DISGRACELAND - River Phoenix: Religious Cults, Deadly Speedballs, and a Disappearing Act

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

River Phoenix was a once in a generation actor. His death shocked Hollywood and is still hard for many to accept. His deadly drug overdose has never been fully explained, but his back story—born into a religious cult, steeped in immersive movie role research, constantly toying with his famous identity—does explain the big talent he brought to the screen and the big heart he brought into the world.This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including child sexual abuse and sex trafficking.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.There's more about River Phoenix coming to your feed on Thursday in the After Party bonus episode. We want to know: Who do you think is the greatest actor of the 1990s? Why? Let us know and join the party at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod.Purchase Tickets for Disgraceland's Special Live Stream Event on Oct. 9, 2024:https://www.moment.co/disgraceland/disgraceland-we-are-not-alone-music-wont-save-us-but-tom-delonge-mightTo listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch!Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Mongeau, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marcia Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction.

It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

This is the story of River Phoenix, a once-in-a-generation actor, big talent and big heart. It's also the story of a religious cult, a disappearing guitar player, hustlers out on Vaseline Alley, and a deadly speedball and a death outside the Viper Room. It's the story of not only a great actor, but of that actor's friends who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Okie Dokey Smokey Bear, MK2.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Dream Lover by Mariah Carey. And why would I play you that specific slice of emotion sampling cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on October 31st, 1993, and that was the day that River Phoenix died suddenly on the Sunset Boulevard sidewalk. On this episode, religious cults, disappearing guitar players, back-alley hustlers, and the late Great River Phoenix. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Although some hadn't seen him in a few years, they all knew they would miss him forever.

Filmmakers like Gus Van Zant and Neil Jordan dedicated their latest movies to his memory. REM dedicated their new album, Monster, to him. And later a song, Ebo, the letter, bore an inscription with his name on the sleeve of its single. The cult, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Natalie Merchant, Belinda Carlis, Rewfish, Wainwright, the stereophonics, not a surf. They all wrote songs that were directly about his legacy or about the tragedy of his untimely death. And every person behind every song, every movie, and every other piece of art that strived to quantify the sense of loss, all acknowledged one truism. The most important thing is the hardest thing to say.

To paraphrase Stephen King anyway. He was only 23, the most talented actor of his generation. His greatest roles lay ahead of him, and he was gone. It was too soon, and he was too young. How do you say that? How do you convey exactly what that? All means. It was near the end of 1993 when River Phoenix walked into the Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard.

The room was dark. It was always dark inside the Viper Room. That Hollywood Clubway, so dark that the stars could disappear. It had been that way since 1903. 8825 Sunset Boulevard. For over a hundred years, the L.A. hideaway on the corner of sunset and Larrabee was known by many names. The Cotton Club, Rue Angel, the Last Call, the Melody. room, Filty McNasties, the Central.

In the 1940s, it was a hangout for wise guy Mickey Cohen who ran dirty money through the basement. In the 1950s, it was a strip joint, again with mob cash and mob muscle until it was shut down for violating obscenity laws. In the 1980s, it was a dive bar where John Belushi could be spotted in the shadows and off the radar and on the rails. And just months before River Phoenix walked inside on that fateful evening, October 30th, going on 31st, 1993, Johnny Depp had outbid both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Frank Stallone

to become the club's new owner. The address maintained its C&BC and the lure, even if the venue's low-lit vibe made it hard to see anything at all. The Tom Petty played there Grottis on opening night. Unlike the story about Chris Chambers, the character River played in Stand By Me, the Rob Reiner film adapted from a Stephen King novella called The Body, River did encounter two men arguing inside the Viper Room when he entered.

And there was no knife, and River wasn't stabbed in the throat as he tried to keep the peace, like the fictional Chris Chambers had been. But River was the kind of person to keep the peace. He was big on peace, big on love, big on family and veganism and goodness to others and to the earth itself. He was the kind of guy he wanted for a brother, the kind of guy he could bring home to mom, the kind of guy who was up for any adventure, the crazy or the better, the kind of actor that directors only found once every generation, if they were lucky. Rob Reiner found that actor when he cast River and stand by me.

That was 1986. It was River's breakout role. Coming of age flick, piss up a rope, man. And that's all River had been doing up until that point, coming of age. River was just 15. He was Chris Chambers because he had already lived that role. Just like he had lived the role Charlie Fox and Peter Weir's the Mosquito Coast, released later in 86.

River played the son of a brilliant inventor Harrison Ford who rejects the commercialism of the United States and moves his family to Central America. River was intimately familiar with that narrative. He could also relate to the role of Danny Pope and running on empty, directed by veterans Sidney Lumet, who'd worked with everyone from Al Pacino to Paul Newman. In that 1988 film, River played the son of counterculture radicals

who were on the run from the FBI and never stayed in one place for too long. River knew about counterculture, just like he knew about the rejection of American commercialism. River pulled from his own life experiences to make each character feel lived in. Unlike a lot of his contemporaries, River had something unique, something special. He borrowed into his roles like the method actors of Yor and delivered performances that transcended his straight out of central casting good looks. That all changed after Halloween 1993. Shortly after River died on a sunset boulevard sidewalk,

the tragedy of his death overshadowed all that other stuff, his talent, his choice roles, his goodness, fame will do that. Because fame doesn't care about what movies you were in or the sort of impact you made while you were around. Fame just wants to know how it all ended. Fame wants the stuff from the dark room, the room where you disappeared, where your star went out, the room that you managed to emerge from,

only to collapse on cold asphalt under the pall of Hollywood light pollution. River's next role was supposed to event Daniel Malloy and Neil Jordan's adaptation of the Anne Rice novel, Interview with the Vampire, a role that ultimately went to Christian Slater. Accepting that role was a calculated move. It must, River's image. He'd been mushing that image ever since his pin-up photos

graced the pages of fan rags like Teen Beat and Bot. His dedication to the cultivation of himself as an actor was at the center of the best stories about River. The stories people told to keep the memories alive, the ones that made the campfire circles and treks out into the woods, where trains rumbled down nearby tracks and junkyard dogs failed to live up to their legend. River lived up to his legend,

even when he was denying his own legend. Gainesville, Florida, 1989. A skinhead at the party made River Phoenix as the River Phoenix, the one who just been at the Oscars, The one who was trying to blend in with the locals, play shows with his alt rock band Alika's attic. The same one who'd spent the day tearing down some of those old Tiger Beat pin-up photos that a rival band had stapled next to the flyers for his band's upcoming show at the hardback. The skinhead knew he wasn't just another dude. He wasn't going to let him slip into anonymity that easily.

But River was feeling contrarian. He was all method. He slipped into a role. He told the skinhead that his name was Rio. You must be thinking of another guy, he said, I'm Rio, not River. There's a difference. Another skinhead got in on the debate. He summoned a third, and soon River was surrounded.

Nah, man, you're full of shit, one of the skinhead spat. His head tilted. Why are you full of shit? You got a fucking problem with me? Nope, River responded. No problem. He looked his three tormentors in the eyes. Just not interested in having this conversation right now.

And the skinheads laughed. Not interested. And they laughed some more. Not interested. Are you interested in my fist in your face? Are you interested in my boot up your fucking ass? Or are you too good for that, too? Look, Riverson.

You want to beat the shit out of me? Fine. Why do you want to beat the shit out of me? Because I look like someone else. Because I am someone else? Because you think I'm not telling you the truth? The skinheads paused. Wait, they were confused.

Did they not want to beat the shit out of him? Was he actually not the person that he thought he was? Was he telling the truth? Too many questions. The confrontation had become all preternation. a logic and was therefore wrote. In the process, however, River Phoenix had become someone completely different. Right there. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the Girlfriends. Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in.

Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. They're like, making karate noises. And here's the entire the Kardashian family over there. Everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that.

Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies?

Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there.

Okay, that's another film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells, running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. Hollywood, February, 1971. John McVee looked out the window of his room at the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel. Yucca Street was eerily calm, but John's anxiety was on 11. His English band Fleetwood Mac had just rolled into town on their American tour. It was supposed to be a rebirth. Their first record in tour without founding member, Peter Green.

They had a lot to prove. They were scheduled to prove it for three straight nights at the Whiskey at Go-Go. There was one major problem. Fleetwood Mac's guitarist and singer Jeremy Spencer was missing. He left after they checked into the hotel, said he was going to the grocery store. When hours passed and it was obvious that Jeremy wasn't coming back, the band went into panic mode. They called the British consulate. They called the LAPD.

They called their label Warner Brothers. They even got the whiskey's owner, Elmer Valentine, a former Chicago cop with a storied history of losing and finding guys via his connections in organized crime to join the search. but no dice. There would be no Fleetwood Mac shows at the whiskey that week. Three days later, the phone in John's hotel room rang. It was the band's manager, Clifford Davis. The voice on the other end of the line was frantic. Jeremy had gone Trapo with the Jesus freaks.

He was found dancing, chanting, and praying alongside 400 others at a four-story building in L.A.'s gritty downtown. The makeshift headquarters of the children of God, a pseudo-revolutionary religious sect that preached changed through rejecting societal norms. Jeremy's hair was cut short. He was wearing a sackcloth. He had given his $200 over to the children of God, or more accurately, to its self-appointed prophet, David Brandt Berg.

Berg was a pastor who had fallen from grace, booted from an evangelical church on suspicions of sexual misconduct. He rebounded by attracting impressionable hippies along the beaches of Greater L.A. to what he called teens for Christ. The hippies called him Father David or Moses or eventually just Moe. By the time Jeremy Spencer was absorbed into Mo's fold, Teens for Christ had morphed into children of God. This membership was growing exponentially.

Mo was seizing the attention, not to mention the worldly possessions, of 20-something counterculture types who continued to desperately seek out the hippie dream. The same hippie dream that had begun its death spiral a few years earlier at the Rolling Stone's deadly Altamont Festival. John and the others in Fleetwood Mac hardly recognized their bandmate. All it took was a few days for Jeremy to become someone else.

He had nothing, he wanted nothing, he said very little. They asked Jeremy to return, but he refused. He renounced Fleetwood Mac. He renounced materialism. He renounced his wife and his two children. He wasn't ever turning back. He was a child of God now.

Crockett, Texas, 1972. Fleetwood Mac's sentimental lady crackled from the speakers as John Bottom drove his VW down I-45. Sitting behind him, his wife, Arlen, held their two-year-old boy River Jude and sang along. River was their first child, though they were currently expecting another. He was born at a peppermint farm in Madras, Oregon, which John and Arlen stumbled upon while driving around with their DIY mobile commune. With Arlen nearing her due date, they had put down stakes for a spell, and the couple's commune members worked the farm in exchange for a place to crash. The idealism of their hippie MO is what led John and Arland to Oregon in the first place,

and also what led them to Texas now. They were wanderers, peace, and lovers. And they knew there was more to life than materialism. There was a higher consciousness out there for the taking. War was over if you wanted it. And they were searching for something, something real, something true, and they would know it when they found it. Just like he, John Bottom, had known that she, Arlen Dunetz, was the one when he first saw her.

Standing on the edge of Santa Monica Boulevard back in 1967, thumbs stuck out in the dry Los Angeles air. She took his breath away. He pulled the VW over, offered her a ride. That was that, brother. And they started a new journey together in that moment. It was fate. From there, fate gave them a mobile commune, and then the peppermint firm. And then River arrived.

then cut to another epic VW Odyssey with John and Arlen, River in Toe of course, still searching for that thing, that honest, real thing, somewhere away from the trappings of stuff, free from political and economic ideologies that smothered creativity and individuality, and they would know it when they found it. And in Crockett, Texas, in 1972, they thought they'd found it. The Children of God community in Crockett was one of over a hundred that had popped up across of the United States and Canada in the early 70s, and at each one, members were expected to follow the same rules. Reject society, reject materialism,

give up all your worldly possessions, don't pay taxes, and don't vote. David Brantberg, aka Father David, aka Moe's so-called children, were also expected to proselytize. They sang songs, they bore witness, they handed out pamphlets. John and Erlen were put in the group's leadership track, and soon they were seeing the world and spreading the word, from Mexico to Puerto Rico to Venezuela,

and during their four-year tenure as proselytasers, their family grew, a girl, Rain, Joan of Arc, and then another boy, Joaquin Raphael, and then another girl, Liberty Mariposa. River and Rain took to the street corners of Caracas with a guitar and sang songs to scrounge up tips. There was a darker reasoning behind Moe their leaders called to live lean and live communally. The apocalypse was near, and it was best to unburden yourself of such, meaningless flotsam and jetsam before the biblical shit hit the fan.

But families like the bottoms were being duped by Moe's cult, because that's what it was, a cult. They weren't told about everything that was going on behind the scenes. There are unspeakable things happening in the darkness behind closed doors. Some light was shed on the true nature of Moe's cult when he sent around a missive to his flock that encouraged women to freely practice what he dubbed flirty fishing. In other words, fine wealthy and powerful men,

sleep with them and convince them to turn their money and their bodies over to the children of God. When that piece of mail arrived in the bottom's mailbox, the wool was pulled from their eyes. They began to see the cult for what it really was, and it wasn't that real, true thing they had searched so long for on the road. They severed their ties with the children of God for good. It wasn't until much later that more of the cult's truth emerged. Mo had been openly promoting incest and pedophilia in the ranks. Children were encouraged to experiment sexually with other children, and according to Mo, it wasn't taboo for adults to engage in sexual acts with kids either. Back in 1978, the bottom family split for good from David Brantberg,

aka Moe and his children of God, when they boarded a cargo ship in Caracas and sailed to Miami. And they would search for a better reality. They would make a fresh start, And they cleansed the past by adopting a new surname, Phoenix, which was rich in meaning. For River, it was his first experience becoming someone new. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler,

we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, and my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up, and I'm hitting a man. in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshes is trying to grab my arms and screaming.

And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships, or religion, or sex, or addiction, or you just go straight for the guts. I Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear,

not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there.

Okay, that's another film grape I got to. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that something. running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over it, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The club kids came from the suburbs. They came from Gresham and Beaverton and they came across the Columbia River from Vancouver. When they made it to Portland to the city nightclub on Northwest 13th Avenue, the boys could finally take their shirts off

and the girls could ignore the boys. And they all could feel free to be whoever they truly were, gay, buy, straight, curious, unsure, whatever. Most nights, the line to get inside the alcohol-free All-Ages Club stretched down the sidewalk. and the anticipation to get beyond the front door was palpable. Each time the door would open to let in another guest,

unrelenting bass would ooze out into the night. So it a steady waft of closed cigarettes. The club kid at the front of the line would get the customary pat down and then would walk inside, past the sign at the front office, the one that prohibited over heterosexual behavior, and then on into the main room, a dance floor heaving to the rhythm of house music

and the flash of strobes. Boys and wigs, girls with shaved heads, studded collars next to pop preppy collars. From 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. every Wednesday through Sunday, anything went. The City Nightclub was the only place in Portland where marginalized kids between the ages of 15 and 25 felt comfortable being themselves in the early 1990s. It was an important gathering place for gay teens and kids who had nowhere else to go. The City Nightclub offered a room where they could live out loud without fear of judgment. August, 1990, River Phoenix stood in the city nightclub's long line, just another

20-year-old anticipating the transformative powers of deep base flashing lights and sweaty bodies. But unlike the other clubgoers looking to be part of something bigger than themselves, River was looking to disappear. He didn't want to be River Phoenix that night. He wanted to be another anonymous Portland Street kid looking for something that couldn't be found in the daylight. His locks of blonde hair were cut short. His Tiger Beat pin-up style replaced with something greasy and haggard, thin, sunken eyes. He wore a dirty barn jacket. He was a fallen J. Crew angel.

The river was disappearing into research for his next movie, My Own Private Idaho, directed by Portland's hot indie filmmaker Gus Van Zan, whose last film, Drugstore Cowboy, took home awards for Best Picture and Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics. In my own private Idaho, River would play Mikey Waters, a narcoleptic street hustler who hits the road with co-star Keanu Reeves to seek out some idealized version of his mother. For both River and Keanu, then best known as one-half of the excellent Bill and Ted,

the roles were daring choices that broke from their established tiger beat type. The role was such a dramatic shift that River's agent, Iris Burton, didn't want River taking the role in the first place. She was worried it would destroy him. It was worth the risk. Maybe if the role destroyed anything, it would be his teeny-bopper image. To deliver a faithful character on screen, something dark and desperate, unlike anything he'd played before, River lost himself in the seedy underworld street culture of Portland.

He got into heroin. He'd been using hard drugs like cocaine since he was 15, free-basing at an age when his peers were experimenting with Zima. And so it was easy enough for River to go even harder in Portland. Smack was everywhere, especially in the city's underworld. of dealers, users, and hustlers. And at places like the City Nightclub, he sought out the action going on above the big communal dance party on the first floor. He was looking for what was happening upstairs,

in the smaller room, the room with a darker soundtrack, more alien sex fiend than Frankie Knuckles. Because like all great things, the City Nightclub had a flip side, a dark side. It lurked upstairs. It blended in among the shadows of the wallflowers, Coke, heroin, and pills were the currency.

Creepy old men going incognito or trying to go incognito, though they always stuck out like sore thumbs. And they were looking to take advantage of younger boys hard up for attention or for a few bucks. The boys, on the other hand, were playing their own grift. Soon, they were the ones propositioning the older men in order to make a quick buck in one of the bathroom stalls. River had already been given a crash course in the grift game. That happened earlier that night. When Scott Green, a former Portland Street kid who was part of the inspiration for the character of Mikey Waters,

took River down to a four-block stretch of Southwest Stark, Portland's gay community referred to it as Vaseline Alley. The Pied Piper, Somebody's Place, Gay bars, and hotels where impulsive trists were just as likely to happen in a lobby bathroom as they were in a paid hourly room. River and Scott took their spots against the wall of a building. The paint was peeling. Cigarettes burned between their fingers. The pavement was wet from a recent storm. Scott gave river pointers on his posture. Poster was everything posture could make or break a deal. And they watched a kid climb into the passenger seat of a sedan that had just pulled over into a handicapped spot on the side of the road. Its rear bumper was dented on the driver's side, headlights cut, muffler rumbling. And the kid closed the door behind him. How old is he, River asked.

Scott shrugged. A few minutes later, the kid was out of the car, stuffing a bill into the pocket of his jeans. He lit a cigarette and disappeared into the shadows on Stark. We're up, Scott said to River, as a Volvo station wagon pulled up next to them. The middle-aged bald man at the wheel was making discreet eye contact. Just remember, if he boxed the price, remind him that he's welcome to drive back home without getting anything. You've got the upper hand. River and Scott never actually followed through with any of the Johns they met on the side of the street. River just wanted to see how the deals were made. The two would bail on the Johns as soon as the deals were struck, laughing and screaming as they tore ass down the back streets of Vaseline Alley.

Now, standing in line for the city nightclub, River looked across 13th Avenue. He was distracted by a small group of protesters lining the opposite sidewalk, and they were silent and pointed handmade sides of the crowd of club kids. Repent, read one of them, the letters surrounded by a cartoon depiction of hell, and the doorman had to yell to get River's attention. He was next in line. There was an issue. River wasn't carrying his wallet. Amhercing himself in the research of the role, he wasn't carrying anything that would identify him as his true self. And since he and Scott had bailed on all the Johns that night after sealing each deal, he didn't have any cash on him either. He couldn't pay the cover charge. Against his best judgment, he told the doorman under his breath that he was,

in fact, River Phoenix, researching a new role. Gus Van Zand and all that. Surely that name meant something here, right? Drunkstore cowboy, you know, could you? Could you? let him in for a quick look around? And the doorman asked for ID and River had nothing. Listen, the doorman said. Either you got the five bucks to get inside or you don't. We're going to move this line along and if you really are who you say you are, you should have some ID on you proving that to be true. I think I would know River Phoenix when I see him and let me tell you, you ain't him. In the early 1990s, the sunset strip in Hollywood was a 24-7 pharmacy. Whatever you wanted, you could get. You just had to know where to look or who to ask. You had to

ask. Sometimes you didn't even have to look for it and the pharmacy would find you. Did you need anything, Coke, ecstasy, weed, uppers, downers, junk? It was a bad scene for someone who was doing more drugs than he was letting on, perhaps even self-medicating as he navigated the demons of his past and the pressures of fame. While researching his role from my own private Idaho, River disappeared a little too far into his fictional character. So far, that when the shoot was over, he didn't fully returned to who he was before. His recreational drug use had become unchecked. He would often binge for hours or days and then swear off drugs when another Sunday morning came down. And this was a cycle that played out over and over again. He ran that cycle sometimes with John Fruciante, guitarist for

the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the L.A. band River had become friendly with as he continued to make go of it with Alica's attic. Frusante really left that faded pink mansion up Laurel Canyon way. The that everyone called Houdini's Mansion, even though it was Errol Flynn who had lived there, not Houdini. Fushante had gone on hiatus from his day job with the chili peppers and was spending most of his days and nights at the so-called Houdini's Mansion doing the so-called disappearing act. River was interested in that, disappearing. Hollywood, October 31st, 1993, 1227 a.m. River carried his guitar as he made his way inside the Viper Room. It was his intention to get get on stage as part of the pickup band that Johnny Depp had assembled to perform songs of his band,

P, as in the letter, that evening. Every performer in the band was looking for the same thing River was looking for, to play against type, to be reborn, if only for the evening, to disappear. And there was Johnny Depp, actor by day and Viper Room owner by night, playing the role of singer and guitarist. Al Jurgensen, ditching his standard industrial fair and ministry for something far less transgressive. Givie Haynes, frontman for the butthole surfers, seeing what it was like to not be the sole frontman for once. Ben Montaignech, keyboardist for Tom Petty and the heartbreakers,

downshifting from sold-out arenas to slum it with the cool kids. And there was Flea, bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who wanted a jam with a unique roster of L.A. cats and gleaned some new insight into the art of collaboration. Flea's usual collaborator, John Fruchante, had already attempted to play an opening set. But he had brought that Houdini mansion vibe with him down from the hills. He was high as shit. He barely made it through one song before he stopped and puked on the stage. In the Viper Room stage was as tiny as the pickup band's roster was deep. There just wasn't enough room for River to take part. So he took a seat, guitared aside. It wasn't in the cards to become another version of himself on stage,

alongside all the other versions of all the other performers who were better known for doing things besides being in a pickup band called P. And though the room was dark, this wasn't the streets of Gainesville or the meaner streets of Portland. This was Hollywood, and inside the Viper Room, he was made as the River Phoenix by those who walked by his table. Not even 30 minutes later, however, almost as soon as River had been made by those in attendance as a celebrity that he was, River was gone again. He'd split. He wasn't at his table. He wasn't standing in the tightly packed crowd in front of the small stage, absorbing the ripple of sound waves

coming from Johnny Depp's band. Where was River Phoenix? He had slipped out the back door or the Vipar Room, undetected by most inside. He remained anonymous on the outside, too, and that's where he was, on his back, on the Sunset Boulevard sidewalk. The seizures started, his arms flailed,

his legs kicked, his head banged against the pavement, and the rumble of Johnny Depp's pickup rock shows. seeped out from the Viper Room's black walls. Hollywood Revelers taking advantage of a Saturday night to celebrate Halloween one night early, sidestepped around River's convulsing body, and they were used to random encounters with Darylux tweaking on the sidewalk, but they had no idea who was literally dying right in front of them. Neither did anyone still inside the Viper Room.

And by the time the paramedics arrived, River had been having a series of seizures for about 15 minutes straight. He was out cold, no pulse. They administered a shot of Narcamp, CPR. They took him to Cedar Sinai. He was pronounced dead at 151 a.m. Halloween morning. Official cause of death, an overdose of cocaine and heroin. News of River's death hit the wires and the disappearing started again. John Fruchante locked himself in the Houdini mansion up the hill. Johnny Depp skipped town, and the Vipar room closed down for a week and became a makeshift show. shrine to River's memory. Steve Lightfoot, an unemployed cook who drove a van around town that read, Stephen King shot John Lennon, see the photos that prove it, peddled a crackpot theory that

River was secretly murdered by the American government for his crusades against animal cruelty. Years later, another particularly explosive murder theory bombshell was dropped by someone close to River, director William Reichardt, who had worked with River on the 1988 film a night in the life of Jimmy Reardon and, at the time of River's death, was preparing to work with him again on his upcoming version of The Man in the Iron Mask, gave an interview to writer Gavin Edwards in 2013. Edwards was speaking to Riker as research for his book about River called Last Night at the Viper Room. In that interview, Rikark claims that shortly after River entered the Viper Room, and immediately before he began to have convulsions, a friend of his, a guitarist, stopped by his table.

He gave him a cup and told him to drink it. A Reichardt's story goes that River did as he was told, but that he had no clue that the cup contained a dissolved speedball. That's cocaine and heroin. And not just any speedball, but one that was eight times a lethal dose. You can easily go online and find many zealous defenders of this theory, the theory that River Phoenix was actually killed,

whether intentionally or not, by someone that he knew. These theories from William Reichart and Stephen Lightfoot, regardless if you believe them or not, regardless of whether or not they are real or fake, they do do the same thing. They displace the pain and draw our focus instead to the scandal and the shame of it all. They also get to a more profound truth. The truth that the most important things are the hardest things to say. And sometimes it's easier to mask grief behind a scandalous claim or a makeshift sign on a white

van than it is to state what we really feel. That it sucks, that River Phoenix is no longer willing. us, and how do you convey exactly what all that means? When we watch his intoxicating jaunt as a young Harrison Ford in the opening scene of Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, or as nuanced comedic turns and I Love You to Death and the vastly underrated sneakers, we all think the same thing. We'll miss him forever. Because River Phoenix ought to be here, but he's not. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan.

And this is Disgraceland. All right, guys, thanks for checking out this episode on River Phoenix. I called River a once-in-a-generation actor in this episode. But Wuzzy, do you guys agree? Do you think so? And I want to know from you guys, the question of the week is, who is the greatest actor from the 1990s and why? 617-906-66-363-8.

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