SAD ANNIVERSARY

River Phoenix- would be 40 years old today....

He had charm, charisma and the good looks that can make you a~ "star."
he also had soul, you could read it in his eyes. a young man who knew everything, could tell you everything with his eyes. and he had sorrow... deep, desperate sorrow.

but he was also funny (watch "A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon" or "I Love You to Death") but more often he was heartbreaking, as in "Running on Empty" or especially, inevitably,
"MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO."

river playing a gay street hustler/heroin addict afflicted with the twin curses of narcolepsy and nostalgia. Now and again he faints away from the former and each time you're shocked because you think of him just a few years later when he fell one last time, in real life, and out of our lives forever except -- like James Dean and Jimi Hendrix and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Heath Ledger -- as a memory and a mere glimpse of what might have been. you feel you knew him, but it was only a movie.

He was born to hippies in Oregon, and he was raised around the country and in Venezuela and had a world of experience in his small frame and seemed able to give body and voice to it with little effort. each time we view him, it breaks our heart.



During the early morning hours of October 31, 1993, Phoenix collapsed outside the viper room on the sunset strip, from a drug overdose of heroin and cocaine (speedball) and began convulsing. his brother Joaquin dialed 9-1-1 and his sister Rain proceeded to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
During the episode, then club owner- Johnny Depp and his band P (featuring Flea and Phoenix's friend Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers) were onstage. According to Haynes the band was in the middle of their song, "Michael Stipe", which includes the line "but we didn't have a part, not a piece of our heart, not Michael, River Phoenix or Flea or me.", while Phoenix was outside the venue having seizures on the sidewalk. When the news filtered through the club, Flea left the stage and rushed outside. Paramedics had arrived on the scene and found Phoenix in a flatline state, and they administered drugs in an attempt to restart his heart. He was rushed to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, accompanied by Flea, via an ambulance. Further attempts to resuscitate Phoenix (including the insertion of a pacemaker) were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at 1:51 a.m. PST on the morning of October 31, 1993.


The following day the club became a makeshift shrine with fans and mourners leaving flowers, pictures and candles on the sidewalk and graffiti messages on the walls of the venue. A sign was placed in the window that read,

"With much respect and love to River and his family, The Viper Room is temporarily closed. Our heartfelt condolences to all his family, friends and loved ones. He will be missed".

The club remained closed for a week. Depp continued to close the club every year on October 31 until selling his share in 2004.

RIVER PHOENIX~ RIP, 1970-1993