Wednesday nights became theme nights at the Viper Room, called Mr. Moo’s Adventure, named after Johnny Depp’s dog. One Wednesday might be “Women in Prison” night, with the V.I.P. booths turned into prison cells; another might find the club converted into an airplane; another would have the black walls covered with aluminum foil. These elaborate evenings were money losers but fun for the club staff.
The Viper Room hosted two episodes of its version of The Dating Game; for one of them, bar back Richmond Arquette recruited his younger brother, actor David Arquette (Scream) to be the bachelor. Richmond wrote some questions for his brother to read to his romantic prospects, but when David attempted the first one, he laughed so hard, he couldn’t get the words out. The question was: “I like to masturbate for hours on end until I’m in danger of dying from dehydration. What do you like to do in your spare time?”
Another night, the bachelor was actor Norman Reedus (now most famous for The Walking Dead). “They sort of set him up,” Richmond Arquette remembered. “One of the bachelorettes was this Mexican tranny. They gave her the best answers, and he picked her. When Reedus’s choice was revealed, “even though it was all in jest, you could see her vulnerability. He did this beautiful thing: he kissed her, said, ‘I’m so happy,’ and was really gracious about it. I always liked him for that.”
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After the emotional wringer of filming Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, “I just did not feel like barreling through someone’s psychosis,” River said. He opted for a low-stress money gig: Sneakers. As one actor in the film said of the title, “It sounded like a bad teen comedy about a hapless junior-high basketball team that is saved when they recruit a girl point guard who’s a great shot.”
The movie was actually a heist caper centered on a band of professional computer hackers and security consultants; the N.S.A. dragoons them into stealing a black box that is the ultimate code-breaking tool. Director Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams) assembled an absurdly star-studded cast: Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, and Ben Kingsley, not to mention Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn, and James Earl Jones. A hugely classy ensemble—but the studio wanted to make sure that there was also some youth appeal and pushed for River.
On the set, River quickly bonded with Aykroyd (another actor who really just wanted to rock). The two of them would gaze awestruck at Redford and Poitier, River said. “We’d think, ‘These guys are like national monuments, like the pyramids.’ And that poses the question, ‘But what are we?’ Well, I guess we’re sand crabs or scabs or something less dignified.”
Aykroyd and River had a host of running jokes; they dubbed the catering truck the Roach Coach, which evolved into calling each other Mr. Woach and Mrs. Woach. River would pinch the fat on Aykroyd’s waist or blow on his bald spot. “Just complete, absolute, total irreverence,” Aykroyd said. “And he could get away with it.”
The first day of shooting, Robinson thought River was fine—but when he saw him in dailies, he was much more impressed. “He makes very quirky choices that really come alive on film,” the director said.
The quirkiest choice of all comes during a montage at a party, where most of the cast takes turns dancing with Mary McDonnell while Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” plays. Poitier is all stiff reserve, while Aykroyd proves to be a surprisingly accomplished swing dancer. And then River flails around like a punk moshing at a Germs concert, kneecaps bobbing and arms waving. It’s the most visually arresting seven seconds in the movie.
The shoot stretched over five months, but River had plenty of downtime, both because he had a supporting role in a large ensemble and because breaks were built into the schedule; Redford insisted on 10 days off at Christmas time so he could go on his annual skiing vacation. So River pushed forward with Aleka’s Attic, the band he’d formed with sister Rain.
Drummer Josh Greenbaum came to California and spent hours jamming with River between scenes. The two-year development deal with Island had been going on for roughly four years; the label wanted to see if their investment had paid off. A&R rep Kim Buie engaged top-flight producer T-Bone Burnett (Elvis Costello, Los Lobos), and River went into the studio to record two songs with Greenbaum, Rain, and close pal Michael “Flea” Balzary of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
When Island’s Chris Blackwell heard the tape, he decided not to pick up the option on the band—to River’s dismay. “It turned out that my voice wasn’t star quality,” River said sardonically. “I’m so glad that it didn’t happen, because I don’t want to make music for the masses. I just want to make it for my friends and the people I play with.”
“In hindsight, I’m not sure that River having a band was necessarily the best decision,” Buie said; she thought he might have done better as a solo acoustic performer. “A band takes time. And his acting career was always competing for his time. Finding the flow and the continuity within a band, it was a challenge. I think he just wasn’t at a place where he could do it full-time and figure out what River Phoenix—the musician, the artist, the songwriter—wanted to be.”
While Sneakers shot in Los Angeles, River stayed at Flea’s house. The bassist was out of town on tour, but plenty of his friends still came around, giving River easy access to whatever drug he wanted, including heroin. Not that it was all party time: one disagreement led to a drug buddy chasing River through the house with a butcher’s knife.
Soon after that incident, River’s former tutor Dirk Drake came to visit and was extremely concerned by the heroin situation. He told River that he was “furious about the glamour those friends attached to scag.”
To which River replied, “Don’t worry, I have the fear of God.”
That infuriated Drake, who suggested that River should change careers from actor to Baptist preacher.
Jim Dobson, who had been the publicist on Jimmy Reardon, saw River for the first time in years and was astonished by the transformation. “He was 100 percent different,” Dobson said. “He’d gone from a cute, well-groomed kid to someone who wouldn’t bathe, and his face was very gray. We all assumed he was on drugs.”
Aykroyd, who had lost his close friend and performing partner John Belushi to a drug overdose, tried to steer River away from heroin. “I think Aykroyd was a very good influence on his life,” Dobson said.
Drake said that there were multiple interventions by River’s friends about his drinking and drug abuse, but none of them had any effect: “River had a strong passion and love of sensation, whether it was watching a full moon or tossing some pints.”
Sneakers is not without charm—in a climactic scene, the principals are being held at gunpoint by the N.S.A. but then realize they have the black-box MacGuffin and, hence, the upper hand. They start making demands before they hand it over. Redford’s character obtains a promise that the federal government will leave him alone, while Aykroyd’s gets a fully kitted Winnebago. River’s character, Carl Arbogast, just asks for the phone number of “the young lady with the Uzi.” Moments like that are why the film was not only a solid box-office hit but also has retained a small but devoted cult following across the decades.
The film received generally positive, if not effusive, reviews. Rita Kempley in The Washington Post called it an “entertaining time-waster,” describing River’s performance as “sweetly underwhelming.”
Ultimately, for all its twists, turns, and reverses, the picture feels thin and formulaic. River didn’t care for it and told his friends not to see it. “I play this cyberpunk nerd, just full on,” he said. “I’ve really degraded myself. He’s very hyper, always twitching, the kind of guy you avoid playing if you want to walk with dignity and grace at the premiere.”
In keeping with its code-breaking theme, the opening credits of Sneakers has the names of some of the film’s major players presented as anagrams before they get unscrambled: “BLOND RHINO SPANIEL” becomes “PHIL ALDEN ROBINSON,” while “FORT RED BORDER” turns into “ROBERT REDFORD,” and “A TURNIP CURES ELVIS” reveals itself as “UNIVERSAL PICTURES.” Not all cast members got their names shuffled—if they had, the world might have discovered that one anagram for “RIVER PHOENIX” is “VIPER HEROIN X.”
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