...INTERVIEWS...
...SHORT 'N' SWEET // FILM REVIEW // APRIL 1987...
River Phoenix isn't really the kind of name you could forget...Neither is the face. And anyone who has already seen The Mosquito Coast must still be dreaming about those steely blue-grey eyes that always looked as though they were about to burst into teats at every close-up.
But who is River Phoenix? And where did he come from? Well, before he portrayed Harrison Ford's young son Charlie, through whose eyes the story of The Mosquito Coast is told, fifteen year old Phoenix made his film debut as Wolfgang Muller, the youthful scientist in Joe Dante's Explorers and real movie buffs should be queueing round the block to see Stand By Me. No wonder that this blockbuster weepie had Americans sobbing in the aisles over its romantic portrait of pre-teenage adventures in middle America. River plays one of four kids who trek out one day in search of their friends dead body, and, natch, River is the tough little cookie who has learned to live with his harsh home life and tries to come to terms with being trapped in a small town with no chances of escape for a kid who was short-changed on brains. In The Mosquito Coast, he's the eldest boy who can't help looking up to his father and admiring everything he does, even a dangerous and daft journey by raft through the South American jungle. But the really strange thing is that River himself spent his own childhood travelling in South and Central America with his parents, who were then independent Christian missionaries.
Returning to the States at seven, he launched his career just three years later with a role in the popular tv series Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and youmight have seen him in Hotel, among a half-dozen other US tv shows. He even has four brothers and sisters all successfully pursuing acting careers on television or in film. I can't think of so much talent in one family since the Osmonds or the Cassidy's!
One of his biggest fans - after me! - is Harrison Ford, who said after shooting of The Mosquito Coast that "River is a natural actor. Inventive, smart and susceptiable to all kinds of influences, he is also very serious about his work".
Anyone can see that he is. In Stand By Me, for instance, he turns from the hardest nut on the block into a twelve year old bursting into tears in the arms of his best friend because his mom and dad don't really love or care about him. So you believe River when he says: "I hate the 'actory' way of saying things I just try to be in the scene's reality".
And what does he do in his spare time? "I love playing guitar, and when I get it together I record my own original songs on my four-track."
Whoever is thinking of starting a River Phoenix fan club should get moving (but not before writing to his agent). River's next movie Jimmy Reardon is already on the way, not to mention Little Nikita, which sees River in the title role of this movie which is all about a family that gets tangled up in an espionage plot. We haven't heard the last of Mr Phoenix, and that's for sure.
