1970 - 1993

River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho dir. Gus Van Sant (1991)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RIVER PHOENIX 🖤 Over this past year, through the process of releasing some of River’s music and embarking on a solo record, I realized that in order to truly find my own voice, I had to include his. “Time Gone” was released Valentine’s Day as a kind of time capsule love letter to River. From there the floodgates opened. RIVER will be released Halloween 2019. This first single “Immolate” is for all of us. 

Stand by Me is being released in 4K Blu-ray on August 27th (4 days after River’s birthday!) w/ Never-Before-Seen Deleted and Alternate Scenes

Running on Empty

1988. Drama

By Sidney Lumet

Starring: Christine Lahti, Judd Hirsch, River Phoenix, Martha Plimpton, Jonas Abry, L.M. Kit Carson, Steven Hill, Augusta Dabney

Country: United States

River Phoenix would be an anomaly anywhere, let alone show business. The Oregon-born actor was named after the river of life in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, and spent his childhood wandering Central America with his parents, then missionaries for an organization called The Children of God. They raised an incurable idealist. 

“One thing I’d like to do when I have the money,” says the 19-year-old, “is to buy thousands of acres of Brazilian rain forest and make a national park, so no one can bulldoze it to put a McDonald’s on them. I guess people find security in a Big Mac, but that’s our oxygen!”

The star of Stand By Me, The Mosquito Coast, Running on Empty and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is cast in I Love You to Death as a pizza maker who joins fellow cooks William Hurt and Keanu Reeves in staging attempts on the life of pizzeria owner Kevin Kline, on behalf of Kline’s jealous wife Tracey Ullman. While the picture sounds like a bizarre black comedy, Phoenix sees it as having an “emotional, even moral” resonance.

Phoenix’s strong moral point of view can be explained by his “early childhood, growing up around people that were really humble, with a lifestyle that called for a lot of faith, without money…You couldn’t be an asshole.”

“At one point,” he adds, “I might decide to give up all material possessions…Just move out to the jungle someplace and live like an ape-man for a while.”