THE THINGS WE'VE SEEN
Mike Waters : I always know where I am by the way that the road looks. Like I just know that I've been here before. I just know that I've been stuck here, like this one fucking time before, you know that? Yeah. There's not another road anywhere that looks like this road - I mean, exactly like this road. It's one kind of place. One of a kind ... like someone's face ...
[cracks neck]
Like a fucked up face.
I'm convinced that if River Phoenix hadn't died so tragically on that fateful Halloween night at the Viper Room in 1993 then he would have easily become the greatest American actor of his generation. Thankfully, his cinematic legacy was already assured at the age of 23 after acting in some of the most classic films of that time including Stand By Me, Running On Empty, The Mosquito Coast and Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. In all of those films he demonstrates an exceptional array of emotional tones and colours and one can only imagine what he would have achieved had he survived the cruel ending that cut short his Hollywood dream.
But it's his performance as the narcoleptic gay prostitute Mike Walters in Gus Van Sant's 1991 film My Own Private Idaho that haunts me when I now think back on Phoenix and his unique talent.
At the mercy of his sleeping condition, Mike's whole existence seems to be a dream state that is occasionally interrupted by the sordid nightmare of his reality. His perpetually lost state of being ends up with him returning to endless highways of the Pacific Northwest in a subconscious bid to find his long lost mother.
Phoenix imbues this character with a complex performance that is in turn stoic, world weary and highly sensitive. The homeless vagabond River portrays, destined to forever drift like a tumbleweed, is so authentic in this instance you could almost imagine his scenes were from a documentary.
Mike Waters : I'm a connoisseur of roads. I've been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world.
Sadly, Phoenix's beautifully naturalistic performance is not so well supported by Keanu Reeves's more wooden performance as the more privileged Scott Favor, Mike's best friend in the movie. With an overt reference to Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV part 1, Reeves's character has chosen to slum it whereas Mike had no real choice.
Although Reeves doesn't spoil the film, it certainly reveals just how much more of a naturally talented actor Phoenix was, and it's especially apparent in all the scenes he doesn't share with Keanu where we can appreciate his masterful performance to its maximum effect.
One quirky delight of Idaho referencing Henry IV, however, is that we get a beautifully down at heel Falstaff-like character called Bob Pigeon (Richard Richert) who, like Fagin, is king of the homeless drifters and schleps around the streets of Portland, like a destitute wizard.
Because Richert playfully exaggerates the character of Bob, he avoids pretentiousness, whereas, sadly, Reeves just can't pull off the gravitas needed to be a 20th Century Prince Hal.
But when all is said and done, it's River Phoenix who makes this film memorable and gives it its heart.
As the sound of Bill Stafford's steel guitar introduces the character of Mike Waters to us in the opening scene of Idaho, with a stunning dream-like rendition of America The Beautiful, it occurs to me that Phoenix's Hollywood dream was also the American dream; the two had become almost indistinguishable at the time the film came out.
Tinseltown provided Phoenix the platform to demonstrate his gifts to the world, but unfortunately, similar to Mike with his narcolepsy, he dropped to the pavement outside the Viper Room in a fit of convulsions, where he himself finally succumbed to sleep.
Though sadly, for River, it was a sleep he never woke up from.