Those days seemed light years away one Halloween night in 1993 when 19-year-old Joaquin held his 23-year-old brother, who overdosed on drugs outside the Los Angeles nightclub the Viper Room. River started crying right away and it made me cry. “We were supposed to cry because someone was fighting. Joaquin and his siblings often played on the set, and he recalls the day he got his own cameo appearance. River’s first role was Guthrie in the CBS series Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Joaquin had been close to River, who appeared in Stand By Me and My Own Private Idaho. The scene had sparked memories of his older brother River’s death. While filming the scene when Johnny’s younger brother Jack dies in a table saw accident, Joaquin suffered a breakdown.
How does a man raised by Children of God missionaries, essentially a gypsy until his parents left the flower-power sect when he was five and moved to Los Angeles, get into the “heart and soul” of a man who was a six-year-old cotton picker in Arkansas, then an adult singing sensation at Memphis’ Sun Records with his number one hit “I Walk the Line,” only to be a drug and booze addict as a Nashville superstar in the 1960s? For Walk the Line, I think we put in probably three-and-a-half months prepping for that film and I’ve never felt so inadequate in my life.”īut if anyone asks him if he measures up to Johnny, who’s five feet taller, he stoutly defends himself: “I can get into the man’s heart and soul, and I hope that will make people forget about resemblances.” That’s when his feelings of inadequacies began to show. Years later, Joaquin was surprised to hear he had been chosen to play the rebel. The legendary singer told him “I really loved the part where you said, ‘Your son squealed like a girl when they nailed him to the cross.’” Joaquin says he was shocked when Johnny started quoting his dialogue. He had first met his idol Johnny Cash four years earlier, when Johnny confessed himself a fan of the film that almost earned Joaquin a gold statuette: Gladiator.
For anyone, attempting to portray the legendary Man in Black is a difficult endeavor, but it would prove especially hard for 30-year-old Joaquin Phoenix, no matter how honored he was by the invitation.
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