My Keanu
BUST, issue #6, Summer/Fall 1995:
I like his goofball deflections of life's complexity, too, the way things can
be totally excellent. And then, not so excellent. His understated alienation
and his far-away brown eyes drift off the screen. He doesn't have a place to
live, except the Chateau Marmont. Apparently, he acts really wierd during
interviews. He retreats into manic laughs that cut off into sudden silence.
He jumps out of his chair and recites obscure lines of dialogue. He answers
the question, "Why do you act?” with "You know, man, whatever.” He crashed
his Norton a few years ago in Topanga Canyon and it left him with a thick scar
that snakes from his navel to his heart. But he's no James Dean. He isn't a bad boy, see. There's no tough shell, no unforgiveables, no edges to soften. He's pretty on the outside. He's like a girl, that way.
Keanu is my boyfriend. Occasionally, I'll get a message on my answering
machine, sing-songing, "Your boyfriend is on TV tonight in Dangerous Liaisons”
or "Your boyfriend is going to be on the next cover of Wired” or "I just heard
your boyfriend is making a movie called Feeling Minnesota with your girlfriend,
Cameron Diaz (I'd love to be sandwiched in the middle of that one).
Friends clip and save pictures of Keanu for me like so many coupons.
Pictures of him as Prince Siddhartha in Little Buddha, where he has this bad
Yul Brynner-as-King-of-Siam makeup happening, but he is mostly unclothed,
which is very good. A few GIFs from Speed, old issues of Details, Interview,
Buzz, Entertainment Weekly. There is a muddy black and white taken by Gus Van
Sant during the making of MOPI which I treasure, because Keanu tries so hard,
but his honesty gets in the way.
But my favorite is the one where he is wearing a black leather biker vest,
unzipped all the way, and black jeans. His hair is parted in the middle and
hangs in a sloppy bob just above the chin. He is not smiling. His hands are
on his hips, and his hips, I must say, have a bit of baby fat on them. He looks deliciously rough trade, showing off his rather hairless chest, his nipples and most importantly, his scar. For Christmas last year, I got copies of Speed, Point Break and a dub of Life Under Water, a PBS drama starring Keanu and Sarah Jessica Parker. In one scene, he is completely naked -- from the back -- and if you watch it frame by frame, you can glimpse his scar when he turns around. I want to run my tongue up and down the length of that jagged pink road.
Or do I? Do I actually want to see the scar up close, in real life? It might
break the spell. The magic is made up of bits of ink stuck to glossy paper,
projections on a screen, my dreams. Besides, why risk ruining the illusion
when there are plenty of other people out there who are out to ruin it for
me?
"He can't act his way out of a paper bag.”
"Did you see Dracula? He was pathetic”
"You know what the critics said about his performance as Hamlet?
'At least he remembered all of his lines.'” Whenever I mention my thing for
Keanu to outsiders, it's usually met with the slag, "He can't act.” As if my
enchantment is supposed to evaporate on the spot when I'm informed he might
not be Oscar material. When the no-talent tactic doesn't work, they bring out
the big guns: He's stupid in person, his band Dogstar is shit and he's a fag
on top of it all. The level of hostility is impressive. They're hell-bent on
convincing me he sucks. They attempt Keanu-intervention.
Keanu can act. Granted, some films are better than others and he is the first
to admit it. "I didn't give a performance,” he told Newsweek, referring to
Dracula. Oh, so what. He was amazing in River's Edge, the story of a group of
disaffected teenagers who discover one of them has killed his girlfriend. His
character is stoned, streaked with compassion and troubled that he can feel so
much nothing for what is going on. Is it a great performance, or is he just
playing himself? Does it matter?
His performance in Speed is good. My only complaint is that there was no
gratuitous male nudity. After all of those death-defying, sweat-soaked
adventures, didn't Keanu need to take a nice long shower? Or when he was under
the bus, dismantling the bomb, why didn't his shirt get ripped off so we could
drool over his scar and newly buffed torso?
Is he stupid in person? I've never met anyone who knows him in real life, so
I wanted to see for myself. I flew to LA to see his band Dogstar play at the
Hollywood American Legion on Highland Ave. "I have restrained the rage of the
dogstar,” wrote Samuel Johnson, the famous 18th century writer and lexicographer. What kind of rage does Keanu restrain? I wondered.
I invited my friend Cintra and her boyfriend Kevin to join me. I was buying.
How could they refuse? As expected, Kevin pulled out the stops about how lame
Keanu was in the acting and brains department. But my loyalty wouldn't budge...
The crowd was a mix of Melrose Place chicklets with perfectly penciled and
tweezed eyebrows, kneesocks and brown lipstick from MAC; big-hair Valley babes
in white heels flashing teeth at their pinky ring dude escorts; club hipsters
and white people with dreadlocks wearing flannel. Interestingly, I noticed a
fairly large contingent of Boho guys. Were they simply the boyfriends of the
girlfriends who dragged them there? Maybe they were there to see the first
band.
The minute Keanu walked on stage and picked up his bass, the females started
screaming. He wore a baggy black t-shirt and black jeans. A sea of short girls
lapped at the front of the stage, giving me a continuously unobstructed view
of Keanu, but I still couldn't see his shoes, which would have given me much
additional non-verbal information about his character. If only Keanu was into
stage-diving and I could touch by Object of Desire. Touch. It's the mythical
action that passes along the currency of soul and hopefully leaves a trail of
charm dust on your fingertips.
Keanu was gee-whiz gracious to his fans. Smiling, accepting their demo tapes,
and thanking them. They threw flowers; I should have thrown my panties at him.
Instead, I quietly enjoyed my buzz. This tingly sensation of, there he is. The
boy in the pictures. It was like the first time I saw the Mona Lisa at the
Louvre. I'd seen reproductions of it for years and then, finally, the real
thing. Keanu was even more beautiful in real life. But the beauty trip only
lasted about 20 minutes and then I came down. The band sucked.
They were beyond suck. The mix was so muddy, Dogbreath could have played the
same chord all night and no one would have noticed.... Much to Keanu's credit,
however, he did not head-bang or make rock-and-roll face. He only sang one
tune, the barely decipherable "Isabelle.” Cintra claimed the lyrics were,
"Isabelle/Is a spell.” Man, like that is so deep.
After the show, we all walked back to the car. "So, did you get a moistie?”
Kevin asked. It's the girl version of a boner.
"Yeah, I did. Did you?”
"Well, if I had to suck a dick, it would probably be Keanu's. He really is
beautiful.” The smart ones, they eventually come around.
Keanu's the lucky one who will always get the girl (or boy) in the end because
he's so incredibly beautiful. Many, yes, but a bit of a dork. A bit of a femme,
too. I like to imagine him taking a bath by candlelight, filling his place with
roses, crying and finding beauty in melancholy, saying fuck you to failure and
then asking me to lick the blood off his face after a fight. He ain't always
got something to prove, but I bet he could prove it all night if he wanted to.
But what do I know? All I have are the pictures.
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Did you know that Keanu means "cool breeze over the mountains” in Hawaiian? It
also means "warm breeze between my legs” in the pornographic candyland of my
subconscious. Not since Madonna have I melted-down so completely in the
luminescence of a star. His mezmerizing beauty, of course, was the beginning.
Looking at his face is like looking at a Boticelli or watching the snow fall.
It's the sense of awe that comes simply from witnessing the beautiful.
Sometimes all I have to do is look at him and I feel, wow.
I believe the "He Can't Act” vitriol is a symptom of something else. Do we
really want to have a discussion about actors in Hollywood who can't act? Let
me bring out my list. Kim Basinger. Matt Dillon. Tom Cruise. Demi Moore. Elvis
Presley. But to be fair, they've all had a shining moment or two. Well, except
for Kim Basinger. Perhaps we really want to talk about the envy and the
unfairness of it all; that someone is making millions of dollars with their
good looks and we're not. Ah, the aroma of jealousy fills the room. Not
surprisingly, the rancor comes mainly from straight guys. They can dismiss his
acting, but they can't dismiss his beauty. In fact, they can't even allow
themselves to recognize it long enough to reject it because they might wake up
the next morning with the letters h-o-m-o branded on their forehead.
Now there have been good-looking screen idols who have received the seal of
approval: Brando, Newman, McQueen. Even dolls like Luke Perry or Johnny Depp
get the gree night. But they have the cool cachet of virility beyond their
pretty faces. Keanu, on the other hand, is not the Marlboro man. Not simply
because of his exotic comeliness, but because of his innocence. Innocence,
particularly sexual innocence, isn't what makes a man. Innocence is for
children. Innocence is for girls. Or sissies. Obviously Keanu, blessed with
the right cheekbones, a heavy dose of naivete and an enigmatic sexuality, must
have slept his way to the top....