  In her eyes, I would always be her sweet, little boy - the one who would crawl into bed with her on Christmas morning rather than insisting she get up.  Along with everything else that changed for me in the summer of '86, so did my relationship with Grandma and it all started the night we went to see Stand by Me.

First, the indignation: "Well, that was a terrible movie!"

Then, the questions: "Do you talk with your friends like that?"

I did my best to explain to her why I loved it.  "Yes, I know the language was bad.  But can't you see that once you get past that, the story's really good?"  Okay, I won't pretend I remember all the specifics about the conversation but I'm sure the details are easily imagined.  It was definitely a tough talk, much more so than either of us expected at the beginning of the evening, I'm sure.

A funny thing happened, though.  I sort of won the argument.  She wasn't any happier about the language by the end of it but I managed to convince her why the story was so important to me.  We connected on a level we never had before and I know I wasn't the only one who felt it.  Over the following years, she would refer back to the evening in a positive way, a moment of mutual understanding.  For the first time in our relationship, we'd had a genuine, adult conversation.

Accepting me as a grownup was always difficult for Grandma.  It was a challenge that summer of '86 just as it was the morning we said goodbye 11 years later - we both knew, for the last time.  It wasn't until the very end that I realized I'd never really seen her as anything other than my grandmother.  She'd been an insecure teenager herself once upon a time.  And with Grandma gone, my own childhood was truly over.

Stand by Me is based on Stephen King's novella, The Body.  The story's subtitle is Fall From Innocence, a process we all must endure eventually.  To date, it is the only Stephen King story I've read from beginning to end.

Epilogue: I was crushed when River Phoenix died.  I know, logically, that River Phoenix and Chris Chambers were not actually the same person but his death at a young age with a promising career ahead of him seemed impossibly cruel all the same.  It was Len Bias all over again.  I followed the careers of the other actors with interest, of course, but River Phoenix was the clear standout in Stand by Me.  For me, it was almost like a Beatle dying.

We hope that you, too, will watch Stand by Me and join in our discussion.  I'll post September's sign-up list tomorrow.  Our feature on Friday, September 12th shall be... Burn After Reading.
via Wikipedia
In the meantime, for the Stand by Me discussion, please sign on to the list below:


29 comments:

  1. This was a stand-out piece of writing, perhaps the most personal I've ever read from you, and it had me rapt to the end. An excellent inaugural post for your film society.

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    1. Thanks, Suze. When this movie came to us as the inaugural choice - and yes, I really did feel like it chose us - I got actual shivers. Obviously, it's one of my all-time favorites and I've got A LOT to say about it.

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  2. I agree with Suze, great post :)

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  3. Wow Squid, that was simply lovely. You provided a good assessment of the movie while also spinning a tale of your own coming-of-age trails. Very well crafted.
    See you next month.

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    1. Thanks, Toi! I'm so glad you've joined us and am equally glad you intend to continue. I'll post the sign-up list tomorrow morning.

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  4. This style of writing suits you, Squid. MORE. This was a beautiful, personal piece that delivered far more than a movie review. Dern it, now I like you twice as much. There's only so much my heart can take... (I'm a sap).

    I'm thinking about doing a humorous blog hop about recasting movies with uniquely inappropriate choices and how that would affect the flow (it's not all script, ha ha).

    Cherdo
    www.cherdoontheflipside.com

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    1. !!!

      I'm totally in for that one! Please let me know if I can be of any help setting things up, promoting, what have you.

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  5. I loved your post! How funny that we both think of this movie in terms of how our world was changing at the time. As a girl watching a "boy movie" I was, perhaps, shocked at how much I enjoyed it.

    Thanks for getting this going. Looking forward to next month's movie!
    Veronica (née Vern ala STAND BY ME) and yes, people from my childhood years persist in calling me Vern. I have grown to accept it.

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    1. Judging from your review, too, I think the fact that we saw it at the right age was extremely meaningful for both of us.

      Following up on my Han Solo post yesterday, Jerry O'Connell was actually one of the first people to come to mind for me. Like Fillion, he's too old but he could definitely pull off a cad role like Han. River Phoenix, of course, would have been perfect. He was Young Indy. He could have been Young Han, too. Sigh... poor Chris...

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    2. Now, when I think of O'Connell I remember his smarmy athlete in JERRY MAGUIRE and I think, What happened to Vern?

      I'm perhaps too complacent when it comes to casting, but I figure they pay people gobs of money to find the right people for a movie, and they're gonna make the best choice they can. I never would have picked Robert Downey Jr for Iron Man, mostly because I never thought he'd overcome his drug issues, so yeah. I'm unqualified. My role, in movies, is to fork out some cash to watch one.
      V:)

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    3. Well, yeah, okay... It's not like the casting director's going to be texting me for advice anymore than Buck Showalter's going to call to ask me who should lead off for the Orioles tonight (Nick Markakis). But speculation is fun, Veronica!

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  6. Your story was very touching. I still have soundtrack from that movie in my CD collection that I never listen to.

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    1. I picked up the soundtrack at the earliest possible opportunity. It was a fine complement to my Beatles discovery summer (big year for me, '86).

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  7. Stand by Me brought back memories of childhood before 1986--boys never change. They still fought the same battles, had the same brutalities back in the 50s and 60s. But their friendship held them together.

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    1. Absolutely. It's really a story about a stage of life rather than a specific historical era.

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  8. I love reviews that tell a story A.C. and this is a great one. Being accepted as a grownup is a very special time in a kids life.

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    1. I keep wanting to cs you A.C. Instead of A.S. So I'll just stick with that. :)

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    2. Well, it's not my real name anyway. Call me whatever you like, just don't call me late for dinner.

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  9. I love Stand By Me. It's unfortunate that the movie was rated R. I didn't get to see it until well after it was out of the theaters because of that.
    For me, the movie that had a similar effect was Dead Poets Society.
    The life changing movie my grandmother took me to see was Star Wars. She didn't "get" it, but I was only 7, so we didn't have any kind of conversation about it.

    My River Phoenix movie was The Mosquito Coast, and I loved that he was young Indy in Last Crusade.

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    1. I was just thinking about Dead Poets Society recently, in a light I'd never considered before. So many of the teen movies (including this one, if you can think of it as a teen movie) of the era defined all adults as evil at worst or a nuisance at best. The idea that a grownup - a teacher, no less - could be a role model and an inspiration was different. I think DPS had a more profound effect on my own life path than I could have appreciated at the time.

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  10. It was the first... well, anything... that helped me to appreciate my ability to teach and inspire. I started doing speaking stuff while I was still in high school (a lot of it, actually), but it wasn't something I felt was really worthwhile, and I was pretty constantly being pushed into math and science, which I no longer enjoyed by the time I was graduating, so it felt like I had two bad choices as my options. DPS helped me to confirm the English path I wanted to start on.

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    1. Cool.

      Parents still don't come off too well in the movie. But it speaks to something that gets tossed around in child psych a lot these days: all a kid really needs is a positive relationship with one adult outside of the immediate family. It can be the bus driver, even.

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  11. Seems like a movie grandmothers would love! But I can see why they wouldn't, too.

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    1. With the mouths on those boys? Not my grandmothers!

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  12. Wow, Squid, I'm late to the party so I can only repeat what others have said: what a wonderful post.

    I think I saw E.T. with my grandmother when it first came out, but I was in college by the time Stand by Me was released. I recognized it as an excellent movie, but I was out of that target age bracket. I don't know if I've seen it all the way through since... I should remedy that! :-)

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    1. Thanks, Cyg! If watch it again, let me know what you think.

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