THE YEAR 1994 was to be a pivotal one for Keanu Reeves. Without a substantial hit since 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Keanu’s star had waned somewhat in Hollywood. He’d been indulgent in his film choices, having fun with his pal Alex Winter in Freaked and playing Don John in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing. ‘Much ado about nothing’ was exactly what critics began to think about Keanu’s lauded career and pin-up status. Once again, he was in the position of being considered one of cinema’s prime heart-throbs, without actually having recently played a part on screen that would have cemented that iconic role. Nonetheless, he’d been working with top name and experimental directors alike: Bernardo Bertolucci and Gus Van Sant on Little Buddha and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues alone.
Things were to change with Jan De Bont’s Speed. Finally, Keanu Reeves was to play a straightforward, action hero role in a slam-bam, summer box office blockbuster. It seemed for Keanu as though the fan adoration had come first, only later to be followed by the career-making film.
Speed was to be dubbed ‘Die Hard on a bus’, and the plot was simple enough to be encapsulated in that high concept phrase. Dennis Hopper plays an ex-cop out for revenge who taunts Keanu’s high-flying bomb disposal expert Jack Traven. Wiring up a Los Angeles city bus to explode if it slows down below fifty miles an hour, Keanu’s cop teams up with bus passenger Annie (Sandra Bullock) to keep the vehicle on the road and out of danger. De Bont saw the appeal of the film as being ‘regular people on a regular bus doing something highly irregular’.
De Bont was looking for a new type of action hero, a younger, more sensitive and vulnerable action man. ‘A lot more like a real person,’ was De Bont’s description of the Speed script’s central character of Jack Traven, ‘and not looking giant and muscular all the time.’
The casting of Keanu Reeves as this new, sensitive action hero should not have been the surprise that many saw it as. After all, he’d almost rehearsed the role in Kathryn Bigelow’s surf-cop movie Point Break several years ago. De Bont had seen that movie and thought Keanu’s turn as the FBI agent was perfect for Speed. ‘I’d seen scenes in it where I’d gone “Oh, my God, if he grows up a little bit, he might be really good.”’
Although De Bont was enamoured of the Speed script the same couldn’t be said for Keanu’s initial reaction. After all, being an action icon was not high on the actor’s agenda. He was worried that his character of Jack Traven was too much in the Die Hard mould, dropping too many Bruce Willis-style one-liners, but he was captivated by the overall premise of the film. ‘The bus and the bomb, fantastically fantastic,’ he enthused. ‘It was so silly, I felt it could bomb, but with the right guy . . . and Jan, he had a – I guess the word is vision – he knew what he wanted to do, and it actually seemed like it would be fun. I don’t mean to use such a coy term, but he had an enthusiasm for it. He seemed like a man with a mission.’
Keanu rehearsing with Speed director Jan De Bont.
Although Keanu was cool at first towards the prospect of starring in a summer action movie, his advisers agreed it would do the star’s career no harm whatsoever and might in fact do him a lot of good.
With revisions underway on the script, worries began to emanate from the studio – 20th Century Fox – about the cast De Bont had assembled. Unconvinced of Keanu’s potential as an action hero, studio bosses wanted him teamed up with a big-name actress in the heroine role as a box office insurance policy.
‘Because they think he’s not a star yet, they said if we take him we have to get a famous actress next to him, so at least audiences have something to build on,’ admitted De Bont. ‘I told them, “You cannot look at it that way.” You have to find the perfect combination. I want someone who is going to drive a bus who you can believe in, not a beautiful face, but a strong feisty woman.’
In the end De Bont got both in the shape of Sandra Bullock, then relatively unknown, having appeared in low budget films like Love Potion No. 9 and opposite Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man. ‘Fox didn’t want to go with it for a long time,’ lamented De Bont, ‘and only two weeks, or less, before shooting they agreed to go with her. It was like a nightmare, but they are a good combination.’
In the finished film, Bullock and Keanu come across well on screen, but they also developed a strong rapport during shooting, with the established star willing to go the extra mile to help the performance of the newcomer. ‘He was so great to work with,’ said Bullock. ‘He didn’t have to be there at five o’clock in the morning for my reversal shot, but he walked out of his trailer and said, “I just waited because I knew you needed me for that scene.” And that’s rare. People go crazy over him, and they have every reason to, because he’s good-looking on the inside, too.’
So strong was the association between Keanu and Bullock that crew members on Speed speculated that the two were having an affair. ‘He’s a kind, beautiful person,’ said Bullock of Keanu, speaking of her co-star in the most glowing terms. ‘There are so many beautiful people in this world, and that’s not what gets me. That’s a dime a dozen and it gets old. Then you meet somebody who happens to be blessed that way and is one of the kindest, most respectful people that’ll you’ll ever meet and that’s Keanu.’ It was her leading man’s sense of humour which struck a chord with Bullock. ‘You know, Keanu’s an incredibly funny guy, and he doesn’t think he is. The first thing he ever said to me was “I don’t have a sense of humour.” Progressively, I think we discovered it. He was courteous and kind and void of any ego. He’s like a cat.’
Star turns: both Sandra Bullock and Keanu emerged from Speed as big Hollywood stars.
Keanu’s new, very short haircut worried studio executives who thought he should wear a wig in Speed.
Bullock was even more pleased that Keanu wasn’t an all-macho action hero in the style of Stallone or Schwarzenegger. ‘I liked it that Keanu wasn’t always the capable male, he couldn’t always keep it together, and depended on a woman just as strong as he was. It didn’t make him less masculine. It just made him human.’
Whether Keanu and Sandra Bullock were ever more than just good friends during the filming of Speed remains a mystery. As so often in the past, Keanu contrived to keep his private life out of the pages of the tabloids by simply appearing not to have one.
With his cast finally in place and his new script approved, De Bont was ready to roll the cameras on Speed. There was one final hold up, however, which almost scuppered the entire project – Keanu’s dramatic new haircut.
De Bont had insisted on a severe haircut for his leading man. ‘I had what they call a one cut,’ joked Keanu, ‘and then I took the “one” off on the clippers! Some people thought it was too extreme because they could see my scalp.’
The studio executives were prime among them, insisting to De Bont that a wig be obtained for Keanu pronto. ‘They saw him walking on the lot and they called me right away. They said, “Who told him to cut his hair? We have to get him a wig – now!” I said, “No way are we going to get him a wig.” They called his manager, they called his agent, they said, “We’re going to have to postpone this movie now,” and I said, “No, we have two more weeks, and in two weeks his hair will grow this much. It’s great, it’s what I want.” They were totally upset.’
Another aspect of Keanu’s appearance had to be tinkered with: his physique. ‘The thing with Keanu,’ said De Bont, ‘is that he looks very boyish and I wanted him to be like a young adult. I didn’t want him to be like a kid – and he loves to be like a kid.’ De Bont had Keanu pump up just a little, trying to keep his physique the right side of believability.
Filming finally got underway in late summer 1993. To try to get him into the spirit of the film, De Bont suggested that Keanu might like to try his hand – and some other important body parts – at doing his own stunts. ‘I said, “You drive the Jaguar during the scenes swerving through the cars . . .” And when he did he started to like it so much, he said: “Action movies can be fun.” He got some kind of adrenalin rush, from that moment on, every day. He was there all the time, and whenever possible he wanted to do it all himself, because it is exciting. That’s the young character in him who wants to experience everything himself first-hand.’
Keanu ended up doing about 90 per cent of the stunt work in Speed himself, adding to the believability of the film and to the action icon image of the actor that emerged more clearly upon the film’s worldwide release. ‘I got to be pretty involved,’ admitted Keanu, after his initially reluctant stance towards the film. ‘It was one of the lessons I learned from Point Break : that the more you can have me in there, the better it is. Gary Himes, the stunt co-ordinator, and Jan were very good about setting up situations that looked like I was in peril and let me get in there and do it.
‘I surprised myself,’ admitted Keanu. ‘It was great to participate and get as close as I could. I enjoy that sort of pressure and excitement very much.’ Not all the action moments were the real Keanu, however. He’s too valuable a property for that. ‘That last scene of someone going under the bus is a stuntman. I didn’t do really tough stunts, other people get paid to do that sort of life-threatening thing.’
With good progress being made on the film, an unexpected hiatus occurred for Keanu Reeves at the end of October 1993, caused by the death of his friend and occasional co-star River Phoenix. Phoenix died of a drug overdose on the sidewalk of Sunset Strip outside the Viper Room, a trendy night-spot owned by another teen heart-throb actor, Johnny Depp.
Keanu was deeply affected by the death of Phoenix, and so Jan De Bont rejigged his tough filming schedule to cut the grieving actor a little slack. ‘It was a terrible shock,’ said Keanu of the death of his friend, after refusing to comment on the incident for a long time. ‘I miss him very much. I think of it as an accident . . . I can’t make any sense of it.’
Switching around the schedule on Speed, De Bont made sure that Keanu had some less demanding scenes to work on while he came to terms with the loss of his friend. ‘He took it very hard,’ recalled the director. ‘He became very quiet. It took him a while to calm down. . .it scared the hell out of him.’
Keanu did come to terms with the death of River Phoenix, and was able to see what he had gained from knowing Phoenix. ‘River was a really heavy actor . . . he was the best. It helped me a lot to work with him. He was really inspiring and intelligent. All I can say is I’ve never felt a thing like that before in my life. I was very sad, and something beyond sad. I don’t know what it is, just that you sob for hours. . .’
‘Get ready for rush hour’ was the inspired marketing slogan used to promote Speed upon its June 1994 American release. With spectacularly good reviews and excellent word-of-mouth about what a rush the film was, Speed reached an American box office gross of over $100 million in just seven weeks.
Split into three distinct sections, Speed has Keanu’s Jack Traven dealing with a plummeting lift in the opening sequence, the bomb on the bus that will explode if the speed falls below 50mph, and a final, out-of-control train on the underconstruction LA subway. Each situation is almost enough on its own for a whole movie, but the three together give Speed its headlong energetic drive. De Bont’s direction and the script by Yost and Wheedon reduced the action film to its bare essentials – a series of blockbusting action sequences with nothing in between. There’s no character development – Keanu is the hero, Hopper is the bomb-making nutter, Jeff Daniels is the buddy who gets sacrificed to the villain’s plans, and Sandra Bullock – in her star-making performance – is the ordinary gal thrust into an extraordinary situation. There’s no real plot, either, just a series of events for the hero to deal with. While all these aspects might be negative in most other films, here they all contribute to the out-and-out success of Speed, one of the first films to bring the theme-park-ride-type experience directly into movies.
Writing in Time magazine, Richard Schickel saw that Speed’s ‘sheer cut-to-the chase straightforwardness is part of its appeal. . . It is executed with panache and utter conviction.’ Empire enthused that Speed was a ‘fabulous trip. . . As for Keanu Reeves, the ongoing debate of his so-called acting skills is finally put to rest here (clue: he can’t) by virtue of his sheer star power and sex appeal, gradually stripping down as the movie progresses and turning himself into the ’90s leading man in the process. An addictive blast of pure adrenalin. . .the knee-tremblin’ white-knuckle ride of the year.’
Keanu had become, as a result of Speed, a cultural icon in his own right. In the Sunday Times, writer and cultural critic Julie Burchill penned a devastating analysis of Keanu’s career to date. ‘Brigitte, Marilyn, Winona, Raquel, and now Keanu. Like Bardot, he rarely speaks in English in his films, and his attempts to do so are charming to behold. And as with her, it is highly unlikely that his beauty will ever allow him to be dispassionately rated as an actor.’
Keanu tangles with Dennis Hopper in Speed. The pair had previously worked together in River’s Edge.
A new action icon: Keanu aimed to be a more believable hero in Speed.
It was not so bizarre a comparison as it might have seemed at first, as Keanu Reeves did share more in common with the great screen goddesses, like Marilyn Monroe or Brigitte Bardot, than he does with great screen actors. He has been defined through his career by his looks, and his acting ability always came secondary to his star power, a power intimately wrapped up with his sculpted cheek bones, Chinese-Hawaiian, almost Asian looks. In his films he is the sexually passive character, having things happen around him rather than functioning as the driving force behind the action. In his films he is a loser at the game of romance, just as he seemed to have difficulties with relationships in real life. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, his wife-to-be Winona Ryder fell for Gary Oldman, while in Dangerous Liaisons Uma Thurman preferred John Malkovich. For an actor whose very appeal was so wrapped up with sex, it seems amazing that there should be so little sex in his films and in his life. In Speed, hero and heroine get no further down the road to romance than a passionate clinch on the ground at the climax. Sexually, Keanu Reeves is an enigma. For a young cinematic sex symbol, the irony was that Keanu has played very few romantic roles.
Keanu and Sandra Bullock enjoy a passionate clinch on the ground at the climax of Speed.
At the height of his success with Speed, Keanu Reeves had to confront a question that had been hanging around his neck for years in Hollywood, but was rarely referred to openly: was he gay?
Rarely seen out on the town with female companionship and hardly ever written about in the tabloids in terms of dating the latest Hollywood starlet, Keanu avoided the kind of press coverage the likes of Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt had attracted to their love lives.
The issue was thrown into sharp relief when a rumour about Keanu spread around the world like wildfire: the actor had supposedly secretly ‘married’ media mogul David Geffen in a beach-front ceremony in Mexico, followed by a $15,000 spending spree on Geffen’s charge card. The story seemed to have first been published in Italian and Spanish newspapers before winding its way back to Los Angeles and New York.
Stories that Keanu Reeves might be gay dated back at least five years when he played around during a session for Interview magazine. Asked outright if he was gay, Keanu denied it, but then, mischievously, added, ‘But ya never know. . .’ It was an answer that recalled his days on the Toronto stage in Wolfboy, the controversial gay-themed play that had kick-started his acting career and so cheered Toronto’s gay community.
His performance alongside River Phoenix in Gus Van Sant’s gay rent-boy drama My Own Private Idaho had done nothing to dampen the speculation. River Phoenix was more comfortable with gossip about his sexuality – including supposed liaisons with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and an unnamed British actor – than Keanu Reeves was ever to be.
His lack of high profile romances in the intervening years had only served to give the rumours some credence. In the absence of any definite information, the void was filled with speculation, unsubstantiated stories and downright untrue reports of Keanu’s activities. Keanu always attributed his lack of high profile female companionship to the demands of his professional life. ‘The thing is, the kind of person I am depends on the day. The biggest sacrifice I’ve made is the chance of success in love. [The worst thing about being famous is] losing out on love. . .’
It wasn’t until the David Geffen tale became widespread public knowledge that Keanu Reeves was forced to tackle the subject head on again. Geffen, a film producer and record label mogul, is now part of the triumvirate (with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberger) behind the new super studio Dreamworks SKG. Upfront about his homosexuality, he never expected to be romantically connected with Keanu Reeves. ‘I’ve never laid eyes on him,’ protested Geffen. ‘It’s a phenomenon: people make this stuff up. I even had a friend say that his trainer was at the wedding. You think I could keep something like that secret? And then people saying I bought Keanu $15,000 worth of clothes at Barney’s? I mean, come on. I’d buy him some clothes, but he doesn’t need that. It’s just an ugly, meanspirited rumour, meant to hurt him because he’s a movie star.’
For his part, Keanu maintained a well-balanced reaction to the bizarre tale. ‘It’s so ridiculous, I find it funny. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, so to deny it is to make a judgement. Why make a big deal of it? If someone doesn’t want to hire me because they think I’m gay, well, then I have to deal with it, I guess. Or if people were picketing a theatre, but otherwise, it’s just gossip, isn’t it.’
Gossip it may have been, but Keanu’s handlers and managers organised an allout PR campaign to set the record straight, even allowing the star to give a lengthy interview to American gay magazine Out. ‘My manager and agent said I had to address it, because it was getting in the way of work and just freaking people out, so I said “Okay”,’ said Keanu of agreeing to the magazine piece. ‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t have. I just took the advice of people whom I’ve hired for professional aspects.’
Keanu opened the Out piece by proclaiming: ‘I don’t really talk about my private life and I guess my public life is pretty boring.’ It didn’t take long for the interview to get around to the subject of David Geffen. ‘I first heard it when I was in Winnipeg [for Hamlet], on my answering machine. My friend Claire called. She said, “I heard you got married, congratulations.” I didn’t really think much about it. I guess I have to say I’ve never met the guy.’
At the time, Keanu approached this breach in his public image calmly and quietly, following his managers’ crisis management instructions, but the rumours, innuendoes and untrue stories revealed to Keanu the downside of his kind of public life. He’d always sought to shield his private life, seeing it as a separate realm from his public persona. That very process, however, had given rise to bizarre unfounded speculation that could potentially have done more harm than the rather unexciting truth. However, part of his appeal was undoubtedly down to this sexual ambiguity.
Gay or straight, Keanu’s elusive romantic life attracted the attention of the paparazzi.
‘It’s nobody’s business,’ Keanu later angrily said, reacting to constant press enquiries about his off-screen affairs. ‘I fucking hate it, it’s a drag. It’s very funny, though. Especially in America, there’s this thinking that “you’re a public figure, so I’m allowed to ask you anything”. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was somehow related to the creative act, as opposed to just trying to get gossip or trying to get to know me.’
For all their efforts, neither Keanu nor David Geffen was able to totally kill the story. The idea of a beach-front New Age marriage ceremony between the two proved too compelling – even if it wasn’t true – and further elaborations on the tale continued to appear. According to reports in the Toronto Star, Geffen was a frequent visitor to see Keanu play Hamlet, while at the same time other reports had Keanu dating a male dancer from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
The aftermath of the Geffen affair was one of the few times when Keanu allowed his carefully constructed, airhead-inspired public interview persona to slip, showing clearly a glimpse of the intelligent man beneath, who is more savvy than many give him credit for. ‘I still have people asking me about River [Phoenix] in an interview where they have three minutes. It’s like “tell me how you felt”, and I’m astounded, because they want to have a moment of seeing whether a person’s affected or not.’
Such was the fallout that Keanu resolved not to read his own press any more. ‘No, I don’t read anything any more. I’m too angry. I’m tired of being misrepresented, misquoted, manipulated, being put on a pedestal, being knocked down – it’s all just too much trouble. I have to admit to feeling like the critics’ whipping boy. You know what, it used to bug me, but now, being a Virgo, digging the masochism, I kind of like it. I think it’s funny.’
Keanu Reeves easily recovered from the David Geffen episode, and all people remembered from 1994 was the success of Speed, which, naturally, did him no harm whatsoever. The most immediate effect was a 600 per cent increase in his salary, with film offers now coming in at $7 million a throw. With Speed, Keanu firmly joined the A-list of Hollywood stars as well as that special breed of all-out action hero. He’d played the Hollywood game their way, for a change, and he’d still come out on top.
Keanu Reeves refused, however, to take the obvious route into action hero bankability after Speed. Once was enough for the time being. Keanu felt a need to return to the stage after his bus and bomb heroics, and the part of Hamlet was a role he’d harboured a long-standing ambition to play. In addition, he signed up to play the lead in the film Johnny Mnemonic. Before this, though, Keanu had a family problem to deal with.
