“His eyes made him the focus of energy in every scene, the centrifugal force so strong you didn’t even try to duel him for control. The off-center eye [Phoenix’s lazy right eye] read as madness, and the other read pure sanity. In a close-up, from one side he was the guy next door, and from the other he was absolutely insane.”

After River’s death and while in London, Dermot Mulroney ran in to one of River’s drug friends, a screenwriter, and slammed him against a wall. “This is how I feel about River’s death,” Mulroney said. “How do you feel?”