Hear Me Out: River Phoenix crafted the perfect filmography
Edgar Allan Poe said that a dead woman was the most poetic topic in the world, but he didn’t know about teen idols who were, like vampires, just as beautiful and almost as immortal. River Phoenix may no longer be with us, having passed away on Halloween night in 1993, tragically gone the way of other cherished actors taken too soon. But he still lives on through the impressive resume he left behind and performances that belied a maturity well beyond his years.
Phoenix, softly spoken, pretty and gentle, was the thinking girl’s crush, the antidote to the machismo of the ’80s where greased-up stars like Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and Matt Dillon ran rampant, giving way to the floppy-haired puppyish boy of the ’90s, à la Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo and Juliet or Johnny Depp in Crybaby. In essence, boys that looked like they cried and weren’t afraid who knew it, boys that held your hand walking down the street.
River may have been the ultimate soft boy pin-up, but he was also a very serious actor. One who didn’t take starring roles in John Hughes teen movies or become an action hero like some of his peers (cough, cough, Tom Cruise). Instead, he picked his movies as though he was crafting a perfect filmography, and that’s still how it stands up.
His first big break came in 1985 with Joe Dante’s Explorers, a sweet tale of outer space and friendship, which was followed by the role he would come to be defined by: Chris Chambers in Rob Reiner’s 1985 Stand By Me, adapted from the Stephen King short story. His unforgettable turn as Chambers, the tough kid with the sensitive soul, proved that Phoenix was something different, an actor with extreme emotional depth for his then-15 years.
The ’80s saw Phoenix continue to take on roles of searing intensity as Charlie in Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast and Danny in Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty. But it’s in playing narcoleptic street hustler Mikey in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho where Phoenix turned what could have been a one-note character into a fully fleshed human. Mikey is looking for love in all the wrong places as he searches for his long-lost mother. The fact is that he dozes off at the worst moments, causing more than a problem.
”I would never, never do anything unless I believed in it” was a mantra that led Phoenix to all the right choices. With My Own Private Idaho, he seemed to not only believe in the project but also identify profoundly with the role, pouring his own aching vulnerabilities and sense of poetry into the performance.
Speaking to Interview magazine, writer-director Gus Van Sant said, “Idaho is the story of a rich boy who falls off the hill and a kid on the street. I saw a bit of the hill in Keanu’s personality and a bit of the street in River’s. They played out those extensions of themselves.”
Phoenix confirms in the same interview that he and Reeves took to the streets for their research, making friends with and experiencing the real-life Mikey and Scotts. “But the actual street stuff was just us, working on our own time. Like guerrillas [laughs]. It was very sensational for us. I thought our main problem was to find out if we could be the real guys. Gus’ choice was to use real street guys or us, so Keanu and I felt a great burden. We wanted to believe in this script and work out the problems.”
With that kind of commitment to his craft coupled with his unique brand of soft boy sensitivity, it’s a tragedy that we never got to witness how Phoenix’s art would have evolved with time. However, what’s left behind remains just about perfect, thanks to his steely drive and daring dedication.
