Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards Page B
Authors: Gavin Edwards
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newfound success: renting a twenty-acre ranch just outside San Diego.
Burton started to find work for the other Phoenix children. Leaf was part of an ensemble of kids in SpaceCamp —which flopped when audiences didn’t want to see a comic adventure about kids going into outer space only five months after the shuttle Challenger exploded and killed seven astronauts.
Leaf was also cast in Russkies, in the starring role of a Key West teen who captures a Soviet sailor. Summer played his little sister, edging out Liberty for the role. Meanwhile, Rainbow booked a small part in the Ally Sheedy comedy Maid to Order .
River took a paternal attitude toward his younger siblings, playing with them on the backyard trampoline and guiding them through Hollywood. He called them “my kids,” speaking of his time with the family as if he were returning from a war zone rather than a movie set: “That’s been a lot of fun, getting to know my kids.”
“His parents saw him as their savior,” Martha Plimpton observed. “And treated him like the father.”
River filmed one last TV movie, Circle of Violence: A Family Drama, about elder abuse. River played unruly teen Chris Benfield, whose mother (Tuesday Weld), unbeknownst to him, is mentally and physically torturing her own mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald). The project was unnotable except for a line of dialogue that River later nominated, tellingly, as the worst he ever had to say on camera: “It was something like, ‘Mom, why can’t we be like most families and get along?’ Like most families get along!”
28
MARTHA MY DEAR
“River went off to do The Mosquito Coast, and he came back with a girlfriend, Martha Plimpton,” Ione Skye remembered. “So I was kind of bummed.”
It wasn’t just jungle love—once River and Plimpton were back on American soil, the relationship only got more serious. One night, when they were fifteen, they were both in New York City, and they went out for a fancy dinner. (Foraging for mangoes on the beaches of Venezuela was only seven years in the past, but it must have seemed like another life to River.) Plimpton ordered soft-shell crabs.
A horrified River abruptly left the restaurant. When Plimpton followed him, she found him walking down Park Avenue, crying. “I love you so much—why?” he wept. He was devastated that she was eating animals, but even more, he was deeply wounded that he hadn’t been able to convince her that veganism was the better, more moral path.
“I loved him for that,” Plimpton said. “For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way.”
Plimpton stayed with the Phoenixes for a while. She said, “I love River’s family; they brought him up to believe he was a pure soul who had a message to deliver to the world. But in moving around all the time, changing schools, keeping to themselves, and distrusting America, they created this utopian bubble so that River was never socialized—he was never prepared for dealing with crowds and with Hollywood, for the world in which he’d have to deliver that message. And furthermore, when you’re fifteen, to have to think of yourself as a prophet is unfair.”
29
COMING-OF-AGE STORY
Every day, all over Hollywood, thousands of people have meetings where they hash out the details of movies, most of which will never get made. One afternoon in 1986, writer/director William Richert returned from yet another Hollywood lunch to his office on Sunset Boulevard. His secretary told him that River Phoenix was waiting to audition for him, for a project of Richert’s called Jimmy Reardon . There was industry buzz that River was excellent in Stand by Me, which hadn’t been released yet, but nobody in Richert’s office even knew how old he was: one person said twenty-five, while another said thirteen.
Richert went to his waiting room, where River was sitting in the shadows next to a potted plant. Then River stood up, “and he was completely surrounded by
Burton started to find work for the other Phoenix children. Leaf was part of an ensemble of kids in SpaceCamp —which flopped when audiences didn’t want to see a comic adventure about kids going into outer space only five months after the shuttle Challenger exploded and killed seven astronauts.
Leaf was also cast in Russkies, in the starring role of a Key West teen who captures a Soviet sailor. Summer played his little sister, edging out Liberty for the role. Meanwhile, Rainbow booked a small part in the Ally Sheedy comedy Maid to Order .
River took a paternal attitude toward his younger siblings, playing with them on the backyard trampoline and guiding them through Hollywood. He called them “my kids,” speaking of his time with the family as if he were returning from a war zone rather than a movie set: “That’s been a lot of fun, getting to know my kids.”
“His parents saw him as their savior,” Martha Plimpton observed. “And treated him like the father.”
River filmed one last TV movie, Circle of Violence: A Family Drama, about elder abuse. River played unruly teen Chris Benfield, whose mother (Tuesday Weld), unbeknownst to him, is mentally and physically torturing her own mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald). The project was unnotable except for a line of dialogue that River later nominated, tellingly, as the worst he ever had to say on camera: “It was something like, ‘Mom, why can’t we be like most families and get along?’ Like most families get along!”
28
MARTHA MY DEAR
“River went off to do The Mosquito Coast, and he came back with a girlfriend, Martha Plimpton,” Ione Skye remembered. “So I was kind of bummed.”
It wasn’t just jungle love—once River and Plimpton were back on American soil, the relationship only got more serious. One night, when they were fifteen, they were both in New York City, and they went out for a fancy dinner. (Foraging for mangoes on the beaches of Venezuela was only seven years in the past, but it must have seemed like another life to River.) Plimpton ordered soft-shell crabs.
A horrified River abruptly left the restaurant. When Plimpton followed him, she found him walking down Park Avenue, crying. “I love you so much—why?” he wept. He was devastated that she was eating animals, but even more, he was deeply wounded that he hadn’t been able to convince her that veganism was the better, more moral path.
“I loved him for that,” Plimpton said. “For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way.”
Plimpton stayed with the Phoenixes for a while. She said, “I love River’s family; they brought him up to believe he was a pure soul who had a message to deliver to the world. But in moving around all the time, changing schools, keeping to themselves, and distrusting America, they created this utopian bubble so that River was never socialized—he was never prepared for dealing with crowds and with Hollywood, for the world in which he’d have to deliver that message. And furthermore, when you’re fifteen, to have to think of yourself as a prophet is unfair.”
29
COMING-OF-AGE STORY
Every day, all over Hollywood, thousands of people have meetings where they hash out the details of movies, most of which will never get made. One afternoon in 1986, writer/director William Richert returned from yet another Hollywood lunch to his office on Sunset Boulevard. His secretary told him that River Phoenix was waiting to audition for him, for a project of Richert’s called Jimmy Reardon . There was industry buzz that River was excellent in Stand by Me, which hadn’t been released yet, but nobody in Richert’s office even knew how old he was: one person said twenty-five, while another said thirteen.
Richert went to his waiting room, where River was sitting in the shadows next to a potted plant. Then River stood up, “and he was completely surrounded by
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