Kiefer Sutherland Remembers ‘Stand By Me’ Co-Star River Phoenix & How Film Title Came To Be

Armando Tinoco
·1 min read
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Kiefer Sutherland is recalling a sweet anecdote from the set of Stand by Me and remembering his late co-star River Phoenix.

The 24 actor is looking back at his time while filming the Rob Reiner coming-of-age drama movie and shared a heartwarming story about Phoenix that also came to possibly influence the title of the film.

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“We were making Stand by Me, which was a Stephen King short story called The Body, and River Phoenix was learning guitar and playing guitar and he was actually very, very good. And he was getting really good at a very, very fast rate,” Sutherland said during an interview on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. “And I was playing Stand by Me and singing that song, and he said, ‘Oh, I love the melody of that song,’ and he hadn’t heard it before.”

Sutherland continued, “So I was teaching it to him and Rob Reiner walked by and said, ‘Oh, I haven’t heard that song for a long time, I love it. And then that was the end of that discussion.'”

Reiner ended up using the Ben E. King song in the film and Sutherland says that naming the film after the song “was part of the conversation.”

Stand by Me was released in 1986 and revolves around four boys who go on a hike to find the dead body of a missing boy. The film stars Wil Wheaton, Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell.

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