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.
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Famous quotes containing the words river, phoenix and/or death:
“There is a river in Macedon, and there is moreover a river in Monmouth. It is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ‘tis all one, ‘tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A victorious tomcat is like a tiger; a plucked phoenix is not worth a chicken.”
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“Only death rescues us from dying.”
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