|
THEIR
OWN PRIVATE IDAHO
|
| Magazine
& Date: |
Empire,
April 92 |
| Written
by: |
Jenny
Cooney |
| Provided
by: |
Rosanna |
River
Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, the golden boys of Tinseltown,
now team up for My Own Private Idaho, a gritty account of
life among the rent boys. Jenny Cooney meets Hollywood's
latest odd couple…
GOD, THE PHYSICAL SENSATION
of ejaculating can be orgasmic," muses River Phoenix, with
an embarrassed little chuckle. Mmmm. This fairly forthright
remark is, thankfully, not a comment on the 21-year-old's
private affairs, but rather a dissection of the particularly
explicit opening scenes of My Own Private Idaho, the independent
arthouse hit of last year in the US, finally released in
the UK this month. Phoenix, playing homosexual prostitute
Mike Waters, head arched back, eyes clamped shut, is, as
the receding camera makes all too clear, experiencing just
such a "sensation", courtesy of a kneeling male client.
With such, er, unusual goings-on
suffusing Gus Van Sant's sleazy homage to the world of male
hustlerdom, My Own Private Idaho does seem something of
a bizarre vehicle for Phoenix and co-star Keanu Reeves,
current holders of that annual title of Hollywood's Hunkiest
HeartThrobs. So, did no one - an agent, a loved one, maybe
even a fellow thespian - have a quiet word with the lads,
advising them that the most astute career decision for a
major young movie star may not be to play, well, a rent
boy?
"I decide my projects not
based on any big strategy or how Hollywood or the critics
will see me," explains Phoenix, sporting, like Reeves, tattered
jeans, a dishevelled jacket and three-day stubble, Reeves'
being merrily decorated with food stains. "If you have a
belief in the story, you'll just commit. You don't think,
'What will people think of this?' If you do, you're ruined."
This, it is immediately apparent, will be the way of things
during our little chat, with Phoenix opting to answer the
questions, ever the thoughtful and talkative counterpoint
to Reeves' generally silent, occasional grunter. Suddenly,
however, Keanu Reeves, up until this point seemingly fascinated
by a tiny piece of dust on the table in front of him, glances
up.
"God, no, they'd be fired,"
he mumbles, apropos of nothing. "No, I mean, when I read
it, it was just... I was really... it was... it's an amazing
part. It's a weird story, so I was just… so I was just very
happy to be there." Er, right. And how did Keanu Reeves
end up being there? Born to a Hawaiian-Chinese father and
an English mother on September 2,1964, young Keanu - Hawaiian,
he insists, for Cool Breeze Over The Mountains - was brought
up in The Lebanon, moving to the US in his teens and almost
immediately getting very heavily into various mood-altering
substances ("I dug it. I'm so glad I've hallucinated in
my life."). A would-be racing driver, inventor, nuclear
physicist, conductor, his reasons for taking up this acting
lark are typically vague.
"Let's see," he ponders, pushing
back his floppy black locks which meet in the general vicinity
of his nose. "I became an actor when I was 16... and I don't
know why." Keanu Reeves, in fact, is a young man not unlike
Ted, the teenage hero of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey fame, a spaced-out dude who
enjoys saying "man" a lot. "I went through a phase of that
self-consciousness a little bit," admits Reeves. "Cos I'm
kind of goofy, right? I'd read interviews and go, 'Wow,
I'm a pretty goofy dude.' So I got over it and now I'm just
hopeless."
IF REEVES IS TED, THEN PHOENIX
IS straight out of a hippy version of The Brady Bunch, though
far from happy with his popular image as Hollywood's resident
environmentally friendly vegetarian fur-hater, the space
cadet brought up by transient hippy parents and once even
going on a public fast to protest over the treatment of
migrant farm workers in the US. "When River was nine years
old, he caught his first fish," confirms his publicist,
in one of the many public utterances to have dogged Phoenix
over the years. "It flopped about on a rock for a while,
then it died. Right then and there, River had this vision
that he had killed a fellow living thing. He cried for three
days and vowed never to eat meat or fish again." It is difficult,
is it not, to avoid the planet-earth-calling-River attitude
when confronted with California psychobabble such as this?
"I don't care if people call me a goody-goody nature boy,"
barks Phoenix. "They can just shove it up their ass. The
world's falling in on them. They're just gonna be blind
ducklings."
The ultimate anti-Hollywood
star, Phoenix now lives with his girlfriend of three years,
a 26-year-old massage therapist, in their rented house in
Gainesville, Florida, a burgh with a population of just
84,770, and home to the rest of the Phoenix clan younger
sisters Rain, Liberty and Summer, and little brother Joaquin
(formerly Leaf), last seen in Parenthood. So what exactly
do the Family With The Strange Names get up to in Gainesville?
"I have some beautiful friends
and I like to play guitar and I like to walk in nature,"
says River. "Life is multi-layered and there's no way I
could do my life justice in one pat answer. And the same
for My Own Private Idaho? "For sensational reasons, people
might say that it's about gay street life," he admits, "which
is really great for the gay community because it's important
to have something to identify with. But it doesn't necessarily
represent the gay community. You don't hear about Five Easy
Pieces as a film about a guy who works on the oil rigs and
he's heterosexual."
Er...
"It might take a few of these
films before there's, like, a natural stride with the whole
issue and then maybe one day it won't even be an issue,
which is what I'm hoping."
Er...
"People just aren't at ease
with their own sexuality," he goes on. "They have to call
it 'Sex Education' and can't have it just like a course
that relates to everything, because what is sex? Sex is
mating. Sex is how we're made, that's what it really is…"
Er...
"I think that's because of
people that can capitalise on sex and make money off it,
and then, you know, fathers feel guilty about watching porno.
They can't be open with their kids and explain that there's
all sorts of sex and it's really not that bad." Ladies and
gentlemen, Mr. Keanu Reeves!
"There's also all sorts of
love," says Keanu slowly, still staring at his little speck
of dust. Keanu! Hold on! Now we have your attention at last,
care to comment on how Hollywood will react to your involvement
in such a potentially controversial movie?
"What is Hollywood?" he demands
sullenly. "Is that a conglomeration of points of view?"
Keanu Reeves lets out a loud guffaw. "Can I talk to Hollywood
on the phone please?…"
END OF INTERVIEW
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