What Was River Phoenix Like?

Who cares? He was a mess and that’s a good photo but in Most he was weird looking

Seemed like a wounded soul.

Do we know the gender of his molester when he was in that cult? Male or female?

I recently saw this newly published interview with him on YouTube and he was so beautiful and humble. What a loss. I bet he would have easily been the megastar of the late 90s/00s and not LeoD or Brad Pitt.

Diverting and effluent, a delta male.

His acting range was limited his looks were meh.

R6 = Joaquin

Boring as shit, just like this board's tedious obsession with him.

He would have just turned 50 this month.

Weird how so many attractive young men and women have offed themselves in the entertainment world over the decades...

It's interesting to me how he's still so popular and kind of a fashion icon like James Dean. Fashion designers seems obsessed with finding a model that favors him. Jordan Barrett. Cole Sprouse. Harry Styles. Charlie Heaton. All got compared to River Phoenix in appearane.

Would have been one of the greats with a little guidance. He set the table for people like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Brad can still put in a good performance and I respect him for supporting indie films. Leo is boring as hell and just phones it in a lot nowadays and plays it safe.

Keanu Light

His life story is still fucking crazy. Being raised in a cult in South America, learning English as a second language, playing music on the streets for money and supporting his big ass family with his acting career. Becoming an advocate for environmentalism and veganism and buying up land to save it from being destroyed. Dying young after making an error of judgment which reflected his actual age and recklessness despite his mature image in the media.

Like James Dean, he was photogenic and there are hundreds of photos of him in his youth and beauty. My Own Private Idaho is revered among film scholars and many "queer"-identifying hipsters like James Franco, Gregg Araki, Avan Jogia, etc.

Great actor but a junkie. Dumb but sweet. Would be a character actor not a leading man if he were still alive.

His parents should have been arrested for being scumbags. Evil people honestly. I can't even blame River and his siblings being fucked up because their parents were leeches who exploited all of their kids. They hid their incompetence and laziness through being liberal hippies.

His asshole was like a velvet path to Cream Town. Plush and not at all bony, even though he was so small.

I mean when he was still young, and not all overly mature and grown out like when he died.

Thanks to him and others in the 90s, I’ll always have a thing for guys with floppy hair.

I loved his soft voice. Very soothing and sing-songy.

He would have been a big star. He'd of got some plum roles and awards. He had musical talent and his environment and veganism would have made him right entrend right now.

Even if he had lived, Brad Pitt and Leo would still have become megastars and much bigger/more high profile than him. He was an indie type—not a leading man,

He is mostly forgotten nowadays.

There have been stories from the set of "The Explorers" about how he was naive and unaware of everyday things that other teenagers knew from birth. Due to his upbringing they had to explain things that most of us just know.

He was a pain in the ass.

I think River's career would be more of a character actor. He would do a lot of indie films and work with artistic directors of his choice. He clearly disliked the Hollywood lifestyle. Johnny, Keanu, Brad and Leo were hungry for fame and became box office movie stars which was something River didn't seem interested in.

He was diverting.

Leo and Brad are such boring and cynical individuals with little personality to them at least what they portray to the public. River had a strong personality and opinions and seemed to actually believed what he preached. I don't get the comparisons other than the fact they are all blond and white.

R16 How was he dumb? Give examples. And don't just say stupid things like: because he did drugs.

I think he really needed to align himself with a good director sort of like Leo did with Scorsese and have projects tailored to him. I think eventually it would have been character roles by now. I see him sort of like a younger Willem Dafoe and playing quirky parts.

His close friend Dermot Mulroney said of River after he passed away: "He was under-educated and over-intelligent."

He was a natural, even at a young age. Anyone saying he was "boring" or "dumb" either doesn't know what they're talking about or is being half-assed "edgy".

He seemed always to be a bit of a zealot with his beliefs. But I remember hearing rumours that he was a bit hypocritical and I don’t know if it’s true or not, but in the autopsy didn’t they say he’d eaten a hamburger?

WHET Samantha Mathis, wasn’t her star on the rise and then quickly faded after the Viper room incident. Seemed a shame, she had potential to be a Gen X icon.

His performance in Stand by Me was special.... exactly my age. That movie really got to me.

He did have many good performances, Stand by Me, Running on Empty, young Indy in The Last Crusade, Idaho and Dogfight. I’m sure he would have gone on to be in more memorable films.

R29 Read "Last Night at the Viper Room" and tell me he doesn't come across as an idiot. I was a big fan but the more I read about him he was just an uneducated pretty boy who became a junkie. Happens in Hollywood all the time but he made some good films. "Running on Empty" and "Dogfight" are two of my faves.

R37 So he came across as an idiot in a book that was written about him by some Rolling Stone journalist? Great. Give me examples from his statements and interviews. How was he dumb? I don't care about the junkie part. Some of the smartest and most talented people are/were junkies and alcoholics.

I liked Dogfight, but I more remember Lily ...I forget her last name, but the other lead.

As for River..

[quote] but in the autopsy didn’t they say he’d eaten a hamburger?

I read the autopsy now and I couldn’t see mention of the hamburger so ignore that please.

Such a sad fate for him. He really was one of the most promising actors of his generation. I think he would possibly have become more choosy about his projects after Interview with a Vampire and maybe worked less but on more quality films like Daniel Day Lewis.

R40 I’m pretty sure he was a longtime vegetarian so no, he wouldn’t have eaten a hamburger.

He'd of won an Oscar by now. For something like Brokeback Mountain or Dallas Buyers Club or an erstwhile environmental film type role.

Directors like Ang Lee or Tim Burton would have seen to that.

I find River way more attractive than Leo. River had beautiful features, a nice athletic body and an eccentric but charming personality. Leo was cute but not handsome or beautiful and he is fake with douchebro personality.

River was extremely handsome in Dogfight.

River was absolutely gorgeous, definitely easy on the eyes. R33, you really articulated how I think of River — a zealot. But he was like a creative hippy artist freebird type, he was passionate about passion, he had a lust for life. He was absolutely a hypocrite, but that’s totally ok, I’m one too, it only made him more human to me. I despise hypocrisy more than almost anything else, so think conservatism and Christians. I can’t stand their hypocrisy. But River telling people he didn’t party when in fact he was a huge druggie, I think he felt like the Message was bigger than the messenger. He faked that he was a sober person, but I do think his intentions were good, I think he was trying to remove the stigma of saying no to drugs. Maybe I’m wrong, and he did it as a shrewd business strategy — if I read that happened, I would change my opinion of him. But my gut is his intention was to give a good message that was anti-drug, that he could save lives, I can’t be mad at that.