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RIVER
PHOENIX: A SHORT LIFE
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| Magazine
& Date: |
Not
Known |
| Written
by: |
Bryan
Robb |
| Provided
by: |
Martha Plimpton Website |
Plaing a minor part in the film was actress
Martha Plimpton, daughter of actor Keith Carradine. Plimpton
had been born and raised in New York City, Martha's mother
Shelley Plimpton was aso an actress, appearing in the original
Broadway cast of Hair, as well as in such counterculture
cult film as Putney Swope (1969) and Alice's Restaurant
(1969).
At the age of ten, Plimpton was spotted
by producer Joseph Papp in a film workshop and he cast her
in The Haggadah, a play he was involved in at New York's
Public Theatre. Plimpton then found a degree of fame and
notoriety phrase was 'I hate competition. I'm a terrible
loser.' The series of advert appearances led to her first
feature film role, in Alan J. Pakula's Rollover (1981),
and eventually she came to be cast by Peter Weir inThe Mosquito
Coast, as the daughter of the preacher, Reverend Spellgood.
 River
Phoenix and Martha Plimpton had met over a year before they
were cast together in The Mosquito Coast. 'We couldn't stand
each other,' recalled Phoenix of this inauspicious start
to what was to be Phoenix's longest lasting romantic relationship.
Once shooting started on The Mosquito Coast, however, both
Phoenix and Plimpton began to see each other differently.
'We realised we'd both changed a lot', said Phoenix, although
he was at a loss to pinpoint exactly what those changes,
between the ages of about thirteen and fifteen, were. 'I
don't know. We're just cooler, I guess. We both grew a couple
of inches!' The beginning of serious relationship between
Plimpton and Phoenix on The Mosquito Coast was to the great
pleasure of director Peter Weir, as it confirmed his good
judgement in his casting of the film. Weir also felt that
the tensions felt at home among the Phoenix family, now
that River Phoenix was well on his way to being a successful
film actor. 'With a young person who suddenly becomes the
key breadwinner of a family hierarchy, and sometimes a tenson
develops, particularly with the father. I don't know if
that was true of John [Phoenix]. but River wanted to compensate.
He didn't want to spoil the family's closeness.'
Unlike Little Nikita, which failed dismally
on both counts and featured an unfocused performance from
Phoenix. Running On Empty succeeded on almost every level.
The physical exuberance which Phoenix displayed in Little
Nikita but which seemed to have no justification, is here
tied to emotional highs and lows, used sparingly and appropriately.
Watching the two films back-to-back it is clear the difference
that a good script and a good director could make to a performance
from River Phoenix. In The Mosquito Coast, Running On Empty,
Dogfight and My Own Private Idaho, Phoenix is given strong
direcion, which also motivates him to a better performace
and to contribute in a more concrete way to the success
or failure of each individual film, even changing dialogue
and staging in My Own Private Idaho, for example.
His relationship with Martha Plimpton was
River's longest lasting; the shooting of Running on Empty
gave them uninterrupted time together. Unlike Little Nikita,
the teen romance is developed fully as a major plank of
the pot in Running On Empty. The chemistry between Martha
Plimpton and River Phoenix is clear on screen, and their
developing romance is the key that unravels the Pope family
unit. Their off-screen relationship had continued since
The Mosquito Coast, under the watchful eyes of Phoenix's
parents. It was difficult, given both young actors' filmmaking
commitments, for them to see each other as often as they
would have liked. Working together on Running On Empty provided
an opportunity for a few months together and their personal
intimacy enabled them to act un-selfconsciously on screen.
 Running
On Empty even features that teen movie cliche, the aspiring
Romeo climbing the tree outside a reluctant Juliet's bedroom
window. However, the film uses this to lead into a pivotal
confession scene where Phoenix as Danny tearfully explains
his mysterious background to Plimpton's Lorna Phillips,
because he doesn't want to get deeply involved with her
while living in a lie. Phoenix uses this key moment to lay
bare the confusion of the character of Danny Pope as he
tries to meet the demands and needs of his parents and the
family, while dealing with his own developing needs: 'I
don't know what I'm doing!' Much of the film explores the
differing relationships between children and their parents.
Like Phoenix's own family, the Popes are a very close family,
as clearly demonstrated at the birthday party scene for
Lahti's Annie Pope. They quickly welcome Lorna as one of
them and clearly display the love and affection they have
for each other.
Larna's own parents are a different matter.
We only ever see her father, music teacer Mr. Phillips,
who seems more interested in developing Danny's musical
talents than in his own daughter. Lorna has an older sister
who followed through on the musical ambitions which her
father had for his offspring, while Lorna is more of an
outspoken individualist, who tries to insist that her father
knock before entering her room and who resents the stuffy
formal Chamber Music recitals he holds.
River Phoenix with Martha Plimpton, his
on- and off-screen girlfriend in Running on Empty. Their
mutual attraction was clear and their relationship a crucial
dynamic to the film. Phoenix's Danny keeps a newspaper cutting
containing photographs of his grandparents, and while attending
a musical audition for entry to the Juilliard School of
Music, a clue leads him to track down his material gradmother.
The vonfrontations is confusing for Danny, who poses as
a pizza delivery boy and doesn't reveal his own identity;
he does nothing to follow up on the meeting. Finding grandparents
would be too much like having family roots, too much like
having a stable background, which Danny can't afford if
the family are to continue moving on.
While family life for Phoenix had been different
in tone that portrayed in Running On Empty, the resonances
in the film cannot have been lost on him. 'My life certainly
hasn't been ordinary: different is the word. It hasn't always
been stable - except in the important things which are love
and security within the family. Whenever there were strains
at home, we could always communicate. The rule was that
the younger you were, the louder you were allowed to scream.
As the eldest, I just talked.'
Martha also acted alongside Rhoenix's brother,
Leaf, in the Steve Martin comedy Parenthood, which also
featured Keanu Reeves - the first time Phoenix met the actor
with whom he was to work in two films. The whole Phoenix
brood were now actors. His sisters Liberty and Summer had
appeared in the TV movie Kate's Secret, Leaf had been in
Parenthood, the feeble comedy Spacecamp (1986) and Ruskies
(1987), which had costarred his nine-year-old sister Summer,
(who beat his other sister Liberty, eleven, to the role).
Rain got in on the act, too, with her debut coming in the
comedy Maid in Order (1987), opposite Ally Sheedy and Beverly
D'Angelo. However, neither Leaf, who had the most success,
nor his sisters, was ever to rival the fame and success
in films of their eldest brother.
It was in Gainesville that River Phoenix
was to develop his musical ambitions, playing guitar and
recording, playing gigs in a local venue, the Club Demolition,
where the entrance fee goes to the feminist Women's Health
Centre, and it was where he was to meet the new woman in
his life, Susanne Solgot, four years his senior.
Dofight wasn't the only thing River Phoenix
was secretive about; in reality he had other opreoccupations
which he needed to keep hidden. A friend of Martha Plimpton's
alleged that she finally broke off the relationship with
Phoenix soon after the 1989 Oscar ceremony because he had
begun to dabble in the world of drugs. Whether this was
true or not, the year before Phoenix had anyway started
a relationship in Florida with Susanne Solgot, a 26-year-old
massage therapist and a musician.
END OF ARTICLE
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