certain behaviors, certain gestures or
movements, whether the camera was
on him and registering it or not.”
“For me, I always thought that acting
should be like a documentary,” he contin-
ues. “That you should just feel whatever it
is that you’re feeling, what you think the
character is going through at that moment.”
Ironically, the two barely spoke on the
set, in part because of their similar act-
ing methods and artistic superstitions.
“I didn’t like to talk to him on set,” says
Phoenix. “The irst day we said good
morning, and beyond that I don’t know
that we talked much.”
“His character and my character, we
didn’t need to talk about anything,” says
De Niro. “We just say, ‘Do the work.
Relate as the characters to each other.’
It makes it simpler and we don’t [talk].
There’s no reason to.”
There was nonetheless some dis-
agreement on the method to the meth-
od. Before shooting his scenes, De Niro
wanted the cast to do a read-through of
the script, a practice he considered stan-
dard. Phoenix, however, has often dis-
liked doing read-throughs, part of his own
mercurial “let it happen” style. Recalls
Phillips: “Bob called me and he goes, ‘Tell
him he’s an actor and he’s got to be there,
I like to hear the whole movie, and we’re
going to all get in a room and just read
it.’ And I’m in between a rock and a hard
place because Joaquin’s like, ‘There’s no
fucking way I’m doing a read-through,’
“Where are you?” he asked, oering to
come to my aid. There was an uncomfort-
able moment as I told him the location. In
an uncanny and unfortunate coincidence,
it was directly behind the Viper Room.
Phoenix paused, then said: “I know that’s
on Sunset, but what’s the cross street?”
Having just seen Phoenix in his har-
rowing role, it was hard not to think of
that grim night, October 31, 1993. It was
three days after Joaquin Phoenix’s 19th
birthday. He had accompanied River and
Rain to the club, which was frequented by
the Hollywood brat pack of the era, includ-
ing actors Keanu Reeves and Christina
Applegate. One version of the story is that
a well-known guitar player handed River a
Dixie cup containing a liquid concoction of
heroin and cocaine, and he drank it—well
over a lethal dose, the coroner later deter-
mined. As River convulsed on the sidewalk
outside the club and Rain looked on, Joa-
quin made the heartbreaking 911 call. The
transcript of his panicked words—“Please
get to him. Please! Please!”—would be
printed in newspapers around the country.
Now, 26 years later, Phoenix drives up
in a beat-up old black Lexus, warm and
smiling in a pair of white karate pants and
well-worn Converse sneakers, a cigarette
dangling from his lip and his hair not somuch combed back as yanked into sub-
mission. Just back from practicing karate,
he goes immediately into the foyer of the
nearby hotel to ask the manager for help
¥nding where the car was towed, and a
few minutes later we’re driving to Hol-
lywood Tow Service, a fluorescent-lit
garage on an empty street, talking about
Ray Bolger and Phoenix’s recent expe-
riences with cryotherapy, where you
expose your body to subzero tempera-
tures (“It’s amazing, you gotta try it”).
In 1991, River famously told Details
magazine that he lost his virginity at age
four, which seemed to cement a narra-
tive about what happened inside the cult.
“You really believe that?” says Phoenix.
“It was a complete and total joke. It was
just fucking with the press. It was literally
a joke, because he was so tired of being
asked ridiculous questions by the press.”
“My parents were never negligent,” he
says. When Joaquin and his siblings were
children, his family was living in Venezu-
ela, apart from the Children of God com-
munity in the United States. In 1977 they
received a letter from the leader describ-
ing a new practice of “irty ¥shing,” using
sex to bring in followers. “They got some
letter, or however it came, some sugges-
tion of that, and they were like, ‘Fuck this,
we’re outta here,’ ” Phoenix says. “I think
they were idealists, and believed that
they were with a group who shared their
beliefs, and their values. I think they prob-
ably were looking for safety, and family.
Leaving a country that had assassinated
a president and any number of civil rights
leaders within a few fucking years, which
is so hard for me to fathom, right?”
His mother, who changed her irst
name to Heart, later said “it took several
years to get over our pain and loneliness”
after leaving the cult.
After the family arrived in Florida,
the singing and dancing continued, with
River and Rain forming a brother-sister
act, winning talent contests and gaining
the attention of local media. When Phoe-
nix’s father stopped working because
of an old back injury, his mother took
charge: She sent an article about the kids
to an old acquaintance from the Bronx,
Penny Marshall, who was then starring in
the ABC sitcom Laverne & Shirley. Mar-
shall’s oce wrote back to say the family
should stop in if they were ever in L.A.,
but hastened to warn them not to move
there if they weren’t already coming. The
family, having“IT’S
GOING
TO BE
OKAY,
BUBBELEH,”
DE NIRO
SAID TO
PHOENIX.
CONTINUED ON PAGE n104 VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2019
GROOMING BY DAVID COX; SET DESIGN BY MARCS GOLDBERG; PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY JOY ASBURY PRODUCTIONS; FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS