Free Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards Page B

ultimately helped him land the part. “I had this tragic air to me ’cause I was bummed out by the accident.”
    River’s character was tough, sensitive, and just a little goofy. In blue jeans and a white T-shirt, sporting a short fifties haircut, he looked like a screen star of the past—one in particular. Director Rob Reiner said, “He was a young James Dean and I had never seen anybody like that.”
    Wil Wheaton, who played the twelve-year-old Gordie, said that the movie worked, in large part, because the four young actors starring in it matched their characters so well: he was nerdy and uncomfortable in his own skin; Jerry O’Connell was funny and schlubby (looking nothing like the chiseled hunk he became as an adult); Corey Feldman was full of inchoate rage and had an awful relationship with his parents. “And River was cool and really smart and passionate,” Wheaton said. “Kind of like a father figure to some of us.”
    At first, Wheaton was intimidated by River, who was fourteen to his twelve. He explained, “He was so professional and so intense, he just seemed a lot older than he was. He seemed to have this wisdom around him that was really difficult to quantify at that age.” He was smart, he was musically talented, and he was one of the kindest people Wheaton had ever met. In other words: “He just seemed cool.”
    Stand by Me, based on the Stephen King novella The Body, is the story of four boys in small-town Oregon in 1959. Just before junior high school begins, they hike twenty miles down the train tracks to the spot where they have heard the corpse of a missing kid lies, and come home older and wiser.
    Production began on The Body (as it was then known) in June 1984. Reiner, most famous for playing “Meathead” on All in the Family, had already directed This Is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing . He didn’t think a coming-of-age period piece had much commercial potential, but it was the sort of movie he wanted to make.
    Reiner gave his stars tapes of late-fifties music and made sure they learned the slang of the era. More importantly, he summoned his four young leads one week early to Brownsville, Oregon (about a hundred miles west of where River was born, on the other side of the Cascade Mountains). Reiner led them in games drawn from Viola Spolin’s book Improvisations for the Theater: River and the other boys mimed each other’s gestures as if they were mirror images, told collaborative stories, and took turns guiding each other blindfolded through their hotel lobby. “Theater games develop trust among people,” declared Reiner, who needed his four actors to become friends—quickly.
    Feldman had known River a long time—they had become friendly on the L.A. audition circuit. “Whenever we saw each other on auditions,” Feldman remembered, “we would hang out or play outside while everyone else was sitting in the room waiting for their shot.”
    The quartet soon bonded. When The Goonies, starring Feldman, was released that summer, they went to see it together; a few weeks later, they all went to Explorers . Wheaton’s family organized weekend white-water rafting trips for the cast and crew. At the end of one outing, they found themselves at a clothing-optional hot springs that was hosting a hippie fair; some of the cast got to juggle with the Flying Karamazov Brothers.
    At the hotel, the actors were testing their limits. When River found out Wheaton was adept with electronics, he encouraged him to monkey with a video-game machine so they could play for free, promising that he’d take the blame if they got caught. They soaked Feldman’s wardrobe in beer; after his clothes dried, he smelled like a wino. And they threw the poolside chairs into the hotel pool—the closest four well-meaning young adolescents could get to acting like the Who.
    Kiefer Sutherland had a supporting role as the quartet’s nemesis, a juvenile delinquent named Ace Merrill. Sutherland was almost four years older