Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, 1991
From interview with the two actors in Interview magazine, 1991:
KR: Um, who knows? I really would like to do Shakespeare with River. I think we’d have a hoot. We could do A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Romeo and Juliet.
RP: I’ll be Juliet.
This slays me.
At home, in my “someday I swear I will make collages with this” drawers, I have every image of River Pheonix I saved when I was in my late teens. Along with piles of other stuff I’ve pulled from magazines over the years, I have old newspaper and magazine articles on him that are worn and faded. I think I may still have the “Tigerbeat” (or some similar publication) image of him that held a special place in my locker when I was 13. I have to find and scan in some of that old stuff.
Looking back, I try to understand why – long before his passing – I was SO taken with him, I was SO certain he was SPECIAL. And I think it was something simple. Of the actors my friends and I idolized and cut out photos of and squealed over, he was the first actor among that group to do something on screen that registered with me as art, as a nuanced performance, as something better and bigger and more important than simply looking good on screen. I think he was a part of that light going on for me. That it was an art.
Also, how lovely were those two on screen together?
Marisa – I so agree that there was something special about him. It was obvious in Stand By Me, and what’s so amazing to me about Private Idaho is what a risk it was at the time. The film is certainly riskier than Brokeback Mountain – because Brokeback Mountain places the two characters in a deeply macho context, they’re cowboys – which is deeply unsettling to the American status quo who don’t want to see their cowboys as gay (get over it) – but also not as risky for the actors. Private Idaho they have to be whores and hustlers. Exactly the worst depiction of what it means to be gay. I think it’s hard to remember back then, what a risk it was – especially for two teen idols, basically. Amazing. I know neither of them were interested in the teen-idol thing (in and of itself) – they wanted to be good actors. But in the Criterion release of Private Idaho Gus van Sant tells funny stories about the day all the boys had to come in and pose to be the porno magazine covers, and everyone was kind of shy – and cold (they were all naked) and both River and Keanu were like, “Wow. This is real. This is the kind of movie we’re doing. Wow.” hahahaha
Yes, they were wonderful together. Eventually I’ll do a piece about the campfire scene. River is unforgettable in it – but Keanu, in my opinion, has never been better or simpler than he was in that scene.
Wow, I’m very moved — by the picture, and by the comments.
Thank you for reminding us what risks the director AND the actors took. “Speed” was my first Keanu Reeves movie (Ha ha ha!) and then I worked backwards: “River’s Edge,” and “My Own Private Idaho” were rentals.
I read somewhere that “Private Idaho” was a re-telling of “Henry V.” After that, I just had to watch every staging of “Henry V” that I could: on screen and on the stage.
Marianne – yes, there is much there (even direct quotes at times) from Shakespeare – only it’s the Henry IV plays, which focus on Prince Hal and his relationship to Falstaff (represented in Idaho by Keanu Reeves as the “heir apparent” and “Bill” – the fat man who took him under his wing on the streets).
It’s fun to see how they wove it in – I know it didn’t work for some people but I find the whole attempt kind of fascinating, and awkward, and – elevates the movie into something other than just a gritty docudrama about life on the streets. It becomes almost mythical.
I loved Speed! It is also AMAZING to me that Reeves would do Idaho right after Point Break (a movie I love as well) – it’s like it’s two different guys. I honestly don’t think he’s that great an actor – or, let’s say – he’s limited – but he’s also hungry, ambitious, and brave. It’s why his career has lasted so long. And here, it paid off. He was unwilling to just be a teen idol, or a leading man. Big BIG risks. He’s wonderful in Idaho, I think – I just love how he LISTENS to River talk at the campfire. It feels unscripted, that scene, but I know it was pretty carefully crafted.
Thanks for reading and commenting. :)
Oh, greetings, fellow Keanu Reeves admirer! Perhaps it’s more his persona than his performances I find compelling — after all, he could have changed his name to “Ken” (HA HA HA). Yes, he is brave, and his choice of movies is always interesting.
I think, what distracts me from his more recent performances is the thing he does with his voice, sometimes I feel he is trying to be too gruff or assertive. And it feels stilted. I have no problems with what he does with his face or his body, though — no problems at all!
About what he does in that campfire scene in Private Idaho — yes, there’s stillness but there’s also alertness. Let’s have more movies with Keanu just listening!
(Jesse Eisenberg, in the New York Times Magazine’s December 2010 issue, where 15 actors were taped “acting their hearts out” — the Jennifer Lawrence segment begins with a shot of her breasts, jeez — has almost NO change in his facial expression. The longer the video goes on, the more nervous I feel. I’m wondering, well, is he just going to STAND there? So, you see, it’s perfectly all right to have an expressionless face! Just as long as it’s the type of face that audiences keep wanting to look at!)
Hadn’t checked in to your site in a few days. Strange, the confluence of this post with the one marking Lumet’s death. I love many of Lumet’s movies, but the one that means the most to me, almost in an embarrassing way, is Running on Empty. The couple of times I’ve watched the movie with someone else, I feel like they’re reading an old private letter. River Phoenix’s *presence* in that movie had a profound affect on the way I saw myself in 1988, at 17, the same age as the actor and the character. Felt like I was watching myself. Think that’s what good performances do. That movie made me feel okay about feeling shy and being awkward and living inside uprootedness. I’d just moved the previous school year to a new town and had to find friends and love in the middle of starting over. Then, the beginning of my senior year, the movie came out. I connected so strongly with the character in that moment that now, thinking back, it has all the aching aura of an old love. Might sound funny coming from a straight, grown, married man. But such is the power of film and acting and directing, when they land at your feet right when you need them.
Wow. Read your Lumet piece after posting the above comment. Couldn’t agree more with your Running on Empty paragraph. (Or the rest of the piece, obviously.)
I remember being in early high school, a time when my friends were all rabid fans of the Nightmare on Elm Street series (a perspective I was already at odds with), and I saw My Own Private Idaho and I thought, “Where can I find more movies like THIS?”