The group of friends is played by Corey Feldman (Teddy), Jerry O’Connell (Vern), River Phoenix (Chris), and Wil Wheaton (Gordie). Stacked with talent, the boys breathed new life into what a coming-of-age story looks like but struggled to relay the amount of fear Reiner was seeking in a scene where the boys had to outrun a train on a bridge. Carefully going step by step across the bridge (with Vern crawling on all fours for some reason), Wil decides to check the tracks. He turns and sees smoke rising from the tree line and yells “train!” as the boys haul ass to the other side barely escaping their demise. However, the kids and the train were never on the tracks at the same time. Speaking with Variety, Reiner mentioned he “lost it” but “did it as kind of an act” while filming this scene. 

“[I] used such a long lens, and so the boys had jumped off the train track before the train even entered the trestle. It was so far away from them that they weren’t scared. It was very hot, 90 degrees out, and the guys were pushing this dolly down the track to follow these boys running and they were supposed to be hysterical, just crying and panicking. We did it a bunch of times and they kept not getting worked up. Finally, I start screaming, ‘these guys, the crew, are exhausted because you guys keep messing up and if you’re not worried that the train is going to kill you, I’ll kill you.’ They started crying and we started rolling and then they ran off the track and gave me a hug and said, ‘we did it. We did it Rob.'”