River Phoenix Rises

Twenty years on from his death, the actor's last film seems set to hit cinemas

By Richard Luck, 28 October 2011

In 1993, River Phoenix - for some, the finest actor of his generation - collapsed and died on the pavement outside LA's Viper Room nightclub. As Phoenix's tragic passing marked the end of a truly captivating career, so it also spelt disaster for Dutch director George Sluizer who was working with the actor at the time of his death. Indeed, Dark Blood - a drama co-starring Judy Davis (Husbands And Wives) and Jonathan Pryce (Brazil) - was just 11 days from wrapping. But with key scenes still to be shot, it seemed that Sluizer's picture was set to join the likes of Orson Welles' The Deep and Roman Polanski's The Double in the film file marked 'incomplete'.

But just as Alex Proyas was able to salvage The Crow after the shooting of Brandon Lee, so it now seems that Sluizer - whose 1988 thriller The Vanishing remains one of the most terrifying films ever made - has it in his power to bring Dark Blood back to life. As for how he's been able to resurrect the project, Sluizer got in touch with River's film star brother Joaquin and asked him whether he could dub some lines of dialogue, so altering the context of certain filmed scenes and explaining away the absence of sequences that couldn't be filmed due to River's passing. The upshot of this is that, two decades on from optioning Jim Barton's script, George Sluizer will finally be able to add Dark Blood to his impressive filmography.

"So why is this something we should get excited about?" you ask. "Because River Phoenix was bloody awesome, that's why!" Born River Jude Bottom (don't laugh) on a hippie commune in 1970, he might have started out in commercials and children's television, but by the time he was 16 he already had one essential movie to his name, the coming-of-age classic Stand By Me. Tipped to become a huge teen heartthrob, Phoenix - like his good friend Johnny Depp - would prove an impossible actor to pin down, choosing to star in small indie movies such as A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon rather than puruse roles in mainstream pictures. Even when he did appear in blockbusters such as Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (in which he was quite outstanding as the young Dr Jones), there was every chance that his next movie would be something niche and personal such as My Own Private Idaho, the story of two gay hustlers masquerading as a reinvention of Shakespeare's Henry IV. Directed by Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting), Idado was a big favourite both of Phoenix's and his fans, who adored the fact that, in a Hollywood full of strapping, super-confident young men, there was one twentysomething willing to play characters who were geeky, awkward and unsure of themselves.

"I thought River was extraordinary in My Own Private Idaho," says Nik Powell, co-founder of Virgin Records and executive producer of Dark Blood. "You know, you see young actors being compared with James Dean all the time, but I think in River's case it was a fair comparison. He had the same honesty as Dean, that fierce integrity that makes it impossible to take your eyes off of him. As for his work in Dark Blood, both on and off camera, it was incredible. River and Judy Davis weren't having the best time of it on-set so we arranged a meeting to have it out once and for all. During that meeting, it was amazing that the maturest person in the room was also the youngest. River was so committed to making the movie and ensuring that relationships remained as cordial as possible. When the meeting broke up I went over to him and said, 'You've got an old head on those shoulders, River. Whatever you do, don't lose that wisdom.'"

Sadly, River Phoenix's wisdom was to desert him on the night of 30 October 1993. During a night out at The Viper Room, which was then co-owned by one Johnny Depp, Phoenix ingested a cocaine/heroin speedball which almost immediately rendered him unconscious. Helped out of the club by his brother Joaquin, his sister Rain and his actress girlfriend Samantha Mathis (Pump Up The Volume, American Psycho), River proceeded to go into convulsions. While Joaquin placed an understandably fraught call to the emergency services (which would be played at great length on American tabloid news programmes), Rain attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but it was all to no avail. River Phoenix was dead. He was just 23 years old.

Watching your brother pass away before your eyes must be pretty near the top of the list of appalling life experiences. But while they're unlikely ever to forget the moment, Joaquin and Rain Phoenix didn't stop living the day their sibling died. On the contrary, both would carve out careers in the entertainment industry. And now Gladiator star Joaquin is helping River to live again by lending his vocal talents to Dark Blood, a kind gesture that will remind the world that River Phoenix was an actor with few equals.

A master of his art.