"The Body" with Wil Wheaton

A quick note before we start the show, this episode includes some discussion of child abuse

“and mental health issues. It may not be suitable for everyone.”

Welcome to Eresay, the audible and eye-heart audio book club. I'm Cal Pen. Each episode I dive into a different audio book with a special guest. In today's conversation, Oomann is one I've been looking forward to since we started planning this season. This one isn't just about an audio book. It's about the 40-year arc of a single story from a Stephen King novella to one of the most beloved films of the 1980s and now back to audio

narrated by the man who starred in the movie as a 12-year-old kid. We're talking about the body by Stephen King, the novella that was adapted into the 1986 Rob Reiner film "Stand by Me." One of my favorite movies. Here's the setup. It's 1960 in the small town of Castle Rock

“Maine. Four 12-year-old boys find out that the body of a missing boy is lying somewhere”

along the railroad tracks outside of town. They set out on a two-day hike to find it.

Ultimately, it's a story about what happens between these four kids on their adventure.

The conversations, the silences, the fights, the moments of terror and wonder, it's a story about how your friendships at 12 can be the most real and intense you'll ever have and how those same friendships can slip through your fingers. The novella was originally published in King's 1982 collection "Different Seasons," which is the same collection that gave us Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.

It's now been released as a standalone publication for the first time as a book and a brand-new audiobook. And this audiobook is narrated by the man who 40 years ago played Gordy LaChance, the main character of "Stand by Me." He's an author and prolific audiobook narrator who you may know from Star Trek, the next generation, the Big Bang Theory, and so much more will-weet he is my guest today.

Well, we welcome to Ear Say. Hi. I'm very excited to have you on the show and before we actually get into it, I will tell you that this story and this movie are both very special to me, I feel like you. I hope you hear that constantly and I assume you've heard that since you were a kid. Yeah, I obviously saw the movie as a kid and when you see it when you're just a couple of years younger than you. So, you know, in your head you're like, "Oh my god, what if we found

a body and you don't, and really all the friendship stuff, the stuff that you're like are these

the best friendships I'll ever have, all the things that you've probably heard a million times.

And I have to say, you're the most obviously uniquely qualified narrator in audiobook history. You played Gordy LaChance when you're 12, now you're narrating Gordy's words. Oh, this is an adult. Thank you. Yeah, man. Sorry. I didn't want to talk over like a nice intro of you, but just I'm very excited that you're here. That means so much to me. Thank you. I love this story too. I love the novella when I first read it. I love that stand by me as

part of my life. Yeah. I love that I've managed to land my career, my artistic and performing career in a place where I'm so happy being an audiobook narrator. So bringing these things together, the way that we did right now, I know Gordy LaChance. I am Gordy LaChance. I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordy LaChance when I didn't know it. And it was the kind of challenge that I was so excited to meet to be the adult remembering being that kid.

So like in the fiction of it, Gordyn is remembering when he was a little boy and in the reality of it, I'm remembering when I was that character and working on that movie. It was crazy, man. There was one moment when we were recording. I was very aware as I was preparing the material that the novella is much darker than the movie. And the narrator is saying over and over again.

“He says it like four or five times in the text, the most important things to say are the hardest”

things to say because your words always **** that up. And you're trying so hard to put these words

in order and you think you get it and you deliver to someone and they don't get it. And you're like, oh my God, and he talks about that a lot. He is saying to you the reader or the listener.

Chambers was. I really need you to know why I loved him. I really need you to know

“the difference he made in my life. Please, please understand. Because if you don't understand”

like why have I done any of this? Yeah. In the process of doing that, I rewatch the movie. Because I was like, I gotta keep these separate, you know, things need to be different. However, there is a scene in the book that is almost word-for-word adapted into the movie and it's Gordon Chris walking down the tree tracks when Chris is saying I wish to hell I was your father. You wouldn't be talking about going into doing these stupid shop classes in my life.

So I thought, all right, I'm going to do my very, very best to recreate Rivers' performance in his dialogues on the side of the scene. I don't normally do that when I do books, but I thought this is something that like it's special. I'm going to do that.

“While I was narrating it, I had the most vivid, multisensory flashback to being on the set.”

I've never experienced anything like that. It was crazy. I could see River standing next to me

doing his side of the scene. I could see the sound man with the boom off to my right. I could hear the camera magazine behind me because we're like shooting Rivers' close-up, you know? Like, I could see and feel all of it. It took me right back to that moment. And I thought, geez, if this can do this for me, maybe the narration can do this for someone who remembers seeing the movie 40 years ago. Totally. I'm always curious about going back.

And I haven't watched the movie. I usually do watch it every couple of years. I haven't watched it in a few years and having read it and listened to it fresh now. I'm curious about doing the same thing. Especially because like you said, the novella's darker. There's a lot in King's text that didn't really make it to the screen. Gordy short stories, the detailed back stories of each boy's families, the flash forwards to their adult lives. And I don't know if you're too close to both

to feel this. But was there anything as you were doing the audiobook that kind of surprised you the most since you went back to the original novella? Before we did it, I hadn't read the novella in a very, very, very long time. And I had vague recollections of some of the scenes. And I was so curious to sort of like experience, oh, I get how Ray and Bruce put this together. Oh, I get how they move this from the text to the screen play. Or at the beginning of this, we were just on tour

with Stand By Me Live. We were up in Portland, Oregon, and Kent Littrell, who plays the body in the movie, who was Corey Felben's photo double, who was on set with us the entire time. He came up

to our show. And we got to see him for the first time in 40 years, which was really super cool.

And he had with him his shooting script that we had all signed to him like a year ago. But he went on the last day of school. Yes, so he showed it to us. And I was paging through it. And I found where I had signed in my little 13-year-old up-ended ship. You know, if you ever come to Los Angeles, here's my address, here's my phone number. But I saw a ton, a ton of dialogue in the script that didn't make it into the movie that I had completely forgotten about. And this wasn't

an early draft of the script. This was the final shooting script, collating all the different

“changes and everything. And it's so interesting because I think we filmed a lot of stuff that would”

be consistent with the darker tone of the novella. And I suspect I don't know, but I suspect that a lot of that just got trimmed out to sort of change the tone of the story to something a bit more, I don't know, maybe like just a little less intense. Yeah, you know, I'm always super nerdy about looking at movies from, I'd say really from the '90s to the early 2000s, especially comedy. But anything that you kind of look back and go, 'A' does it hold up, but be if this were to be made

today in what ways would it change? And some of that is like, I have a little trip on my shoulder because I frequently get from like, from the kids, if I do a college lecture or something, yeah, I'll get questions. Like, oh, those movies you didn't the late '90s and early 2000s. Don't you think they were homophobic and misogynistic and blah, blah, blah, and you could never make those

today. Like, first of all, if you're using a 2026 lens, obviously the answer is yes. Of course,

I don't want to go, why would I want to make the movie I made 20 years ago? I want to make a movie in which comedy has evolved, isn't that the beauty of storytelling? So, the comedy thing is what really made me go, oh, I wonder, you know, like movies like the Goonies really hold up, stand by me, obviously really holds up, but then it gave me this sense of like,

“what's the layer beneath that? Are there different ways that somebody might tell the story today?”

So, for example, if somebody was doing that adaptation for like a Netflix, would it lean into some of the psychological darkness or trauma in a way that maybe the studio version of the feature

didn't 40 years ago? It's always such an interesting question to me. I think that the movie

Rob wanted to make. What was the movie he made? I think that the dark intensity of it when it was called the body. I don't want to speak for him, but I just suspect this and I'm kind of like putting it together based on my unreliable 40-year-old memories of conversation. You know, I was a kid. He wanted to make a story about Gordy trying to put together the loss of his brother and figure out what he's going to do with the relationship with his dad. And that it is through

“his relationship with Chris, his healthy, safe, loving relationship with Chris, that he ultimately”

will be able to process the loss of his brother and come to some sort of resolution with his father, which might not actually include his father's participation. You know, Gordy maybe wants somebody who grows up and like me is like, look, I try to really, really hard, but you obviously do not want to have a relationship with me, so I will not have contact with you. As we have been on to our Jerry O'Connell says in every single show, they do not make movies like this anymore. And he's

right. And I've thought about that a lot. Stand by me as a little movie. It's an intimate movie.

It's an emotional film. It's only 87 minutes long. It's very tight. And it's ultimately a very

simple story. It's not complicated. You know, you can settle into it, right? They don't make movies like that anymore. Stories like that get told on prestige television or they get told on streaming. And if stand by me were to be made today, it would very likely be pitched to streaming because that's where movies of this size go. It's kind of where they go and disappear. And also the reality of movies that are on streaming, this ridiculous notion that we have to have our characters

narrating what they're doing because two-thirds of the audience isn't even paying attention to

“what's happening on the screen. That stand by me just would not have, would it have a place to go?”

The circumstances that allowed us the privilege of becoming a generational classic. They don't exist anymore. I love that story for a couple of reasons. One who doesn't love Jerry O'Connell. He's great. I've worked with both Jerry and Keifer. And so as a nerd for stand by me, it's been really fun to have two friends who were in it. And I just get to hear stories of what they remember from 40 years ago, you know, just when you're shooting the fucking kind of a thing.

Jerry's been quoted in the press for years saying that he was scared to death of Keifer. On set. And I think, and like, and I wasn't. I knew he was an actor. I knew that I was whatever, but we were doing a show up in Seattle. Jerry says, hey, we saw Keifer when we were at the Oscars. And he came up and he was Keifer was like, it's so lovely to see you in the circumstances suck, but it's great to see you and he hugged both of us. It was really nice to see him. And then Jerry's

telling this very sweet story and he takes it. He pauses for a moment and he says, but I got to be honest you guys. I was looking at him and I thought, I could take you. And he's so funny. He's so Jerry is so funny. It's why he's burned, right? Rob cast four kids who were those kids. You know, I'm Gordy because I was really sad and lonely and just like Gordy, I was an invisible kid in my house,

just like Gordy, my dad hated me. Just like Gordy, my mom was useless and never helped me at

all for a river. He just, he had suffered so much. He had been abused so badly and none of us knew.

he just wanted to go someplace where he could be who he was, right? Corey was the angriest

and and most deeply suffering in pain teenager, Rob had ever met, he told me, which is perfect for Teddy. And Jerry, every time you talk to him, he's making you laugh. Someone's mildly uncomfortable, here comes Jerry with a joke to defuse the tension. Here's, you know, there's something happening. Here's Jerry with a hilarious throwaway joke that's funnier than like the joke that you spent five minutes trying to write, you know, like that. Which is still the case, by the way, with Jerry,

I'll call for people listening. This is still the case. He still will make you laugh. And something I noticed about the difference between the movie and the text, the movie Ray and Bruce did a great job deepening and clarifying and setting apart from one another, Teddy and Vernon. In the book, they could be one character almost.

“Yeah. And maybe you have to do that for something to kind of visually make sense too. I mean,”

what we all love about books is that you're imagining it, right? Yeah, film adaptation, you're always

doing. Do you cast when you read a book, do you cast actors as the voices in your head for the characters? Oh, interesting. Not usually, but on occasion, somebody will pop in there and it'll be like, oh, I guess that's that person. But otherwise, no. Otherwise, they're total unknown. No, they're like new people. New characters. Yeah. I read this book last year called The Ministry of Time that I really enjoyed. It was really fun. Most of the stuff I read is intense.

And this is not. This is fun. This is a popcorn movie, you know. And I could not hear one of the main characters. I was like, oh, I've got to cast this guy. And I ended up casting, I don't even know the actor's name. But he's in a series called, I think it's called The Gentleman. And he's in like a car commercial. He's like, I hand some British guy. You know, he's just like this beautiful British man. And he has this like deep bearish on kind of thing. And as I was reading, it was like, I wonder if

I could cast this guy in this role. And the whole book just immediately came together. I was just narrating his story. And I was like, I really need to cast a voice for this character. She's really interesting. But I need to give her just like a little more point of view that is going to come from her voice. So I was like, all right, Natasha Leone, you're in. Let's go. And I did a voice kind of inspired by her to bring that particular character to life. That's a fun. Actually,

“that's a fun thing to try. But also kind of useful too. I'm not sure. Remember that was an audience”

narrator. I always, you know, I've got whatever my seven to ten archetypes that I can use when I

need to. And you know, then sort of like throw them in a blender with like that character's backstory and they're wherever they came from. And like, do they have an accent? And what is their education level and stuff like that and put them all together? And grab the little, the little punch card that comes out of that machine. Here's a question. Then it's kind of tied to that with the text of this book and then we'll jump to, we'll jump to our mid episode break. But in the novella, Steven King

included Gordy short stories, stud city and the revenge of art as a little game. Yeah, yeah. Great title. So given everything you just said about kind of like looking at looking at the text going back

“narrating to putting yourself in there, what was it like to narrate a story within a story?”

It was really fun. The story that didn't make it into the movie, stud city, doesn't belong in the movie. And it's, it's right that that wasn't put in the movie. I feel like he includes that because he's showing you his growth as an author and his growth as a person. Right? Like that, that story is, it's terrible. And, and then you get to the end of it and he's like, "I got a level with you guys. That story was terrible." Which was really interesting to me.

Doing the revenge of Lardez Hogan, I remembered being 13 and telling that story. Right? So all of Gordy's voice over narration in that portion of the film, we shot all of it. So I'm sitting at the campfire and I learned it all in the whole story all the way through and I just got to sit there and tell the story. And it's fun. The pacing of the story is really satisfying. It's just such a great job of like slowly ratcheting up the tension until the big reveal and then the Barfa Roma.

Right? In the movie, it's Gordy as a kid in the book. It's like, okay, we pulled this out of

Gordy went to his wife and said, "Can I tell you a story?" And I read you the story that just got

published and I just approached it like that. I just approached it from, you know, from that. Okay, I'm now inside, I'm a narrator inside this narration, narrating the story that's inside the narration. Don't think about it too much. You get lost. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more. Okay, we'll do a few quickfire questions. Okay. This is a segment we call plot twist. Okay.

“So whatever comes to your mind is fair game. So the boys flip coins throughout the story, right?”

Maybe it goes to the store who takes watch, everything. The narrator describes four tails in a row

as something called a goocher, a very bad omin. What are you superstitious about? When I was playing hockey and I was a golly, I had a such a list of pre-game things that had to to happen. And the big one was, look, everyone else on the team, you absolutely have to come and hit both of my leg pads before this game starts or we're at a real trouble. Yeah, that's that's a good one. Gordy tells the piloting revenge story to his friends around the campfire.

If you had to tell a story around a campfire now, not read one, just like tell one. Yeah, what would it be? Oh, man, I can do anything I want. Anything. I had been working on a story that the story is a series of metaphors. It's a guy playing plastic 80s arcade games. But each arcade game has a different challenge inherent in it. Every classic video game has a different

“it tells you this is how you need to play me if you want to get on a high score board, right?”

And you had to figure out what that is. The story is about this guy trying to figure out how to get the high score on some of these old classic arcade games. And about two thirds of the way through he realizes each one is a metaphor for trauma recovery, for how he's like overcoming something they he had experienced before. And there's like a little supernatural aspect to it. There's a little kind of like a ghostly sort of aspect to it because that is the story that is in my

head that I've been like kind of developing for a few months. That's probably the story that I can tell. Oh, that's cool. That's a very thoughtful answer. If somebody asked me that, I just would have been like something with jump scares. I didn't jump scares were great for a campfire story. Like no doubt about that. Yeah, sure. All right. Chris Chambers tells Gordy, it's like God gave you something. All those stories you can make up. And he said, this is what we got for you kid. Try not to lose it.

Has anyone ever said something like that to you? Something that changed how you thought about your own telling? You know, I'm sure that in the course of my life, I've been praised and encouraged by people. I know that I am. I can't, gosh, that's sad. I can't think of a moment where I worked really hard on something and I showed it to someone who's opinion really mattered to me. And they were, you know, and they praised the, the work that I did. One of the things I think Chris is talking

about when he says that is, you know, Stephen King did it. Have this language when he wrote the story. This language certainly didn't exist in 1959 when the movie takes, or in the story takes place.

“Creativity thrives in a safe environment. You have to be safe to make”

big choices and to try things out. And you have to be willing to just get up on that high wire and try to get all the way across without falling down. And if you do fall down, you hope that you're either not so high off the ground that you break your leg or maybe there's somebody to catch you when you get there. I think Chris is saying, like, you're not supported me and kids are supported. Kids have these great dreams. And when they're not supported, they end up just

kind of like being ground under the gears of capitalism and that's super duper sucks, man, right? Yeah. I have felt incredibly supported. My whole adult life by the cast of Star Trek

the next generation. They very much became the parents that I never had. When we were doing the show,

I was embarrassed and, you know, protecting my, my abusers and all that. Yeah. And then when I was

“older and I got sober and I like did a lot of recovery work. And I saw all of them, it was like,”

hey, I just want you to know. This is what you meant to me when you didn't know. It's me. That's me. How great. Yeah. And since then, whenever I need a mom or a dad, I can text either individually or the group and they constantly show, you know, they always show up for me. And I guess, you know, it took me a minute to get here. Because when you ask that question, the first thing that comes to my

mind is, it doesn't matter because I'll never get it from my dad, right? That's the first thing

that comes to my mind that I'm like, but there's all sorts of wonderful, there's beauty and joy and great, you know, like, let him do that to you, man. So when I wanted to start my podcast, yeah, I was a massive fan of Levard Burton's podcast. I loved it when Levard would read me a story. And, you know, and I listened to it every, every new episode and I still have old episodes that

“I have saved on my phone that I listened to when I, when I can't sleep, I'm going to just”

suede me into sleep and stuff. So when he stopped doing the podcast, I was sort of kicking around the idea of maybe kind of starting one of my own. And I didn't want to step on his toes. So we were in an airport together and I said to him, I'm going to start this podcast where I narrate short speculative fiction and I want to help new authors find their audience. I want to help authors that are massively known in the genre space, but completely anonymous in like, you know,

normie world, right? I want to bring them to new audience. And I feel like maybe this is running right up against and perhaps a little bit over into what you were doing. And I don't want to step on your toes. Are you okay with me doing this? And Levard was like, I would love for you to do this. Your perfect to do this. I give you my blessing. I will help you. However, I can.

I can, I can to help you be successful. And then when we finally launched our first episode,

Levard called me. No way. On premier day and he said, he said to me, I couldn't only text you. I needed to hear your voice. And I needed you to hear my voice. And I wanted to tell you how proud of you I am. And I was just like, this is, you're the best space dad ever. And that was a moment where like, I don't know, like, maybe I don't know if I would have been like, Gordy, you know, and kind of like, I give up. I'm not going to try. It's easier and not do it than take the

chance of being disappointed. But he really encouraged me and has remained encouraging the entire time. And we've been doing it for a little over a year. That's so amazing. I love this

story for many reasons. But I feel like there's, especially in our line of work, there's always

this, I don't know if you get this. But like, I feel like more people ask me, who's the worst person you worked with rather than who's the kindest. And it always weirds me out. Yeah, because I just don't think of, hey, I don't tend to think of things as a binary and the creative space. But especially the like, we take such pride and joy in what we do that I love that 99.9% of the people have had the pleasure of working with are wonderful. And the couple who haven't have been

probably going through something on their own. So anyway, what I love about that story is it like

“articulate so beautifully. I think why a lot of us prefer talking about the people who have been”

especially kind of the moments that mattered the most. I say two things. Every one is going through something and you don't know what it is. You have no idea what that person is going through. Yeah. And so it follows that. It costs nothing to be kind. Nothing, dude. They're all overshare a quick story. I know we're over time, but I'll just overshare because I think it's related to what you're saying. This was years ago. But there's a bar

in Chelsea that it's an old like writer actor bar. I love it. It's called Peter McMahon. It's great, great place. And I'd been going there for years and myself. And I sat down there one after noon. And I was having a really bad day. It was just that I was having like a club soda or something and meeting friends. And I wasn't going to stay long. And there was this kid next to me at a bar stool who didn't. He didn't look 21, but I didn't really pay any attention. He was staring at me.

And it was like it irritated me because I had had a bad day, but I'm not confrontational. So finally, after like 10 minutes, it was him. And what are you doing here? And I just very curtly. I wasn't rude,

to, you know, back to my phone or whatever. And he goes, um, well, I just wanted to say hi because

“my dad and I watch so many of your movies together. Like way before I should have been watching”

rated our movies. And he let me watch a bunch of your movies because he was such a big fan of yours. And he passed away last year. And we used to come to this bar together, even though I'm 21,

and he would sit in the seat that you're sitting in. And my stool is always the seat that I take.

And so I just thought it was amazing that you happen to walk in and sit down there. And I was crying immediately, right? But it was such a beautiful moment, a beautiful story. And it was one of those things where I'm like, yes, I'm mindful it doesn't cost anything to be kind. And you don't know somebody's story. And I obviously talked to him for, you know, an hour and a half. And really what a great kid. And not just because his dad had good taste in movies. Dude, what a blessed

thing. What a gift. Yes. Be in that place and be that, and be, and be, and be you for him. I felt very, very privileged. That's really, yeah. Those moments don't happen for me that often, but they do. And every time I'm just like, wow, thank you. Thank you, universe for this gift. Thank you. Totally. Okay. Last rapid fire of caution for you, then we'll wrap it. All right. The boys have a debate about what's the best car. Teddy insists it's the 58

“Corvette. What's your answer? I think he's not wrong. I mean, that's that's so it's 1959 when they're”

doing this, right? So they don't have a whole, they can't go back, especially far. I think the Tucker is a massively underrated automobile. And it has such an incredible story. And it's so wonderfully weird. And just like, kind of could only have existed for the one year that that vehicle was produced. I absolutely love it. If I could go anywhere, it would be a 67 Mustang fastback. Wow. All right. All right. I think Teddy's not wrong. I think that's actually really, yeah.

As long as it's not a Tesla, it's a great car. Yeah. I was just gonna say I was, I tend to pick the Ford F-150 lightning because it's an electric version of the F-150. Yeah. But yes, I agree with you. Let's just avoid Tesla. All right. Well, we, and this is such a pleasure before you go anything you're listening to or reading right now that you want to plug. I am listening to Mary Robinette

“Koals, Lady Astronaut series. It's phenomenal. I'm listening to the first book in the series,”

the calculating stars. And when I'm not listening, I realized just this last weekend,

I have never read the Great Gatsby. So I grabbed it. I cannot put it down.

Like, for me to read something that I would have classified as homework at some point in my life. Yeah. I read so much speculative fiction. I read so much non-fiction. I haven't spent any time with classics at all. I just thought, yeah, that's the classic I'm gonna start with. And I absolutely cannot put it down. And like, it's a little embarrassing. I'm 53. I waited a minute to get to this book. But like, I'm really excited to dive in to go to any of the online

universities and find a place that teaches the book. And then do what it does classes and just get a little bit more out of it. Totally. And then I've been reading lots of short speculative fiction for its story time. And just like, I cannot oversell Clark's world, uncanny, light speed. These have all been just magnificent destinations for me and my team to go as we're looking for new material and looking for new stories to share with the audience. Oh, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for being a member of our club. Thanks for joining your say. It's such a pleasure to be here, man. I'm a, I'm a really big fan of yours. Oh, are you kidding? That is very new to you. Like, I managed to get all the way to the end before I made it weird. So very kind of very, very good talk to you. I bet that feeling is very mutual. And we have mutual friends who over the years have said,

do you and will know each other? I'm like, no, but I'm a big fan of like, you wouldn't really get

a log. Like, oh, okay, cool. And that always felt awesome today. It's the best feeling. I love, man.

I love that way to go and mutual friends. There's something about a narrator who literally lived inside the story he's reading and you can hear it in every line. Thank you for tuning into this episode of ear say, the audible and I heart audio book club. On our next episode, we're getting in the Lily Choose romantic comedy just

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“Ear say, the audible and I heart audio book club is a production of I Heart's Ruby Studio.”

I'm your host, Cal Pen. Our executive producer is Matt Schiltz with theme music and post-production

by Marcus Bagala. Our talent coordinator is Ellison Pepper. For Ruby Studio, our managing EP is Matt Romano and our EP of post-production is Matt Stillow. Until next time, thanks for listening.