Stephen King Remembers Rob Reiner’s ‘Stand By Me’ in Emotional Tribute

Stephen King remembered embracing Rob Reiner after watching Stand By Me — based on King’s novella The Body — for the first time in a tribute to the late director in The New York Times.  

As King wrote, Reiner invited him to watch a private screening of the film in fall 1985, and he marveled at how the adaptation immediately transported him back to his childhood in Maine in the late 1950s. The Body, King wrote, is still “the only nakedly autobiographical story” he’s ever written: Gordie Lachance was the stand-in for King, Chris Chambers was based on one of his friends, and there was even a menacing junkyard dog, though he wasn’t named Chopper.  

King said he was shocked at how everything from his life in the story “rang true” in Reiner’s hands. “The funny parts were really funny (including the barf-o-rama pie) and the dramatic parts hit me where I lived, or where I did live back in the days when John F. Kennedy was president and gas was a quarter a gallon.”

After the movie ended, King thanked Reiner and then “surprised the hell out of myself by giving him a hug. I’m not ordinarily a hugging man, and I don’t think he was used to getting them. He stiffened, muttered something about being glad I liked it, and we both stepped away.”

After collecting himself in the bathroom — “Nostalgia can be dangerous when it’s up close,” King wrote — he and Reiner had a more “normal conversation” about the film. When Reiner asked for notes, King said he had none. “I had just let the whole thing wash over me,” he said. “I marveled at what a good story the truth could make in the right hands.”

King then recalled his “equally delighted,” but far less “emotionally wrecked” reaction to watching Reiner’s adaptation of his novel Misery several years later. He praised Reiner’s ability to catch “the mixture of humor and suspense” in the film, like when Kathy Bates’ character, Annie Wilkes, tells James Caan’s Paul Sheldon that they’re going to drink “Dom Per-IG-non” champagne. 

“[I]t’s both funny and touching: This woman has never had anyone to teach her the correct pronunciation,” King wrote. “Rob caught that perfectly.” 

King ended his tribute my mentioning Reiner’s long history of political activism and social commentary, but said all of that “still pales for me when I watch Chris Chambers say to the weeping Gordie Lachance: ‘You’re gonna be a great writer someday.’” 

King added: “That weeping boy was me. It was Rob Reiner who put it on the screen.”