River Phoenix's Death
A few months after the film's completion, Rain flew to Los Angeles with her brother Joaquin to meet River during a break in his 14th project Dark Blood. On the evening of October 30, 1993, they set out, joined by River's good friend Samantha Mathis, for a night at the LA club The Viper Room, part owned by Johnny Depp. It would be the last evening Phoenix would spend with her brother; he died later that night from heart failure attributed to an overdose of heroin and cocaine, a concoction called a "speedball".
Not only did Rain have to deal with the loss of her older brother, but also the media circus that followed. Aleka's Attic, by that time consisting a different line-up, had been working on an album that River had been funding himself. The album was near completion and so Phoenix began the long task of mixing and producing the scraps of recordings. The album has never been released.
Read more about this topic: Rain Phoenix
Famous quotes containing the words river, phoenix and/or death:
“Sitting in that dusky wilderness, under that dark mountain, by the bright river which was full of reflected light, still I heard the wood thrush sing, as if no higher civilization could be attained. By this time the night was upon us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And there’s a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind,
Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay
And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind:
I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)