I first met River Phoenix in 1990 in Gainesville, Florida. I’d flown down from New York City. I was shooting him for a magazine. I don’t remember which one. His family had this beautiful wild piece of land on the edge of a swamp. I was there for two days. We smoked pot, drank beer, climbed up to his tree house, swung on a rope, bounced on his trampoline and went on an alligator hunt just to spot one and we did. At night he and his band got together and jammed. It was this wonderful kind of Peter Pan fun time we had far far away from Hollywood.
Three years later Detour magazine contacted me to shoot River for their cover. At least they wanted to shoot him but couldn’t get him to agree. I was now living in Los Angeles and River was there shooting the last film he completed “The Thing Called Love”.
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