STAND BY ME Screenplay by RAYNOLD GIDEON & BRUCE A. EVANS Based on the short story "THE BODY" by STEPHEN KING Draft Revised April 30, 1985 FADE IN: BLACK SCREEN. The title "THE BODY" DISSOLVES UP IN WHITE LETTERS. FADE IN: 1 EXT. COUNTRY ROAD - LATE AFTERNOON 1 FADE OUT: A hard autumn RAIN POUNDS a Morris Minor parked on the shoulder. THROUGH the water-streaked WINDOWS, we see a blurred image of GORDON LACHANCE, 37 , slumped down in the seat staring straight ahead. 2 INT. MORRIS MINOR - LATE. AFTERNOON 2 Lying on the dash is a crumpled copy of The Oregonian folded open to a story whose headline reads "Local Attorney Fatally Stabbed in Restaurant." Outside, a yellow school bus drops off a young boy. Gordon watches as the buss drives off and the young boy, 12, yanks his jacket up over his head and runs up the hill toward his house. THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD we MOVE in on Gordon's face. FADE IN: NARRATOR (V.O) (the adult voice Of Gordon Lachance) In all of our lives there's a fall from innocence. A time after which we are never the same. FADE OUT: 3 EXT. CASTLE ROCK (A BLUE-COLLAR MILL TOWN) - MORNING 3 It's 7:30 and already hot. "BIRDDOG" by The Everly Brothers BLEEDS IN ON THE SOUNDTRACK. The twelve-year old GORDON LACHANCE, dark hair, sweet face, walks across the shady common. Temporary platforms have been erected and a banner over them advertises the Castle Rock "Labor Day" picnic. NARRATOR (V.O.) I was twelve going on thirteen when I first saw a dead human being. Gordon kicks a can down a tired looking street. NARRATOR (V.O.) (continuing) It happened in 1960, a long time ago... although sometimes it doesn't seem that long to me. Gordie enters a vacant lot where a treehouse made of scavenged planks swelter in the lower branches of an ancient elm. 4 INT. TREEHOUSE - MORNING 4 CHRIS CHAMBERS (12), good looking, dirty blond, all American, with a fading black eye, sits across a ratty card table from Gordie. Between them, TEDDY DUCHAMP (12), coke-bottle glasses and hair much longer than either of them, draws a card from a stack and discards one in his hand. CHRIS How do you know a Frenchman's been in your back yard? FREDDY Hey, I'm French, okay? CHRIS Your garbage cans are empty and your dog is pregnant. TEDDY Didn't I just say I was French? CHRIS I knock. Gordie draws and gets nothing belpful. Teddy draws. CHRIS (continuing; laying down diamonds) Twenty-nine. TEDDY (thinking he's lost) Twenty-two. GORDIE (slams his cards on the table) Piss up a rope. TEDOY (bugles) Gordie's out. Ole' Gordie just bit the bag and stepped out the door. Eee-eee-eee ... His laugh sounds like a rusty nail being hauled out a rotten board. Teddy scratches the back of his head and we get a glimpse of a flesh-colored hearing aid stuck into an ear that looks like a lump of warm wax. NARRATOR (V.O.) (as Teddy deals) Teddy was the craziest guy we around with. His favorite sport was what he called "truck dodging." He'd run out in front of the big rigs on 196 and let them miss him by bare inches. Gordie leaves the table and picks up a "Master Detective" to read. Chris draws and discards. TEDDY I knock - CHRIS You four-eyed pile of shit. TEDDY (gravely) The pile of shit has a thousand eyes. Gordie and Chris look at each other and crack up. TEDDY (continuing; looks at them quizzically) what?... what's so funny?... Come on, I got thirty. What have you got? CHRIS (laughing) Sixteen. TEDDY Go ahead. Keep laughing. You're down to your ride, pal. Ccme on. Let's go. Still grinning, Chris starts to shuffle. NARRATOR (V.O.) Chris was the leader of our gang, and my best friend. He came from a bad family and everybody thought he would turn out bad... including Chris. We hear SOMEONE COMING FAST UP THE LADDER nailed to the side of the elm. Chris stops dealing. A FIST RAPS on the underside of the trapdoor. CHRIS Who goes? VOICE (excited and out of breath) Vern. Gordie pulls the bolt. The TRAPDOOR BANGS UP and VERN TESSIO, another twelve-year-old, raises himself into the clubhouse. He's sweating buckets and his hair, which he usually keeps combed in a perfect imitation of his rock and roll idol, Bobby Rydell, is plastered to his bullet head in chunks and strings. VERN (panting) Wow, man! wait'll you hear this. Chris and Teddy continue to play cards. GORDIE Hear what? VERN (breathing heavily) Lemma get my breath. I ran all the way from my house. TEDDY (Little Anthony falsetto) I ran all the way home ... CHRIS & GORDIE (raggedly begin to harmonize with him) Just to say I'm soh-ree ... TEDDY What can I say... CHRIS & GORDIE I ran all the way... yay, yay, yay.-. VERN (trying to override them) Come on, you guys ... Listen to me... This is boss. Come on... Teddy, Chris, and Gordis continue to sing. VERN (continuing) Okay. Okay. Forget it. I don't have to tell you nuthin'... CHRIS Alright, Vern, what is it? VERN Okay, great. You won't believe this. Sincerely. I... TEDDY, CHRIS & GORDIE (interrupting, singing again) I ran all the way home... VERN Screw you guys. CHRIS No, no, no. What is it? VERN Can you guys camp out tonight? I mean if you tell your folks we're gonna tent out in my back field@ CHRIS (begins to deal again) Yeah, I guess so. But my dad's on a mean streak. (taps his black eye) Drinkin', you know. VERN You got to, man. Sincerely. You won't believe this. Can you, Gordie? GORDIE Yeah probably. TEDDY So what are you pissing and moaning about, Vern-O? CHRIS I knock. TEDDY What?!! You liar! You ain't got no pat hand! You didn't deal yourself no pat hand. CHRIS (smirks) Make your draw, shitheap. Teddy reaches for the top card on the pile of bikes. Chris reaches for his smoke on the ledge behind him. Gordie bends over to pick up his detective magazine. VERN You guys want to go see a dead body. Everybody stops and looks at Vern. VERN (continuing) I was under the porch digging, you know. NARRATOR (V.0.) We all understood what Vern meant right away. DISSOLVE TO: 5 EXT. TESSIO HOUSE - EARLIER THAT MORNING 5 The front porch runs the length of the house -probably forty feet long and seven feet wide. As the Narrator talks, we MOVE TOWARD a =all door in the lattice-work skirt that fences the underside of the porch. NARRATOR (V.0.) When Vern was eight he buried a quart jar of pennies under his porch. He drew a treasure map so he coula find them agaii. A week later his mom cleaned out his room and threw away his map. OUR VIEW at the small doorway and we... CUT TO: 6 UNDER THE PORCH 6 The ground looks like a prairie dog city with its little holes and mounds of earth. Halfway toward the other end the twelve-year-old Vern is digging obsessively with a short haidle hoe. NARRATOR (V.O.) Vern had been trying to find those pennies for four years. Four years, man. You didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The SCREEN DOOR SLAMS open above him and Vern freezes in midstroke. TWO PAIRS OF FOOTSTEPS cross the porch. Carefully Vern moves his eyeballs to look through a crack in the boards. it , a his brother BILLY and his juvenile delinquent friend, CHARLIE HOGAN -- both sixteen. BILLY (in a travelling, cry-baby voice) Jesus Christ, Billy, we gotta do something. BILLY Why? Who says? INTERCUT under porch and exterior porch. CHARLIE But we saw him. BILLY So? It's nothin' to us. The kid's dead so it's nuthin' to him, neither. Who gives a shit if they ever find him? I don't. And the girls didn't see him. CHARLIE But it was that kid they been talking about on the radio. Vern's head snaps around and he tries to get a look at them through the lattice work. CHARLIE (continuing) Brocker, Brower, Flowers, whatever his name is. Train must have 'hit him. BILLY So? We had all followed the Ray Brower story closely because he was a kid our age. Three days before he'd gone out to pick blueberries and nobody'd seen, or heard from him since. Billy lights a cigarette and flicks the match into the gravel driveway. Vern doesn't want to miss any of this and begins to creep a little closer to the steps. CHARLIE I think we should tell the cops. BILLY You don't go squawking to the cops after you boosted a car. They'd want to know how we got way the hell out an the Back Harlow Road. They know we ain't got no car. It's better if we just keep our mouths shut. Then they can't touch us. CHARLIE We could make a nornamus call. BILLY They trace those calls, stupid. I seen it on Highway Patrol and Dragnet. Yeah, right. I wish we'd never boosted that goddamned Dodge. If Ace'd been with us, we could have told the cops we was in his car. BILLY (tosses cigarette butt away) Well, he wasn't. CHARLIE We gonna tell him? BILLY We ain't gonna tell nobody. nobody never. You dig me? CHARLIE Christ Jesus, I wish we never boosted that goddamned Dodge. BILLY Aw, shut up and come on. TWO pairs of legs clad in tight, wash-faded jeans, two pairs of feet in black engineer boots with side buckles, come down the steps and 'keep going. 7 INT. TREEBOUSE - MORNING 7 The boys' positions around Vern have changed. They're all sitting facing him now. TEDDY I know the Back Harlow Road. It comes to a dead end by the Royal River. The train tracks are right there. Me and my dad used to fish for cossies out there. CHRIS If they'd known you were under there, they would have killed you. Everybody nods in agreement. Then the idea begins to take hold. GORDIE (musing) Could he have gotten all the way from Chamerlain to Harlow? That's twenty or thirty miles. CHRIS I think so. He musta started walking on the train tracks and followed them the whole way. TEDDY Yeah. And after dark a train must have come along and... (drives his right fist into his left arm) ... el smacko. CHRIS Yeah. I bet you anything it we find him we'll get our pictures in the paper. VERN (shocked) huh?! TEDDY Yeah! We could even be on TV. CHRIS Sure. If we can find the body and report it, we'll be an the news. TEDDY We'll be heroes. VERN I dunno. Billy will know where I found out. TEDDY He won't care. Because it'll be us guys that find that kid, not Billy and Charlie Hogan in a boosted car. They'll probably pin a medal on you. VERN Yeah? Yeah, you think so?! GORDIE Sure. VERN But what will we tell our folks? GORDIE Just what you said. We all tell our folks we're tenting in your back yard, and you tell your folks you're sleeping over at Teddy's. And that the next morning we're all going over to hang out at the drag races. We're rock solid 'til dinner tomorrow night. VERN But if we find that kid's body over in South Barlow, they'll know we didn't go to the drag races. We'll get hided. GORDIE No, we won't. Everybody'll be so excited about what we found. CHRIS Yeah (thinks about it) My dad'Il hide me, anyway. Hell, it's worth a hiding. Let's do it. What do you say, Gordie? GORDIE Sure. CHRIS Vern? VERN I don't know. BOYS Vern... Vern-o ... Come on, it'll be great. VERN Yeah, okay. TEDDY (shoots his fist in the air) Too Cool! LACHANCE HOUSE - DAY We PUSH IN on an upstairs window and see Gordie moving back and forth in the room. NARRATOR (V.O.) Our plans were set and we all went about the business of preparing for the trip. CUT TO: 9 INT. GORDIE'S ROOM - MIDDAY 9 With a hot dog wrapped in Wonder Bread stuck in his mouth, Gardie is getting ready for his trip. He Pulls two blankets out of a drawer and throws them an the bed. With his hands free he tries to take another bite off the hot dog only to have it squirt out onto the floor. Casually, he picks it up, blows the lint off, and sticks it back in his mouth. He straightens a sheaf of handwritten pages, the title of which is "The Secret of the Living Dead" by Gordon Lachance. He hears FOOTSTEPS coming down the hall and ',hides the pages under a stack of comic books. Gordie's FATHER, a tall, stooped man with a tired face and gray hair, walking aimlessly down the hall, glances into Gordie's room. There's an awkward pause. GORDIE (trying to make contact) You want a Rollo, Dad? FATHER No... The Father continues down the hall. After a beat, Gordie collects all the loose change and a watch off the top of the dresser and puts them in his pocket. CUT TO: 10 INT. TEDDY'S ROOM - MIDDAY 10 There's an Army recruiting poster above his bad. Child-like crayon drawings of battle scenes decorate another wall. There's a faded 8X10 of his father as a young man in combat gear propped up an the dresser. Cheap plastic models of planes, tanks and ships litter the room. Teddy takes a set of dog tags off his father's picture and pulls them over his head. Humming the Marine hymn Teddy puts on a cut-down battle blouse and tucks it into a pair of fatigue pants. TEDDY (looking at himself in the mirror) Too cool. He turns around and searches the floor for a helmet liner. When he finds it he scoops it up and returns to the mirror to put it on. He picks up a web belt with a canteen hooked onto it and buckles it around his waist. TEDDY (continuing) Ahh... Too cool! He increases the volume of the Marine hymn as he goes to the closet and drags out a full-length greatcoat. He comes back to the mirror and struggles into it. TEDDY (continuing) Too cool ... (after a Pause, feeling the weight of the jacket) Too hot. He starts to take it off. CUT TO: 11 INT. CHRIS' ROOM - MIDDAY 11 While his FATHER, unshaven, 40's, snores bare-assed on a filthy bed surrounded by empty wine battles, Chris is very carefully pulling Winstons out of a dresser. CUT TO: 12 INT. KITCHEN - VERN'S HOUSE - MIDDAY 12 Vern is sitting alone at the kitchen table shoveling Spaghetti-O'S into his mouth. Anxious to leave, he gets up from the table. VERN Bye, Ma, see you tomorrow. MOTHER (O.S) Vern, You're not going anywhere until you finish everything on that plate. Vern, with half a plate still in front of him, is momentarily stopped. He sees the open kitchen window. He picks up the plate and, with a flick of the wrist, launches the remainder of the Spaghetti-O's Out the window. VERN (setting down the now-empty plate) All finished, Ma. MOTHER (O.S.) (as Vern heads out) Okay, have a good time.