the groundhog day project

I was going to move on from Stand By Me after yesterday but as I was posting the blog entry and the film was ending, a detail caught my attention. And, having looked again at the book, it stood out. At the end of the film, narrator Gordie explains: As time went on we saw less and less of Teddy and Vern, until eventually they became just two more faces in the halls. It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant. I heard that Vern got married out of high school, had four kids and is now the forklift operator at the Arsenault Lumber Yard. In the book, Vern "was killed in a house fire that swept a Lewiston apartment building in 1966... Someone fell asleep in one of the bedrooms with a live cigarette going. Vern himself, maybe, drifting off, dreaming of his pennies. They identified him and the four others who dies by their teeth." The story of The Body takes place in 1960. So, Vern died when he was only about 18. He married no ...

And then, there's Gordie. Opening scene, now a couple decades older (and I was surprised to learn that Richard Dreyfuss would have only been about 3 years older than Gordie would have been. Of course, in the book, Chris doesn't die in the mid-80s. He dies in 1973. When he and Gordie would only be 25-26 years old. The film does specify on the prop newspaper that Chris died September 4, 1985.) and sitting in silence, contemplating. We see the headline and know he's thinking about death, maybe a friend, maybe a family member. We don't know who Chris Chambers is. We don't yet know who Gordie Lachance is. CUT TO the past and it has long struck me that narrator Gordie saying "I was living in a small town" instead of "I lived in a small town" like he was just passing through. But, he is just passing through this time and place like any of us are. What happens now, what happens here--is finite, specific. Before he even gets to that line, we get...

There's a really basic take on Stand By Me --it's about four boys growing up in the face of their own mortality--and there's plenty to explore just there. But, I kinda like the more specific thing regarding explicitly Gordie but also to increasingly lesser degrees--again, because this is Gordie 's story--Chris, Teddy, and Vern. That thing is an old standby in this blog--identity. Vern's is simple. He's the timid one, clearly still more of a kid than the other three. Just look at him saying "Geronimo" when he jumps off the train tracks when Teddy goes for the dodge. But, Vern has to at least gotta grow up a little by the end. Teddy, despite how horrible his father has been to him, still idolizes his father and clearly wants to be like him. His father stormed the beaches at Normandy. Teddy dressed in military colors, wears what is probably his father's army belt and surely those are his father's dog tags around his neck, and he makes a thin...

It's interesting watching Stand By Me these past few days things I notice that I didn't notice (or couldn't have noticed) before. When I watched this as a kid, I had no idea what card game they were playing in the treehouse. I've since played 31 a bunch of times, but only just a handful of years ago. Some background extras reflected in the glass behind Gordie right after he fires Chris' gun accidentally, walk the same bit of block twice--two different takes, I assume. But, also--and this one has an interesting meaning for me--the music that plays when Gordie goes into his brother Denny's bedroom to get his canteen (pretty sure it's just called "Denny's Theme" but I don't think the score was ever released properly, just the soundtrack with all the old songs) sounds a lot--to my untrained ear at least--like a part of the score for a far more recent film Never Look Away . But, then that connection has me thinking about Never Look Away and al...

Stand By Me still hits, emotionally. Even right off, the score is not particularly powerful, certainly not famous, but I recognize it immediately, and I know who Christopher Chambers is in that newspaper headline. I didn't know that first time I saw this movie what that headline was about. And, I also didn't realize that Castle Rock shouldn't be in Oregon, but I guess when they were adapting the novella, the only other marker of geography was Portland and Portland, Oregon was more well known than Portland, Maine. I didn't know Castle Rock at all. (Though it is part of The Dead Zone , which had already had a film version, I wouldn't see any of that movie until one night in a bed and breakfast in Dublin, Ireland in 1987. I wouldn't get to reading stories like "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut", "The Sun Dog", "It Grows on You", Cujo , The Dark Half , or Needful Things until at least a year or two later. That last one I would read on our...

Today's film is a little bit of a cheat like Highlander was. While I saw Stand By Me in the theater, it was not really a fixture in my movie life until I was a teenager and I bought my own copy on VHS. But, then this was a movie I would watch time and time again, only in my 20s. And, I even ripped it off a little bit--or paid homage to it, I suppose--in my second novel. Actually, I think that was more ripping off--or paying homage to-- It actually. There was even a battle between kids throwing kids at each other. The thing is, speaking of my writing, I often snagged bits of setup or stylistic things from Stephen King. For example, in my... I want to say fourth novel-- (None of these have been properly published, by the way. I had a few of my novels available self-published for a bit about a decade-and-a-half ago, but no longer. I recently did a re-edit of what's probably my best writing--a novel called Clubhouse Blues , which I'm sure I've mentioned in this b...

The thing about SpaceCamp is, nevermind the silly space visuals of the opening titles (and when Max freaks out looking into deep space), nevermind the silly turns of the plot, and the simplicity of the characters, I still liked it back in ’86, and I still kinda dig it. I can see all of its parts moving now, of course. And the one part that fits badly, but I’ll get to that. Tish is super smart, so of course her passing knowledge of morse code will save the day later. Despite her urge to be otherwise, Kathryn is a great pilot, so of course her piloting skills will save the day. Max is too small (and is friends with Jinx) so of course his diminutive size (and his robot friendship*) will save the day. (* his relationship with Jinx is also, of course, why they are all endangered in the first place.) Before I continue the obviousness, there is some cheap audience attention getting early on. Kids are picking up their team tags, and the people handing them out say their names, but ...