The Body and Stand By Me: Characters

The Body and Stand By Me

10b1 111034 Jonathan Hongsoon Kim

           “Books and movies are apples and oranges,” Stephen King, author the The Body, once remarked in an interview, “they’re both delicious, but they don’t taste the same at all.” Such is the case in most movie adaptations of novels; how the movie makers interpret and illustrate a book’s message would decide the resulting image that is presented to the viewers.

           The movie version of The Body, directed by Rob Reiner and titled Stand By Me, is an example of such an interpretation. Plot-wise, the novel and the movie are almost parallel. While the story is made more simplified, focused, and otherwise altered here and there to make it more suitable for a movie’s synopsis, the core issues are the same. The more interesting factor, for me, was the characters. How the movie producers understood the characters that Stephen King had given life to, and how they were visualized in the movie was fascinating.

           The four boys are the central characters of both versions of the tale, and I, personally, enjoyed the movie’s presentation of these characters very much. As they boys are young, less experienced actors, and the movie is 25 years old, sometimes the acting seems a bit awkward or cheesy from a modern perspective. Nevertheless, the way the individual characters are portrayed makes the movie an overall enjoyable experience.

Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance

           Gordie Lachance, the narrator in both the novel and the film, is set as the main protagonist in the latter. While, in the original book, he serves as a storyteller and emotionally expressive guide to the plot, the film places a much more significant role on him. Gordie is, no doubt, the hero in Stand By Me, and most of the plot accordingly revolves around him. Thus, the actor’s presentation of the character would have been crucial to the plot, and I think that the actor that plays Gordie, does more than a decent job. His calm, relatively mature, yet sometimes naïve demeanor portrays the character well, and especially is effective in showing the eventual emotional changes that Gordie experiences.

           Chris Chambers, the “tough kid” of the group and the de facto leader, is more of a guide and supporter to Gordie in Stand By Me. As most of the plots details and important scenes are focused on Gordie, Chris naturally falls ever so slightly into the background. Nevertheless, Chris’s portrayer shows versatility, maintaining his charismatic attitude when necessary, but showing Chris’s sympathetic, playful, or sometimes even emotionally overwhelmed sides realistically. I, personally, was quite pleased with Chris’s depiction in the movie.

Teddy Duchamp

Vern Tessio

           Teddy and Vern are somewhat minor characters in The Body, and the movie once again puts the spotlight on Gordie by minimizing the background stories of the two. However, almost as if to compensate for the loss, the two have wonderful characters shown by talented actors. Teddy’s almost-mad bravery and pride, along with his overall oddness is well captured in the actor’s presentation. Vern is my personal favorite in the movie, and I’m probably not alone. Vern, a largely ignored, somewhat daft character in the book is illustrated very colorfully in the film. Vern is the comic relief in the film; his amusing lines and the natural, childish, humor of his actor make him much more than the book draws him as. Teddy and Vern also complement each other well, holding child-like conversations and having running jokes that do not contribute to the plot but add flavor and background, features that are available only in movies.

Ace Merrill

           Another character that caught my attention was not one of the four major characters, but the main antagonist, Ace Merrill. Ace and his gang were not dealt with in that much detail in the novel, they were shown as little more than violent bullies that traveled in gangs and played tough on younger children. Ace in the movie is much cooler and somewhat charismatic, standing out from the rest of his gang members, which are portrayed as a bit stupid and immature. I appreciated this representation very much, and later on, when I read that the actor that played Ace actually, picked on the younger actors from time to time in order to stay in character, I was much more amused and impressed.

           Thus the ways the characters are portrayed make the film adaptation of The Body very enjoyable. While it is hard to decide if the movie is “better” than the novel, it certainly entertains the audience in a different sense than the novel. Comparing and contrasting the two versions was an interesting experience, and was a chance to analyze the characters on a deeper scale.

The cast of Stand By Me. From left to right, Teddy, Vern, Chris, and Gordie