80s mainly

“He’s already being made into a martyr, he’s become a metaphor for a fallen angel, a messiah. He wasn’t. He was just a boy, a very good-hearted boy who was very fucked-up and had no idea how to implement his good intentions. I don’t want to be comforted by his death. I think it’s right that I’m angry about it, angry at the people who helped him stay sick, and angry at River.“

River in films: Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989) as Young Indy // dir. Steven Spielberg

She recalls as a young child when River would perform on the streets and sing songs about love with his guitar. Or when the family traveled in South America and he went into prisons and comforted inmates by telling them “you’re not a bad person, you just did something that wasn’t right.” He was an activist in his own right, who used his celebrity to shine a light on environmental issues and the unethical treatment of animals. River was a vegan before it became fashionable to be a vegan. 

[…] Her words when she speaks of River drip with love. They linger in a place of reverence and sadness, the kind of place that only a mother who’s lost her son could know intimately, and yet, because of the positivity that oozes from Heart’s soul, because of the ways her son is still getting to make an impact on the Earth after he’s departed it, she’s happy.

Bonus:

“I told you not to come in here anymore.”

RIVER: I was thinking about fighting fire with fire, that concept. For the longest time I’ve been offered Japanese commercials. I’ve always turned them down because I don’t want a million dollars to advertise Hitachi or Mitsubishi or, god forbid, Mazda. But, in my later thinking, I can find the lesser of those evils, like, lets say, Japanese jeans or whatever. I can take that money and buy rainforests, which is exactly what I’m going to do. I’m trying to get together 500,000 grand so I can buy 40,000 acres. Man, it’s beautiful stuff. Where I want to do it is in South America

INTERVIEWER: Oh, that’s brilliant!

RIVER: Yeah, I’m gonna spend it all on that. I know these great guys who are very wealthy and are doing it now, these corporate heads who are putting it all into the planet. It’s great to see wealthy good

INTERVIEWER: I’ve never equated those two words before

RIVER: Good and wealthy? [laughs] Neither have I! Let’s face it: everyone who has it abuses it, usually. […] So that’s what I want to do now, whenever I can get jobs that pay me ridiculous amounts of money - because I really don’t think it’s fair people get paid that kind of money for what they do - but, if you redistribute it, and stick to your convictions, and use the money to buy freedom, man, you can turn your money into light

GoodFellas

Martin Scorsese