Stand by Me/The Breathing Method

In my last post I stated that I had read The Body by Stephen King and that I was going to watch the movie Stand by Me, which is based on it.  I found the movie on Amazon.  It seems like Netflix never has any of the old movies I am looking for.  Oh well, thanks Amazon!  I was happy to see that it was offered in HD.  The movie was made in 1986, but you weren’t given a hint of it’s age by watching it.   I am always amazed at how the Stephen King film adaptations use dialogue directly from the book.  No wonder he is so popular with film makers – he writes a great story and he also does the script!  The only really notable deviation of the film from the book is that in the movie Chris is the only one of Gordie’s friends that dies by the end of the movie.  In the book, Gordie, only 34 by the end of the book, is the only one to make it to the final chapter.  This does not effect the story much.  Some other minor deviations:

In the book, there is a scene with a shopkeeper that tries to rip Gordie off by  putting his finger on the meat scale and also short him on his change.  Gordie still goes to the shop in the movie, but the shopkeeper does not do anything that appears to be dishonest.  The book also has Gordie firing a .45 at Ace’s feet as he wades through swampy water.  This does not happen in the movie.  All this is fairly inconsequential.

If you have not seen Stand By Me, or you have not seen it in a long time, it is definitely worth watching.  It is one of Meathead’s (Rob Reiner’s) early directing efforts.  Rob Reiner is one a heck of a director.

With The Body finished, I ventured into one of the other novellas in Stephen King’s Different Seasons.  The story was called The Breathing Method.  I am really hesitant to explain too much of the story because I investigated it before I read it and learned of the ending before I read the story.  I was doing so to try to avoid reading something too creepy before bedtime.  Knowing the ending, however, kind of ruined it for me.  I will not reveal the ending and I suggest you do not look it up if you intend to read the story.

Set in the 1930’s, the story follows David, an aging attorney in a large Manhattan law firm.  David follows a plain, uneventful life.  Despite his age, he is not a partner.  One day, one of the senior partners of the firm invites him to an after-hours event on short notice.  David is apprehensive to go, but sees no options.  He attends and finds that it is a recurring event in the bottom floor of a Manhattan building where everything appears to be one-of-a-kind.  From the furnishings to the endless bookcases filled with the works of authors and publishers that do not seem to exist anywhere else.

The main point of this event and the recurring ones is the telling of great stories.  One is told by an old medical doctor who tells the story of a lovely young unwed woman who enters his office looking for help with her pregnancy.  She comes into the office long before it is obvious that she is pregnant and she makes regular monthly visits for check-ups.  The doctor was a general practitioner, but was very fond of delivering babies and devised a breathing method to assist women with their deliveries.   His new patient becomes a star pupil.  She takes to this breathing method and practices it religiously throughout the pregnancy.  In the end, the method really proves to deliver.  Oddly enough, for completely unrelated reasons, while I was reading this, my girlfriend took up the practice of doing meditative breathing exercises for five minutes prior to bed every evening.  This seemed to give additional realism to the story.  As far as Stephen King creepiness is concerned, the story is completely harmless until the very ending, at which point it is not.  I have been told that this story is going to be released as a feature film in 2020.