River Phoenix

[NickiLee]

This program looks like it should be pretty interesting. It chronicles the last 24 hours of his life.

http://www.biography.com/listings/episode_details.do?episodeid=204834&airingid=205556

 

[Twill Bill]

^^ I hate those "recreation" programs.

 

[SusanSuperstar]

I love "My own Private Idaho" sooooooooooooooooo much!!!!!

 

[Lacroix]

^ I have that, but I can never get into it! I'm really annoyed too because I've never watched it to the end. Stand by me is the best!

 

[SusanSuperstar]

^The Movie is so sad. "Stand by me" is really great I watched it soooooo often I don´t even count anymore!!!! I love "Dogfight" too!!!!!

 

[funkyhepburn]

River Phoenix>Stand By Me> sooo sexual

River is quoted for saying

"Joaquin is better than all of us".

It's such a shame that the media played Joaquin's phonecall that he made to the paramedics on the night of the tragedy

 

[Lacroix]

^ They did? Thats bad, God I would sue; if you can sue about stuff like that ?? I love River so much, why did he have to go?? If he were alive today he'd be better than all these actors he was amazing!

 

[Ilovelefashion]

For some reason Dogfight is my favorite River movie... I can't even explain why I like it so much... I guess I liked the concept of a boy falling in love with the same girl he brought to an "ugly contest" hehehe. There were alot of funny moments too.

 

[SarAnt]

I love him in Stand by me. I sometimes wonder what his life would had been like if he was still here....It sounds corny I know, and I obviously didnt know him, but Im sure the world would be a better place.

 

[Lacroix]

^ Yes! Yes! I agree. Ah, we can all but dream.

 

[Lacroix]

He was too beautiful for this world.

riverphoenixonline.de

 

[Lacroix]

Hmmm, I seem to be the only one who likes him!

Did anyone see 'The last 24 hours- River Phoenix' on Sky 1 on monday? It was so sad; they reacted the final hours (with a pretty bad person playing River, but Oh Well). He was so talented; what with the band and the acting, and he could speak so many languages- he's my inspiration (sans the drugs)

 

[funkyhepburn]

Was he nominated for an oscar? If so which film was he nominated for?

I've never seen my own private idaho..they don't seem to sell it in UK shops?

 

[ChristieHumble]

^ He was nominated for an Oscar for Running on Empty (Best Supporting Actor).

 

[funkyhepburn]

cool, thanks humble

 

[SiennaInLondon]

He had presence alright but I don't see how he is considered beautiful. His turned up nose and sharp features make me think of Kevin Bacon... Joaquin is more up my alley.

 

[Diamond Star]

I remember seeing him in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when I was a kid and having a huge crush on him .

{flickr, wikipedia}

 

[christina126]

^He's adorable in that picture.

I wonder what his life and career would have been like had he not died. Everyone said he was a rising star and a great actor. Its sad that we'll never know

 

[NickiLee]

River was one of the most intense and natural actors of his generation. He could convey so much with just one look. Silence was his forte. His face was like a book. It's such a shame we never had the pleasure of seeing him grow into one of today's finest actors. A far better actor than his brother even if he would have disagreed with that statement. What really saddens me is that River had actually abstained from using drugs about 3 or more months prior to his death. It was anger and disappointment that drove him to use drugs that night. I read somewhere that if River had been a regular user, then he would not have made the mistake he did that night. He was a "dabbler" and he really was not experienced enough with taking drugs to know how much was lethal. I still think his friendship with the Red Hot Chili Peppers is what took him down that road.

Here is a beautiful and heartbreakingly sad article written about River. They do take an accusatory stance against his upbringing, so anyone who is a fan of his parents would not like it:

http://www.angelfire.com/film/riverphoenix/us.html

 

[Lacroix]

FunkyHepburn, I got my River films from HMV; all have been brought in offers, so I've never had to pay full price. HMV has: Stand by me, My own private Idaho (sometimes), Mosquito Coast (which is expensive), The Thing Called Love and Little Nikita. I haven’t seen any others. I really want Running on Empty, I'm desperate to see that & Jimmy Reardon.



I found an article on him which made me cry some-what! -


Ten years ago, River Phoenix collapsed and died from a drug overdose. He was 23 years old, and the brightest in a generation of Hollywood actors that included Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Keanu Reeves. But where others have been made more famous by dying young, Phoenix's star has fallen. Why? Ryan Gilbey asks the actor's friends and colleagues where, if he had lived, he would be today ?
If it had happened yesterday, you would have read about it on the internet, or received the bad tidings in an email or a text message. But when River Phoenix died from a drugs overdose outside Johnny Depp's Los Angeles club, the Viper Room, mobile phones were still the size of house bricks. In this country, the first announcements of his death appeared in the low-tech, large-print format of Teletext.
Joaquin had accompanied his brother to the Viper Room at 10pm on October 30, along with River's girlfriend, the actress Samantha Mathis, and friends from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Butthole Surfers. An hour into the evening, River was convulsing on the sidewalk after ingesting a heroin-and-cocaine "speedball"; it later came to light that he had been scoring drugs after finishing his day's work shooting for the film Dark Blood. If you had switched on any US TV or radio station a few hours after his death, you would have heard Joaquin's anguished 911 call being played repeatedly. Small wonder that he now freezes out anyone who trespasses on his memories with a Dictaphone
River had been compared frequently, even before his death, to James Dean, but Phoenix's persona was nowhere near as clearly defined. He hadn't completed an iconic film, a Rebel Without a Cause or a Giant, to sharpen his memory in the popular imagination; only Stand By Me, made when Phoenix was still a child swaddled in puppy fat, came close. (EDIT: I DISAGREE! 1) HE WAS NOT FAT! HE WAS GORGEOUS IN STAND BY ME- SO SEXY<, YES I KNOW HE WAS YOUNG! 2) STAND BY ME WAS AN ICONIC FILM AS WAS MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO)
Stephen Woolley was supposed to produce River for 'Interview with the Vampire', for which he had signed to play the reporter Daniel Malloy, a part that went to Christian Slater after Phoenix's death. It was likely that Phoenix would have followed that by appearing as Susan Sarandon's son in 'Safe Passage'; Sean Astin, later to star in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, eventually took the role. Phoenix had also expressed an interest in playing Rimbaud in T'otal Eclipse,' which was eventually filmed with Leonardo DiCaprio as the scabrous poet. It was possible, too, that Gus van Sant would pick him to play Andy Warhol in a biopic that he had been planning for some years. "It dawned on me that you look a lot like Warhol did when he was, say, 18 to 25," the director told him in 1992. "It would be a stretch, but you could pull off playing the young Warhol."

He was very attractive," recalls Newman, "but he didn't try to enhance his looks. He was always sort of raggedy, his hair dirty and hanging down." Dirk Drake, his former tutor and friend, has said: "River hated being on the cover of [teen magazine] Tiger Beat. Pulling a fancy T-shirt down and exposing a nipple - he was totally ashamed of doing it but he understood that was part of it all: the mission, the purpose, the job. But he found it ridiculous at the same time."
Woolley sensed the same disparity. "River was gifted with phenomenal looks," he says, "and every casting director and producer had him in mind for any film where the pretty boy image was the main ingredient. But he was determined to go against that grain. His philosophy was movie actor, not movie star."
Boorman was one of a small number of friends and colleagues invited to attend a memorial for the actor held at Paramount. "His mother said that she'd been in labour with River for 48 hours," he recalls, "and that she was convinced he hadn't really wanted to be born. She thought he had struck some sort of deal so that he wouldn't have to stay very long on this earth. People were invited to say things, and I had that feeling that people get at Quaker meetings, where they suddenly start to shake. So I got up and said, 'Why did he have to take all those drugs?'
"People shouted and screamed at me - they were horrified I could ask that question. But it seemed to me that it had been hanging in the air. His girlfriend stood up and said that she thought he could feel people's pain: the pain of the world. And he had to find a way to dull that pain. He simply couldn't deal with it."

http://arts.guardian.co.uk


Sigh!

credit: http://www.river-phoenix.org/


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