Movie Explainer: What is Stand by Me about?

(This substack is about books and maybe history, but I thought I’d extend the self-indulgence of my birthday week to writing two or three explainers about movies, and WHAT ARE THEY ALL ABOUT? This is the first.)

Books are better than movies, right?

Everyone knows what Stand by Me is about. It’s a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story. Young Gordie LaChance undergoes a harrowing and even Campbellian journey into the wilderness towards death, and comes out of it on if not a man then at least well on...