Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind

by Edwards, Gavin

  After a lifetime of providing for his family and being anointed as the savior of the planet, River had given himself an extended vacation from responsibility—a delayed childhood, but with adult vices. If it had gotten out of control, that didn’t mean he was on an inevitable junkie journey to a young death. River had spent some time wandering around, but he was ready to come out of the desert.

  At the end of Dark Blood, Boy lies dead, a victim of his own obsession and of a money-counting representative of Hollywood wielding an ax. The house he built with love and care is in flames, burning bright as the picture fades to black.

  EPILOGUE

  When River died, in 1993, the rules of Hollywood and pop culture were in flux: what was once marginal and avant-garde had become wildly successful and commercial.

  In 1995, Leonardo DiCaprio appeared in two movies that had been attached to River: Total Eclipse and The Basketball Diaries. After burnishing his reputation with Baz Luhrmann’s hit version of Romeo + Juliet, DiCaprio became one of the most famous people in the world by starring in Titanic, the first movie ever to gross a billion dollars at the box office. As DiCaprio grew into baby-faced adulthood, the Hollywood studios sussed out the new terrain of commercial movies, and became steadily more reliant on “tentpole” series, comic-book movies, and other entertainments squarely aimed at male teenagers. DiCaprio sidestepped them, specializing in classy big-budget movies that assumed the audience had something resembling an attention span: Catch Me If You Can, Inception, Django Unchained, The Great Gatsby. He also achieved his boyhood dream of working with Martin Scorsese, the two of them making four films together (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island). DiCaprio had the true measure of Hollywood power: the de facto ability to green-light any movie he wanted. As Jeff Robinov, president of the Warner Bros. movie division, said, “I don’t know of a movie that Leo wanted to make that hasn’t been made.”

  Sean Astin took over the Safe Passage role that River never played, and then kept working steadily. His role as Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) let him continue his habit of starring in one iconic film project every decade, following The Goonies in 1985 and Rudy in 1993. After pinch-hitting for River in Interview with the Vampire, Christian Slater appeared in nearly fifty movies over the following twenty years, some successful, many totally obscure. There appeared to be no unifying theme or purpose to them other than Slater’s name usually being above the title.

  Ethan Hawke, along with director Richard Linklater and actress Julie Delpy, made a sublime trilogy of relationship dramas across eighteen years: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. “Shit, man, this might be our life’s work,” Hawke said. He also wrote two novels, was nominated for an Academy Award for playing a rookie cop opposite Denzel Washington in Training Day, had impressive stage turns at Lincoln Center in Shakespeare and Stoppard plays, and, despite his best efforts to avoid publicity in the tabloids, received saturation coverage when his marriage to Uma Thurman broke up. Across the decades, he remained committed to the artistic ideals that he was formulating when he was a teen acting opposite River in Explorers: “Theater is not a stepping stone,” he said. “Independent cinema is not a stepping-stone. I bump into a lot of young actors who are interested in it as a stepping-stone, and it really pisses me off. Big movies aren’t a stepping-stone to another movie. Do what you’re doing. You are your actions, and thinking motivates your actions. That’s why you have to be so careful what you think about.”

  Michael J. Fox followed his eight seasons on Family Ties with four on the political sitcom Spin City, leaving the show in 2000 when his Parkinson’s disease worsened. Through talent and force of will, Tom Cruise remained one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, starring in Jerry Maguire, Eyes Wide Shut, and the Mission: Impossible films, to name a few. He continued to approach his career like a military strategist, but as his box-office returns declined, his support of Scientology became more vocal. He also jumped up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s couch.

  Gus Van Sant had a breakthrough hit in 1997 when he directed Good Will Hunting, the film written by and starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The year after that, Van Sant made his biggest career misstep: the remake of Psycho starring Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, and Anne Heche. Since then, he has careened from classy commercial films (Finding Forrester, Milk) to experimental cinema, sometimes starring amateur actors (Gerry, Elephant). “I’ve always held on to the idea that with any setting and character, if you execute the film correctly, and it’s an enthralling movie experience, that the rest would just fall into place, that the setting and character won’t matter,” he said, looking back at his career. “Now I’m realizing that there are other ways to think about what you’re doing, other more accommodating ways to think about what subjects you’re choosing. To be less defiant makes more sense now than it did before.”

  William Richert never directed another studio film after A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, although he did helm a low-budget version of The Man in the Iron Mask. He also sued the Writers Guild of America for credit on the movie The American President and the TV show The West Wing, unsuccessfully arguing that Aaron Sorkin had drawn on a screenplay of his called The President Elopes.

  Wil Wheaton matured into a geek icon, writing a popular blog and several volumes of memoirs. He also played a vindictive version of himself in a recurring role on The Big Bang Theory. Corey Feldman battled his addictions and became most prominent as a generic celebrity on reality shows such as The Surreal Life. Jerry O’Connell dropped a lot of weight, became a regular on the TV show Sliders, and married Rebecca Romijn.

  The Butthole Surfers had a name so obscene they were sometimes referred to as the “Buttonhole Surfers” by squeamish newspapers, but in 1996, they had a bona fide hit single, proving that the music-world rulebook had been discarded. The slurry, hypnotic “Pepper,” with a refrain of “pouring like an avalanche / coming down the mountain,” received substantial pop airplay and hit number one on Billboard’s Hot Modern Rock Tracks. After that hit, and an extended dispute with their record label, the Surfers released just one more album.

  The Red Hot Chili Peppers replaced guitarist John Frusciante with Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction; he lasted for one album, the successful yet not well-liked One Hot Minute. After the other band members parted ways with Navarro, they recruited a cleaned-up Frusciante to rejoin the group. Frusciante bore the marks of his addiction: his arms were covered with abscesses, making them look as if they had been badly burned. (He was taught to shoot up by people who didn’t really know how, and the abscesses didn’t deter him from his habit.) “I love everything that I felt on drugs, but I can do more justice to those feelings by trying to re-create them with my music,” he said. “A couple of years ago, I could only make people feel sad. That was the only ability I had. So it means everything to me to be able to sit down and sing and play guitar and make whoever I’m with feel good.” Frusciante made three more albums with the Peppers—Californication, By the Way, and Stadium Arcadium—before quitting the band again. When the group went on hiatus, Flea played in various side projects (including Atoms for Peace with Radiohead singer Thom Yorke) and went back to school to study music composition.

  Brad Pitt was at the apex of the most famous love triangle of the twenty-first century, dropping Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie in what became a multiyear tabloid theatrical. He seemed like the least interesting member of that threesome—for the story to have legs, Pitt needed to be portrayed as lacking agency, to be terrain fought over by two women rather than an adult making decisions. The hubbub obscured that Pitt was staying on top of Hollywood while making a minimal number of popcorn movies. His performances weren’t eccentric or flashy. Pitt’s preferred MO was to serve as an engaging, upright presence in what turned out to be a darker, weirder movie than audiences might have expected: Fight Club, Inglorious Basterds, Babel, Burn After Reading.

  Aside from hanging out at the Vip
er Room, Samantha Mathis was a working actress, with credits ranging from American Psycho to Curb Your Enthusiasm. Suzanne Solgot studied belly dancing, got married, and had two kids. She practiced alternative healing, employing massage and the Reiki technique. Martha Plimpton shuttled between the stage, movies, and TV, before anchoring the Fox sitcom Raising Hope as a scabrous grandmother. “It’s a crazy thing, you know, when kids become actors,” she said, looking back. “Very often, their parents or whoever aren’t interested in what their kids are learning while they’re doing it. They’re interested in what their kids are getting . . . Cuteness doesn’t last.”

  R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry had a brain aneurysm onstage in Switzerland in 1995, and quit the band two years later; after some soul-searching, the other three members continued without him. R.E.M. released seven studio albums between River’s death in 1993 and the band’s dissolution in 2011—their sales gradually diminished (as they did for just about everybody in the music business), but most of the albums were pretty great.

  Before he died, River introduced Michael Stipe to Sandy Stern, who had produced Mathis’s film Pump Up the Volume. Stern and Stipe became partners in Single Cell Pictures, and produced some excellent left-of-center movies, including Being John Malkovich, Velvet Goldmine, and Saved! Stipe spent more time in Los Angeles, and on R.E.M.’s 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi, sang the gorgeous, elegiac “Electrolite,” about standing in the Hollywood Hills gazing at the twinkling nighttime lights of L.A. “Twentieth century go to sleep,” he sang, in a loving elegy for show business, and for the whole world. “Stand on a cliff and look down there / Don’t be scared / You are alive,” he counseled, echoing River’s monologue when he stood over the foggy ravine outside William Richert’s house.

  After an extended separation, John and Heart Phoenix officially split up about three years after River died. John returned to Florida and worked as an organic farmer, while Heart married Jeffrey Weisberg. She also led gender workshops and eventually founded the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding. River’s sister Liberty worked at the River Phoenix Center as office manager, taught midwifery, worked as a Realtor, and, after the tragic death of a young son that she attributed to toxic outgassing, opened the nontoxic Indigo Green Building Supply Store.

  Summer Phoenix told a British newspaper that changing the world had gone by the wayside for her. “Nah, it’s not about that now,” she said. “Now I just want to act.” Summer appeared in a dozen movies through 2004, plus nearly as many TV roles, but stopped acting after she became a mother; she and her husband, actor/director Casey Affleck, had two sons and she opened a vintage store called Some Odd Rubies.

  Rain Phoenix starred in the video for R.E.M.’s “At My Most Beautiful,” playing a harried cellist auditioning for the band. She also toured with the Red Hot Chili Peppers as a backing vocalist on the tour for One Hot Minute, and had her own band, called Papercranes. For a while, all three Phoenix sisters were members of a new-wave band called the Causey Way. The group’s gimmick: a (fictional) cult that decided to spread the word through music.

  “Of course there is a sadness with not seeing him in the physical world, but everything I do, he is part of,” Rain said of River. “Through my music, I am forever able to stay connected to my brother. We are always infinitely collaborating in spirit.”

  Joaquin Phoenix became one of the most intense actors in film, receiving Oscar nominations for his glowering performances in Gladiator, Walk the Line, and The Master, despite expressing contempt for the Academy Awards and all they represented. “I think it’s total, utter bullshit, and I don’t want to be part of it,” he said. “It’s a carrot, but it’s the worst-tasting carrot I’ve ever tasted in my whole life.” Joaquin fiercely guarded his privacy but denied reports that he had a breakdown while filming the scene in Walk the Line where, playing Johnny Cash, he can’t prevent the death of his older brother. “I don’t need to pull from my experience for a character, and I’ve never understood why actors would, except for lack of ability, imagination, or research,” he said. “Suggesting that I would use this personal part of my life for a fucking movie . . . it kind of makes me sick.” He added: “The press has kind of imposed upon me the title of Mourning Brother, and because I haven’t been vocal about it, the assumption is that I’m holding on to this shit that’s just not there.”

  Johnny Depp maintained his alliance with Tim Burton; after Edward Scissorhands, they made six more films together, from Ed Wood to Dark Shadows. Aside from his work with Burton, Depp kept making anticommercial choices, playing a Victorian police inspector in From Hell with Albert and Allan Hughes, a fugitive accountant in Dead Man with Jim Jarmusch, and a jailed transvestite in Before Night Falls with Julian Schnabel. In 2003, he had an antic turn as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, basing his performance on Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew. After the movie became a surprise blockbuster, finally elevating Depp to the top of Hollywood’s A-list, he made three sequels and cashed a check for playing opposite Angelina Jolie in the international thriller The Tourist. But he maintained his status as the major star most willing to put on his crazy hat for movies—literally, with his role as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.

  “I don’t think anybody’s necessarily ready for death,” Depp reflected. “You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you’ve said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to everyone who helped with this book, or who just made the world a better place during those interludes when I came up for air. When you’re on an overcaffeinated book-writing odyssey, you want excellent people to be in the boat with you, in case it takes ten years to get back to Ithaca.

  I am extremely lucky to be working with the brilliant editor Carrie Thornton, who is filled with wisdom and talent the way a Russian nesting doll is filled with more nesting dolls. Thanks to all her fellow superstars at It Books, especially Kevin Callahan (whose enthusiasm made this book possible), Brittany Hamblin, Heidi Lewis, Julia Meltzer, Trina Hunn, Elissa Cohen, Shannon Plunkett, Cal Morgan, and Lynn Grady. Thanks also to Laura Wyss and Martin Karlow. And a special salute to Amanda Kain, who designed the beautiful cover of this book before I finished writing it. On more than one late night, the cover was highly motivating: I wanted to write a book that would live up to it.

  My agent, Daniel Greenberg, routinely brings keen intelligence, good humor, and elite ninja skills to bear on my behalf: a thousand thank-yous to him and his associates at Levine Greenberg, especially Monika Verma and Tim Wojcik.

  In the Venn diagram with two circles, one of which is “awesome people” and the other is “my friends,” I am extremely fortunate that they have such a huge overlapping area. I am particularly in the debt of four people who read this book when it was just a raw manuscript; all provided sage counsel and useful reality checks. Bill Tipper is the guy you want by your side when you’re on top of a mountain (and not just because he brings snacks). Steve Crystal is formerly my roommate, currently a Hollywood power player, and always a mensch. Nina Blackwood is a VJ goddess and one of the kindest people I know. Rob Sheffield is my friend, my inspiration, and a man who can lead a crowd of strangers in a sing-along version of “Build Me Up Buttercup.”

  Thank you, Julie Farman, for your essential assistance in locating celebrities and their publicists. Thank you, Molly Ker Hawn, for your invaluable genealogy skills. Thank you, Abby Royle, for crackerjack transcription. Thank you, Tim Atkinson, for letting me drag you out to the Viper Room when you were in town to hang with Lemmy. Thank you, Marjorie Ingall, for timely Sassy help. Thank you, Katie Hollander, for your talented navigation of the art world.

  Thank you for your help, guidance, and courtesy, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Diedrich Bader, Rob Brunner, Steve Crystal, Flea, Stacey Grenrock-Woods, Sal Jenco, Melissa Maerz, Morgan Neville, Eddie Schmidt, John Vlautin, Marc Weidenbaum, Hillary Wendroff, and Moon Zappa. And an extra-spec
ial thanks to Sebastian Bach.

  I am full of gratitude to everyone who consented to an interview with me, some in recent months, some years before I knew I was going to write this book: Richmond Arquette, Gus Brandt, Kim Buie, Johnny Depp, Joe Dolce, John Frusciante, Ethan Hawke, Rose McGowan, Frank Meyer, Heart Phoenix, William Richert, Ione Skye, George Sluizer, and anonymous sources.

  I spent most of the nineties working at Details, which proved to be the best possible training ground I could have hoped for. This book has let me revisit that era, so I want to salute all my twelfth-floor coworkers who inspired me, then and now, especially James Truman, David Keeps, Joe Levy, Joe Dolce, Michael Caruso, John Leland, Pat Blashill, Caren Myers, Michael Dolan, Jeanie Pyun, Tommy Dunne, Ilsa Enomoto, Lisa Steinmeyer, B. W. Honeycutt, Lisa Murray, Markus Kiersztan, Francesca Castagnoli, Rob Tannenbaum, William Shaw, Mim Udovitch, and Chris Heath.

  My Rolling Stone colleagues are basically the Avengers of the magazine world, and I’m always psyched to get into the quinjet with them. I am in awe of the superpowers of Will Dana, Nathan Brackett, Sean Woods, Jonathan Ringen, Peter Travers, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Christian Hoard, Andy Greene, Alison Weinflash, Coco McPherson, Jodi Peckman, Jason Fine, and the god of thunder, Jann Wenner.

  In New York, I salute James Hannaham, Brendan Moroney, Brian Smith-Sweeney, Sabrina Smith-Sweeney, Emily Nussbaum, Clive Thompson, Chris Kalb, Ben Smith, and Chris Molanphy; in Los Angeles, David Handelman, Syd Sidner, Leah Lehmbeck, Jason Lehmbeck, Nettie Neville, Philip Farha, Meryl Emmerton, Christine Street Gregg, David Gregg, Martha Quinn, Julie Heimark, Peter Heimark, Hillary Seitz, Brenna Sanchez, and Travis Barker; in Evanston, Megan Kashner, Trina Whittaker, Zane Kashner, and Tessa Kashner.