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 tog
ether.”
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.
72
YOUNG HOLLYWOOD 1993
For his Idaho follow-up, Gus Van Sant was offered the job of directing a movie about famed gay politician Harvey Milk, with Oliver Stone producing and Robin Williams starring. He spent a year working on the project, but instead made Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, an adaptation of the cult Tom Robbins novel about a girl with abnormally large thumbs (played by Uma Thurman). Reeves played her husband, a repressed Mohawk named Julian Gitche; Rain Phoenix also appeared as the sexually liberated cowgirl Bonanza Jellybean. The film debuted to widespread critical derision. (It was rumored that River made a cameo, but Van Sant insisted not.) Later in the year, Reeves started filming Speed, everybody’s favorite bus-that-can’t-slow-down-because-there’s-a-bomb-strapped-to-it movie, costarring with Sandra Bullock; it would prove to be an enormous, star-making hit for both of them.
Leonardo DiCaprio was handpicked by Robert De Niro and director Michael Caton-Jones to play De Niro’s stepson in This Boy’s Life, a drama about an abusive family. Critics raved that DiCaprio gave as good as he got from De Niro; the New York Daily News called it “the breakthrough performance of the decade.” (And although the decade wasn’t even half done, they were probably right.)
DiCaprio then teamed up with Johnny Depp: they played brothers in the moving, off-kilter Lasse Hallström drama What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Depp starred as Gilbert, stuck in a small town caring for his family, which includes his five-hundred-pound mother and his mentally impaired brother (DiCaprio, in a great performance). DiCaprio had been offered a part in Hocus Pocus, a forgettable comedy with Bette Midler, Rosie O’Donnell, and Sarah Jessica Parker as a family of witches. “I knew it was awful,” DiCaprio said, “but it was just like, ‘OK, they’re offering me more and more money. Isn’t that what you do? You do movies and you get more money.’ But something inside me kept saying, ‘Don’t do this movie.’ ” All of his advisers were telling him to take the job, but he decided to audition for Gilbert Grape instead. Artistic virtue was rewarded when he received an Oscar nomination for his work on the movie.
Depp had largely put his career on hold the previous two years while Winona Ryder worked almost continuously, but he knew they were growing apart; they broke up in May, right after Gilbert Grape wrapped. “Johnny was pretty unhappy then,” Depp said of the Gilbert Grape shoot. Mercifully switching to the first person, he continued, “I was poisoning myself beyond belief. There was a lot of liquor, a lot of liquor. I was in a pretty unhealthy state.”
He did find solace during the shoot by attending a Neil Young show, where he met and befriended Gibby Haynes; the Butthole Surfers had recently released their sixth album, Independent Worm Saloon. For fun, Haynes and Depp started a new band together. Called P (“spelled u-r-i-n-e,” Depp helpfully explained), the band also included songwriter Bill Carter and Depp’s close friend Sal Jenco. They mostly played sloppy, squalling rock with a sense of humor, as in their cover of Daniel Johnston’s “I Save Cigarette Butts.”
Brad Pitt followed up on his success in A River Runs Through It (the Los Angeles Times called his performance “career-making”) by scuffing up his wholesome blond image. He and his then-girlfriend Juliette Lewis starred in the serial-killer drama Kalifornia (she would make a more successful version of the same movie the following year with Natural Born Killers). He also had a small role in True Romance (directed by Tony Scott, written by Quentin Tarantino) as a metal-head couch potato, getting stoned from a honey-bear bong, unfazed by the appearance of gangsters with shotguns. Christian Slater starred as the comic-book clerk who marries a hooker named Alabama (Patricia Arquette), kills her pimp, and heads to California with a bag full of uncut cocaine.
R.E.M. was still releasing singles off the massively successful Automatic for the People, generally regarded as the best album the band ever made. Michael Stipe had stopped giving interviews (guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills took care of that), but since he was interested in photography and filmmaking, he oversaw the band’s videos.
Martha Plimpton was working steadily in little-seen projects: the improvised film Chantilly Lace (on Showtime), the dystopic movie Daybreak (on HBO), and the child-runaway movie Josh and S.A.M. (a theatrical flop). Jerry O’Connell had slimmed down dramatically since his Stand by Me days, and began an adult leading-man career playing a one-legged character opposite Jason Priestley in the period film Calendar Girl, about three friends on a mission to meet Marilyn Monroe.
Ethan Hawke followed up his appearance in Alive (plane crash! cannibalism! survival!) by making Reality Bites, a Generation-X romantic comedy, opposite Winona Ryder and director Ben Stiller, that captured both the exciting and annoying aspects of discovering you’re part of a generation.
John Frusciante had abruptly quit the Red Hot Chili Peppers the year before—during a tour in Japan, he told them, “I can’t do this anymore. I will die if I don’t get out of this band right away.” Before he left, he had been getting sloppy and erratic. Kiedis said: “I don’t know if it was a combination of the wine and the pot, but it seemed like he was drinking psycho juice rather than just wine.” Frusciante flew back to California, where he was free to play guitar and ingest whatever he liked without worrying about the rest of the world.
Depp and Haynes made a twelve-minute experimental film about Frusciante, called Stuff. In it, the camera pinwheels around Frusciante’s home, showing guitars, sagging shelves of vinyl records, and debris on pretty much every flat surface. On the soundtrack, wheezing psychedelic music by Frusciante plays while the camera lingers on the walls of his home, covered with angry red scrawls of incoherent graffiti such as KILL PIGS BY LETTING THEM BECOME SHITS PEANUTS. The house is small enough that halfway through, the filmmakers just start repeating footage, which is perhaps more claustrophobic than intended. Somebody reads a poem on the soundtrack, and we finally see Frusciante—short hair, gray sweater, button-down shirt—and then LSD guru Timothy Leary, bald and in a psychedel
ic waistcoat. Surrounded by his clutter, Frusciante doesn’t look like he has any intention of ever leaving his house again.
73
TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT
There’s nothing in Hollywood so harrowing that it can’t be presented with artifice. A West Hollywood chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, held its meetings in a fake log cabin. River went to a couple of meetings, but he didn’t buy into the program, complaining, “I’m here because my manager and my publicist and my agent want me to be here. I drink and I do drugs, but I don’t have a problem.”
A British model/actor with the pseudonym of Cedric Niles had been holed up freebasing cocaine for two days straight—and then River showed up at his door, guided there by friends who knew they had shared interests. Niles didn’t immediately recognize River, and not just because he had spent the previous forty-eight hours freebasing. River “was wearing those flared-out hippie pants and one of those hooded Mexican shirts” and no shoes. River had grown his hair long again; he kept it hanging over his face.
The two of them smoked their way through River’s ample stash of cocaine, and then went wandering down Melrose Avenue, barefoot, looking for a guitar. Over the following two weeks, they kept getting high. River told Niles the password that would get phone calls put through to his room at the upscale St. James’s Club & Hotel: “Earl Grey.”
Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind Page 18