Longform

He was a nobody who became a porn star, a porn star who became a destitute freebaser, an addict who set up his dealer to be robbed, and finally witness to a retaliatory massacre at the house they called Wonderland.

Somehow, River Phoenix’s reluctance to be a star only made him more famous. When he died outside an LA club in 1993, it only cemented his troubled legend.

He came home from Vietnam, wrote the novel that became Full Metal Jacket, was nominated for an Oscar and riding high. Then he got thrown in jail for stockpiling stolen library books, started drinking, cut off his friends and fled to a remote Greek island. He never made it back.

Bonnie Lee Bakley always wanted to marry a celebrity. The one she chose was Robert Blake, a troubled and only intermittently famous man who would end up accused of her murder.

Peter Bart was once a movie executive like everyone else, but as the head of Variety, the industry’s powerful source of news,

How a high-powered lawyer and a rough-edged private detective ended up at the center of the biggest, dirtiest scandal in Hollywood history.

He was just another coked-up agent (representing the likes of Steven Soderbergh) when he disappeared into Iraq, shooting heaps of footage he would attempt to package into a pro-war documentary. And that was just the beginning.

Two years ago, the fitness guru abruptly disappeared from public life. His friends worry that he’s being held against his will inside his Hollywood Hills mansion, or something even worse.