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A few days later, he and I spoke on the phone. He said he was feeling good, working on an album with his sister Rain. He said I should tell Louise and Carrie he had kept his promise - he was back to a healthy life, he told me. He had to beg off going to the Montreal film festival screening of our movie because he was really into the album, into singing and playing music. He hoped I understood. The picture had also been invited to the Vienna International Film Festival, but he would be shooting his new film, Dark Blood [see box on page 80], by then. After that, he was going to do Interview with the Vampire, and there were two or three other big pictures on which Iris Burton was in negotiation. He sounded very happy to be home. Sam was there, too.

The picture was glowingly received in Montreal - by the public, the press, and some of my peers. Several critics - all of whom were bowled over by River's transformation - said they were holding their rave reviews in anticipation of the film's imminent opening. As it turned out, The Thing Called Love was never released in Montreal, nor in a lot of other places. After its disappointing southwestern tryout, the movie was, for all intents and purposes, shelved. River and I spoke animatedly for about a half hour over the phone while he was shooting Dark Blood. He sounded crystal clear and completely grounded. He said he had been clean of any kind of substance for three months and was feeling great. The film was heavy, he said, but interesting. One of his costars didn't get on well with the director, which was a drag, but he loved Jonathan Pryce. I told him that my wife and I would be arriving back in L.A. right around Halloween. River noted that he'd be there by then and that we could see each other. We made a date to have dinner on the night of November 1.

The picture was so well received in Vienna that I almost tried to reach River to tell him what a particular hit he had been with critics and audiences. But I knew the odds of tracking him down were poor, and we'd be seeing each other soon enough. We flew back to Los Angeles on Halloween, nonstop from Genoa, accompanied by Robert Towne and his family. While I raved about River, Towne talked excitedly of a young actor he was working with named Johnny Depp. When we arrived at LAX, Bob and his family got separated from us for a while. Just as we were nearing the exit where greeters wait, we ran into each other again. Bob looked troubled and confused. He said he hated to tell me this, but he'd just heard someone talking and they said, "Wasn't it too bad River Phoenix had been killed." I almost laughed. "But that's impossible," I said, and Louise shrugged it off as a crazy rumor. My mind was racing: Could it be? A car accident? A fight? No, it wasn't anything. But when I saw that my longtime assistant, Iris Chester, was waiting gravely for us with the driver, I realized something had to be wrong: Iris had never before come to meet us at an airport. Iris said she hadn't wanted me to see it on TV, but River had died that night. Seemed to have been some sort of drug overdose. It happened while we were on the plane. He had collapsed on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room, a club co-owned by Johnny Depp.

By the time I got home, it was getting late, but I called Sam. She sounded numb. It had all happened so fast, she said. She'd suspected River had taken some drugs earlier in the evening but hadn't been sure of it. They hadn't planned to hang out at the Viper Room - only to go by, say hello, drop off Joaquin and Rain, and then go back to her house. But River had brought his guitar, knowing some friends were jamming there, and had really wanted to play with them. Reluctantly, Sam said, she'd yielded.

After a while, she saw River with a pal of his who he had told her was a junkie, and a bouncer was opening a side door for them. She didn't know if they were being pushed out or going out of their own accord. Evidently, the junkie had given River some stuff that didn't mix with what he might have already taken. River complained that he wasn't feeling well, but his friend told him he was just being paranoid. Worried, Sam followed them out to the sidewalk to keep an eye on them, lit a cigarette, and walked ten feet away to give them privacy. When she turned around, River had started going into convulsions, then he dropped to the sidewalk. His friend said he was fine, to just leave him alone. Knowing that couldn't be true, Sam said, and that something was terribly wrong, she tried to get River on his feet, but he seemed to have passed out. She ran into the club to get Joaquin and Rain. Joaquin called 911 while Rain and Sam tried to help River. Then Joaquin and Rain both attempted unsuccessfully to revive River. By the time the paramedics got there, he had gone into cardiac arrest. Though they tried repeatedly to revive him, it was too late. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Sam said that Joaquin and his sisters were overcome with grief, and that Heart was being incredibly strong, holding everybody together. How she did it, Sam said, she didn't know. We spoke a little while longer, me trying to say something about the indestructibility of the spirit. I promised that first thing in the morning, I would come over to the house where everyone was staying.

When I arrived, some friends were in the kitchen making sandwiches. The kids looked devastated. Heart, as Sam had said, was amazingly in control. We embraced for a long moment. She said her main concern right now was helping the other children through this - they were all devoted to River, worshipful - and it was so terrible for them that she couldn't really show how she felt. Sam and I spoke for a while, alone. She cried. She and River had been talking a lot, she said, looking forward to seeing each other. He had been totally clean, she said. The minute he got to L.A., the bad influences surfaced, the temptations reached out. Because he had been off everything for more than three months, he was far more vulnerable than if he had never stopped. Joaquin was having a cigarette in the living room. We hadn't met before, but Joaquin said that River had spoken well of me. As he tried to speak of his brother, Joaquin broke down; recalling the terrible last moments, he began sobbing and couldn't go on. I embraced him. He held on to me and kept crying. There was a memorial for River a few days later at the Paramount Theatre on the lot. Sidney Poitier was very eloquent and touching, as were Ethan Hawke and numerous others. On a talk show not long afterward, the host asked veteran star Tony Curtis to comment on the death of River Phoenix. I recall Curtis saying cryptically that it was "difficult to comprehend how much envy" there was in Hollywood. The remark resonates. Samantha had many recriminations about that horrible final night, most particularly against the junkie, but Heart would hear none of it. There was nothing that could bring River's body back to life, Heart seemed to feel, and she focused entirely on the continuing life of River's spirit and on helping her children overcome the tragedy and learn to live with their brother in a different way. Her strength and selflessness were inspirational. Eventually, there were lawsuits against River's estate because his death happened during a picture. Corporate inhumanity knows no bounds. A few years later, River's sister Liberty gave Heart her first grandchild: A boy. They named him Rio - Spanish for river.

Barely a week goes by that I don't think of River Phoenix, usually wishing I could just call him up and tell him what was happening, or hear his enthusiasm as we planned another movie or he wrote another song. He was an old soul, of course, so he'll never really be gone, but that doesn't mean I don't miss him terribly in this life: a lovely boy, a loyal friend, a poet at heart, a true artist.

� 2001 Premi�re magazine.

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