Read Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind for Free Online

were stowaways—“the crew discovered us halfway home,” he said. But although the accommodations were Spartan, they were welcome guests: the ship’s cook even brought along the ingredients for a birthday cake, because Joaquin turned four during the journey. The ship was carrying a shipment of Tonka Toys and the crew gave some damaged trucks to Joaquin as a birthday present.
    While the family lived in Venezuela, the United States had become a land of polyester, disco, and Farrah Fawcett posters. Number one singles that fall were Exile’s “Kiss You All Over” and Nick Gilder’s “Hot Child in the City,” while the Grease soundtrack dominated the album chart. The top shows on TV were the sitcoms Laverne & Shirley and Three’s Company, followed by the Robin Williams vehicle Mork & Mindy . As River and his family plowed north to the United States and its colorful, tacky, vibrant culture, they made another major life choice.
    Some of the crew were fishing off the side of the ship; when they reeled in a catch, they would unhook the fish from the line and then impale it on a board that had nails sticking out of it, so it wouldn’t flop back into the water. The Bottom children had never seen anything like that before, and were horrified. “These weren’t bad people, but they’d become totally desensitized to the pain they were causing,” River said. “It was the first time that I really saw that meat wasn’t just a hamburger or a hot dog or some disguised food on your plate, that it was an animal, it was flesh. It seemed very barbaric and kind of cruel, and me and my brother and sister were all crying and were traumatized. The reality just hit us so hard.”
    River, Rain, and Joaquin told their parents that they didn’t want to eat meat anymore. “Our parents were very sensitive to our feelings,” he remembered. “I mean, they were obviously immune to it themselves—meat-eating is so much a part of society as a whole and how people eat—but they were very interested in our sensitivity to it, so they were open to us becoming vegetarian.”
    The lighter ecological impact of vegetarianism was appealing to the parents. “I tell my kids to celebrate the Earth,” Arlyn said. “We’re living creatures who should live as gently and lovingly as we can on the Earth.”
    Within months, the family was not only eschewing meat, they—led by River, and encouraged by Arlyn’s vegan sister—had sworn off eggs and dairy. At the time, vegetarianism was further out of mainstream American culture than it is today; veganism (where one avoids not only meat, but animal products in general) was so fringe that magazine articles about River sometimes just called it “ultravegetarianism.” “It was hard to give up dairy for a while for a lot of people in my family,” River said. “My mom and dad were so used to eating cheese, and it was so convenient. But I said, ‘Hey, if we’re doing this thing, let’s go all the way with it.’”
    “Every child starts out loving animals, identifying with them,” River declared later. “But early on, adults start sending them contradictory messages. They’ll give a kid a stuffed animal to hug and love and sleep with. But at the same time, they’re serving them animals for dinner every night. It’s crazy, if you think about it. But when you’re young, you just accept what grown-ups tell you as the truth.”
    Now that River’s family had left the Children of God and street-corner evangelism behind, veganism became the central tenet of his philosophy: not just a way to be kind to animals, improve the environment, and better one’s health, but the root of enhanced planetary consciousness.
    “Vegetarianism is a link to perfection and peace,” River said when he was seventeen, after years of considering these beliefs (and acting on them). “But it’s a small link. There are lots of other issues: apartheid, vivisection, political prisoners, the arms race. There’s so much going