Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone an unfinished film released almost 20 years after the untimely death of its star.

This is another episode in our Out of Frame bonus series where we explore the darker, more obscure corners of Hollywood.

And today we're talking about the life, death, and final film of River Phoenix.

Now, I do want to give a content warning right up top. This episode will discuss

child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and heavy drug use. It's also going to feature more

colorful language than you may be used to, and that's because I'm not just here with my usual

co-host, Chris Winterbauer, but we are also joined by experts on some subject matter that's

going to be very relevant in today's episode. I am so excited. We've got Henry Zabrowski and

Ed Larson from the last podcast on the left. Welcome, guys. Hello. I want to stress to everyone

how much not an expert I am. I just want to say, I'm not an expert.

I'm just a fan.

I think dad's a sexy guy, and it's just nice to have some time to really ruminate on it.

I can see the regret in their eyes.

I was just so happy last night, kicked back, big, tall, frothy glass of milk, reading the story of Davidito aloud to my wife.

And one of my favorite times.

Just in case anybody's wondering what we were talking about, a decent part of this episode is going to be spent discussing

the Children of God cult because, yes, River Phoenix and all of his siblings did grow up for a few

years in the Children of God cult. So we are going to talk about it. It's so much weirder than

you could possibly imagine. So we will get there. But before we do, very quickly, Henry, Ed, and Chris,

what's your sort of experience of River Phoenix coming into this episode? I mean, I'm a big Indiana

Jones and the Last Crusade fan. He's my man. He's young indie. He's the real young indie, as far as I'm

concerned. And I love them for that. And then there's, of course, my private Idaho. And that was about all I really knew. I never really watched too much. Other than that, big fan of his brother. Huge fan of his brother. Like his work. I do find that every five years, what Hollywood does is choose the skinniest boys they can find and give

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