River attended the Oscars with his girlfriend, Plimpton, and his mother, Heart. Plimpton sported a blond crew cut on the red carpet, having shaved her head for her role as a cancer patient in Silence Like Glass. Uncomfortable with the spotlight, River spoke modestly of his nomination: “It’s an official bonus to the satisfaction that I had already felt after seeing the movie.”
The other nominees were Alec Guinness as an imprisoned debtor in the Dickens adaptation Little Dorrit, Kevin Kline as a deranged hit man in the farce A Fish Called Wanda, Martin Landau as an auto-company financier in Tucker: The Man and His Dream, and Dean Stockwell as a Mafia boss in the comedy Married to the Mob. It was an experienced group—on average, fully thirty-nine years older than River. At the lunch for Oscar nominees a week before the awards ceremony, River made a point of meeting Kline: they were slated to work together later that year, in a film called I Love You to Death.
Infamously, the 1989 Oscars had no host—but began with a production number that included Rob Lowe and an actress dressed as Snow White duetting on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.” When the time came for the best-supporting-actor category, Sean Connery and Michael Caine (the winners the previous two years) clowned around with Roger Moore before reading the nominees. While they did, River awkwardly posed for the camera with one finger resting on his cheek—but when Kline was named the winner, he cheered with wild enthusiasm for his new costar, even pumping his fist.
River wanted to run over and hug Kline, but his mother stopped him.