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By November 1990, fresh-faccd River Phoenix had all but disappeared. In his place was a vasty, sad-eyed, pimply boy dressed in thrift-store clothes. It was impossible to know where River Phoenix ended and Mike Waters began. Once filming began, the cast and crew split into different social groups. Phoenix was the enthusiastic ringleader for the inner circle that liked partying and playing music. They were all living at Van Sant's ten-room Tudor-style house on a hill overlooking Portland. At night, they would often get drunk and stoned in the garage and jam late into the night next to Van Sant's collection of BMWs before falling asleep on the futons scattered throughout the house. "River would just start playing these tribal rhythms on guitar, and he'd so into a trance," says Parker, who frequently joined in on a drum machine. "We'd play these amazing jams that would last for three hours without stopping. River loved it. He would shut his eyes and just go on for hours like nothing else around him mattered at all." Even after everyone else had put down their instruments to go to sleep, River would carry on alone, playing in his favorite alcove until his fingertips bled.

When River Phoenix resurfaced after My Own Private Idaho, it became painfully obvious to his friends that something had gone wrong with the gifted actor. After living and breathing his Mike Waters character for six months, he couldn't quite shake his new persona. River became increasingly temperamental and moody. He was veering out of control, fueled by the combination of cocaine and alcohol. Since Phoenix had left Gainesville to do Idaho six months earlier, Aleka's Attic had been put on hold. Josh Greenbaum and Josh McKay, who had uprooted their lives to move to Gainesville to play in the band, were starting to get restless, finding it difficult having their lives dictated by River's movie schedule. Each time Phoenix took off on a movie project, the two-year Island development deal would be frozen, leaving the band members waiting in limbo for his return. Tim Hankins was the first to leave the band in late spring, saying they were working toward something "that never came to fruition. He always took this posture of trying to dissolve this myth that had been created. If you saw the way he dressed ... if you didn't know him, you'd think he was a homeless person." For the next four months, Phoenix mainly stayed on the West Coast, alternating between Los Angeles and Portland and leaving Sue Solgot behind in their Gainesville apartment. The couple were now more often apart than together. Sue claimed that the separation was actually good for their relationship. "It sucks and it doesn't suck," she said at the time, "because it gives us space. My Own Private Idaho made River a hero for the gay-rights movement, leading to much speculation about his true sexual orientation. He fueled the rumors when he started hanging out in gay bars on Hollywood's Santa Monica Boulevard. Sue Solgot was more concerned, however, about River's drug use. But when she would point out the conflict between his healthy public persona and his drinking and drugging, River would lose his temper.

He thought he was invincible and often referred to his body as a horse, But in his more lucid moments, he would ask his girlfriend, "What would those twelve-year-old girls with a picture of me above their beds think if they knew?" Sue Solgot saw River change dramatically during their relationship: "When we first met, he seemed really sweet and gentle. There was a lot of pressure on him. His childhood had been so different from other people's that he had to catch up. He was always very responsible and serious as a child, and then when he got older, he started having more fun, partying more. It's really complex, but he became more hassled, more worldly." In October 1991, River moved to Los Angeles to start preparing for Sneakers, a big-budget film starring Robert Redford. He braced himself for life in the fast lane, and to escape the mounting pressures of his career, he started using heroin. Josh Greenbaum tried to warn River about drugs, with little effect. "He didn't like it," says Greenbaum. "He made that pretty clear to me. He just wanted to be able to do his own thing. Of course, as a friend, I always told him how I felt about what was going on, regardless." The one person River would listen to was Sneakers costar Dan Aykroyd, who realized the young actor had a problem and took him in hand. After having seen his partner, John Belushi, overdose on a lethal speedball combination of heroin and cocaine, Aykroyd warned about the dangers, and River agreed to lay off heroin. River found an instant rapport with Aykroyd, and they kept the rest of the cast entertained with their antics.

One of River's favorite tricks was to creep up behind Aykroyd and blow on his bald spot or playfully pinch the "love handles" around his waist. "Just complete, absolute, total irreverence," says Aykroyd. And he could get away with it." By the summer of 1992, River's relationship with Sue Solgot deteriorated as his escalating drug use came between them. Throughout their last year together, Sue constantly tried to get River to clean himself up, but he refused to admit that he had a problem. He alternated between going on drink-and-drug binges and being clean for days. In the middle of the night, when he felt lonely and depressed, River would frequently call Martha Plimpton in New York to pour his heart out. "He'd often be high when he called," remembers Plimpton. "And I'd listen for twenty minutes to his jumbled, made-up words, his own logic, and not know what he was talking about. His language had become at times totally incoherent. He'd say, `You're just not listening carefully enough.'" Although he was battling alcoholism and cocaine addiction, River was always ready to help and support his friends when they were having substance problems. Once, after hearing that a young actor friend of his had held up production of his new movie for three days after his arm abscessed from too much heroin, River staged an intervention.

And when he started regularly calling Bob Timmins, a drug counselor, it was never to ask for help for himself. "He called me twice in the last couple of years to ask me to intervene with friends," says Timmins. "And he made it passionately clear that he was committed with his time and money to making sure these people didn't die. In one case he drove [a famous rock star] to a clinic in Arizona." When River arrived on set to start work on his next movie, The Thing Called Love, the effects of his drug use were unmistakable. His complexion was chalky, and his dirty brown hair fell limply over his dark-ringed eyes. River--who was being paid $1.5 million for the film--brought a chilling new intensity to his role of up-and-coming country singer James Wright. But for the first time, heavy drug use was making him lose his creative objectivity. Throughout the nine-week shoot outside Los Angeles, he fought Paramount Pictures executives for a say in every aspect of production. Phoenix's love interest in The Thing Called Love was young actress Samantha Mathis. "Samantha agreed to do the movie because River was in it," says director Peter Bogdanovich. "She'd met him a couple of times, but she didn't know him. He was crazy about her right away. He was anxious to have a lot of kissing scenes. He was saying, 'In the lovemaking scene, can we really do it? Can you just put us in there and close the door and let us go?' He was only half-kidding." To the amusement of the other actors and crew, a visibly shy and nervous Phoenix started to woo Mathis with a boyish clumsiness. Finally, the intense love scenes they were playing accelerated the real-life romantic drama. Phoenix made his move while they were doing a photo shoot together, and they soon became inseparable. "Samantha was a leveling influence on River," said Alan Moyle, who had been called in to rework the script. "She could be nothing but a good influence on anybody." But even if everyone else tried to ignore the telling signs that River was floundering, he could never fool the movie camera. When Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert saw River's shambling performance the following year he called it "a painful experience for anyone who remembers him in good health." River spent Christmas of 1992 in Los Angeles and embarked on a drug binge, buying heroin and cocaine from his group of drug friends. Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea was so alarmed by River's behavior that he urged his friend to get help.

One morning, River staggered around to friend Bobby Bukowski's Los Angeles home, stoned on a speedball cocktail of heroin and cocaine, and collapsed into unconsciousness. When he eventually awoke and tried to cleanse his system with one of his patented garlic-and-raw-veggies-and-serial-glasses-of-water meals, Bukowski staged an emotional intervention: "I'd rather you just point a gun at your head and pull the trigger. I want to see you become an old man, so we can be old friends together." Phoenix broke down in tears, swearing never to touch drugs again. "That's the end of drugs," he promised Bukowski. "I don't want to go down to the place that's so dark it'll annihilate me." River was now in the grip of a serious depression, which was intensified by the drugs he was taking. It was becoming more difficult for him to break out of his moody spells. River's truly happy moments took place only when he was acting. "That's the only time I have security," he said. "My self is a bum! My self is nothing! I'm a peon. I'm an idiot. I'm totally removed. I'm in the closet. I'm out of sight. You can't touch me."

On September 6, 1993, River Phoenix and Samantha Mathis flew to the remote village of Torrey, deep in the Utah desert, to start rehearsals for Dark Blood. Now almost unrecognizable with his newly shorn hair dyed black, River was delighted to be working with the English actor Jonathan Pryce, who had starred in his all-time favorite movie, Brazil. River had stayed completely sober since his birthday, two weeks earlier.

Physically, he was feeling better than he had for years as he started work on the film. In the film, River plays Boy, a young widower living a hermitlike existence on a deserted nuclear-testing site. One day, a couple played by Pryce and actress Judy Davis are driving from the city through the desert when their car breaks down and Boy comes to their rescue. From the first day of shooting, River's rapport with costar Judy Davis was acrimonious at best. Then a chain of strange events took place that Phoenix saw as bad omens. Unseasonably heavy rains turned the set into a mud slide, with vehicles skidding out of control. Once director George Sluizer narrowly escaped with his life when his director's chair slid off the edge of a high cliff only minutes after he had stood up. "River said, `Somebody's going to die on this film,'" recalls Jonathan Pryce. "We were on this kind of inexorable journey to some disaster. Every day there was some kind of difficulty. It just seemed as if something had to give."

On Saturday, October 23, the production moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. River strained his voice doing a scene in which he had to scream, and since he was not needed for the rest of the day, Sluizer let him fly back to Los Angeles early on Tuesday, one day ahead of the rest of the cast and crew. The production was to resume in Los Angeles on Saturday. Before he left, River went to say good-bye to his director. "River told me, `I'm going back to the bad, bad town,'" remembers Sluizer. "There was something childlike about the way he said the word bad. I didn't realize at that moment what he meant. I guess he felt he was going to dark places and that L.A. was a bad influence on him. Maybe he disliked the town for things that had happened to him there in the past and was afraid of it." River Phoenix and Samantha Mathis flew back to Los Angeles on Tuesday and checked into the Hotel Nikko, in West Hollywood.

After seven weeks cooped up in the desert with nothing to do, River was anxious to unwind. The heavy tension on the set had taken its toll: For the next three days, River numbed his pain with drugs. On Saturday morning, River took Valium to put him in a fit condition to work. But when he reported to the studio, he looked worn out, as if he'd hardly slept. The day's shooting went off without a hitch. After leaving the Dark Blood set at about 7:00 p.m., River took the studio limousine back to his hotel suite, where Samantha Mathis was waiting for him. When he arrived at Room 328, there was a family reunion. Rain and Leaf had just flown in from Florida to audition for parts in John Boorman's upcoming film Safe, Passage, in which River had been cast.

An impromptu party began in the suite as the actor had a couple of drinks, smoked some marijuana, and snorted cocaine. It was Saturday night, Halloween Eve, and River planned to see his friends, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were going to play an unannounced set at actor Johnny Depp's new club, the Viper Room. By the time the Phoenixes and Mathis arrived at the Viper Room just after midnight, the Halloween party was in full swing. The tiny room, dimly lit by art deco green wall lamps, was packed with people in Halloween costumes. River and his party were given a table toward the back of the club. The actor was approached by drug dealers who offered him a taste of their wares. He disappeared into the men's room with them. At 12:45 a.m., a musician friend offered River some high-grade heroin. "Try this, it'll make you feel fabulous." As soon as River snorted it he started trembling and shaking in front of the sink. He screamed at his friend, "What did you give me? What the fuck is in it?" After he vomited, someone tried to help him by splashing cold water over his face and giving him some Valium. As he staggered back to the long bar across from, the stage, where Samantha and Rain were waiting for him, a loud stage jam had started with actor Johnny Depp, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, Flea, and Al Jourgensen of Ministry. River complained that he couldn't breathe and briefly passed out. When he came to, he asked Samantha to take him outside. Samantha and Leaf helped River past the stage to the back door of the Viper Room, which opens directly onto Sunset Boulevard. As soon as they got him outside, he collapsed on the sidewalk. Just after 1:00 a.m., Phoenix went into a seizure under the canopy of the Viper Room, just four traffic lights down the road from the Chateau Marmont, where comedian John Belushi had overdosed from a heroin-and-cocaine speedball more than a decade earlier. Celebrity photographer Ron Davis and his colleague, Miranda, were just finishing their regular late-night round of clubs when they saw River Phoenix collapsed on the sidewalk. They walked up to help and were standing directly over him trying to identify him. As River came out of the first seizure, he saw Davis and Miranda towering over him, their four cameras hanging down from their shoulders. He looked up, appearing trapped and terrified that he would be captured on film for the whole world to see. He turned to Samantha and Leaf and gasped his last words: "No paparazzi. I want anonymity." And sank back into unconsciousness. As River went into a second seizure, his sister Rain suddenly came out of the club. When she saw him shaking uncontrollably, she threw herself on top of him. She tried to give her brother mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as he flailed on the ground. At the third seizure, Ron Davis, who never attempted to take a photograph, ran into Turner's liquor store on the corner of Larabie and Sunset Boulevard and dialed 911. When he came out, he discovered that Leaf had also dialed for an ambulance at 1:10 a.m. "My brother's having seizures!" Leaf screamed into the phone, as his sister still lay over their brother and hysterical Samantha Mathis paced up and down the sidewalk where River was lying. "You must get over here, please. You must get over here, please," he pleaded. When the dispatcher attempted to calm him down, telling him to "take it easy," Leaf said, "Now I'm thinking he's had Valium or something. You must get here, please, because he's dying." After making his 911 call, Leaf put his arm around River and desperately started to try to reassure his elder brother that he was going to be all right. "He was like a fish out of water, flapping around the sidewalk like a guppy," said Ron Davis. "It was almost like his body was possessed. His legs and arms were all over the place, while his knuckles and the back of his head kept hitting the sidewalk hard." The seizures lasted fifteen to twenty seconds each, and after each one there would be a terrible silence. Davis found himself praying for the next seizure, because at least it would show that River was still alive. Finally, after eight minutes of seizures, which seemed an eternity, River lay still. Terrified that his brother had died, Leaf shouted, "Oh my God, he's not breathing."

By the time the paramedics arrived, at 1:14 A.M., River had gone into cardiac arrest with no signs of a pulse or blood pressure. Paramedics began to administer CPR and were told by someone at the scene that the actor had been "speed-balling." Samantha, Rain, and Leaf would later deny any knowledge of River's using drugs. Samantha claimed only that someone had given him Valium in the club to calm him down because he had been acting strangely. By the time he arrived at Cedars-Sinai, River's skin was dark blue, but his body was still warm. Emergency-room physicians battled for forty minutes to revive him, even inserting a pacemaker to stimulate his heart. But it was too late. At 1:51 on the morning of Halloween, River Phoenix was pronounced dead.

The text on this page � 1995 Hearst Corporation

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