`The Thing Called Love': Phoenix's Last Portrait

The parallels come easily.

James Dean, widely regarded as the finest actor of his generation, died less than a month before the 1955 opening of "Rebel Without a Cause," the movie with which he became identified. He was 24.

River Phoenix, the most respected screen actor of his generation, died less than two weeks before the opening of "The Thing Called Love," his last completed film (it's coming next Friday to the Uptown). He was 23.

The actor's family wants "The Thing Called Love" to stand as a tribute to Phoenix, who rarely had so much input on a film. So does the movie's director, Peter Bogdanovich, who regarded Phoenix as a full-time collaborator on the project.

"We rewrote most of the picture while the writers were there - and the actors more than me," said Bogdanovich during a Seattle visit last week. "I trusted him. I gave him tremendous freedom. His input was so brilliant."

Phoenix was with his co-star, Samantha Mathis, when he collapsed and died last weekend outside a Los Angeles club. In the film, they play aspiring, immature country-western singers who rush into marriage. They became constant companions after it was finished.

"The picture must look so different now," said Bogdanovich. "You can't ignore the fact that he has died, or that he's playing a Jimmy Dean kind of good-bad guy. I must watch it again, though I don't know if I can."

Bogdanovich still finds it hard to talk about Phoenix in the past tense. He believes "his spirit is undiminished." He claims Phoenix never indulged in drugs during the filming, and he feels the actor must have been a victim. A few hours before the actor's death, Bogdanovich spoke on the phone to Mathis.

"Sam(antha) told me he wasn't even having a beer," said Bogdanovich. "He wasn't drinking. But L.A. is a city he hated, a city he didn't feel comfortable with. You never know what someone's going to hand you."

Phoenix wanted to make the movie because it gave him an opportunity to sing and to broaden his range by playing a self-centered character. At first Bogdanovich thought the part was too small, that it was too obviously Mathis' picture, so he didn't offer it to Phoenix. Then the actor came after him.

"It's very, very rare to find an actor who's interested in the whole work," said Bogdanovich, recalling Howard Hawks' comment that most actors are trying to win a popularity contest in every scene.

"River didn't care about how it reflected back on him. He lets her character win in the end. He lets his character be portrayed as not very likable. Sometimes I had to pull him back because I felt he was going too far.

"Like most young actors since Brando, he's into a kind of method, and he got so deeply into this role that he seemed moody and abrasive at first. But then he'd say, `Don't let me give you any trouble.' I didn't know how fully he was into the part. I didn't meet the real River until three or four weeks after we finished shooting."

Bogdanovich inherited "The Thing Called Love" in the late summer of 1992, when the original director, Brian Gibson, parted company with Paramount Pictures. The script by first-time screenwriter Carol Heikkinen needed work.

"It had a lot of potential and some marvelous scenes," said Bogdanovich. "But there was a fair element of formula: the girl who comes to town to become a show-biz success. What interested me was that here was a major studio asking me to do a character-driven piece."

A 30-ish actress had been set for Mathis' role. Told that the studio wanted him to bring a "Last Picture Show" quality to the material, Bogdanovich decided to cast actors in their early 20s.

"I thought it would be more poignant, more interesting if she was younger," he said. Although Mathis was nervous about accepting a script that she knew would be rewritten while they were on location in Nashville, she wanted to work with Phoenix. Both responded to Bogdanovich's pleas to help him with the characters' language and their music.

"I wanted to know if they would say these things," said Bogdanovich, who is 54. "I can't speak as though I'm of that age because I'm not."

Bogdanovich helped introduce country-western music to movie soundtracks with "The Last Picture Show" 22 years ago, and he's used it in "They All Laughed," "Texasville" and other films.

"The music is so different from what I grew up with in New York," he said. "There's this artless lack of slickness, and that appealed to me as an antidote. Country-western music makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it wears its heart on its sleeve."

Phoenix wrote one of the songs in the film. A guitarist since 1987 with the band Aleka's Attic, he sings five songs and shares one number, "Blame It On Your Heart," with Mathis.

"The Thing Called Love" isn't quite as fresh as "Rebel Without a Cause" seemed when it opened. The picture had an unsuccessful test run in the South last summer, and it may not be remembered as Phoenix's definitive work. His performances in "Running on Empty," "Dogfight," "Stand by Me," "The Mosquito Coast" and "My Own Private Idaho" provide plenty of competition.

It may also not be the actor's last film to surface. "Silent Tongue," which he finished shooting before this one, will probably turn up at some point. Another Phoenix film, "Dark Blood," had three weeks to go when he died. Its fate is uncertain.

But it seems fair to say that Phoenix felt fulfilled on this film.

"He was very proud of it," said Bogdanovich. "He was not simply an actor in the picture."