Page 12 - JIMMY REARDON LETTER TO CHICAGO CRITICS

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Today, knowing some of his story, what a wit and thoughtful power he was, you

can imagine what it was like to hang with River Phoenix, work with him on dia-

logue and scenes, and have him playing a role like the one you yourself played for

real – sort of -- a long time ago. And as well as you might imagine that, it was

even better.

IT MUST HAVE BEEN early January, 1988, when the publicity department at

Fox gathered in a room to mockingly interview me about any thoughts I had on

promoting my ilm after they and their studio bosses had changed the title, tossed

out academy-award winning Elmer Bernstein’s score, my author’s narration,

River's Song, and that six-minute scene which reveals the protagonist’s true feel-

ings for his friend Suzie, the classic revelatory scene, slashed to enable more show-

ings in the theaters.

I’ll not forget their grins and insulting innuendoes as the Fox publicists talked

about the sexy parts of my ilm, which their marketing department insisted on call-

ing “A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON.” They gleefully pointed

out that the R rating would go against River Phoenix’s fans, who were only 14 or

so at the time, as if that problem were not also their own problem. They seemed

hell bent on ridiculing a picture they themselves were distributing.

My thoughts were that they should never have taken the movie on for release if

they so openly disliked it.

(In my single hurried meeting with Fox marketing chief Cynthia Wick I asked that

she please not change the title to “A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF” because it

smacked of playboy-ism; she said nobody every heard of anybody named “Jimmy

Reardon.” I said what about TOM SAWYER or HUCKLEBERRY FINN or even

DR. ZHIVAGO. Her response was that these were famous names and Jimmy Re-

ardon was not. Eh, what?)

I pleaded with her/them to present the picture to critics as a movie made for

grownups, that it was directed and written for adults, some of whom were looking

back on adolescence as I myself did; at the intensity of it, the comic delirium of it.

It was a movie drenched in the angst of the young, which, paradoxically, the young

would largely watch without a clue as to why adults were laughing. Yeah it was

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