Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind (19 page)

70

MANY RIVERS TO CROSS

River started meeting with John Boorman, the British director of
Point Blank, Deliverance,
and
Excalibur
. Back in 1979, Boorman and Irish director Neil Jordan had written a science-fiction script called
Broken Dream,
and had been trying to get it made ever since. River agreed to play Ben, a magician in a dystopic world—Ben’s father teaches him to make things (and ultimately people) vanish. Winona Ryder signed on as well, and when Jordan had a big hit with
The Crying Game
in October 1992, it looked like the movie was finally happening. But then—in a common film-world setback—the funding collapsed and the project was shelved. (Two decades later, in 2012, Boorman announced the revival of the project with Ben Kingsley, John Hurt, and Caleb Landry Jones—although a year later, there appeared to be no forward motion, meaning the
Broken Dream
clock had been running for over thirty-four years.)

“I met with River a few times,” Boorman said. “He was streetwise, but at the same time, there was this fragility about him. You felt that somehow he had to be protected.”

German director Volker Schlöndorff (
The Tin Drum, The Handmaid’s Tale
) wanted River to star in the film version of Christopher Hampton’s play
Total Eclipse
as Arthur Rimbaud, the enfant terrible of nineteenth-century French poetry. As a teen, Rimbaud famously had a torrid affair with the older French poet Paul Verlaine, which ended when Verlaine shot him in the wrist. Rimbaud, ravenous for all forms of human experience, did his most famous work (“Le Bateau ivre” (“The Drunken Boat”) and
Une Saison en Enfer
(
A Season in Hell
)) before the age of nineteen, when he renounced poetry.

One hundred and one years after Rimbaud’s death, River felt so deeply connected to him that he started carrying around a copy of
Time of the Assassins,
Henry Miller’s biography of the poet. He obsessively found connections between his own life and Rimbaud’s and would quote key passages from Miller’s book to friends.

Time of the Assassins
portrayed the artist as the most exalted and the most wretched creature on earth: “Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone.”

For River to discover himself in Rimbaud’s life and Miller’s prose was simultaneously self-aggrandizing and self-pitying. Tellingly, he was more interested in Miller’s book than in Rimbaud’s actual writing: he responded to Rimbaud not as a poet, but as a symbol.

John Malkovich signed on as Verlaine. While River waited for the project to come together—for any project to come together—he stayed in L.A. and kept partying. Solgot thought of Los Angeles as the poisoned wellspring of River’s drug problems; too many people there were eager to supply him with whatever substance he desired. The couple’s relationship was undergoing tremors as two tectonic plates ground against each other: River’s drug use and his denial of the idea that it was a problem. “He didn’t want me nagging him,” Solgot said. “Pointing out the contradictions between his public stands and what he was doing to his body.”

“He was hanging around with people who didn’t really care about him,” said Louanne Sirota, who had acted with him in
Jimmy Reardon
and
Seven Brides.
“I know he was hanging around with a couple of English dudes that couldn’t have given a shit about who he was, as far as a human being goes; they were about as shallow as a two-foot pool.”

At a 1992 wedding, River’s decline was obvious to everyone in attendance. “It was a formal affair,” said one of the guests. “Even the Chili Peppers were wearing cheesy seventies tuxedos. But River arrived at 9:30
A.M.
, drinking a bottle of wine, dressed in sneakers, a pair of shaggy, ripped shorts, and a dirty T-shirt. People were angry with him.”

Martha Plimpton would sometimes talk with River on the phone, but “his language had become at times totally incoherent,” she said. “He’d often be high when he called, and I’d listen for twenty minutes to his jumbled, made-up words, his own logic, and not know what the fuck he was talking about. He’d say, ‘You’re just not listening carefully enough.’ ”

River was not blind to addiction—he personally drove a rock-star guitarist friend to rehab. Twice. And he knew that his consumption of hard drugs was not congruent with his tree-hugging image, even wondering aloud, “What would those twelve-year-old girls with a picture of me over their bed think if they knew?” But that didn’t mean he would actually admit he had a problem.

“He fooled a lot of people and he fooled himself,” Solgot said. “He was a great actor.”

Paul Petersen, a former Mouseketeer and star of
The Donna Reed Show,
had started a support organization for former child stars, called A Minor Concern. In mid-1992, he got “a frantic phone call from a journalist pal who saw River and five other young actors shooting up in the bathroom of the Roxy,” he said. The Roxy was a storied rock club on the Sunset Strip, a quarter mile from the Viper Room’s future location.

Believing strongly in the power of intervention, Petersen gathered a medical doctor and another former child star, and went to visit River in his hotel room.

River opened the door a crack, but wouldn’t let them in. He told them that the Roxy story was a lie, declaring, “I don’t even eat meat.” (True, but a non sequitur.)

“He was in heavy denial and obviously loaded,” Petersen remembered.

“I don’t need your help,” River told them. And then he shut the door.

71

THE LAST PICTURE

In an effort to get her top-earning slice of filet mignon working again, Iris Burton sent River the screenplay for
The Thing Called Love,
a tale of romance among aspiring singer/songwriters in Nashville.

A few days later, River called her back. “This script really isn’t ready at all,” he chided her.

Burton agreed, but said that she was confident it would be whipped into shape, since the director was Peter Bogdanovich. River, however, had no idea who that was.

In the late sixties, Peter Bogdanovich had turned his autodidactic film obsession into a career as a movie director—much like Quentin Tarantino two decades later, except Bogdanovich’s training ground was programming the film series at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, not working behind the counter at the Video Archives video-rental store in Manhattan Beach. After filming two movies for low-budget schlockmeister Roger Corman, Bogdanovich made his masterpiece in 1971:
The Last Picture Show
was an elegiac black-and-white picture about coming of age in a dying Texas town. Bogdanovich was nominated for two Oscars, and left his wife (editor Polly Platt) for his star, Cybill Shepherd. His movies after that included
Paper Moon
and
Mask,
but he entered into a long, slow artistic decline. He became most famous for dating Playmate Dorothy Stratten—and then, after she was brutally murdered by her ex, marrying her younger sister, Louise.

Burton told River to go to the video store and rent
The Last Picture Show
. He did, and was blown away; he told Burton he wanted to make a movie with “the guy who directed that picture.”

“Iris had called in every favor she had to secure River the lead,” her assistant, Chris Snyder, said. The studio, Paramount, would have preferred meathead country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who was enjoying blockbuster success with his debut album,
Some Gave All,
and the single “Achy Breaky Heart.” (He would later be famous as the father of Disney starlet Miley Cyrus.) But Bogdanovich got on the phone with River and asked him how he would convey the dangerous qualities of the male lead, James.

River paused, and then said, “Silence.”

Duly impressed, Bogdanovich hired River (who was paid $1.5 million), although he didn’t meet him until filming started, a month later. Before he showed up, River offered his advice on casting, recommending Dermot Mulroney (whom he knew from
Silent Tongue
) for his romantic rival and Anthony Clark (a
Dogfight
costar) for the ensemble. Impressed by his instincts, and by how River was considering the big picture, Bogdanovich said he “increasingly wanted him involved in all script conferences, all writing sessions, all music discussions.”

Clark noted, “It’s one thing to be the star and carry a motion picture, but he wanted to write the music, perform the music, and be in on the decision making.”

When Bogdanovich told River that he should be a director, River confided that he had been thinking about it. “Well, be sure and cast me, will ya?” Bogdanovich joked. Bogdanovich asked River how he became interested in show business; River told him a tale about how his mother had read stories to him as a kid. He had liked that, he said, so now he liked being part of a bigger story.

The bigger story in this movie was the young musician Miranda Presley (played by Samantha Mathis) moving to Nashville to make it as a singer/songwriter, and having two rival singers (River and Mulroney) compete for her heart. K. T. Oslin played the owner of the Bluebird Café, where Miranda gets a waitress job, and Sandra Bullock played her roommate, long on spunk and short on talent. (The energetic Bullock ended up stealing the movie.)

Shooting began, and things quickly went awry. Iris Burton got panicked phone calls from the film’s producer, John Davis; Bogdanovich; and an array of Paramount execs. Davis sent her a VHS tape of River’s dailies, and the problem became clear:

The first take was River opening the door to a truck. Instead of walking to his mark, he stumbled and almost fell. His face was ghastly white and his blond hair, freshly dyed black, was slicked back. He looked awful . . .

River did his scenes over and over. His eyes were unfocused. He mumbled his lines into the ground, not looking at the other actors or the camera. In an hour of dailies, there wasn’t one good scene. Even after twenty takes he never managed to get it right.

According to Bogdanovich, on the night of the truck scene, “River was wandering around the parking lot, looking forlorn and agitated.” The director asked his star if he had been using drugs; River said that he had taken a pain pill and drunk a beer, and the two weren’t interacting well. Bogdanovich then asked him about his behavior; Mathis had complained that he was being rude to her. A contrite River said that he was just trying to get into the head of James Wright, his hard-edged character. Bogdanovich quoted a maxim from legendary Method acting teacher Stella Adler: “To play dead, darling, you don’t have to die!”

River told him that he thought that James had “been into drugs,” which had made him “a bit of a bastard.” When Bogdanovich encouraged him to downplay that aspect of the character, River blithely assured him that he didn’t have “a problem with drugs”—he was just figuring out James.

Bogdanovich would later minimize River’s troubles that night and insist that he “didn’t cause me another problem on the entire picture.” But the situation was deemed serious enough that Burton flew out to Nashville, to her great displeasure (“What am I supposed to do? Give him a spanking?”). Nobody else was willing to confront River, including Heart—who was not only his mother, but also still his manager.

In Nashville, Bogdanovich told Burton that the studio was freaking out because they didn’t understand the role River was playing. When she spoke with River, he sobbed in her arms, swearing that he didn’t do drugs and blaming the punishing production schedule. She stayed in Nashville to make sure there would be no more lapses on her client’s part.

River confessed to Bogdanovich that Solgot had recently told him that she had cheated on him during his long absence from Florida. He acknowledged that he hadn’t been faithful himself, and that his behavior might have prompted her dalliance—which didn’t lessen its sting. He then proceeded to argue the case from her perspective, conceding that cheating might be a defense mechanism that let her feel in control of the situation.

At the same time, River was nursing a crush on Mathis, counting the days until their first kissing scene. The night they shot it, River told Bogdanovich to make sure the camera was fully loaded with film, because it was going to be a long kiss. He then proceeded to list the things he wanted to do with Mathis, itemizing the parts of her body he wanted to kiss.

They shot about seven takes, all of them steamy. “Samantha managed a pretty impassive, professional look between takes,” Bogdanovich said, “while River just loudly asked for ‘another one—we need another one, don’t you think, Peter?’ Samantha laughed.”

Mathis had been dating actor/comic John Leguizamo (they had been in the
Super Mario Bros.
movie together); he came to visit her in Nashville, but stayed only one day. Mathis broke up with him, and she and River became a couple.

Samantha Mathis grew up in Brooklyn, the daughter of actress Bibi Besch, who appeared in various soap operas but was perhaps best known for her role in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
as Carol Marcus, the mother of Captain Kirk’s son. Besch discouraged her daughter from following in her footsteps, even bringing her to work for a 4:30
A.M.
call time in the hope that the predawn work hours would dissuade her, but Mathis persisted. At age twenty, she had a memorable role opposite Christian Slater in the pirate-radio movie
Pump Up the Volume
(she dated Slater, too); two years later, she was playing the central character in
The Thing Called Love
.

River wrestled over the script with Allan Moyle, the writer/director of
Pump Up the Volume,
who had been brought on the set to punch up the
Thing Called Love
screenplay. “River was determined to keep his character from being bubblegum and easily figured out,” Moyle said. “Unfortunately, one of my jobs as a ghostwriter was to make him accessible.” River was also campaigning to write his own songs for the movie, but the studio approved just one, “Lone Star State of Mine.”

Moyle was planning a remake of the 1966 British film
Morgan—A Suitable Case for Treatment
(aka
Morgan!
), about a husband who responds to his divorce with ill-advised stunts such as crashing his ex-wife’s wedding while wearing a gorilla suit. As Moyle got to know River better, he thought he might be perfect for the manic, unbalanced title role. River affected apathy when Moyle pitched him, but a few days later, when they were alone in his trailer, he gave a command performance as Morgan.

“River’s face was contorted like a demented gorilla,” recalled Moyle. “I was awed and shocked by his transformation. He was hooting and pogoing and swinging wildly and dangerously and trashing everything in sight.” River was pure simian for thirty seconds—and then he stopped. He never repeated the performance, even when Moyle begged him.

River’s best acting on
The Thing Called Love
may have been convincing his fellow filmmakers that he had everything under control. Clark said, “I knew maybe there were problems with . . . I didn’t really know what . . . I was scared to even ask, because a few times I did talk to him about his intense situation with alcohol. I brought it up, but he was such a great actor that he would make you feel crazy for even asking him, ‘Is everything all right?’ And I wish to God that I could have stepped in and intervened, but he just seemed so incredibly together.”

The shoot moved cross-country to finish at the Disney-owned Golden Oak Ranch, north of Los Angeles. River told Bogdanovich that he didn’t care for L.A., confessing that it was a bad influence on him. Burton accompanied River back from Nashville, but he insisted on wearing a black ski mask the entire way. She was embarrassed, but pretended everything was normal.

Heart came to watch over River for the rest of the shoot; she was beginning to realize that her eldest child might have a problem. She didn’t force the issue—either because she didn’t believe the situation was that serious, or because she was avoiding conflict with her son (and management client). Burton’s assistant, Chris Snyder, lamented, “No one wanted to confront him—not even his own mother.”

The shoot concluded; River and Mathis paid for a wrap party at a Japanese karaoke club with a leaky roof. When the movie was cut together, the fact that everyone had attempted to ignore was on the screen, undeniable: River was in bad shape. He gave a sullen, distant performance, looking like a coke dealer and sulking his way through every scene.

The Thing Called Love
received a minimal release; after River’s death, critic Roger Ebert accurately described the movie as “a painful experience for anyone who remembers him in good health. He looks ill—thin, sallow, listless. His eyes are directed mostly at the ground. He cannot meet the camera, or the eyes of the other actors. It is sometimes difficult to understand his dialogue. Even worse, there is no energy in the dialogue, no conviction that he cares about what he is saying.”

Ebert allowed that the filmmakers might have convinced themselves that River was giving a Brandoesque performance, one that would blossom on-screen. His final judgment, however, was that “the world was shocked when River Phoenix overdosed, but the people working on this film should not have been . . . this performance should have been seen by someone as a cry for help.”

The rest of the film had virtues and flaws, but they hardly mattered when the male lead was wasting away before the audience’s eyes, turning into a shadow of himself.