This show contains mature content and adult themes, it may not be suitable for young audiences.
And the mysterious death of actor Phoenix is also shaking the film community tonight. The twenty three year old Phoenix collapsed early this morning and died a short time later. It happened outside of West Hollywood Nightclub.
From Variety and iHeart Podcasts, this is Variety Confidential, the Life and Legend of River Phoenix. I'm Tatiana Siegel, Executive editor of Film and Media Variety. In the first two episodes, we explored River's rise to fame, his ground baking films, and how the filming of My Own Private, Idaho set the actor on a dangerous path. Today, we will uncover the final days of River's life up until that fateful night in October nineteen ninety three when Hollywood lost one
of its brightest stars. Let's listen to this interview from the early nineties.
How do you see yourself fitting in with the younger Hollywood acting?
I don't see I don't see myselves. Boy, that's I wonder what that means selves. Yeah, a few of those guys in me, I don't see any of them in the perspective or in the limelight idea of Hollywood, or I just I really don't ever want to get that objective or self conscious of my place in this world concerning showbiz, you know.
By nineteen ninety three, River Phoenix's struggles with substance abuse had become an open secret within Hollywood, but the actor kept taking on more projects, even as one of his closest friends, Matthew Ebert, begged him to take a break and focus on sobriety. Despite his friends please, River began shooting Dark Blood that fall, the twisty thriller co star Jonathan Price and Judy Davis. Matthew remembers of her calling him after a difficult day on set.
He called me during that time, and there's a horrible thing that happened between him and Judy Davis, and she had just read in the Riot Act one day, and he really admired Judy very much, and it just crushed him. I remember talking to him about it, and he was just devastated, just devastated by what she had said and what he could no longer control. And I thought to myself, why is no one in that production saying, dude, we're gonna get some help. We're gonna close down, We're gonna
start over. Judy was very disciplined. I think she was trying to be hard love. She's being tough love. You couldn't not know he was using because he was a mess. He had come to set literally fucked up, speedy, not the same guy. There was no support for him to get sober. It wasn't hey, this is really an illness.
We got to figure out how quietly and calmly, how do you do that with a huge celebrity in nineteen ninety ninety one, ninety two, How do you do it without the media and everything on top of it back then? How do you do it in a culture that only wants to shame you, that only wants to point out, Oh, he's so healthy. Now look at him. I guess he's not so healthy. I guess he's really a scumbag. He's not a vegan, and he's a heroin addict. So it gave the whole narrative to anyone who was jealous. And
we know how Hollywood is. You know, if you're up, somebody's always got to shive out. In the last year of his life, I was really trying to stay stober, and he would call me like like let's go do this thing, Come go see and I really had to avoid it. I had to avoid him. Was heartbreaking to me now that I couldn't see him because I was trying to clean up.
River died before Dark Blood was finished. The film has never been seen in theaters outside of a few film festivals.
The speed with which River descended and died, I've never seen anyone go that fast. Never. In many years now of counseling people and being a sponsor and many many years sober, I've never seen anyone deteriorate so quickly in my life.
In nineteen ninety three, River Phoenix celebrated the Halloween holiday at the Viper Room, located on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The nightclub and music venue, partly owned by actor Johnny Depp, quickly became a hotspot among Hollywood's most popular young stars. River was there with his girlfriend Samantha Mathis, brother Joaquin, and sister Rain. It was meant to be a night
of celebration, but it ended in tragedy. Michelle Sabrino, Stearn's Variety CEO and group publisher, was there that night.
He was a heart throb, but he also had he had a cool factor. He was the cool guy and entertainment and I just remember seeing him sitting there. I mean, we were all young women. We all had crushes on River Phoenix. He was one of the biggest stars in the country, if not the world. He had a massive fan base, and we were thrilled to be in the same room as River Phoenix. I didn't think that this Unfortunately, something would happen like him passing away.
What do you remember when you saw him?
We were out. It was Saturday night. It was October thirtieth, nineteen ninety three. It's a big night in LA. Halloween is a big deal. Halloween was actually the next day, but everybody was celebrating. It was Saturday night and it was vibrant and exciting, and we were all in costumes, and you know, when you're young, you really do it up. So somebody from the Viber room came over and invited us to bypass the line. And this is one of those fun LA moments that we took advance, and so
we did. And I remember walking in and seeing people in costumes and it was just fun and music was blasting and people were drinking, and it was just very exciting and very fun. It was highly exclusive. We didn't even think we would try.
It was that.
Exclusive, and when we were invited and escorted in, I just remember it being and I didn't expect it to be fancy. It was actually gritty, and I loved that. It was like music was blaring, and everybody kind of seemed to know each other, and it was very from today's standards now that I'm in the industry. It was very Hollywood, if you will. Everybody kind of knew each other. Everybody was talking with each other, and I felt comfortable, strangely, even though I didn't know anyone in the room and
I was young. Almost everybody in that room was highly, highly intoxicated. It was a bar, and it was a very fun party. It was a Halloween party.
Did it surprise you at all what you saw?
Yeah, it surprised me. Of course. You see somebody in all these movies that you love, and you picture them differently than sitting on a couch. But it was obviously him. We were all excited to see him, but he looked tired, and we just assumed that, like everyone else in that room,
he had had a few too many drinks. The Viper Room was that cool place that all the celebrities hung out, and it was private, And to your point, we weren't running around with phones taking pictures of each other and posting it on social media at the time.
So how'd you find out the next day that he had passed to what?
I think?
I remember hearing about it on the news. I actually remember my parents talking about it. River Phoenix was an incredible actor. So even though all of us young women were in love with him, he spanned all generations and people admired him for being a tremendous actor. And I remember my parents talking about it. I was horrified. My girlfriends and I called each other and it was just very, very sad.
Yeah, had such a career ahead of him.
Yeah, he was tremendous.
A Variety report published on November eighth, nineteen ninety three reads as follows. Though it's been said that Fever Phoenix's band was going to play at the Viper Room in West Hollywood when he died early Sunday morning, they didn't.
It's more likely he was there to see the band that did, called p The combo consisted of Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers on vocals, Tom Petty keyboardist benmont Tench on organ, actor and Viper Room employee Sal Jenko on drums, and the unlikely guitar duo of Al Jorgenson Ministry and producer of Nirvana's latest effort in Uterow, the Actor club owner
Johnny Depp. Perhaps the eerious moment of the evening came during this second song, when Haines's impromptu vocals turned into a meandering ramble about RIM's Michael Stite and River Phoenix.
Please there again? Gun down over, Okay, what's the other's lab at the Viper Road.
Variety reported at the time that River was leaving the Viper Room at about one am when he fell to the ground, adding that friends reported that the actor had been acting strange. He was rushed to Cedar Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at one fifty one am on November fifteenth. The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office confirmed to Variety that River had died of a drug overdose. Toxicology tests later showed lethal levels of morphine heroin and cocaine.
Traces of marijuana, vallium, and over the counter cold medication were also found. His death was ruled accidental. The actor's passing sent shockwaves through Hollywood and beyond. The News of his passing reached the front page of Variety, which called him quote one of the most versatile and prominent of contemporary young actors end quote. Variety's executive editor Brent Lang recalls the response from the Hollywood community in the weeks following the actor's death.
Well, I think in a lot of ways, his death, because it was so shocking, is analogous to what happened with John Belushi, where you had this kind of blazing talent that their flame was sort of extinguished at such a young age. The impact was really seismic, and it was a wake up call too. I think for people that if you played around in a certain kind of pool with a lot of very very dangerous drugs, this
was something that could end up happening to you. He was both an inspiration for a lot of people in the way that he acted on SCO and his kind of magnetism, his natural sort of innate charisma. But he was also a cautionary tale about the perils and the price of fame, and if you look at a kind of how people responded in real time, it was I think there was sort of a generational shift there that
happened after. I don't have evidence of this, but I would I would assume that a lot of people who were sort of moving in the path of doing really, really dangerous drugs might have reconsidered that after what happened to him.
River's longtime friend Matthew Ebert still remembers getting the call.
I got a call from a fellow actor in my own private Idaho. He was in tears. It's like, what's going on? Ever died? Totally?
Remember it? You don't.
You don't forget something like that.
I felt. I felt a shame that I hadn't worked harder to get him out.
The outpouring of grief highlighted the profound impact he had on those who knew him off camera and those who admired his on camera work.
From Afar, he was definitely an environmentalist. He came from sort of a hippie family. He was a vegan before people really knew what vegans were, and I think that was also sort of shocking to people because he seemed to have this kind of clean living persona. And I know that people in the industry knew that he was having drug issues, but the general public was shocked to discover that that was something he was grappling with at the time because of his kind of persona.
Matthew Ebert recalls taking Rivers ashes to the Phoenix family. During that trip, Matthew remembers feeling angry with Rivers team and those around him who could have prevented River's death somehow.
After he died, I went to mickin Opie, where the family is. I spent six weeks there. I brought his ashes home to his mother. Never forget that, as long as I live. I went with his sister and brought him home and she cradled that like a baby. That earned Never forget that, as long as I live, or what it was like to hear he was dead and he's gone on like just gone.
Like that.
It's so fast.
Never ever saw somebody move so quickly from playful drug use to death. And it's because you have all this money, you have all this power, you have a huge machine in the studio. Nobody's saying shit like you know, that's an agent's job. That's really like your your manager and your agent's job is to watch out for your health and your and your welfare. That there's no other place to put that. Your agent, your manager, your team, the
people around you, they're responsible when that happens. That's your job to protect that person when the pressures and everything from the outside are killing them. You know, that is why I was so upset with the team, because it was so obvious, it was so self evident. All you had to do was go sit in the rushes. You'd see a completely different person on that screen than you did three years ago. There was all this stuff and
all these pressures. You take all these different rays of light and you put it on the you shine a light on it. You realize there was all these different things working to make this perfect storm. There were all these different pressures, not only from the drugs and the people in the community and the study and your friends then as now, if you're a celebrity, somebody's going to throw you a bag. Somebody's going to do you know, people want its currency. Back then, it was the currency
of cool. You know, you could go you know, I could take them to see a band or there was just it was everywhere, the night of the viper room. Everywhere you want something, here it is and nobody's filtering it and saying, you know, back then we didn't have fentanyl, but certainly you could mix cocaine and heroin in a bag and kill somebody like that and no one. It went so fast.
Nearly a week after River's death, Variety reported that simultaneous funeral services were held for River. His family hosted one in their home in Gainesville, Florida, while another private service was held in La organized by Rivers A Night in the Life of Jimmy Rearden co star Ione Sky Matthew, can you describe the funerals? How well attended were they?
They went to La and went to a few one or two services there. Remember like all the young actors were there, like Ethan Hawk I think was there, and a bunch of mother and I spoke a little bit there. There were a lot of people there at the farm at the compound, and I wouldn't say there was kind of a There was definitely like a service and all that, but there wasn't like very non traditional outdoor and my time there, I remember trying to take care of his father,
who was really in bad shape. And I would attend to his father, it soak his feet, put him to bed. His father was really in bad shape. The whole family was in bad shape. I stayed six weeks and you cry every day, you know, you're just like, oh God, you know, they're like, what are we going to do? I don't really remember.
I remember the.
Vibe around everybody by the water, but I think it was just too emotional to have to really lock in on any of it, Like it all just seemed like a nightmare, a weird dream. To say that he was, you know, it just seemed so corny to say all the stupid shit people say about him, But it's really true. No one else was like him, nobody on that set,
nobody on that no one had what he had. River was really at the peak what would have been the peak of his power, and without those drugs, he'd still be at the peak of his power.
In nineteen ninety three, River Phoenix's death shocked Hollywood and the world. Very rarely has his then girlfriend, Samantha Mathis spoken about him. Samantha, who was with River when he died. Details were memories, including co starring in The Thing called Love. His last film was released, and I know you've talked about it, but for many years you did not talk about River. Correct, Correct? Like decades?
Like two decades? All right?
Yeah?
Yeah, I mean I'm very protective of his memory and his family and my memories. So I feel it's a really delicate matter, and there's some things that I want to keep for myself.
I guess I'll start with heading into this thing called Love. You did not know River before signing on. Correct?
We had met, ever so briefly in a nightclub when we were both nineteen. Obviously I was very aware of who he was. He was really the one of the greatest actors of our generation. But no, we didn't know each other when I signed onto the movie.
Okay, so heading into the film, what were your expectations and how did they ultimately turn out to be different than what you were expecting.
I don't know. It's hard to speak to what my expectations were in nineteen ninety three, when I was nineteen ninety two, when I was twenty two years old. I mean, I had seen most of his work and found him to be extremely compelling and iconic and really inspiring and quite frankly, though I knew who Peter Bogdanovitch was, it was really River that compelled me to say yes to the movie.
What were your first impressions when you did meet River face to face?
I mean, he was dazzling. He was just dazzling. He had that spirit. He was feisty and smart and quick and present. He was such a present person and a bit of mischievousness to his personality, with a kind soul and a true artist. He was a true artist. He was very impressive.
People often describe him and other actors that they're very generous with how they allow you to as the co star, to have your breath and space in the scene. Was that kind of how it worked in terms of how you played opposite one another and off of one another.
Obviously, we're talking about nineteen ninety two, so it's in some ways really hard for me to speak with definitively about what my experience was shooting that movie with him. What I do remember clearly is that he was incapable of being dishonest in his work, and that challenged me in a way that I found really exciting and also terrifying. I was not a confident performer at that age and not as into une with my instrument as he was.
And it made me, I hope, a better actor because he challenged me to be really present in the moment and to be spontaneous and to really react to what was happening. And I think that at that point I was less confident to be able to act in that way and more someone who plotted out what I was going to do, you know, And so he was exciting and generous, and it also felt a little dangerous in a really vital way that makes something pop on the screen.
And we obviously had great chemistry, so that was also all there on camera. We were taken by each other and enjoyed each other.
Do you remember where it was in production? Like midway towards the beginning, towards the end, when you realize like we're in law or I'm trying to love with this person.
It's complicated. It's complicated. I can't say exactly when it happened, but you know, unfortunately I was with someone else at the time that it happened, and so it was messy. But it was also something that was undeniable between the two of us, you know, eventually we did end up together.
Okay, what was the most memorable scene looking back all these years and what do you remember from it? Kind of take me back to it.
I mean, there are many memories that I have that are so fond. I don't know which one is the most.
There's a scene between River and I in the back of the pickup truck where we're supposed to be sitting outside of Graceland, and it's just such a charming scene between the two of us, getting to really let the scene breathe and be with each other and be under the stars in a romantic moment, and to just be with him and and have this sort of languid quality and scene where we could really find our beats was
really exciting. But also this this whole cast was amazing, right, I mean, we had dermotmulrooney, and we had a then unknown Sandra Bullock, and there was an electric energy between all of us on set together that was really exciting. River thought that Sandy was a star. I remember him saying that to me, She's going to be a big star. I remember it so clearly, and he was right, he was, Yeah, he could see it in her.
Yeah, and it took a while for her to get that those roles that really could show her amazing range as an actress.
But well, I think that doing the thing called Love gave her the film that helped to get her speed. That was a moment in time where her life completely completely changed. H yeah, and we could all see it. I mean, she was also had this sort of shiny spirit, this this undeniable spark of in her case, like a great sense of humor and ability to just be fearless and make a complete fool out of herself. She could make fun of herself and had a sense of humor
about herself and was just adorable. She was just undeniably adorable. So it was a very exciting thing to see her ascent into tremendous, tremendous success.
Did River have a great sense of humor, because if so, that would be kind of surprising. He always seemed like very you know, very sensitive and like somewhat introverted. But that would be interesting to know was he did he have a good sense of humor?
Oh? He I mean he grew up in a big family. I don't think you can grow up in a big family with a lot of kids without having a sense of humor about yourself, or a sense of playfulness at least that was true of his family than incredibly loving but also playful.
You know, he.
As an actor and as a musician was incredibly playful, and he had a yeah, he had a mischievous quality. He was a very intelligent person and his mind was quick.
So, Samantha, what ch of River's films would you point young audiences and new generations of fans too, maybe people who aren't familiar with his work.
Well, of course, my own Private Idaho was an extraordinary performance and an extraordinary movie. So anyone who's interested in seeing a really powerful, daring film with really bold work, that I would highly highly suggest. Running on Empty was something that left an indelible mark on my life. I was eighteen and he was playing a young man in a family that were activists who were on the run for being involved in a political action where someone was killed.
He and Martha Plimpton played boyfriend girlfriend in that and their chemistry was justugh, it was gorgeous. It was just they were so alive together and beautiful together, and there was a beauty to the dynamic that was created with Christine Latti and jud Hirshs' parents and what that family was like that as a child of a single parent, I just wanted to be in that family, even though
they were on the run. But his journey as a young man conflicted in that piece about to stay with his family or to go off and make his own life was just searingly painful and beautiful in his portrayal. So those are two movies that really stand out to me. I know he had a great connection with Harrison Ford when he made Mosquito Coast. I know that they really adored each other. Dan Akwerit was a friend of his until the end and someone he adored just loved so much.
He worked with a lot of iconic people, for sure.
His pace of working was actually kind of intense, and there was a sort of, you know, like most people would, I guess, take a longer period of time in between movies. Do you think there's any accurate from your perspective.
I mean, I only knew him for the year year and a half that I did, so I can't speak to the length of his career and what speed he was working. He was very passionate about the work and was obviously in great demand. He had been meeting with Nashka Holland about doing a movie together right after we finished. There were many things that were of interest to him. But after we wrapped the thing called Left, we spent a month together on vacation, so it wasn't like he
wasn't capable of doing that. And he also spent a great deal of time with his family, who obviously was very important to him. Down in Florida. He had certainly been working at quite a pace, and he started working at a very young age, and we had definitely had conversations about taking a pause and our mutual interest in perhaps going to college.
Ill to see River's legacy as an actor and how he maybe influenced the generation that came after him.
Well, he was undeniably one of the most talented, if not the most talented young man of his generation. I think he challenged all of us to be a better actor and to be a better human because he was also an activist who was quite outspoken about the environment. He was so ahead of his time. I'm sure that he was and continues to be a tremendous inspiration to his brother, who I find to have startlingly talent, you know, so equally present and daring and alive in his work.
And for those of us who knew him then and worked with him or experienced just viewing him on screen, he was dazzling in his talent. So I do think that there are people of the generation coming up today that are becoming aware of him because there is this fascination with all things of the nineties, and he was certainly emblematic of a lot in the nineties, even though he passed away relatively soon into the nineties.
The nineties were a very unique period and just like even in America, like we were out of the eighties, where it was like very you know, greed is good, like the Reagan era, and like wasn't the seventies either, which was like very gritty. How would you describe sort of the landscape of Hollywood in the early nineties.
I feel like in some ways it was a very fertile time. Independent cinema had really started to explode in the late eighties, and I see the real exciting work happening in the nineties. I feel like it was in a way, the last Garrah of Hollywood before things became so corporate, before boards of directors were deciding strictly about shareholders stock options, where people were still invested in cinema,
in really making movies and being artists. We were really the last generation that remembers life for cell phones, and there was just an innocence to that, and a purity to that, and a freedom to that that led to great work and just a freedom, a freedom to be young, certainly, and to be creative and to not just be held under a lens. I feel so much for young actors today and what's required and expected of them to be a brand. There was no discussion of brand. You were
an artist. We wanted to be DeNiro, We wanted to be Paccino, We wanted to be Meryl Street, Jessica Lang and Ellen Burston, and we wanted to be great artists. That's what we wanted to be. There was no discussion of a brand. I do remember towards the end of the nineties things starting to shift. There was a magazine that came along called Maxim and suddenly my representation was like, you should really do this, and I was like, would Meryl Streep do this? Would should be on the cover
of a magazine and a bikini. I'm not doing that. That has nothing to do with what I'm interested in doing and becoming. Yeah, things changed in the nineties, but there was an innocence to the beginning of the nineties pre cell phone that I'm so grateful I experienced and that I remember and no can exist.
Do you see sort of similarities with Johnny Depp's career also, like I mean, Johnny Depp's another one where he loved music and some loves music in some ways that sort of like performing. And then they do seem to have similarities as careers, I suppose.
I mean, Johnny's obviously gone on to have a thirty more years of a career than River unfortunately had. You know, I think that as an artist and as a creative being, it's really important to have outlets that you are not monetizing, that are not there for anyone to co opt or monetize or make something out of or profit from, but to have it be your own and be pure and true to it. My impression of Johnny is that he
does it because he loves it. He's ultimately you know, he doesn't need it to survive, and he's not really interested in anyone's opinion. Nor was River. He had a really unique style as a musician and was something he could lose time doing, being in the studio with his with his sister and with his friends, writing music and exploring.
Was he friends with Johnny at the time. No, who were other than his family some of his closest friends in the industry? Or were they all outside of the industry.
He really didn't have a lot of actor friends. No, he had some. I mean, Dermott was a friend of his. They had worked on a movie together years before, so they were kind of like brothers. They were quite close.
What do you think is the greatest legacy of River as an actor?
River was one of those actors who was incapable of being dishonest. He really was so riveting because he was so alive on camera. He demanded that of himself, he demanded that of other people in scenes with him. He was startlingly present. And that kind of courage and confidence just eats up the screen. It eats it makes the film come to life. It was undeniable.
Where do you think River's career would have gone? Would he have stayed more comfortable in the like indie sphere.
It's interesting to muse upon and it's impossible to say right. I mean, he was also a really passionate musician, and music meant the world to him, and he loved the work of acting and hated the machine around what was expected of you as an actor. That was not interesting to him. So it's hard to say if he would have continued and become an even bigger movie star, if
that would have been of interest to him. You know, there was an anonymity and an ability to be more abstract as an artist in his music, and of course environmental work was very, very important to him, so I know that would have been a huge part of his journey.
Tell me a little bit about his animal activism because it's such a big part.
Yeah, yeah, it's so true. I mean I was a meat eater when we started dating, and that horrified him to no end. I remember driving in Beverly Hills. I don't know where we were going or where we were coming from what There were people on a street corner protesting for animal rights. And he pulled over and pulled all these pamphlets and stuck them in my face and just said, just look at this, look at this. I was like, oh God, okay, okay, okay, I hear you. I hear you, and I ended up being vegan for
several years after that. I mean he changed me. I can't say that I stuck with it, unfortunately, but he did have that effect on me for several years afterwards. He was incredibly sensitive to the suffering of others, including animals.
Including animals. Yeah, I hope that his legacy as a human being overall is one of having been a tremendous artist and activist who deeply cared about the world and was a sensitive young man who left a mark forever in Hollywood and left a mark forever on gen X. I think he was an iconic person for our generation, just like my parents talk about they knew where they
were when John F. Kennedy was killed. Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died, and what a loss of hope that was for our generation.
But he.
Leaves behind an incredible body of work that I hope is a real inspiration for the generations to come.
River Phoenix's story is one of brilliance and tragedy, and both his life and work illuminated the beauty and the darkness of the human experience. In our next episode, we discussed River Phoenix's lasting impact on those who knew him best, and how his untimely death reshaped the conversation around addiction. We'll also examine the tragedy of a Hollywood life taken too soon. River was one of Hollywood's brightest young stars whose final act was hampered by fame and drug addiction.
Subscribe to Variety Confidential the Life and Legend of River Phoenix, and leave us a review to share your thoughts. Join us next time as we continue to honor the legacy of a remarkable talent. Variety Confidential is hosted by Tatiana Siegel and produced by Karen Mizugucci and Sidney Kramer. Written by Anna Mosluin, Karen Mizugucci and Tatiana Siegel, Executive produced by Dea Lawrence, Variety's co editor in chief Cynthia Littleton, and Ramins A two day edited and mixed by Aaron
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