Director, co-star remember Phoenix fondly

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River Phoenix in Dark Blood, his last role before his death in 1993. (MIAMI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL)

MIAMI -- When actor Jonathan Pryce first received a copy of River Phoenix's last film, Dark Blood, it sat unwatched on his desk for months. He worried about how he would feel reliving Phoenix's death, growing nostalgic about memorable dinners the two shared after long days of filming in Utah and recalling the shocking 5 a.m. phone call telling him the young actor had died.

"It's very hard to comprehend for a while. It was a terribly sad time," said Pryce, who starred in the film alongside Phoenix and Judy Davis.

Now, 20 years later, Dark Blood made its U.S. première at the Miami International Film Festival on Wednesday, a testament to the endurance of 80-year-old director George Sluizer, who almost died before the film was completed, and a tribute to Phoenix's timeless charisma. (It's uncertain whether the film will ever go to a general release.)

In the film, Pryce and Davis play a Hollywood couple who travel through the desert, desperately trying to save their marriage on a second honeymoon. They seek shelter in Phoenix's shack after their car breaks down, unaware that he intends to keep them as prisoners. Phoenix played Boy, whose wife died of leukemia from nuclear testing, leaving him alone and isolated in the desert.

But the journey to complete the film is every bit as dramatic as the story itself. Phoenix, a rising star from Stand by Me and My Own Private Idaho, was 23 when he died in 1993 outside The Viper Room in Los Angeles. The cause was heart failure after overdosing on heroin and cocaine.

After his death, there was talk of finding another actor to replace Phoenix or using special effects to finish Dark Blood. The film was about 80 per cent complete and most of the missing scenes were between Davis and Phoenix. But Sluizer ultimately passed on those options and the film footage sat untouched in a vault for years. In 1999, the Dutch director learned the footage was going to be burned to make space for new material, so he quickly transported it to The Netherlands, where it sat for another decade.

Sluizer was diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia in 2007 and "the doctors basically condemned me." But the director recovered and felt compelled to finish Dark Blood before it was too late. He sorted through the material, uncovering missing and damaged reels, and narrated the voiceovers to fill in missing pieces of the plot.

When Sluizer first met Phoenix at a San Francisco hotel to discuss the film, he worried about how a hot-shot heartthrob would handle working with an older director.

But Phoenix was respectful and compassionate, abruptly running off to get Sluizer some headache medicine during their first meeting, and accompanying Sluizer on long hikes in Utah.

"River was a gentle, respectful person. I must say that I was very fond of him," Sluizer said.

Dark Blood was not an easy production. The material was heavy, they filmed in desolate locations and Davis was difficult to work with. Phoenix also had dyslexia and struggled to remember long segments of dialogue.

But Sluizer marveled at Phoenix's ability to embody a character with such depth.

"It's what comes out of him and the charisma he has, plus the fact that he knows how to express a character when he has got hold of it," he said.

Pryce often met the young actor and his friends for dinner, finding camaraderie in the desert.

"You do become incredibly close when you work together in a film... I felt enormous empathy with him. I liked him very much," Pryce said.

The two insist Phoenix was not using drugs while filming in Utah. But something was noticeably wrong with Phoenix when the crew returned for a shoot in Los Angeles. His eyes floated, he walked differently and sat listlessly for long periods of time.

The next morning, cast and crew got the news.

"It left us totally sad and after River's death, I nearly said I don't want to make movies anymore," Sluizer lamented.

He dismisses any notion that the film is exploiting the actor's death.

"It's a piece of work that belongs not just to River but all of us in the film and it was right that (Sluizer) completed it in the way that he did," Pryce said.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 9, 2013 G8