Remembering Rob Reiner<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was just the start of a multi-city tour that had been long in the works. Then the Reiner news broke, and they knew they had each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first thought was, \u2018I am so glad that I have a place to land with my grief,\u2019\u201d Wheaton said. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of other people in the world who really know what this feels like.\u201d<\/p>\n
For better or worse, in some ways they\u2019d been here before with their co-star River Phoenix, who died in 1993. At a 25th anniversary screening, they remembered Reiner saying to no one in particular that it \u201cfeels like there should be a chair here for River.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in that spirit, O\u2019Connell, Feldman and Wheaton started figuring out what they could do to honor and remember the filmmaker who not only changed their lives but who gave them an experience they\u2019ve all been chasing ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how much Rob loved \u2018Stand by Me.\u2019 We know what it meant to him,\u201d Wheaton said. \u201cIt never occurred to me to just shelve it all. I thought, well, now we really have to get out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wheaton and O\u2019Connell were also among those who stood on the Oscars stage for the Reiner tribute. Feldman was not there, because he was not invited, he said on social media. The show\u2019s representatives did not respond to the AP\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n
But the trio will continue on together. The tour still has a handful of stops left, in Anaheim, California; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; Indianapolis and Chicago. And for broader audiences, a 4K restoration of the film is coming back to select theaters in the U.S. and Canada for one week starting Friday.<\/p>\n
The movie that almost never was<\/strong><\/p>\nPeople like to say that Hollywood doesn\u2019t make movies like \u201cStand by Me\u201d anymore, but, in 1985, they weren\u2019t exactly clamoring to make it either. Yes, it was based on a Stephen King novella, but it was also a small hangout movie with no stars. Just four 12-year-old boys on a quest to find a dead body.<\/p>\n
Though Reiner had hits under his belt as a filmmaker, everyone passed. And even he had modest expectations for its reach: As Reiner told his screenwriters, according to a New York Times article in 1986, \u201cThere\u2019s no way this picture is going to do business, because no one who went to \u2018Rambo\u2019 will go to see our film.\u201d<\/p>\n
Somewhat ironically, O\u2019Connell told the AP, \u201cRambo: First Blood Part II\u201d was the movie he saw the night before he boarded the plane to Oregon to film \u201cStand by Me\u201d and that, \u201cas an 11-year-old, I thought it was the greatest film I had seen in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStand by Me\u201d was definitely not \u201cRambo.\u201d And the only reason it did get made was Norman Lear, who saved it after his company\u2019s new owner, Coca-Cola, refused to put up the money. Lear funded it himself, to the tune of \u201c$8 million and change,\u201d as he told the Times in 1986. It would end up earning over $52 million in its initial run in the late summer of 1986.<\/p>\n
The film tapped into something universal about youthful friendships, lazy summer days, bullies, dark home lives and adventure. Perhaps most importantly, the boys were relatable and true, their friendship forged through off-screen games that Reiner played with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cRob took the time to really reach us and help us make authentic emotional connections to what our characters were experiencing,\u201d Wheaton said. \u201cWe were kids. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve even turned 13 yet. River hasn\u2019t turned 15 yet. And Rob is talking to us the way you talk to seasoned professionals and bringing these incredible performances out of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though it was set in 1959, it\u2019s also become a kind of nostalgic catch-all for any generation who lived through a time before cellphones.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s what\u2019s so special about \u2018Stand by Me\u2019 is that it\u2019s not like any epic adventure movie,\u201d O\u2019Connell said. \u201cThere are no, like, stunt sequences with cars rolling over and explosions. It\u2019s a simple movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Stand by Me\u2019 on the big screen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter \n\t<\/p>\n\n
\t\t\t\t\t![\"Sign](\"https:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/07\/newslettericons-jenz24.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
O\u2019Connell has seen the film many times over the years, but usually at home, flipping through channels with his dog or cat as a companion. But watching in a movie theater again was transportive.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting to see it on the big screen, it\u2019s a different experience,\u201d O\u2019Connell said. \u201cI think it\u2019s because it is such an epic film with little boys.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the screenings, they\u2019ve all noticed a wide range of ages in the audience, from young kids to grandparents. Wheaton said it seems to be resonating in particular with \u201cthe \u2018Stranger Things\u2019 generation,\u201d referencing a show that was heavily inspired by \u201cStand by Me.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connell said he plans to take his 17-year-old daughters and \u201cas many of their friends who will come,\u201d collect their phones, lock them in a bag and \u201cmake these Gen Z-ers sit down and watch a real movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wheaton laughed: \u201cHow (expletive) old do we sound right now?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.winnipegfreepress.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jerry O\u2019Connell, Corey Feldman and Wil Wheaton were already thinking about \u201cStand by Me\u201d when Rob Reiner died in December. Just a week prior, the trio spent a weekend together attending some screenings of Reiner\u2019s beloved coming-of-age film, which was about to turn 40. The memories from that formative 1985 summer in Oregon were flooding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2344902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2344901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/\u2018Stand-by-Me-stars-reflect-on-the-movie-Rob-Reiner.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2344901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2344903,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344901\/revisions\/2344903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2344902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2344901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2344901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2344901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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