Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind (24 page)

1:51
A.M.
: DR. PAUL SILKA
officially pronounced River Jude Phoenix dead.

80

R.I.P. RJP

Iris Burton got a phone call summoning her to Cedars-Sinai. She identified River’s corpse, and then collapsed, a sobbing mess. When Mathis arrived, she also insisted on seeing the body; a nurse took her to where it lay in the emergency room.

All through the night, people got woken up with news of the tragedy: friends, family, producers, executives. One person who couldn’t be reached right away was Heart: she was already on the first flight out of Gainesville, on her way to Hollywood to help River with his problems before it was too late. Once she arrived at the hospital, Burton left, crying so hard that she burst a blood vessel in her nose. Heart wanted to take possession of River’s body, but was told that the autopsy would have to happen first. The Phoenix family all flew home to Florida the same day, before they could be questioned by an L.A. homicide detective.

Eleven years earlier, comedy superstar John Belushi had died from an overdose while speedballing, on the other end of the Sunset Strip, in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont hotel. Cathy Smith, the woman who provided him with the drugs and helped inject him, ended up pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and serving fifteen months in prison. But the Phoenix family (and Mathis) ducked questions from the police department, not wanting to see anyone prosecuted for River’s death by misadventure. “The bottom line was the family didn’t want anyone to go to jail who was participating with River in ingesting the drugs,” said L.A. homicide detective sergeant Mike Lee. “They said if it was an overdose of drugs, then so be it.”

Sometime after 3
A.M.
on October 31, Depp found out that the kid who had collapsed on his doorstep was dead—and that it had been River Phoenix. He hadn’t known River well, but he was shocked. Depp closed the Viper Room for the next ten days. That patch of sidewalk outside his club’s back door quickly drew crowds anyway: news crews getting footage of the Viper Room’s exterior, and mourners leaving flowers and scrawling memorials to River on the club’s wall and door. Depp later offered to take the door off its hinges and send it to the Iris Burton Agency; they gave him the Florida address of the Phoenixes instead.

In the newspapers, the story of River’s death played alongside obituaries of the Italian director Federico Fellini (
La Dolce Vita, 8½
), who had died in Rome the same day, at age seventy-three. But although Fellini had half a century and five Oscars on River, he didn’t have a younger brother pleading with 911. The tape of Joaquin’s call went into heavy rotation on TV news and tabloid shows—the worst moment of his young life was when most Americans first heard his voice.

The
Dark Blood
cast and crew showed up at the studio on Monday, not that there was any way to keep working. Jonathan Pryce said a few words in memory of River, and asked everyone to join hands in a circle. They did, except for Judy Davis. “I didn’t want to hold hands,” she said. “I don’t believe in spirits passing, but I didn’t have a choice, so I wished that I’d not gone into the studio. I don’t like to be forced to be dishonest. I think it has to be remembered in the midst of all this that he was twenty-three, and he made the choice.”

River was cremated in a blue coffin, wearing an Aleka’s Attic T-shirt, with the long hair he had cut off for
Dark Blood
laid next to him as a ponytail. The night before the cremation, somebody with access to the funeral home took a picture of his body and sold it to the
National Enquirer
.

On November 12, about a hundred guests went to Micanopy for a memorial service, held under a large oak tree on the Phoenix property. Neighbors walked over; Dan Aykroyd and Keanu Reeves came in limousines. Flea and Michael Stipe were in attendance, as were Martha Plimpton, Suzanne Solgot, and Samantha Mathis. Heart tracked down Father Stephen Wood, who had helped her family get out of Venezuela; he was doing missionary work in Mexico. She paid for his plane ticket to Gainesville and he helped officiate.

Heart gave a eulogy for the child she had thought would change the world, talking about River’s life and how, even in death, he touched her: “When the sun shines I see River, when I look in someone’s eyes and make a connection, I see River. To have death transformed into another way to look at life is his huge gift.”

The mourners took turns remembering River. “He was my brother and I loved him a great deal,” Stipe said. “It was just an awful, awful mistake. We fed off each other and learned a lot from each other.”

Ethan Hawke copped to how he had been in awe of River, and then asked whether the people in attendance would learn anything from his death.

John kept interjecting wisecracks that made many of the guests uncomfortable.

As the residents of Camp Phoenix took turns speaking, the tenor shifted: River’s pure soul was too good for this world, they said, and so he had progressed to a higher state of being. (Essentially the same message that had so infuriated Judy Davis, but at greater length and without the hand-holding.) Or as Solgot summarized it: “River’s in heaven, blah blah blah, it was his time, blah blah blah.”

The sentiment began to rankle some of those in attendance. Bradley Gregg—father of the child whose birthday party River didn’t attend on October 31—shouted, “River didn’t have to die to be free!”

Later, the perspicacious Martha Plimpton observed, “You would have thought he was ninety and had died in his sleep. The people who were saying this felt tremendous guilt that they had contributed to his death.” She wasn’t any happier about how his death was being discussed outside Micanopy: “He’s already being made into a martyr,” she complained. “He’s become a metaphor for a fallen angel, a messiah. He was just a boy, a very good-hearted boy who was very fucked up and had no idea how to implement his good intentions. I don’t want to be comforted by his death. I think it’s right that I’m angry about it, angry at the people who helped him stay sick, and angry at River.”

Two weeks later, there was another memorial service, this one on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, with about 150 of River’s show-biz colleagues in attendance. Before it started, they milled around outside, smoking cigarettes and gossiping about Hollywood casting, as if it were just another movie screening. The list of speakers was star-studded: Sidney Poitier, Rob Reiner, Jerry O’Connell, John Boorman, Christine Lahti, Peter Bogdanovich, and Helen Mirren. When it was Heart’s turn, she related a vision she had: that River hadn’t wanted to be born, preferring to stay with God in heaven. God had convinced him to go, and they haggled over how long, settling on twenty-three years.

After a moment of silence, Jane Campion, the director of
The Piano,
stood up and announced that earlier that year, her infant son had died when he was only thirteen days old, and that although she hadn’t known River, she had come to the service in search of some solace and understanding. Heart stepped off the stage and gave Campion a hug.

Not to be outdone, Peter Bogdanovich’s wife, Louise Stratten, stood up and said, “Peter and I adopted this stray cat that came around the house every day.” They believed, she explained, that the spirit of her sister (murdered Playmate Dorothy Stratten) lived in that cat.

The testimonials continued: people who had known River intensely and briefly, all talking about how he had touched their lives. Then John Boorman, sitting in a corner, spat out a question: “Is there anybody here who can tell us why River took all those drugs?”

The room fell silent. Heart looked shocked; River’s younger sisters, Liberty and Summer, left the room in protest. Mathis, who had been silent until then, tried to answer the question: “River was a sensitive,” she said gently. “He had so much compassion for everyone and everything that he had a weight on his heart.”

In December, Christina Applegate found her own way of memorializing River: at a Studio City theater, she starred in an antidrug performance piece based on witnessing his death. While a song called “Junkie” played, she writhed on the stage.

81

BROKEN DREAMS

While Hollywood agents mouthed pieties of sorrow, some of them smelled chum in the water. River’s in heaven, blah blah blah—but that meant there were vacancies to be filled in movies here on earth, especially in
Interview with the Vampire,
which now needed a new interviewer—and quickly. The interview scenes had already been held to the end of the shoot so River could finish making
Dark Blood.

It was an ideal gig: a quick, lucrative job in a classy movie that looked like it would be a hit. Christian Slater got the role, but recognizing the gruesome situation, donated his paycheck to two of River’s favorite charities, Earth Save and Earth Trust.
Interview with the Vampire
proved to be a respectable success: apparently audiences liked watching a vision of Hollywood stars who couldn’t die and looked young forever, even if River Phoenix wasn’t one of them.

Safe Passage
filled the role of the son with Sean Astin, fresh off the success of
Rudy.
Some other films got shelved permanently: without River to wear the gorilla suit, Allan Moyle couldn’t imagine making
Morgan
. Similarly, Agnieszka Holland abandoned
Jack and Jill,
and Gus Van Sant never revived his Andy Warhol movie.

John Malkovich didn’t want to play Verlaine without River as Rimbaud, and dropped out of
Total Eclipse;
director Volker Schlöndorff followed. The project was taken over by (coincidentally) Agnieszka Holland, who cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Rimbaud and David Thewlis as Verlaine; the film was released in 1995. In 2008, Van Sant finally made
Milk,
his award-winning Harvey Milk biopic. Sean Penn starred instead of Robin Williams, while the role of Cleve Jones, which Van Sant had earmarked for River, was taken by Emile Hirsch, who was just eight years old when River died.

The movie that was the most problematic was the one River had been in the middle of,
Dark Blood.
Sluizer had completed about eighty percent of the shooting schedule, with roughly eleven days to go—not very many, except that they would have included crucial interior scenes and close-ups of River. With CGI in its infancy, a special-effects solution wasn’t feasible. The missing pieces were too big to edit around. And nobody had the stomach to start over with a new actor in the role of Boy.

As was customary, the film had been insured against a disaster like this; CNA International Reinsurance made the unusual but appropriate call to abandon the picture. They paid off the movie’s investors and ended up as the legal owners of
Dark Blood,
not to mention 1,500 pounds of 35mm film. Some of the filmmakers were glad to put the tragic episode behind them.
Dark Blood
producer Nik Powell said, “For me, the most respectful thing was to close it, not attempt to finish it, and let bygones be bygones.”

The insurance company then sued River’s estate for about $5.5 million, arguing that by “taking illegal drugs, River J. Phoenix deprived the parties to the contract of his services, and he therefore breached his obligation/duty.” The crux of the argument was that River had lied when he attested during his insurance-required medical exam that he didn’t use drugs. The lawsuit kept River’s estate tied up in probate until 1997, when it was finally dismissed.

In 1999, Sluizer found out that the insurance company was going to dispose of the
Dark Blood
footage, believing it was of no value. Sluizer liberated the reels of films from the storage facility, with the consent of the claims adjuster—when they couldn’t find a key, they had to break open a lock. “I call it saving, not stealing,” Sluizer said. “Morally, I was saving important material. If you go to the Guggenheim and it’s a fire and you save a painting, you’re not stealing a painting—you’re saving it.”

82

NEVER GONNA WITHER

As he would have wanted, River lived on in song. Friends recorded tributes to him: Flea’s composition “Transcending,” found on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’
One Hot Minute
album, includes the lyrics “Smartest fucker I ever met” and “I called you hippie, you said fuck off.” Michael Stipe was so shattered by River’s death that he found himself unable to write songs for five months. When he recovered, R.E.M. made the classic
Monster,
which they dedicated to River; the song “Bang and Blame” had backing vocals by Rain. (Behind the scenes, Stipe bought the rights to the Aleka’s Attic recordings from Island.)

There was also a slew of songs about River by musicians who didn’t know him well, or at all, including Natalie Merchant, Rufus Wainwright, Belinda Carlisle, the Cult.

When River died, it was generally assumed that he would become the “vegan James Dean”—a star even better remembered in death than in life, a potent symbol of youthful talent and beauty snuffed out at an early age. Instead, he faded in people’s memories.

Partially, this is because of the idiosyncrasies of River’s filmography: of his four great films, two (
Dogfight, Running on Empty
) are basically forgotten, while
My Own Private Idaho
is well-regarded but rarely seen (there’s no easy way to edit it down to make it palatable on basic cable).
Stand by Me
has become an enduring classic, but River was so young in the movie, it can be hard to connect his performance to the man he became.

The other reason River didn’t become more iconic in death: on April 5, 1994, only five months after River died, Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head and became the symbol of snuffed potential. Apparently the nineties had room for only one angel-faced blond boy, too pained by the world to live in it.

Ever since River died, his absence has reverberated through Hollywood, and not just in growing awareness of veganism and rain forests. Leonardo DiCaprio played so many parts that River originally intended to do, it’s hard not to wonder which roles River might have beaten him out for, had he stayed alive and healthy. Steven Spielberg commented, “When I finally worked with Leonardo DiCaprio on
Catch Me If You Can,
he reminded me of River. Not only do they look alike, their approach to acting, to their art, is very similar.” Would River have starred in
Titanic,
and found himself transformed into a global superstar? Might he have one day vanished into the role of a plantation owner for
Django Unchained?
Would River and DiCaprio have acted opposite each other as doppelgangers in
The Departed?

Or perhaps River and Van Sant would have forged a long-term collaboration, the way DiCaprio did with Martin Scorsese and Depp did with Tim Burton. As it happened, the first film Van Sant made after River died was
To Die For,
which featured Joaquin in his breakout role (a disturbed teen who is seduced by a local newscaster and gulled into killing her husband). It was Joaquin’s first movie in six years; he had been spending a lot of time with his father in Costa Rica, but after River’s death, he found himself thrust into his brother’s role as the family breadwinner, if not its missionary.

While Joaquin chose different roles than his brother probably would have—based on their physical types, if nothing else—his career successfully balanced art films (
The Master
) with popcorn movies (
Gladiator
), a path that River had tried to walk himself. The movie that obviously echoed Joaquin’s own life was
Walk the Line:
he played country singer Johnny Cash, who saw his beloved brother die in front of him. But the film that actually seems to draw from the Phoenix family’s experience is
I’m Still Here,
the fake documentary Joaquin made with his brother-in-law Casey Affleck (his
To Die For
costar, who married his sister Summer) and released in 2010 to general confusion.

River never had a ludicrous beard or a meltdown on David Letterman, but like Joaquin in
I’m Still Here,
he chafed at the self-important rituals of the acting life, and wanted to trade it all in for music (Joaquin’s version of this impulse in
I’m Still Here
was making a rap album). The movie begins with all five Phoenix children performing on the streets of Los Angeles and ends with a choice that River never made, although Costa Rica was open to him: leaving the United States behind and heading into the jungle.

River had a boyish face—and not just because he made the majority of his movies when he was a teenager. Leonardo DiCaprio has maintained the same youthful quality as an adult, giving the impression of having baby fat, even in his late thirties. That look was ascendant in the early nineties, as teenage pinups reliably turned into movie stars. Nineteen ninety-seven proved to be a watershed year for the look: it was when
L.A. Confidential
came out, making a leading man out of Russell Crowe, who was praised as a sweaty Australian throwback to an era of real men, not a pretty boy like DiCaprio, Depp, or Jared Leto. The praise was often couched as a commercial analysis—where would Hollywood find its new leading men and action heroes?—but had a whiff of homophobia to it nevertheless.

Film actors know that youthful glamour will fade—there’s a reason that Hollywood plastic surgeons stay busy. River couldn’t have predicted that at age twenty-seven, his physical appearance would be going out of fashion. If he had maintained his acting at a high level, however, his talent and star power would likely have trumped the zeitgeist.

If he had triumphed over his addiction-prone genes, River would have celebrated his forty-third birthday in August 2013. It’s not hard to imagine him as an actor with dozens of movies of all stripes behind him, a powerful performer in full command of his craft. Sluizer said, “His heart went a little more to music than acting, but probably he was more gifted as an actor. He was an actor who had so much appeal for an audience, film would have carried him on.”