My Own Private River

Sunday, March 9 - Thursday, March 13, 2014

“Actor-director James Franco remixes River Phoenix. The star of Rise of the Planet of the Apes was 15 when Phoenix died at the age of 23, passing into legend and inspiring a devoted cult that endures to this day. Phoenix was immortalized in Gus Van Sant’s acclaimed and influential 1991 film My Own Private Idaho—the role of Mike, the Seattle hustler who loves and then loses slumming rich kid Scott (Keanu Reeves) proved to be the actor’s apotheosis. Twenty years on, this icon of sensitive youth has risen from the ashes: after spending two days watching the film’s dailies and outtakes with Van Sant, Franco edited together a new version combining footage from the original film and its unused residue. As Franco put it in a piece he wrote for The Paris Review: ‘Many filmmakers would consider the discarded material worthless, but sometimes—as when they feature an actor like River Phoenix in a film like My Own Private Idaho, the best of his generation giving his best performance—every scrap is gold. It was overwhelming to be able to cut the raw material of my favorite film, a film that had moved me, that had helped shape me as a teenager.’ The end result, MY OWN PRIVATE RIVER, is a dreamlike portrait of both the actor and the character he incarnates.” – Film Society of Lincoln Center

• Country USA
• Rating NR
• Running Time 102 minutes
• Director James Franco & Gus Van Sant

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