Stephen King on Stand By Me

In this case, I prefer to trust my feelings more than my memory. The only thing I’m positive about is how I felt when I heard Rob Reiner was dead: a combination of sadness and disbelief. As for the rest … Robert Stone had it right when he said “the mind is a monkey.”

I think I saw “Stand by Me” in the fall of 1985. Back then it was still called “The Body,” which was the name of my novella, on which Rob’s film was based. I think he showed it to me in a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel with a rock ’n’ roll band thudding away somewhere in the distance. That band was pure ’80s. The movie allowed me entry to another, more innocent, time: 1959.

I’m pretty sure Rob was wearing a checked short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants, as if he’d just come from the golf course. (For all I knew, he had.) The only thing I’m absolutely sure of is that he hovered until the movie was going and then left the room. Later he told me he couldn’t bear to see my reaction if I didn’t like it. I was an audience of one, sitting in a high-backed chair filched from one of the hotel’s meeting rooms.