"The Body" with Wil Wheaton
4/30/202636 min
Wil Wheaton starred as the main character in the 1986 classic Stand By Me, which was based on the Stephen King novella The Body. Forty Years later, Wil has narrated the new audiobook version of The Body in a real true circle moment.
He joins Kal to jump into the differences between the darker novella and the film, and we hear about a vivid flashback to filming with River Phoenix that hit Wil while recording this audiobook. He also gets into his own parallels with the character he voices, and explains how his fellow cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation became the family he never had.
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First 90 secondsKal Penn· Host0:00
This is an iHeart podcast, [upbeat music] Guaranteed Human. 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. [upbeat music] Welcome to Ear Say, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club. I'm Cal Penn. Each episode, I dive into a different audiobook with a special guest, and today's conversation, ooh, man, is one I've been looking forward to since we started planning this season. This one isn't just about an audiobook. 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. [gentle music] 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,