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