His life came to a tragic end outside The Viper Room in Los Angeles where he experienced an overdose after taking a combination of heroin and cocaine.

As he suffered convulsions on the pavement outside the club his girlfriend, actress Samantha Mathis, looked on in horror, his sister Rain tried to give him mouth-to-mouth, and brother Joaquin called for an ambulance.

He was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, but doctors were unable to revive him, and he pronounced dead at 1.51am.

Phoenix was an acclaimed actor who made 14 films during his short career, two of them were released after his death. Dark Blood, the movie he was filming at the time of his death was not released until 2012, many years after his passing.

Phoenix got audience’s attention in early films including Explorers and Stand by Me, he acted opposite some of Hollywood’s biggest names including Sydney Poitier in Little Nikita, and Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast. 

He played a younger version of Ford when he appeared as the young Indiana Jones in a sequence that opens Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. He also had memorable roles in Running on Empty, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. 

His greatest praise came for his leading role alongside Keanu Reeves in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. In the film he played a gay street hustler searching for belonging.

Back in the early 90’s both Phoenix and Reeves’ agents tried to dissuade them from taking on the roles, advising that playing a gay or bisexual character could have a negative effect on their careers. They both ignored the advice, and instead the world got one of the classic LGBTIQA+ themed films, and acclaimed performances from both the actors.

Actor David Ogden Stiers was born on this day.

Actor David Ogden Stiers, best known for portraying Major Charles Winchester III on the long running TV show M*A*S*H was born on this day in 1942.

Ogden Stiers joined the hit TV show in 1977 at the beginning of its sixth season, filling to void left by actor Larry Linville who had played the character of Frank Burns. He stayed with the show until its final episode in 1983.

Aside from his best-known work in M*A*S*H, the actor was also a successful voice actor lending his voice to many Disney productions including Beauty and the Beast, Lilo and Stitch, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

During his career the actor appeared in many well-known TV shows including Charlie’s Angles, Murder She Wrote, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Matlock. The Practice and Frasier.

He also appeared in the landmark miniseries North and South. In the 1980’s he appeared in a series of Perry Mason TV movies, his character District Attorney Michael Reston repeatedly losing to Ramond Burr’s Mason.

The actor also appeared in several Woody Allen movies including Shadows and Fog, Mighty Aphrodite, Everybody Says I Love You and Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

In 2009 the actor shared that he was gay and said that he’d kept his sexuality a secret throughout most of his career out of fear that it would stop him getting roles on the family friendly TV shows he was best known for.

Ogden Stiers passed away in 2018 aged 75.

The post On This Gay Day | Remembering actor River Phoenix appeared first on OUTinPerth.

Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho celebrates its 25th anniversary this week. Kyle J Kash is a young gay man who has just seen the film for the first time, Graeme Watson saw it when he was a young gay man.

Kyle’s Thoughts

This is a story not of dipping your toes into our culture but rather being familiar with it and riding the waves by withholding judgement. The 1991 film My Own Private Idaho lays bare the common straight-washed LGBTI+ stories we have come to accept in 2016 and forces us to dig deeper into the root of our humanity: That we aren’t just coming out stories and comedic sidelines but actual people too.

River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves (in what is possibly the only redeeming work I’ve seen Reeves perform in 25 years) birth a story that deals with class, abandonment, loneliness and the ever-familiar situation of unrequited love for your straight best friend. We all have a moment in our lives where the campfire scene is brutally heart-breaking for its honest portrayal of a love that cannot be due to the physical getting in the way of the emotional.

Gus Van Sant’s gay hustler fable is melded with several Shakespearean epics that lends to its universality and relevance in 2016. Cut with vivid landscape cinematography and the most minimalistic fonts and colours we are transported to a time in the 1990’s where grungy, indie films were abrasive and audacious enough to elevate us out of the mundane and into a hyper-reality that we can still believe. Essentially, that is what life truly is: Heightened characters that seem unbelievable, until you realise they are the very people your memory recollects.

In an age where sex and gore is splattered upon us for the sake of ‘realism’ My Own Private Idaho implies its grotesque side and makes it beautiful. We are treated to tableau for sex scenes and quasi-documentary interviews of twinkie prostitutes recounting their sexually violent histories.

The film dares to experiment and go where Hollywood wouldn’t take us and for that it has stood the test of time, like all things queer and worthwhile it bent the rules and challenged us by causing us to empathise with drug-addled, homosexual callboys trapped in a world where they were never going to be accepted anyway.

Graeme’s Thoughts

The first time I saw My Own Private Idaho was at the New Oxford Cinema. I had to show my ID to get a ticket to see the controversial film. There had been news reports about how outrageous it was in its depictions of homosexuality. When I told my friends I’d seen the film, some of them were visibly shocked.

I was in love with River Phoenix. It was a love affair that began three years earlier when he appeared on the over on the UK magazine SKY. I drew his picture and put in on my bedroom wall, I watched all his movies, and now here he was in a queer film.  Thank you Santa.

There were parts of the film I didn’t understand, but River was in and that scene where he jumps under the covers and makes sex noises with Keanu Reeves- that was everything.

I’ve watched the film many times, maybe once every five years. Each time I see new things. I find new meaning, new humour and connect with different characters based on my own changing life experience. The opening scene with the salmon and the house crashing on to the road meant nothing to me. At 18 I’d never had a house crashing experience. A few years later – I was laughing hysterically.

It’s a film I’ve watched over and over. It’s a great gauge for what we find risqué. We’ve gone from holding our breath when Phoenix and Reeves appeared as pornographic models on the covers of magazines in the film – to being able to access as much porn as we want on mobile phones in our pockets.

Just after I saw the film I bought a rust coloured jacket with a suede collar, just like the one River wears in the film. I was obsessed, but the love affair would end just two years later when the actor died of an overdose outside LA’s The Viper Room on Halloween night 1993.

My Own Private Idaho is Phoenix’s most intriguing work. I’m ready to watch it again.

The post My Own Private Idaho celebrates 25 years appeared first on OUTinPerth.

I clearly remember when we first met. It was in a supermarket, maybe it was Sainsburrys, it was somewhere in England. I was there on holiday and you were in the supermarket hanging out on the front cover of SKY magazine.

I bought the magazine and read about your new films ‘A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon’, ‘Little Nikita’ and ‘Running on Empty’. I saw them all as soon they arrived at my local video store in outback Australia.

I also began repetitively drawing your portrait. over and over again I recreated the cover o f that SKY magazine in different media; sometimes pastels, sometimes a pencil sketch. An abstract minimalist version was blue-tacked to my bedroom wall forever.

Let’s be honest, not all of your films were great – but I gave them all a go.  I wished there was more of you ‘I Love You to Death’ and I struggled to connect with ‘Dog Fight’ but that’s OK because just watching your face for 90 minutes was a wonderful experience in itself. It was great to see you turn up as Indiana Jones!

For years I wished I had your hair. It wanted a fringe that fell in my eyes. When I grew my hair long to be likes you, you grew yours even longer, I could never catch-up.

You talked about the environment, and being a vegetarian, you introduced me to the concept of being ‘alternative’ whether that be films, music or thinking.

Then came ‘My Own Private Idaho’, a film that none of my friends would come and see because it was too controversial. I showed my ID at the New Oxford Cinema and saw it on my own. I’ve watched this film over and over again – each time I find something new. As I’ve gotten older it’s taken on new meanings, as I’ve gained more life experience parts of it have made more sense.

And suddenly my dreams had come true because in this film you were gay too. I bought a jacket the same colour as your characters. It was almost identical.

You may have made me like country music a little more with ‘Thing Called Love’ and I saw ‘Sneakers’ at the drive-in. Then suddenly you were gone.

It was the last thing I was expecting to hear on the 6pm news. Actor River Phoenix dead at 23 from apparent drug overdose.

It was two shocks at once. You were dead, but from drugs? This isn’t who you were, or at least… it wasn’t who we knew you to be.

Your death showed me that when we are young we are not invincible. It showed me that we can change our lives for better or worse at any time. I probably started to become more cynical about things, realising that not everything is exactly what it seems.

It’s 21 years today since you left, people have written songs about you, they’ve written plays about you, and soon your last film – the one you were making when you died – will be released.

Your picture is still blue-tacked to my wall, well my desk, near my business cards and beside’s the label maker.

Graeme Watson

What are your favourite memories of River Phoenix? Sound off below in the comments. 

The post Remembering River Phoenix appeared first on OUTinPerth.