Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind Read Online Free PDF

it. The good times and the bad are all part of the experience.”
    Then, in 1976, the mailman brought an international delivery that changed everything. The latest Mo Letter was advocating the benefits of “flirty fishing.” The term was derived from Jesus Christ’s message to his disciples (in Matthew 4:19): “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Now, Berg told his female followers, they should bring new men into the Children of God by sleeping with them.
    “What greater way could you show anyone your love than to give them your all in the bed of love?” Berg wrote. “How much more can you show them the Love of God than to show them His Love to the uttermost through you?”
    Flirty fishing was the official policy of the Children of God for a full decade, until 1987, when it was curtailed because of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Apparently, it did bring thousands of men into Berg’s flock, but it also transformed many of his female disciples into prostitutes—or, as some nicknamed them, “Hookers for God.” Some women established long-term sexual relationships with locally powerful men who could offer political protection for their commune, or with wealthy men who provided funds to keep the commune going. In other locations, the transactions became even balder, as the women were hired out to local escort services.
    The Bottom family didn’t stick around for these developments. Arlyn’s summary of the Children of God experience: “The guy running it got crazy. He sought to attract rich disciples through sex. No way,” she said. “The group was being distorted by a leader who was getting very full of power and wealthy. We were serving God; we weren’t serving our leader. It took several years to get over our pain and loneliness.”
    John looked back at Berg ruefully, unable to condemn his onetime spiritual guide: “He may have been a sexual pervert, but he is still a better man than a lot of people.”
    Without money or a place to stay, the Bottom family turned to their friend Padre Esteban—Father Stephen Wood was now pastor of his own parish in Caracas. They told him that the twin lodestars that guided their conduct had long been the Bible and the Mo Letters. Now that they found these two sources to be in conflict, they had opted for the Bible.
    Concerned for their four children, Wood invited the family to stay at his church for a few weeks, in return for singing at Sunday services. During the week, the Bottoms kept proselytizing at the shopping malls of downtown Caracas. “They tried to evangelize and entertain at the same time,” Wood said. “I got the feeling that all the parents in the Children of God were exploiting their kids’ talents, aware that the kids were more effective beggars than them.”
    Later in life, River would describe his seventh birthday—August 23, 1977—as a day spent in squalor. As he told it, his family at that point was living on the beach in a rat-infested shack with no toilet, surviving by scavenging coconuts and mangoes from the trees. In fact, Wood said, while River may have availed himself of the local fruit, there was always food available at the mission. “While they were definitely poor, it was never quite down to the level of Venezuelan poverty,” Wood said. “They were struggling, and they didn’t have much money, and they didn’t know where they were really going to go.”
    The family did stay on the beach—not in a shack, but in the caretaker’s cottage at the back of a large property unused by its owners except on weekends. So during the week, the family had access to the main house’s swimming pool.
     
    UNDER THE HOT VENEZUELAN SUN , River jumps into the swimming pool, his limbs skinny and his hair a golden bowl crowning his head. A jet airplane flies overhead, leaving from the nearby airport at La Guaira for someplace far away. The family has put the Children of God behind them; an uncertain future lies before them. But a