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The Viper Room documentary
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00:07The Viper Room
00:07Many people said at The Viper Room
00:08that the crowd was more famous than the bands,
00:10and that was absolutely true.
00:12The Viper Room, a West Hollywood night spot
00:14frequented by celebrities.
00:16There was a lot of velvet rope
00:17going on at that club.
00:20Johnny Depp could be telling the person
00:23at the door, let that person in,
00:25don't let that other person in.
00:26Everyone was sneezing fame all over each other.
00:29Christina Aguilera.
00:30David Arquette, Charlize Theron,
00:33Christina Applegate.
00:34I met Jennifer Aniston there.
00:35If you could just get inside,
00:38you could let your hair down.
00:40Hidden away from fans and paparazzi,
00:42the shadowy corners
00:44and back rooms of The Viper Room
00:46are also a new safe place
00:48to indulge in an old
00:50and dangerous vice.
00:55Suddenly, heroin started flowing into L.A.
00:58It felt like we were living through
00:59like an epidemic,
01:00when you have friend after friend die.
01:02An investigation is underway
01:03into the sudden death
01:05of one of Hollywood's brightest young stars.
01:07I opened the door to Sunset Strip,
01:09and I looked down,
01:10and I saw who it was,
01:11and I was, like, shocked.
01:13...
01:27...
01:41You must get over here, please.
01:43You must get over here, please.
01:45Is your brother having a seizure?
01:46Yes.
01:46How old is he?
01:47He's 23.
01:4823?
01:49So you know what's on the phone number?
01:51You must please come here.
01:52It's your diaper room.
01:53Okay, diaper room.
01:56As time goes on, people get remembered for, like, one thing.
02:02Fifty years from now, the diaper room, it's the place where River Phoenix died.
02:0623-year-old River Phoenix collapsed outside a Los Angeles nightclub early this morning.
02:12Witnesses say he appeared high on drugs.
02:14Fans have been gathering outside the nightclub where the 23-year-old actor collapsed and died on early Sunday.
02:20I think the 90s viper room, without a doubt, it's intertwined fully with the death of River Phoenix.
02:27That's, I think, what most people would know about it.
02:30The viper room might have been a lot more underground for a lot longer if River hadn't passed away.
02:36That was a big thing that made it infamous, maybe, instead of famous.
02:41When it's all said and done, I hope the viper room is remembered for something other than River Phoenix, because
02:48it was so much more to a lot of people.
02:54One reason that the viper room is so important to people has to do with the street it's located on.
03:00The Sunset Strip is an area of Sunset Boulevard, which is one of the truly longest streets in Los Angeles.
03:09It goes from East L.A. to the ocean.
03:12My name is Pleasant Gaiman.
03:14I'm a writer and performer, and I spent four decades of my life hanging around on the Sunset Strip.
03:22I'm a Hollywood icon.
03:24Kiss the hem of my dress.
03:28Since the late 30s and early 40s, the Sunset Strip was always populated by a lot of nightclubs.
03:35Some of them are legendary in rock and roll circles.
03:39In the early 90s, you had the Whiskey-a-Go-Go, the Roxy, and those were, like, prestige places.
03:46And then Gazzari's, which was catering to a heavy metal crowd.
03:51There's Guns N' Roses.
03:52We're the band of the 90s.
03:53Did you like the new material?
03:55I loved it.
03:56Guns N' Roses were the biggest band in the world, and they came out of Sunset Strip.
04:02My name is Randall Slavin, and I'm a photographer, and I've been taking pictures for as long as I can
04:09remember,
04:09and compiled some of my favorites in a book called We All Want Something Beautiful.
04:18Everything was heavy metal.
04:20A lot of Harleys and hairspray and fishnets.
04:25But that begins to change.
04:28A new sound can be heard on the Sunset Strip, and it'll set the stage for the Viper Room.
04:34Coming out of the 80s, which was one of the most debauched times ever, and even into the early 90s,
04:41there was a lot of musical things going on.
04:44When Jane's Addiction came in, in the early 90s, that was the new wave.
04:49They were cool, and they were different and younger, and felt like a whole different kind of energy.
04:57And that's when things changed.
05:00But it was a moment where, you know, sort of like, yes, this is the non-hair metal alternative that
05:06we've been looking for.
05:07In the early 90s, the grunge movement invades the Sunset Strip on its way to changing rock and roll.
05:17There was a lot of people that had been involved in one facet of show business, as in movies or
05:27television, who were now exploring rock and roll.
05:31Like, I remember Juliette Lewis had a band for a long time.
05:36Jared Leto was always playing in bands.
05:39Other actors who dabble in music are Keanu Reeves with Dogstar, River Phoenix as frontman for Alka's Attic, and Johnny
05:49Depp with his band P.
05:52With both River Phoenix and Johnny Depp, they originally started off, like, thinking they were going to do music.
05:57How you doing that, Johnny?
05:59Good.
05:59And then they discovered, oh, I'm really good at this other thing.
06:04Johnny Depp wasn't the biggest movie star in the world.
06:06He wasn't Jack Sparrow, but he was on a long-running TV show, 21 Jump Street.
06:12But in Hollywood, in that time, being cool was just as important as being a big movie star, and he
06:20was very cool.
06:22Johnny?
06:23Yeah.
06:24At the height of grunge in 1993, Johnny Depp buys The Central, a dirty little live music club in the
06:32heart of the Sunset Strip.
06:35The Central was a dive.
06:37It was just a place to play.
06:40By the time that Johnny Depp bought The Central and changed the name to The Viper Room, I think there
06:46was a couple of different camps going on, because The Central had been a really popular club.
06:53And so the people that played it thought it was going to turn into, like, what would now be known
06:58as an A-list venue, you know, snobbish and not rock and roll enough.
07:03The Central was also the spot where singer-songwriter Chuckie Weiss played.
07:09You may not know him, but Johnny Depp was a big fan.
07:14When they're getting ready to sell The Central, and that was going to be the end of Chuckie's gig.
07:18And I think half the reason Johnny bought the place was to keep a club open so Chuckie could play.
07:25When Johnny came in and took it over, it became this special sort of, like, cool underground, kind of like,
07:32almost like a speakeasy, you know, which he obviously was very into.
07:39And the biggest, most gigantic rock stars were coming to perform at this little tiny club of only 200 people.
07:48I mean, you couldn't fit any more than 200 people in this nightclub, and that is packed.
07:53And, like, for opening night, you know, sort of like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers owe me a favor, so
07:58they'll, like, play the opening gig.
07:59And because it's this small room, it becomes this, like, little celebrity clubhouse.
08:05Literally, they didn't have to let in anyone that they didn't want to.
08:07There was this sudden new renaissance of young Hollywood people that just wanted to go out and have fun.
08:15And in some places, they couldn't.
08:18Leonardo, tell us about Johnny.
08:20What do you want to tell us?
08:21We just want you to tell us how much fun it was working with Johnny.
08:23Great.
08:24Come on.
08:25Johnny Depp could be in his office looking at the camera.
08:29Telling the person at the door, let that person in.
08:32Don't let that other person in.
08:34Hey, good to see you.
08:35Hey, look at night.
08:36It's pretty gross.
08:37The reason the Viper became a haven for famous people is because of how protected they felt.
08:46There was definitely a sense of, like, if you could just get inside, you could let your hair down.
08:52There were just fame spraying.
08:54Everyone was sneezing fame all over each other.
08:56It was just a lot of famous people.
08:58And they were all cool.
09:00And it was like we were all in this room together and we just got to hang out and talk.
09:07Inside the Viper was very insular and very protected.
09:12And famous people were no different than everyone else inside because you weren't the only famous person in there.
09:21That was the only game in town for young Hollywood.
09:26They were hanging out there trying to elude fame while at the same time their very appearance there was what
09:33caused so many people to flock to the Viper Room.
09:36It was like its own little secret in giant five-story high lime green neon air quotes hideaway for famous
09:45people.
09:58The same month the Viper Room opens its doors, a little band called Counting Crows finally hits it big and
10:05their lead singer, Adam Duritz, is immediately welcomed into the Viper's inner sanctum.
10:12Boy, I could talk for hours, but sitting there staring at a camera makes my skin crawl.
10:19Mostly I lived at the Viper Room, night in and night out, and a lot of really interesting people that
10:24I got to just talk to.
10:26It wasn't walking up for autographs.
10:28It was talking.
10:29And that was kind of what the Viper always was to me, was this place to go be.
10:35I met Jennifer Aniston there because a bunch of my friends lied to me and told me she had a
10:41crush on me.
10:42And those same friends lied to her and told her I had a crush on her.
10:47I honestly had no idea who she was.
10:49I'd been on the road during all of Friends.
10:50I had never seen it, I don't think.
10:52She was really nice, really funny, really pretty.
10:54Those are pretty good requirements for me.
10:57And also, she liked me.
10:59Yeah.
11:00It didn't last very long, so it was probably because of that.
11:02But she's a very nice girl, you know.
11:04The secret sauce of the Viper Room was you had the coolest actor in Hollywood who was dating the coolest
11:14girl in the world who was Kate Moss.
11:17And he wants a place to hang out, and they don't need to make money.
11:23With Viper, Johnny Depp creates a bubble for his cool A-lister friends where they can feel shelter.
11:30But it's just a matter of time before that bubble bursts.
11:34You got it out of the way!
11:36I can't see!
11:46We have reports from Paris that Diana, Princess of Wales, has been killed in a car accident.
11:53And that her partner, Dodie Fired, has also been killed.
11:58They were apparently being pursued by paparazzi on two motorcycles.
12:02Killed by the royal family or hit by a...
12:05The paparazzi spends the 90s hunting down Hollywood royalty before killing an actual member of the royal family in 1997.
12:16How you doing, Sean?
12:16Shouldn't you guys be out killing a princess somewhere?
12:19Yeah, we did that already.
12:21But Diana's death was the unhappy ending to a story that begins much earlier in the decade.
12:28That was the very, very beginning of the tabloids being revamped from, like, stuff like soap operas.
12:36I mean, that sort of started around that time, you know?
12:40And it was because there was such a new guard coming up in Hollywood, and they were people that were
12:45going out.
12:45They weren't sheltered.
12:46You can send that out, man. Come on.
12:48All right.
12:49The studios weren't controlling people the way they had in the golden age of Hollywood.
12:54And that's when it all of a sudden became a big business, selling pictures of people coming in out of
13:01a nightclub.
13:04It hadn't been like that since maybe, like, the Beatles landed, you know, for the first time in America.
13:09There wasn't, like, legions of screaming fans and a bunch of paparazzi again until the early 90s.
13:17There were a ton of paparazzi then, everywhere you went, especially in a town like L.A.
13:25That was seriously unpleasant.
13:26You guys need to back up. I can't see the cars.
13:30Okay, back up, guys. You can't see the cars.
13:33Get the f*** out of the way! I can't see!
13:35There are cars there, f***!
13:38Get out of the way!
13:39While the flashbulbs and prying eyes of the paparazzi ravaged most of Hollywood in the mid-90s, Johnny Depp's Viper
13:47Room remains mostly immune.
13:51The paparazzi of the Viper Room was always just one or two guys.
13:55This guy Woody and Brian.
13:58It was like a clubhouse, but the club was open to everybody, you know, and even the paparazzi seemed to
14:04appreciate it for what it was.
14:06And it was pretty casual that way.
14:09It definitely makes a huge difference that it was pre-social media, because people were willing to let themselves go
14:15in ways that it's not smart to now.
14:18Not just pre-social media, but pre-everyone having a digital camera right inside their cell phones.
14:26Johnny Depp was making a valiant attempt to protect the young and famous or the up-and-comers or the
14:34arty A-listers of rock stars and movie stars.
14:40What the f*** is that, man?
14:42It's video camera.
14:44It's video camera.
14:45Don't let the f*** up. Let him get a f*** up.
14:51Let him get a f*** up.
15:08But, like, the thing that made the Viper Room special were the other things they did that were just fun.
15:19You know, they would do theme nights that must have cost a fortune and were only up for one night.
15:28They would have, like, a dating game night. David Arquette from the Arquette acting family would be The Bachelor.
15:35I remember once they covered the entire inside of the place with tinfoil.
15:40They would do these shows, like, everyone would dress up and it would be like an old school burlesque night.
15:46You know, act like you were in a different time for a little while.
15:49I remember they did an Alice in Wonderland night that was incredible.
15:54The whole place done up in an Alice in Wonderland scene and I remember going up and all of a
15:59sudden you get to the top and it's Timothy Leary is on stage reading from Alice in Wonderland.
16:06Why sometimes I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
16:12Surrounded by a bunch of giant toadstools in this, like, glow-in-the-dark club.
16:18And he's reading from Alice in Wonderland.
16:21And you're like, how did this happen? How is this happening?
16:26And, like, this is the coolest thing ever.
16:33Outside the Viper Room, celebrities are on their own.
16:37But inside, it's a safe space to explore their creativity.
16:43I remember, like, some of the real burlesque club nights, too.
16:46Like, when Christina Applegate had this group of friends and they had a really cool burlesque show and they were
16:51called the Pussycat Dolls.
16:53Christina Applegate was on Married with Children at the time.
16:56And she had a housemate named Robin who was a choreographer.
17:01I'm Robin Anton. I'm the founder of the Pussycat Dolls, which started at the Viper Room in 1994.
17:09I was creating this little show in Christina's garage at, like, midnight with a couple of my friends.
17:17Christina would come down and go, like, what, you know, like, this is so cool.
17:20And I'm like, you should be in it, because Christina was a dancer.
17:22And a lot of people didn't know that about her, that she had this talent as a real trained dancer.
17:29Of course, where else were they going to do it but at the Viper Room? That was their hang.
17:35So we went and we auditioned for Johnny at the club.
17:40We got on stage, put on our corsets and our, you know, our whole garb, everything that I had made.
17:51And it was perfect because right on the chorus was when we did the strip.
17:55You blow a fuse. Zing, boom, strip another corset.
18:00Zing, boom, down to another corset.
18:04And then we'd take a glove off.
18:07And take a glove off.
18:09And I remember he was just, like, looking at us going,
18:11these girls are crazy and wild and outrageous and this is so cool, you know.
18:18And we're just throwing all the clothes off into the audience.
18:23There was layers and bustiers under bustiers and shorter shorts under frilly shorts.
18:29It was, like, literally a strip tease.
18:33So we didn't really strip down to nothing.
18:36And I remember Johnny saying, this is exactly why I opened the Viper Room.
18:43He said, I would love for this to be a show at the Viper Room, like, once a week maybe.
18:51I mean, can you do it?
18:52And so the next thing we knew, you know, we were on stage at the Viper Room for, like, eight
18:56years.
18:58They were lip syncing to old songs.
19:01And the place went bananas.
19:04The place went crazy.
19:07Everybody would hear about it from the cast of Friends to, you know, Marilyn Manson to, you know,
19:14Jimmy Iovine was there and Ron Fair and Dr. Dre was coming around.
19:20Hugh Hefner to, I mean, the most, it was just wild.
19:24Like, the people that would show up to the show that would be in the audience.
19:28It grew.
19:29And then I think Carmen Electra was the first sort of regular famous member.
19:34We felt like we were celebrating being women up there.
19:38I mean, that was the beginning of female empowerment as I knew it.
19:42I'm loving it.
19:43And that's when all of these label heads were coming down to check it out and see what's going on.
19:49And the Pussycat Dolls outgrew the Viper Room and then started performing at other clubs and other places.
19:54And then they got a record deal and then became a multi-platinum international pop group.
20:00Crazy.
20:03While the Pussycat Dolls are killing it on the Viper Room stage, an even deadlier act shows up in town.
20:11A dangerous drug has dropped like a bomb on the streets of the suburbs.
20:15It's heroin.
20:16It started off a little slowly, but then it just hit like a sledgehammer.
20:26Everyone had been doing coke.
20:28You know, I mean, that was huge in the 70s and L.A. was kind of the coke capital.
20:33But by 1993, a drug that has fallen out of favor is back in vogue and will help define the
20:41decade.
20:43Suddenly heroin started flowing into L.A.
20:47Heroin has made a major comeback, particularly within the music world where it is the chic drug of choice for
20:53some rock musicians.
20:54Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Kelly Deal of The Breeders, Steve Adler of Guns N' Roses have all abused heroin.
21:01In L.A., as in other places, heroin was ascendant.
21:04It's everywhere.
21:05You can get it easier than pot.
21:08It's hard to really explain how rampant heroin was in Hollywood.
21:13It was like Hollywood turned into a zombie town suddenly, so many people.
21:17It was so easy to get and it was so ubiquitous.
21:20It was really scary.
21:24As emergency rooms are flooded with victims of bad heroin, many are arriving violent and disoriented.
21:31It felt like we were living through an epidemic, you know, sort of when you have friend after friend die.
21:38You could always kind of tell if someone was doing heroin if the door to the dressing room was locked.
21:45That could be the viper room, that could be any club that you'd go to, because normally there wouldn't be
21:51a lock on the door if someone was just doing blow.
21:55It was a drug that was very easy if you took a wrong step.
21:58You didn't just like have a bad hangover the next day, like you would be dead.
22:06For some new stars of Hollywood and rock and roll, heroin becomes a perfect escape from the pressures of their
22:13new found fame.
22:15For others, it's a way to cope with demons that have been there all along.
22:21Radio stations nationwide offer tribute to Kurt Cobain as young fans mourn the rock singer's apparent suicide in Seattle.
22:28Many people over 30 probably never heard of Kurt Cobain, but for younger fans his music captured the spirit of
22:35the difficult transition from youth to maturity.
22:39It was obvious this man is dead from a shotgun wound to the head. Now there was a suicide note
22:45left inside.
22:46I'm sitting there waiting to be interviewed for Rolling Stone and I got a call from a guy who used
22:52to be our A&R guy, who signed us, who signed Nirvana.
22:57Me and Kurt were like his little brothers and Kurt died.
23:03Anyway.
23:04What are you from?
23:05It was weeks after Kurt killed himself.
23:09See you, Courtney. God love you, babe.
23:11I remember being at the Viper Room. It was after hours and there was only a few of us sitting
23:16downstairs.
23:18And myself, Courtney, and my friend Michael Stipe.
23:22She was a mess. She was a mess talking about it.
23:28And she was trying to rewrite what had happened and trying to, we should have done this and we could
23:36have done that and if we'd only done this.
23:40And I remember Michael just being like, trying to console this sobbing widow.
23:47It was a really heavy, heavy night.
23:56And I think it's a testament to the atmosphere that she felt safe there and protected by the Viper Room.
24:06I mean, it really shook me up because I didn't think we were all that different in a lot of
24:12ways.
24:14Adam's first album with Counting Crows becomes a seven times platinum hit and the fastest selling record since Nirvana's Nevermind.
24:24But Adam and Kurt have an even more profound connection.
24:29You know, I wasn't talking about it publicly then, but I had a pretty severe mental illness and I knew
24:33that.
24:34So, you know, the things that had concerned me before that morning concerned me a lot more after that morning.
24:42Adam was having a really hard time being famous.
24:45And when your little cool band becomes the cover of Rolling Stone, people are going to rebel against it because
24:52it's not theirs anymore.
24:53It's everyone's.
24:54Everywhere I went, it was an issue.
24:56Sometimes just like we love you, sometimes we hate you, but an issue everywhere.
25:02I felt very exposed.
25:05Anonymity, you don't realize what a shield it is until it's gone.
25:18One night, I got a phone call from Johnny from the office at the Viper.
25:21It's Kate Moss's 21st birthday tonight. The Viper's closed and we're having a party.
25:26You need to get down here now.
25:28And we went to the Viper room and I never really went home again.
25:34Pretty soon I just started bartending every night because I made insane tips for the people that work there.
25:40I didn't keep them.
25:41But I would go there every night and just work bartending.
25:43I was trying to, you know, deal, you know, get a little space.
25:47I think the Viper room was a real refuge, a real place they could go in and feel safe.
25:54And also Adam ain't the most famous dude running around the Viper room.
25:58And that's a big weight off your shoulders.
26:02And everyone loved Adam. Adam's a lovable guy and he's not a dick.
26:06So they liked having him around.
26:08And it was cool to have the guy who's on the cover of Rolling Stone, you know, serving you Amstel
26:13lights.
26:14And it added to the coolness of the Viper room.
26:17I wasn't comfortable.
26:18The whole world had turned uncomfortable for me.
26:22The Viper room gave me a home at a time when I really needed one.
26:26Another way of saying it gave me a second shot at life.
26:30For some stars, the Viper's legacy will always be the safety they felt inside its walls.
26:37But its infamy comes from what happens just outside on Sunset Boulevard.
26:43To happen right in front of the Viper room was like, oh my God, this is just never gonna, you
26:51know, be forgotten.
26:53At Pittsfield High School, it is wildly unpopular.
26:57A new dress code passed by the school committee last night, 5 to 1.
27:01It prohibits the wearing of what the committee describes as anything depicting illegal acts, provocative dress, profanity, gangs, drugs or
27:09violence.
27:10It's wrong. Why?
27:11Because we should be allowed to wear whatever we want.
27:14The 90s are a time of transition when youth culture is re-envisioning the world with a tenacity not seen
27:21since the counterculture movement in the 60s.
27:26The people who were young in the 90s felt culturally disaffected and, you know, sort of like, what is going
27:33on with the system that we don't feel like we fit into?
27:37A lot of people were trying to tear down the archetypes that existed before.
27:41This is what a blockbuster Hollywood movie is. This is what, like, a mega successful, like, rock band is.
27:48It's all kind of up for grabs and people are figuring it out.
27:54River, in many ways, was the grungy version of a movie star.
28:00He has this attitude and appearance and sometimes it explicitly crosses over, you know, sort of like he hangs out
28:06with the red hot chili peppers.
28:08He becomes great friends with Flea.
28:13I like to say that River was a musician with a damn good day job.
28:18And it's his day job that made him rich and famous, but his music was always his heart.
28:24My name is Sasa Hasid Ra. I'll do a little dance for you.
28:31My relationship with River was primarily as a friend and as a little brother, but also developed into a musical
28:39relationship where we produced amazing music together and wrote some really beautiful songs.
28:45I'll probably be, um, in the Bay Area, um, playing local underground clubs.
28:53I think River was pretty laid back in the way that he dealt with Hollywood.
28:58He didn't, it's not like he was always eager to try to get the most blockbuster movie and to try
29:03to get all of these contracts.
29:04He was more interested in the artistic expression of film and acting.
29:10How old were you then when you started?
29:11Ten.
29:13What is that sound?
29:14Mm-hmm.
29:15Television commercials, and then later you, um, get cast in a film if you're lucky.
29:21Mm-hmm.
29:23You're a natural.
29:25I'm not saying anything.
29:27I'm saying it.
29:28Okay, thank you very much.
29:28Yeah, I thought you did a wonderful performance in that movie.
29:32River Phoenix gets his big break in the coming-of-age classic Stand By Me.
29:38And although he goes on to accept roles in studio films with Robert Redford and Harrison Ford, he feels more
29:45at home on indie art productions like My Own Private Idaho.
29:48They could drop a big old bomb in this city, you know what we would do?
29:52Take shelter.
29:54Where he acts alongside other young voices like Keanu Reeves and his friend, Flea.
30:01And actually, one of the Chili Peppers songs, Give It Away.
30:05Give it away, give it away, give it away now.
30:07There's an interesting verse in that that is, like, dedicated to River that most people don't know.
30:13But that first verse, there's a river that's always a giver.
30:18Keep your warm, won't ever let you shiver.
30:20Yeah, that's, like, about River because he was so, so generous.
30:24He was such a generous kind of, he's always a giver.
30:28A lot of it was sort of, like, caretaker for the earth.
30:32And so you have this sense of, like, River Phoenix cares about the dolphins and he cares about animals and
30:38his dogs.
30:38He believes in the rainforest.
30:40And he's, like, in many ways could serve as a movie fan's introduction to larger social issues.
30:47Like a handful of other young stars at the time, River starts using heroin as a way to cope with
30:53the pressures of his success.
30:56I don't do television.
30:58I don't want to sit there and be a puppet and become more of, like, a speaking piece for the
31:05show than your own film.
31:06And so then you have shows all the time showing clips of the film, speaking about the film.
31:11You don't have, and then we talk to the actor, River, rubber penis.
31:15And, you know, I sit down, like, yeah.
31:17And then, like, yeah, I had a fun time doing this project.
31:20Yeah.
31:22It's just stupid, man.
31:23It's just a waste of time.
31:25Right.
31:26It bores me.
31:28And it scares the shit out of me, too, to be frank.
31:31To be in front of a camera?
31:32Oh, it's so frightening.
31:38I had seen River Phoenix a few months earlier.
31:43I didn't know it was River Phoenix at first.
31:46He was sprawled in the middle of the back little corridor.
31:51And I was like, who is that really cute and really up boy?
31:55And someone said, that's River Phoenix.
31:57And I was like, that's River Phoenix?
31:59You got me one, Scott?
32:02Yeah, I will.
32:03A glass of wine would be good.
32:05He's got addiction problems, and at a certain point, he's going to have to deal with this.
32:10He would clean out and dry out when he was making a movie.
32:15For example, his last movie, you know, it was Dark Blood, and it was filmed in the desert.
32:19And he sort of showed up straight and going for, like, long hikes.
32:25And when he got away from L.A., he was able to, like, you know, not have people, like, feeding
32:30him cocaine.
32:31And, you know, it's like, here's what you need.
32:33That's why I don't hang out and talk to those Hollywood people, because they're there to hurt me.
32:39They're there to hurt my views.
32:43And he actually said to the director, George Luzer, when, like, the filming shifted from the desert to L.A.,
32:50he said,
32:50I'm going back to the bad, bad town.
32:53Like, this is where temptation is for me.
32:58River gets to town, and he pretty much immediately falls off the wagon.
33:02He's out of it.
33:03Like, there's sort of, like, meetings he's supposed to take with directors where he's, you know, like, slurring his words.
33:09And, you know, calls up his agent.
33:11They can tell, like, he's within 24 hours, he's in bad shape.
33:17Samantha Mathis' girlfriend is there.
33:19Two of his siblings are there as well, Joaquin Phoenix and his sister, Rain.
33:25His siblings, they want to go out to the Viper Room.
33:28It's the hot club in town. They're curious.
33:30He's going to stay and just sort of, like, have a quiet night, so he's in good shape for tomorrow's
33:36shooting.
33:38You guys go have a good time at the Viper Room.
33:40His girlfriend's going to take his siblings there.
33:42And as they're, like, heading out the room and, like, going to the elevator, like, he changes his mind.
33:48Like, okay, like, let's go.
33:50And runs after them into the night.
33:54I got a call from Spin Magazine, whom I was writing for in those days.
33:59Will you go and cover this band at the Viper Room?
34:03I went there and the line was just insane.
34:06Everybody wanted to get in that night.
34:07Because there was a special band playing.
34:10It was kind of a super group.
34:12And it was called P, the initial P.
34:15P was Johnny Depp's band that included Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers.
34:21Also sitting in that night was River's friend, Flea.
34:28I went into the club, and it was already packed.
34:33I went to the dressing room, which was what I always did.
34:36But the door was pretty much locked.
34:39People that knew me inside the dressing room at the Viper Room on that night weren't letting me in.
34:44I knew what was going on in there.
34:46It's a crowded dark room, and there's a lot of conflicting versions of what happened.
34:56It's possible that most of them are true, and different people saw different things happen, and it all added up.
35:03The version that I heard from a friend of his was somebody who walked up to the table and then
35:08gave him this cup and says,
35:09Drink this. You'll feel great.
35:13And River does and downs it and almost immediately starts to feel like there's something in the drink that's starting
35:19to send his body into convulsions.
35:24I watched a few songs of pee.
35:27It was humid, it was sweaty, and it was super smoky.
35:32I was like, I can't stand this anymore.
35:34So I opened the door to Sunset Strip, and I almost tripped over paramedics resuscitating someone.
35:42I literally almost tripped. It was happening right in front of the door.
35:50Then I looked down, as one would naturally do, and I saw who it was, and I was, like, shocked.
36:06The End
36:06How are you?
36:07How are you?
36:08How are you?
36:09Getting heavy seizures on Sunset and Larrabee. Please come here.
36:12Okay, calm down a little bit, okay? What's the address where you need us?
36:15It's Sunset and Larrabee. It's the viper room.
36:18And what's the address where you know?
36:20Well, man, I'm dressed in a ****!
36:30There's this heartbreaking tape of his brother watching, you know, sort of like losing his mind because his brother is
36:36dying in front of him.
36:54He's like on the sidewalk right in front of the viper room.
36:59He's having seizures. His sister is lying on top of his body trying to like sort of like settle down
37:04and like stop him from hurting himself as he flails around.
37:35This tape gets played over and over in the aftermath.
37:39And this is like the moment when America like met Joaquin Phoenix, when, you know, sort of like, you know,
37:45at the lowest point of his life, his brother, who he like loved and worshipped and looked up to, is
37:49dying in front of him.
37:54Seeing the first responders with defibrillators and with an oxygen mask on and with like, girls like screaming and crying
38:02on the sidewalk.
38:03I have tears in my eyes right now. That was a traumatic thing. I didn't talk about that for a
38:09long time.
38:13It's not nice to witness someone dying like that.
38:19The band that was playing finishes their set and they hear, oh, a friend of Flea's is having like a
38:25bad time.
38:26And so they come out and Flea sees what's happening and like rides in the ambulance to the hospital and
38:32they take him to Cedars-Sinai.
38:33And they work for about half an hour before they declare that he's dead.
38:37But, you know, he died there like on the sidewalk outside the viper room.
38:41An investigation is underway into the sudden death of one of Hollywood's brightest young stars.
38:4623-year-old River Phoenix collapsed outside a Los Angeles nightclub early this morning.
38:52The actor's brother says he might have taken drugs before he died.
38:55The psychology results came back. The findings were that he was found to have cocaine and heroin.
39:02It metabolizes as morphine in the body. And there were very high levels.
39:15It was very difficult when River passed.
39:20Joaquin and I, you know, we didn't ever talk about the specifics of that night.
39:24You know, it was too painful, I think.
39:29But, um, we cried a lot. We cried a lot together.
39:33You know, an ocean of tears.
39:35And, um, he was such a beautiful boy and he definitely left, you know, way too young.
39:42You know, too young to die for sure.
39:52By the late 90s, a new breed of celebrity invades the Sunset Strip.
39:58And for those who found safety behind the viper room's walls, everything is about to change.
40:05Reality TV kind of came around and changed a lot of what fame was in America.
40:13The goal is that one day, every home in America will have a special cable box.
40:18We will hook up our computer, our telephone, our video camera, and our TV to that one box.
40:24In the late 90s, the internet matures from chat rooms and pay-per-view porn
40:29into a powerful media tool that's altering our very concept of what it means to be famous.
40:37And nowhere is that transformation more evident than on L.A.'s Sunset Strip.
40:44Every generation felt that their generation was better than the generation that came after them.
40:49And that just happens every generation.
40:51But there is a definite line in the sand with a pre-internet and a post-internet.
40:58And that's the big demarcation.
41:01I don't remember any actors in the 90s referring to themselves as a brand.
41:06I don't like L.A. as much anymore.
41:10It's not what it was then.
41:11It really turned into a town where there were a lot of people who got famous for being famous.
41:16And a lot of the sons and daughters are really rich people, you know, and famous people.
41:21That started to be like a real thing in L.A.
41:23The 90s were the last era where it was really uncool to like being famous.
41:31I think that era is long gone.
41:35Fame used to be the unfortunate byproduct of being really good at something.
41:40Whereas I think now with a lot of people coming up, fame is the end goal.
41:47With this new breed of celebrity taking over the strip, Johnny Depp finally sells off the Viper Room in 2004.
41:56Although the name stays the same, the vibe does not.
42:01And soon the Hollywood royalty stops showing up.
42:05I haven't been to the Viper Room lately, meaning in the past few years.
42:11I constantly say that I am not in rock and roll anymore and people roll their eyes at me.
42:19I can't really say when my sort of Viper days drew to a close.
42:27Because by the time you realize, oh, I haven't been there in a while, huh, I guess it's over.
42:38The Viper Room wasn't the Viper Room anymore.
42:42Those golden hours don't last forever.
42:46It's only an hour.
42:49You know, commerce catches up to everything.
42:52And now the Viper Room is going to be bulldozed and a hotel is going to be erected in that
42:58space.
42:59And then it'll be gone forever.
43:02Yeah.
43:03I mean, we all have to grow up with that.
43:05You go to the places that you grew up going to see shows and they're not there anymore.
43:10I have lifelong friends because of the Viper Room that I met at the Viper Room and grew to love
43:18at the Viper Room.
43:19So you just have to be appreciative of what you had and the time you had because you can't get
43:26that back.
43:29The Viper Room gave me a home at a time when I needed one.
43:34And it gave me a place to be an artist again.
43:40I would treasure Johnny Depp for the rest of my life.
43:44Because of that, it changed my life.
43:46And it was the making of me in some ways, the remaking of me, put it that way.
44:08It actually was the kind of beautiful place.
44:11I would never forget myaug LGBT which is one of the big people who felt like me, put it it
44:12down.
44:12And that's it for me.
44:18You are a good writer how much can you?
44:18Because of vaccination times prior to the Leap Room while I getting never at it.
44:24And now I'm looking at my view in my life.
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