Most Rewatchable Scene
Train bridge crossing
In the discussion (16)
Approx. transcript time · 00:30:23Read transcript
- The first pick is the early run-in with Ace, who takes the Yankee hat Denny gave Gordy; it does a lot in two minutes, establishing Ace, Gordy's inability to fight back and Chris not yet able to stop the cigarette.
- There is not a wasted frame: the end mirrors the beginning, and the world holds only the kids looking for Ray Brower and the Cobras, with no parents or cops.
- Gordy's trip to the store for Cokes and hamburger meat, the store guy's quarterback comment about his brother, and the junkyard chase that ends with Feldman yelling at the junkyard guy is a favorite; the store evokes first solo shopping trips, though baseball cards at the counter would have been a nice touch.
- Chris's speech about Gordy's gift for writing shows in about 150 seconds why they are best friends: Chris is tough with a sensitive side, Gordy sensitive and wanting to be cool, always in each other's corner unlike Vern and Teddy.
- An NBA analogy makes Chris and Gordy the two stars with a rotating cast; Vern is compared to Dwight Howard and to not wanting to go in the bubble.
- The train scene is iconic: the wide bridge shots, the quiet, feeling the tracks, Teddy's line, Jerry O'Connell crawling and screaming, and the jump make a flawless four minutes.
- The pie-eating story delivers for little kids; its editing, cutting back to the campfire where the others ask 'that's it?', is praised.
- Chris's milk-money monologue is when Phoenix became the number-one draft pick; the hosts say Reiner told the 2016 Variety oral history he asked Phoenix to think of an adult who let him down, and the next take is in the movie.
- The scene reflects learning that people in power disappoint you; none of the four is getting out of town, each for his own reason.
- Gordy and Chris facing Ace with the gun is good, with Kiefer 'throwing 110 miles an hour' next to the decomposing body.
- The ending keeps building: goodbye to Chris, the story of his death, Chris vanishing, then the writer finding his last sentence, which the speaker, a former columnist, identifies with; then wrestling with his son.
- A joke imagines the same feeling after a 200th-episode Heat podcast with Michael Mann.
- A second participant adds Vern running up to the treehouse and being cut off while the others keep singing, which sets up the gang as real characters.
- The Cobras' mailbox baseball and tattoo scenes show what the boys could become; not even the bad guys have fun lives in this town. That participant calls the bridge crossing the most rewatchable.
- Mailbox baseball and smashing pumpkins are called New England traditions after one participant admits he might have done it in Worcester.
- Another participant agrees the train scene is the most rewatchable, a flawless four or five minutes; the hosts' research says a camera trick made the distant train seem right behind the boys.
