Stand by Me Trivia
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50 free Stand by Me trivia questions with answers. Stand by Me is the rare 80s movie that gets better every time you go back to it, and it rewards close attention. This quiz covers the plot of the boys' Labor Day weekend in 1959, from Chris's stolen pistol and Chopper the dog to the leeches, the body and Ace's switchblade, along with the 1985 framing story and the line about never having friends like the ones you had at twelve. It also goes behind the camera: Stephen King's novella The Body, the title change, Adrian Lyne's departure and Rob Reiner's arrival, Norman Lear's $7.5 million rescue, the Oregon town that played Castle Rock, the trestle in California, the cabbage-leaf cigarettes and the cottage-cheese vomit. Cast questions cover Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, Kiefer Sutherland and Richard Dreyfuss, plus the Ben E. King song that gave the film its name. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia articles on the film, its cast, the novella and the song, and each question shows the sentence that supports it once you answer. Free, no signup.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Stand by Me (1986)?
Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner had directed only This Is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing when he took the job; he stepped in after the first director attached to the project had to drop out.
Q 02Stand by Me is based on a novella by which author?
Stephen King
Stephen King drew the story from his own childhood; after a private screening he left the room for a while to compose himself, then said it was the best film yet made from his work.
Q 03What is the title of the 1982 novella that Stand by Me adapts?
The Body
The Body was the film's working title too, until the studio swapped it for the name of the song that plays over the end credits.
Q 04In Stand by Me, Teddy insists that his father stormed the beach where?
Normandy
Normandy is Teddy's proudest boast: he flies at the junkman for calling his father a loony, even though that same father once held his ear to a stove.
Q 05Which holiday weekend frames Stand by Me's journey?
Labor Day
Labor Day weekend closes the boys' summer, and with it the foursome: the narrator says that as time went on two of the four friends drifted away from the others.
Q 06Which actor plays Denny, Gordie's late older brother, in the flashbacks of Stand by Me?
John Cusack
John Cusack appears only in flashbacks as Denny, the favoured football-star son whose death leaves Gordie's grieving parents barely noticing the boy still at home.
Q 07Who plays the young Gordie Lachance in Stand by Me?
Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton said the director cast four boys who already were their characters, and he was the awkward, sensitive one; soon afterwards he joined Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Q 08Which character does River Phoenix play in Stand by Me?
Chris Chambers
Chris Chambers was not the part River Phoenix read for: he auditioned as Gordie, but the director saw in him the cool, protective leader of the group.
Q 09Which character does Corey Feldman play in Stand by Me?
Teddy Duchamp
Teddy Duchamp's rage came easily to Corey Feldman, who said he drew on his own unhappy home life to play the boy whose father had burned his ear.
Q 10Which character does Jerry O'Connell play in Stand by Me?
Vern Tessio
Vern Tessio went to Jerry O'Connell, at 11 the youngest of the four, who had made only commercials; he said he stayed in character all summer, saying the things Vern would.
Q 11Who plays the town bully Ace Merrill in Stand by Me?
Kiefer Sutherland
Kiefer Sutherland is said to have kept up Ace's menace off camera too, so that the younger boys' fear of him looked real, though not all of them remember being scared.
Q 12Which actor plays the adult Gordie, who narrates Stand by Me?
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss was a late fix: the director, a friend since high school, had tried three other narrators whose voices never sounded right, and Dreyfuss offered to appear on screen too.
Q 13In Stand by Me, what is the name of the dead boy the four friends set out to find?
Ray Brower
Ray Brower is found first by Vern's older brother, who cannot report it because he was in a stolen car at the time; Vern overhears him and tells his friends.
Q 21In Stand by Me, how does River Phoenix's character die as an adult?
Stabbed in a diner fight
Stabbed in a diner fight that was not his: by then a lawyer, he stepped between two strangers arguing in a fast-food restaurant, and one of them had pulled a knife.
Q 22Which Oregon town stood in for the fictional setting of Stand by Me?
Brownsville
Brownsville still shows off its 1950s storefronts: about 100 residents worked as extras, and since 2007 the town has thrown a Stand by Me Day each July for visiting fans.
Q 23Stand by Me was mostly shot in Oregon, but its train-trestle chase was filmed in which state?
California
Q 14In Stand by Me, what has Chris stolen from his father to bring on the trip?
A Colt .45 pistol
A Colt .45 pistol is what lets quiet Gordie face down the town bully at the end: he fires a warning shot into the air, then levels it at him.
Q 15What does Ace steal from Gordie early in Stand by Me?
A Yankees cap
A Yankees cap was a gift from Gordie's late brother Denny, which is why losing it to the town bully stings far more than the price of a hat.
Q 16In Stand by Me, what is the name of Milo Pressman's supposedly ferocious junkyard dog?
Chopper
Chopper is said to be trained to attack one very specific part of a trespasser on command, but the beast that finally chases Gordie turns out to be a harmless-looking pet.
Q 17What is the name of the boy in Gordie's campfire story about a pie-eating contest?
'Lard-Ass' Hogan
He drinks castor oil beforehand and triggers what Gordie calls a barf-o-rama.
Q 18What was mixed with pie filling to fake the vomit in Stand by Me's barf-o-rama scene?
Cottage cheese
Cottage cheese, the large-curd kind, went into vats of pie filling from a local bakery; a hand-pushed plunger then shot five gallons of it through a hose hidden on the contest's star.
Q 19In Stand by Me, what does Chris admit he stole from school, only to be suspended after handing it back?
The milk money
The milk money never reached the office: Chris says the teacher he handed it to kept it for herself, knowing nobody would take a Chambers kid's word over hers.
Q 20In Stand by Me, Gordie faints after finding what on himself once the boys wade through a pond?
A leech
A leech in the worst possible place is what fells Gordie; the cast found the scene grim too, because the man-made pond had sat open to the forest for six weeks before they shot it.
California's Lake Britton trestle hosted the chase, but the danger was a trick of the camera: a long lens squeezed the distance, so a train far down the line seemed to be right on the boys' heels.
Q 24At the director's insistence, what did the cigarettes smoked by the boys in Stand by Me contain?
Cabbage leaves
Cabbage leaves, by most accounts, stood in for tobacco: the director, who went on to campaign for anti-smoking laws, would not let his young cast light the real thing.
Q 25Which British director was first attached to Stand by Me but pulled out before filming?
Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne had promised himself a long break and could not start before spring 1986; the producers refused to wait that long, so the script went to a friend of theirs instead.
Q 26Which TV producer paid for Stand by Me from his own pocket after its studio was sold days before filming?
Norman Lear
Norman Lear, the man behind All in the Family, said he believed in the script and put up the whole budget himself.
Q 27Which studio finally agreed to distribute Stand by Me after the other majors had all turned it down?
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures had itself cancelled the film and then passed on it; its production chief gave in only after screening it at home, where his daughters loved it.
Q 28In Stand by Me, the boys debate whether which cartoon hero could beat up Superman?
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse loses on a technicality: Teddy rules that he is only a cartoon while Superman is a real guy, and no cartoon could ever beat up a real guy.
Q 29How do the boys in Stand by Me finally report the dead boy they find?
An anonymous phone call
An anonymous phone call ends their dream of becoming town heroes: after the stand-off they agree that taking the credit for finding him would be wrong.
Q 30For which Academy Award was Stand by Me nominated?
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Adapted Screenplay was its only Oscar nomination; the script began when one writer gave the novella to his partner's wife as a birthday present and both men fell for it.