Tag Archives: River Phoenix

The Gus Van Sant Podcast 3: My Own Private Idaho (1991)

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We discuss one of the films that very much marked me, the image above was the image on my letterhead in the time we still used snail mail. In the accompanying podcast we discuss the film’s historical significance. Was it a ‘film that (made) history’? We discuss its relationship to ‘New Queer Cinema’. We speculate on whether the film queers Shakespeare and discuss the film in relation to Welles’ Chimes at Midnight. We comment on the significance of the casting, the contributions of River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Udo Kier and others and what their contributions to the film might be. We also discuss in detail particular scenes, the one where the magazine covers come to life; the rhyming musical/ hustler interludes, the great campfire scene. …and much more.

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

The Criterion blog on Shakespeare in relation to Private Idaho + Jarman’s Tempest etc that Richard mentions in the podcast may be found here:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8551-my-own-private-idaho-s-outsider-twist-on-shakespeare

 

More info, clips, examples, a bibliography below:

magazine sequence:

Campfire Sequence:

Time lapse:

Incest and Super8:

Still sex straight and gay:

Funerals and Endings:

I’d never seen Chimes at Midnight until now and found it a film of many pleasures: Gielgud’s speaking of the verse; Welles performance as Falstaff, surprisingly subtle in places; the compositions and look which still feel arresting; the opportunity of seeing Fernando Rey interact with Gielgud, Welles with Margaret Rutherford; and on another note: I hadn’t realised the walls of my birthplace played such a role in this film. The film is also very instructive in that Keith Baxter’s performance as Prince Hal is nowhere as effective as Keanu Reeves’ in MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, no matter how he speaks the language. Cinema is about conveying particular kinds of embodiment and Reeves is so much more effective at conveying a patrician demeanor, a rebellious disposition, the pranking and the power. Baxter, no matter how he says what he says, looks callow and inconsequential.

In Bed in Chimes and Idaho:

Camp in Chimes and Idaho:

Vandals in Chimes and Idaho

Repudiation Scene in Chimes and Idaho:

 

Aping heterosexuality:

The Brixton Ritzy, October 3, 2024

 

 

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON/ AREN’T YOU EVER GOING TO KISS ME GOODBYE (William Richert, 1986)

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Hollywood has no shortage of coming-of-age teen comedies structured around a young man’s hormones. But there was also a time where it was less afraid to cast the heartthrob of the moment (River Phoenix) as an aspiring poet with beatnik aspirations, easily seducing and eagerly seducible, but on a quest to win his one true love. This is a romance with a comic tone hovering between the broad and the delicate, one the film mostly achieves.

 

The film is set in the North Shore of Chicago in 1962., It’s based on a biographical novel by its screen-writer/director, who sees his past through somewhat rose-tinted lenses. Jimmy Reardon wants to go to university and study literature. His father wants him to study business at a local college, like he did. They had a deal to each pay half. But at the very beginning of the film Jimmy gets conned out of his college money (all $110 of it. Ostensibly annual tuition at the University of Chicago in 1962 was $220) when he hands over all his savings to a young woman who’s already conned three others on a phony abortion claim. Now he needs to come up with his half of the money or it’s goodbye to the No Exit café, with its art, poetry and espresso – no more brushing up to girls who read Kierkegaard — and hello to McInley Business College.  This is all made more difficult in that all his friends seem to be country-club rich. It’s a film with a pointed view of class but one so American and so of its period that it’s worth an analysis of its own. Middle-class America’s idea of ‘poor’ in 1962 must have seemed quite rich to foreigners then, or indeed much of America now.

 

William Richert, the director was convinced that this was a masterpiece the studio had screwed over. Twenty years after its first release, he called on critics to see and re-evaluate his cut, with the original Elmer Bernstein score restored, his choice of a beautiful Johnny Mathis ballad – I’m Not Afraid to Say Goodbye — to set the tone at the beginning, and a voice-over narration performed by Richert  himself added on. I  liked it very much, even seen on the terrible print Amazon prime makes available, but a masterpiece it’s not. It’s got lovely performances from Ann Magnuson as an older woman, Luke Perry in his first role as a rich kid  whose money could solve all of Jimmy’s problems, and most of all River Phoenix, in his first starrig role, daring and tender and true in all he does. But Richert’s voice-over is mannered and inexpressive. He would go on to perform Shakespeare in MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, but he would have done better to hire someone else here. Richert also has no visual sense, and it’s a film that seems entirely maintained by the rhythm’s of speech, situation and performance. But that’s enough; and on top of that, it shows a love for the odd, the weird, the outsider, the bohemian and gives weight to Robin Hood’s answer when Maid Marian asks him why he bothers to help the poor in the Curtiz/ Keighley film. It’s a lot to love.

José Arroyo

James Wharton on Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986)

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“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”

 

As final lines go, words that are not spoken, this one lingers in the minds of the droves of fans of Rob Reiner’s 1986 coming-of-age film Stand By Me. It neatly underlines the point of the film’s narrative while allowing us to ponder: were our best friends really the ones we had as children? The statement, an idea we can place ourselves, furnishes one of the film’s key strengths – reflection.

At the onset, a sombre-looking Richard Dreyfus sits in his car eyeing a newspaper headline about a tragedy involving the death of his childhood friend Chris. While pondering this loss, his attention is captured by two youngsters cycling by and away into the dimming sunlight; the vision sends his mind back to the 1950s when times were more innocent and to a final childhood summer with a friend, the now lost Chris (River Phoenix).

Our transfer places us at the start of what for Geordie (the 12-year-old version of Dreyfus’ character, played by Will Wheaton) and his three friends, Chris, Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O’Connell), seems like an unmissable adventure to locate a missing child’s dead body. No sooner are they on their way that they come to realise their sugar-coated ideas may not be the expedition they envisioned.

Danger, which never seems far away, sees them come up against the seemingly definitive prospect of passing the county boundary and heading into the unknown delves of the state’s wilderness. And what a picturesque wilderness it is, furnishing another of the film’s great strengths, its cinematography.

Eventually, they must face “The Body” – the expression used by Stephen King to title the novella from which the film is adapted. King’s well-known preference for thrilling breaks through Reiner’s interpretive feel-good powers; the King thrill lives in this film aplenty.

But for all the childhood visions of adventure and the big moments the four boys must face – grown-up problems that deal with death, abuse, and neglect, they only have each other. And this bond, this companionship between Geordie and Chris that enables them to overcome the injustices they have each been served, is another cornerstone of the film’s strengths. It’s not the physical journey they conquer together but the emotional one.

The final element of Stand By Me that it would be remiss of this review to overlook is the performances of the four young actors. They are all outstanding, but the sixteen-year-old Phoenix’s exceptional (and career-changing) turn is crucial to why this film works so well. He’s just so watchable. The star later remarked that his identification with the character of Chris Chambers was so much so that he considered therapy once filming had concluded. And boy, does this connection show.

Self-reflexivity, the nature found within its cinematography, the bond written between the characters and extracted from the actors impeccably by the director, and the performance of River Phoneix are the four pillars that hold this great film above others.

Stand By Me is rightly labelled a classic.

James Wharton