Iris and Arlyn were concentrating on finding a new role for Rio. He had a lot of offers from all the directors, but Rio had his own problems. He had no real friends outside his family. His only friend was Larry, and he introduced Rio to some friends of his in L.A. Many of them were involved in drugs.
River was experimenting with alcohol and drugs and hid it from his parents, because by this time, he was speaking out against drugs in interviews,
"I've tried marijuana a few times, but I don't like it"- Rio declared to People magazine after his sixteenth birthday-"I get really boring in marijuana. It makes me dull."
At the end of 1986, Rio got his next role in the film "The Mosquito Coast" and he traveled with his father to the Central American jungle of Belize. By this time, John blamed himself more and more for losing his son who was being captured by Hollywood. He tried to escape with Rio to other places, but Rio told him that he had to study his lines and be responsible. In this film, he worked with Martha Plimpton, who would became his girlfriend. Rio became good friends with Harrison Ford who thought a lot of him.
Rio was having some serious problems because he had became a teen-idol followed by scores of teeny-bobbers, and he hated that. He only wanted to be recognized as a serious adult actor.
But his next two films, "A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon" and "Little Nikitta" made him even more of a teen idol. Meanwhile, John Phoenix was becoming more and more depressed. He wanted Rio to leave his acting career and start a new life with the money he had. Rio faced problems that one as young as he should not be concerned with. He felt he couldn't save his father because he was not considered a serious adult actor, and because he had to maintain all his family.
By this time Rio began to experiment with cocaine and hallucinogenic drugs.
After the completion of this film, Rio and his family moved to Gainesville, Florida, a place with a strong music scene. River was very happy there. He was able to have friends and be anonymous. He let his hair to grow out and combed it over his face whenever he went out.
Rio persuaded a friend from L.A., Josh Greenbaum, to move to his home to create a band there. They spent long hours playing songs and going around making connections for their music.
A new member, Josh McKay, a guitarist from Denton, joined the band and came to live with the family. Rain offered to play keyboards and sing harmony and they got a classically trained viola player, Tim Hankins. River and Rain were playing together again, just like when they were children. They decided to call the band Aleka's Attic.
By June of 1988, all the Phoenix family and the persons who lived with them moved to a twenty-acre spread in Micanopy, twelve miles outside Gainesville. They called the place Camp Phoenix. They lived there like hippies and were very conscious of the environment, using only recycled items and never eating any meat.
Martha Plimpton went to spend the summer with the Phoenixes and was surprised at Rio's involvement with drugs. He was drinking a lot, smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine and taking psychedelic drugs. He often drank with his father.
Several months after this, Martha ended her relationship with Rio,
"When we split up, a lot of it was that I had learned that screaming, fighting, and begging weren't going to change him. He had to change himself, and he didn't want to yet."
Rio made two new films during this time, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "I Love You to Death".
River concentrated on his music to forget his sorrows and every weekend his band used to play around Gainesville. It was in the fall of 1989, that Rio met Sue Solgot, a saxophonist from another band.
When he knew the twenty-five-year-old saxophone player, Rio was in the middle of shooting "Dogfight". They met at a party where River introduced himself as Rio. A friend of Sue's told her that he was River Phoenix. He said,
"I'm not that guy, I'm nothing like him."
Soon Rio and Sue began dating and later they moved in together to a flat in the most expensive area of Gainesville, twenty minutes from Camp Phoenix.
la casa de rio