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

attended school. Since he was now eight, they insisted that he enroll right away. He entered the first grade but felt hugely out of place: the older kid who didn’t get anybody’s jokes. It wasn’t just that River didn’t understand American cultural references—he had never really developed a sense of humor and was unfamiliar with the format of a joke. Director and friend Gus Van Sant remembered River saying “that he never really got its logic, the surprise of the unexpected. You know: an elephant and a hippo go into a bar, something is introduced, punch line. And he’d be like, ‘Yeah? So what happened then?’ ”
    It wasn’t just his lack of punch-line comprehension: young River Bottom stood out in every way possible, starting with his name. “When I was in first grade, everybody made fun of my name, of course,” he said later. “I think it’s kind of a big name to hold up when you’re nine years old. It seemed goofy. I used to tell people I wanted to change the world and they used to think, ‘This kid’s really weird.’ ”
    Within his own family, it had long been expected that River would carry the weight of the world like a pint-size Atlas. Now he was discovering that other kids cared more about recess and Star Wars .
    Arlyn and John had their fifth child on December 10, 1978. Ignoring the calendar, they named her “Summer Joy.” Four-year-old Joaquin, dismayed at being the only child in the family with a mundane name, asked his mother if he could change it.
    “Ask your father,” Arlyn said.
    Joaquin went to John, who was earning the family’s keep by raking leaves. “Pick another name,” John assented. With a pile of leaves in front of him, the boy chose “Leaf.” As writer Michael Angeli later observed, the names of the children (River, Rain, Leaf, Liberty, and Summer) sounded like “generic items you’d find on the Family Feud tote board if the subject were Emerson.”
    A few years later, River considered the personalities of the five children. “We all look completely different and we all have our distinct things. Leaf was the family clown, the comedian—very witty and smart.” Rain (who would later modify her name to Rainbow) “was the older sister and trendsetter. Mom had to work a lot, so she took her place.” About himself, River said, “I played the guitar.” Although he thought that was a sufficient summary of his personality, he continued, “I went off to my room a lot and had a real goofy side to me, really corny—laughing about stupid things, making fart noises with my mouth. A lot of inside jokes. Liberty was always the most physical, like an acrobat: nimble, strong, slender, a really beautiful girl. And Summer was the youngest, the baby of the family, with big brown eyes and blonde hair. She looks WASPy. Liberty and Rainbow have more of an ethnic look, Israeli or Italian.”
    John and Arlyn strived to speak with their children as if they were peers. “We never treated them like children, but like extra added friends,” Arlyn said. “It was never like, ‘We know better because we’re the parents.’ It was more like, ‘This is the first time we’ve ever done this, too. What do you think?’ And the children were so wise. If we made a mistake, we made it together.”
    The family wasn’t big on table manners, or on taking turns in a conversation, but John did have one rule of family comportment: “The youngest gets to yell the loudest because they’re never listened to!”
    The Bottom kids played with other neighborhood kids, and became friendly enough to have sleepovers. Decades later, one of their child guests still remembered the bedtime stories: “They were really trippy—about the stars .” After tucking in the kids with celestial tales, John and Arlyn would sneak out of the house to visit other neighbors, fearlessly leaving the children alone. “I just remember the parents were major hippies,” River’s friend said. “His mom had this crazy curly