By Kayleigh Donaldson/Aug. 23, 2021 7:57 am EST
And at its heart is a quartet of performances that helped to redefine the child star of the ’80s: the fragile cockiness of Corey Feldman, the earnest naivety of Jerry O’Connell, the bruised sensitivity of Wil Wheaton, and, of course, the prodigal charisma of River Phoenix.
“Our Kids Could Captivate the World”
It seems impossible to talk about River Phoenix as an actor without discussing him as an icon of youthful tragedy. His name pops up on practically every clickbait list dedicated to leering over the celebrities who died before their time. Rufus Wainwright wrote a song about him, lamenting the death of a matinee idol. His younger brother Joaquin, who’s done a bit of acting over the years, is still incessantly asked about River’s death and endlessly portrayed as a tortured soul because of it. Pop culture has a grand fetish for beloved geniuses who died prematurely, from Buddy Holly to Kurt Cobain to Amy Winehouse, and Phoenix will forever be embedded in that narrative. It’s not hard to see how we got to this place, but it is a shame that this unbearable pain has irrevocably skewed how we understand Phoenix’s work.
Of course, it’s not as though these compromising perspectives weren’t present when he was alive either. From his earliest introduction in Hollywood, Phoenix was defined as something of a curiosity. Where the child stars of old were impeccably polished dolls under the thumb of the studio system and tap-dancing for their lives, the Phoenix kids were unruly hippies of unreal talent, plucked from nowhere and shoved into the spotlight. The story of his unusual upbringing was as inescapable in interviews as description of his prodigious acting skills. A 1986 interview from People heralded the teenager as “an independent spirit” free of slick styling or training, while Rob Reiner said that his parents “have somehow managed to maintain what was pure and good about the ’60s morality and make it work.”
Reiner’s warmly encouraging stance, however, was a rare one in the media cycle. His hippie nature was often mocked, such as during an interview on Donahue when the very mention of his siblings’ names made the audience guffaw with laughter. A Movieline journalist wondered if “the poor kid” Phoenix had been “raised by the Keebler elves or just domineering parents masquerading as flower children? Jimmy Connors, Brooke Shields, and Patti Davis survived domineering parents. Jesus, Hamlet, and Hitler didn’t fare as well. Which way did River fall?” After his death, his ardent veganism and environmentalist activism were spun as simultaneously godlike and a symbol of hypocrisy: how could Hollywood’s most famous earth child die of a drug overdose?
Most journalists also seemed somewhat horrified by Phoenix’s upbringing, especially once it became common knowledge that he spent part of his childhood in the Children of God cult. Now known as The Family International, the group preached an explicitly sexual approach to spirituality that included a proselytizing method called Flirty Fishing, which encouraged female members to “show God’s love” to potential converts through sex. The Children of God has faced countless accusations of child sex abuse. In an interview with Details magazine in November 1991, Phoenix stated, in his words, that he first “made love” at the age of four while in the Children of God, but he’d “blocked it out” (in 2019, Joaquin Phoenix claimed that River was joking when he said this “because he was so tired of being asked ridiculous questions by the press.”)
