Keanu Reeves: The Young and the Restless

Eventually, he decided to abandon the Great Canadian Indoors for the Great American Outdoors, auditioning in the States for a role in a Disney TV movie. He didn't get it, but he did get hooked up with a big-time agent in Los Angeles, and, as he reports it, drifted west with $3,000, an ancient Volvo, and his stepfather's address. It didn't take him long to get work--he landed a small part in one of Rob Lowe's vehicles, playing a French-Canadian goalie in Youngblood.

"It's an awful movie," says Reeves, acidly, of the Lowe point in his career.

Still, with the exception of the unnecessary and unseen teen comedy The Night Before, released in 1988, Youngblood was the last overtly bad project Reeves has been associated with--no mean feat in this age of sludge. Since 1986, Reeves has been appearing in a bunch of films that always manage to get attention, either because they're good, strange, loony, twisted, or because John Malkovich and Glenn Close are in them too.

First came River's Edge, the cult classic about a bunch of real-life Northern California high school students who suppress the evidence that a deranged classmate has strangled his girlfriend. As is usually the case, Keanu plays a confused, alienated adolescent, one who initially colludes with his classmates and then realizes, Jesus this is nuts, and goes to the police.

Reeves is outstanding in the film, and holds center stage in a scene that says more about what's wrong with contemporary American society (we can't tell right from wrong) than any other scene in a film of recent memory. That's when he has to persuade his nine-year-old brother that it's not really such a good idea to blow him away with the .38 he stole from drug dealer and all-purpose lunatic Dennis Hooper. "Come on, man, I'm your brother" Come on, man, I'm your brother. That disturbing, unforgettable movie. It's that kind of movie.

Reeves, who is generally generous toward other actors, is still especially impressed by Crispin Glover's performance in River's Edge, one regarded by many critics as the definition of "over the top." For those who have not seen the film, suffice it to say that River's Edge is the only motion picture in recent memory in which Dennis Hopper gives the second weirdest performance. Glover plays an unhinged character named Lane, a sort of townie Axl Rose, who becomes obsessed with the idea of protecting his murderous classmate by getting rid of the corpse. From the moment he upbraids the killer for only giving him a Budweiser after he disposes of the body--"I thought it was at least worth a Michelob"--the audience knows that it is in for a long, wild ride with one sick pup. "Crispin was amazing," says Reeves.

But did Reeves and the rest of the cast know how unsettling a movie they were making at the time, without the eerie soundtrack, without the grainy film quality, without seeing the whole package all at once?

"No way," says Reeves. "I saw the script and I didn't get it. I knew it was going to be funny, but no, I had no idea."

Using a word he has used in the past, Reeves says that if he had done the Glover role, "my Lane would have been a lot more pedestrian." Then comes the touchy subject of morality, of whether the Reeves or the Glover character is more representative of young Americans today. In other words, is Glover's demonic Lane an archetype of sorts, or just a sick fuck the actor dreamed up to put the fear of God into people?

"It's there," Reeves intones. "It's there. It's surprising what's out there." He adds, decisively, "There are Lanes."

After River's Edge, an instant favorite with critics, came Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, a spectacularly stupid film about two teen meatheads who can only avoid flunking out of high school by going back in time and kidnapping Socrates, Napoleon Bonaparte, Billy the Kid and Beethoven, and persuading them to appear in a show-and-tell end-of-term report in the school auditorium the following day. Reeves delivers an exuberantly idiotic performance as a Valley Boy so dumb that even Dick Clark would think twice about letting him appear on "American Bandstand."

"It was a pretty solid film," says Reeves, who, unlike many others in his line of work, doesn't mind talking about money, since he's making a lot of it. "It cost $10 million to make, and it made $43 million."

Did it make him a teen idol?

"Yeah, I think so. Girls like it; guys dig it."

Does getting typecast as a bozo worry him?

"It's not like I'm Robert De Niro in Raging Bull," he says. "But if that's going to be my claim to fame, that's going to be my claim to fame."

Bill & Ted (which was made in '87 but not released until last summer) was followed by Permanent Record, a potentially good film that went off the rails. Reeves, a master at having mixed feelings about things, definitely has mixed feelings about this tale of high school seniors forced to cope with the Boy Most Likely to Succeed's decision to jump off a cliff. Keanu plays the doomed boy's best friend and does a real good job, but the film blows up about two-thirds of the way through. Permanent Record starts out with the same gritty quality as River's Edge, but then gets all mushy at the end (the finale is a hokey standing ovation when the Girl Most Likely to Succeed performs an impromptu a cappella version of the dead boy's last song at a school production of "H.M.S. Pinafore." Give it up.)

In the past, Keanu has been quoted as saying nice things about the film and its director, Marisa Silver; he has also been quoted as saying that the studio sabotaged the film, wrecking what had otherwise been his most pleasant acting experience to date. He is politely asked which are his real feelings about this movie.

"All of these things," he says. "It's just, I couldn't believe it when it happened."

When what happened?

"When everybody stood up and clapped at the end," he says. "It was pretty cheesey."

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