Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards Read Free Book Online Page A

“independent missionaries” in Latin America; River and Rain first performed with a Venezuelan band John was leading when he lost his voice; Liberty was actually born one day earlier, on the Fourth of July, making her name a tribute to America rather than Venezuelan independence.
    One thing that couldn’t be concealed: the precocity of River, who told Guthman, “I hope to be famous one day, not to be proud of myself because I thank God for giving me my powers.”
    “This was an 8-year-old talking,” an astonished Guthman wrote.
    Team Phoenix proudly touted the article, sending it to friends, family, and anyone they thought could help the kids get famous. One copy was mailed to Penny Marshall in Hollywood: the star of the top-rated TV show Laverne & Shirley was an old school friend of Arlyn’s in the Bronx. The letter ended up in the hands of the Paramount Pictures casting department, which sent Arlyn a form letter. As River described it, “They answered, ‘Yeah, we’d be happy to see your children. If you’re ever in California, by all means, look us up, but don’t make a special trip.’ And so, of course, we just threw everything into the old station wagon and drove out to Burbank.”
    The Phoenix family wasn’t just chasing stardom: they thought this was all part of a divine plan in which the children, especially River, could be instrumental in changing the world into a better, holier place. The family sold their possessions, loaded up another battered VW minibus (which John had converted into a camper), and drove three thousand miles west: seven people and a dog, looking like Grapes of Wrath reenactors. “Things went wrong for us all the time,” Arlyn said. “One night, it was freezing—but we didn’t have a back window in the camper. It got so cold, we stuffed Pampers in the window.”
    Jacked up on hope and naïveté, River resolved that acting rather than singing was his path forward, and announced this destiny to anyone who would listen. “We’d roll into gas stations,” River said, “and I’d tell the attendant, ‘I’m going to be an actor!’ ”
    The family kept moving west, looking through the windshield with the optimism of a nine-year-old, and doing everything they could to block out the view of what lay behind them.

10
    JOHNNY CAME FROM MIAMI F-L-A
    Around the same time, farther down the peninsula, in a Miami suburb called Miramar, a sixteen-year-old Johnny Depp was considering his future. Determined to be a rock star, he had just quit high school, and now worried that he had made a huge mistake.
    Depp grew up in Kentucky watching his uncle play guitar with his gospel group: “These hillbillies, for lack of a better description, playing guitar right in front of me—that was where the bug came from.” When a young Depp was listening to Frampton Comes Alive, his older brother grabbed the needle off the record and turned him on to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks instead.
    At age twelve, Depp talked his mom into buying him a Decca electric guitar for twenty-five dollars; he taught himself songs from a Mel Bay chord book that he had shoplifted by stuffing it down his pants. Depp locked himself in his bedroom and learned to play chords: soon he could hammer out Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” and Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.”
    With some other neighborhood kids, he started a band called Flame and played backyard parties: “This one guy had a bass, we knew a guy who had a PA system, it was ramshackle and great.” They even cobbled together a homemade lighting system. Depp knew he had found his calling in life.
    “There’s a big change from thirteen to fifteen,” Depp noted. “You start out with super-innocent names, and then by the time you’re fifteen, you’re a guitarist in a band named Bitch.” He laughed. “Kind of ludicrous.” Depp never considered being lead singer: ironically, he didn’t want to be the guy that everybody looked at.
    The band got popular enough to