Showing from: Now showing
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Corey Feldman, Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Jerry O'Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, Richard Dreyfuss
Genre: Drama
Price: £2.00
Certificate: 15
Year: 1986
Duration: 84 mins
Charming coming of age tale about four young boys who hear about a dead body 20 miles down the railroad tracks from their small Oregon town. They secretly set off on an eventful trip to see it.
FILM TRIVIA:
>Based upon a novella by Stephen King called ‘The Body’.
>Directed by Rob Reiner, director of such modern classics as ‘This is Spinal Tap’, ‘When Harry Met Sally’, ‘The Princess Bride’ and ‘Misery’.
>The film featured one of the best young casts of the 1980s, who at the time were predominantly unknown. This includes the late River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, Keifer Sutherland and John Cusack.
>Lead actor Wil Wheaton, who plays Gordie, is now predominantly involved in voiceovers for computer games and animated TV shows. Outside of his work in this film, he is perhaps best known for his recurring role on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ as Wesley Crusher.
>Casey Siemaszko plays Billy Tessio, one of Ace Merrill’s (Kiefer Sutherland) gang. He also plays ‘3-D’, one of Biff Tannen’s gang members in ‘Back to the Future’!
>This was Jerry O’Connell’s first screen role. O’Connell would later go on to star in sci-fi TV show ‘Sliders’ and Oscar winner ‘Jerry Maguire’.
>John Cusack appears in one of his first film roles as Gordie’s late brother Denny.
>Richard Dreyfuss acts as narrator and the older Gordie. Originally another actor wasd cast, but then Dreyfuss became available and took the role.
>Whilst filming, the four kids – Phoenix, O’Connell, Wheaton and Feldman were all terrified of Kiefer Sutherland. He tried to keep in character in between filming and picked on the four of them regularly! According to O’Connell, he was really intimidating and they all did their best to stay away from him!
>A few years after filming, Jerry O’Connell studied at film school with the intention of becoming a screenwriter. Whilst studying, one of the films that he and his classmates studied was ‘Stand By Me’!
>In the famous train scene, director Rob Reiner was furious that Wil Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell did not look frightened enough when they were about to get run over by a train. As a result he shouted at them until they were literally in tears and he used that footage to get the final shot!
>Rob Reiner and Corey Feldman tested nearly 30 different laughs in order to find the ‘right fit’ for Teddy!
>The film was shot entirely in Oregon. The majority of locations look almost exactly the same today! The film changed the novella’s original location of Maine.
>The town in the film is called Castle Rock, which later became the name of Rob Reiner’s production company.
>The Novella’s location of Castle Rock, Maine was also used for some other Stephen King novels, some of which elaborate on the fates of the characters in the film a bit more including Gordie and Sutherland’s Ace character.
>Jack Nitzsche wrote the music for the film. Nitzsche is perhaps best known for his surf style music, which appeared in Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof’ and his score for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. He also won an Academy Award for co-writing ‘Up Where We Belong’ which featured in 1982s ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’.
>The film led to the revival of Ben E. King’s hit single from the 1960s – ‘Stand By Me’. The producers used the song for the title of the film after they felt that the title of the original novella: ‘The Body’ was a bit too heavy for a ‘teen movie’.
MAJOR AWARDS:
>Nominated for an Academy Award (1987) – ‘Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium’.
>Nominated for 2 Golden Globes (1987) – ‘Best Motion Picture – Drama’, ‘Best Director – Rob Reiner’.