‘Silent Tongue’ to Speak for River Phoenix

Reviews and reaction to River Phoenix’s screen talents will not end with his death.

One of the actor’s more obscure performances is in Sam Shepard’s unreleased film “Silent Tongue,” a ghost story set in the Southwest of the late 1800s, which won’t get a public viewing until early next year when independent distributor Trimark plans to open it in limited release.

Shepard, currently in New York for rehearsals of his next play, “Simpatico,” had just finished re-editing “Silent Tongue” when Phoenix died suddenly outside a Sunset Strip nightclub. (A coroner’s report is pending.)

But rather than rush the picture into theaters (and exploit the sensational circumstances surrounding the actor’s death at age 23), Trimark will tentatively open the picture in February.

“It’s important for the movie to get out in a way that’s appropriate,” said Tim Swain, a senior marketing executive for Trimark. “River is great in it, but so is the rest of the top-flight cast.” Phoenix gets third billing after Richard Harris and Alan Bates.

One completed version of “Silent Tongue” was shown earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, but generated little critical praise. Finished a year ago May, it originally was scheduled to open this month. Shepard then decided to re-cut it, trimming eight minutes from the opening sequence, a Trimark spokesman said.

The complicated, non-linear plot has Phoenix grieving for his half-Indian young wife, who has died in childbirth. In Indian tradition, her body is left to be eaten by vultures to free her spirit--a tradition Phoenix seeks to prevent. His father, played by Harris, then tries to buy the wife’s sister to help his son get over his loss. But the sister is a money-generating trick rider in the local Kickapoo Indian medicine show and the Irishman who runs it (Bates) refuses the sale. So Harris kidnaps the woman. The ghost of Phoenix’s wife, played by Sheila Tousey, haunts them all.

“Silent Tongue” producer Carolyn Pfeiffer, reached at her home in Jamaica, said the filmmakers sought Phoenix out to play the widower after seeing him in “My Own Private Idaho” and were very pleased with his performance. (Shepard was unavailable for comment.) Phoenix’s role required that he be on location in the small town of Rosewell, N.M., for only three weeks, but Pfeiffer recalled he stayed for the entire seven-week shoot “because he felt the need to. It was his first experience working with theater people and he was excited about it.” The production even hired a vegetarian caterer to accommodate Phoenix’s diet.

Pfeiffer’s recollection was that the actor was “very clean . . . the most he ever had was a beer.”

“Silent Tongue” was screened at the Native American Film Festival in San Francisco last week and will play the London Film Festival Monday, where Bates will introduce it.

Another Phoenix picture, “The Thing Called Love” directed by Peter Bogdanovich, opened in late August on about 490 screens through the South and Southwest and grossed just over $1 million. The success of its current run in Seattle will determine whether it opens in L.A. and New York.