|
THE
TOALLY REAL BILL AND TED
|
| Magazine
& Date: |
City
Limits (UK), 23 Jan 1992 |
| Written
by: |
Winfield
Scott |
| Provided
by: |
Keanu Norweigan Wood |
There's
no way Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix aren't the most non-heinous
screen double act since Butch and Sundance. As London eagerly
awaits their most station performances in My Own Private
Idaho, Stevan Keane checks out a duo of dudes who are nothing
if not excellent to each other.
Prior to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
in 1989, valley-speak as equated solely with air-head mall
rats. Their ultimate remonstration was 'grody to the max'
-- Frank Zappa even wrote a song about them. Residual vestiges
of their lexical aberrations can be found in Laurie Pike's
'gagging' and in the speech patterns of Ruby Wax and The
Word's Katy Puckrick.
But since the release of Bill and Ted's
Bogus Journey earlier this month, you can't move for retards
and teenage boys howling 'sign of the devil' at each other
and performing an act considered the nadir of bad taste
for some 20 years: playing air guitar. Better still, for
these juvenile longhairs in pursuit of role models, Bill
and Ted really exist. In River Phoenix (who did not appear
in the Bill and Ted films) and Keanu 'Ted' himself Reeves
(who did), fiction and reality have smudged into an agreeable
blur as they out-dude one another in interview after interview.
The last time River and Keanu shared a screen
together was in Lawrence Kasdan's deservedly ill-received
I Love You To Death. Based on a true story, it starred Tracy
Ullman as a neglected wife who decides to put an end to
her husband's philandering for good. River was the lovesick
pizza delivery boy unrealistically hankering after the attentions
of la belle Ullman, while Keanu was hippy hit man William
Hurt's inept aide-de-camp. If their double act didn't get
the auspicious debut it might have, it still managed to
fill London cinemas with young girls eager to indulge their
My Guy perspective on life. Without a word of a lie, I shared
that particular cinematic experience with a row of teenage
females who squealed with delight every time either of them
showed their faces.
Such influence over the minds of a generation
of babes is totally awesome responsibility but, as countless
interviews and profiles have shown, it's one the dudes are
prepared to transcend.
The staunchly vegetarian child of children
of US cultists The Children of God, and lately a rainforest
campaigner, River Phoenix has had the dubious honour of
being dubbed by one woman's magazine: 'the intelligent woman's
hope for what the new generation of men will be like in
the 21st century.' Then again, asked if he would date a
woman who eats sausages, he declared: 'I wouldn't want to
lick her juices if they were made up of her metabolism's
version of all that shit that goes in sausage.' There's
a real new man for you.
Keanu usually gets the 'he's not as dumb
as he makes out' treatment which he qualifies admirably
with beautifully phrased admissions like: 'I'm a meathead.
You've got smart people and you've got dumb people. You
just happen to be spending some time with a dumb person'.
The product of a childhood as fragmented as River's, Keanu
has trouble talking about his absent dad, admits hallucinogens
have played a part in his life, and doesn't much like questions.
In Gus Van Sant's forthcoming My Own Private
Idaho, a road movie/love story about two rent boys blowing
a living across the U.S. and Italy, the duo shine. River's
personification of Mike is terrifyingly touching. A narcoleptic
whose market-value is seriously undermined by an illness
which causes him to enter a coma and dream of a time before
he was abandoned, he's the ultimate babe (dude?) in the
woods. As the slumming rich-boy Scott, Keanu brilliantly
conjures a new breed of unrequited love for his young pal.
They are both, well, excellent.
And if the plot is a little mawkish with
the director thoroughly indulging himself as some Fagin/Kindly
Old Gentleman dude to Keanu's and River's Oliver Twist dudes,
their attitude to the subject matter is exemplary. Unsurprisingly,
the movie has provoked all kinds of responses in the US
press (from rumour analysis to straight outrage) but Keanu
and River tease out their screen personas with aplomb.
As excellent to one another as they are
to their audience, we asked River and Keanu to give their
angles on the bogus mythology...
SWEET TALKING
GUYS
RIVER
AND KEANU TALK TOGETHER...
Do you get 'involved' with
the women you work with?
RIVER: I have a steady girlfriend that I
love, so relationships with other people are off limits
right now. It's easier to work with women you are not involved
with.
KEANU: If you have relationships with the
women you work with, then you become part of the Hollywood
gossip-mongers and I try to stay out of all that. If you
don't have relationships with the women you work with, then
people say you're gay. You're damned if you do and damned
if you don't. I agree with River though. It's easier to
work with women when your relationship is professional and
not romantic. I know actors that have become involved with
actresses, women, on the set and it makes it harder, much
harder. It's ok to be friends though. What's wrong with
just being friends?
What do you think of all
that West Coast New Age nonsense?
RIVER: The Lord works in mysterious ways!
You are part of a much larger plan created in heaven and
your salvation will depend on the love and open-mindedness
you display here on earth...
KEANU: Don't knock reality, man. It's not
nonsense, it represents the truth to many people. I mean,
it's a big part of their lives. I don't like these questions.
Define 'Best Friend'.
RIVER: Someone you can tell all your secrets
to. For me it's a guy you enjoy being with, a guy you love
and a guy you care about. Keanu is my buddy, dude.
KEANU: I've always loved you, River. River
is my best friend and I don't have many of them.
RIVER: That's really sweet, Keany.
Which is Paul Newman and which
is Robert Redford?
KEANU: I don't know, do you?
RIVER: I think Paul Redford is related to
Robert Newman, or is it the other way around? The cosmic
reality is that we are all one.
Is there anything you wouldn't
do in a film?
RIVER: Didn't we answer that already?
KEANU: Where have we heard that before?
I'm not against gays or anything, but I won't have sex with
guys. I would never do that on film. We did a little of
that in Idaho and it was really hard. Never again.
RIVER: I thought you liked that. Was it
something I did?
KEANU: Shut up, dude!
How long do you think your
careers will last?
RIVER: My career will last forever. What
do you think?
KEANU: My career will last as long as I
get parts in films.
And then what?
KEANU: And then you die.
RIVER: Then it's time for the old folks
home. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get older,
do you, Keany?
KEANU: I'd like to maybe get a boat some
day and sail around. Maybe I'll settle down and raise a
family. I've always wanted kids.
RIVER: I didn't know that.
KEANU: You never asked, dude.
RIVER: I really want kids too, but it takes
money these days to raise them right and give them a good
home.
KEANU: You can say that again.
What are your feelings about
Dan Quayle?
RIVER: I really love Quayle. I love to eat
Quayle. I honestly love him.
KEANU: I've never had any feelings for Dan
Quayle. But I do love him. You know, he could be President
some day, dude.
RIVER: That's right, dude, so you had better
watch what you say!
RIVER
TALKS ALONE...
Why don't you work much?
I think I work too much. The only person
who works more than me is Keany.
How long do you think the
rainforests have got?
About two years. Seriously? Probably about
five, maybe ten. It's being cut down much faster than people
realise, it's a human tragedy of immense proportions. Right
now many native Indians in that region are losing their
homes daily. And it's going to affect both you and me because
that's where most of the world's oxygen comes from. The
Amazon rainforests are the world's lungs and without them
we will not be able to breathe. It's a very scary thought
and it's not too far off.
How close to your actual life
was your role in The Mosquito Coast?
Too close.
KEANU
TALKS ALONE...
Why do you work so much?
Because I'm getting the parts. I guess I've
got a good agent. If I didn't get so many parts, then I
wouldn't be working as much as I am. I'm very, very lucky.
Most actors are lucky to get one good film every two years.
I'm getting three and four films each year and they're good
parts! I try hard to and I think that word has gotten around
that I study for my parts. I could never be one of those
actors that shows up on the set not knowing his lines. I
always try to be the pro people expect.
Is there any Bill and Ted-speak
we backwards English haven't yet heard?
No dude, I think you know it all.
Is it (a) Kee Noo or (b) Kee Yah
Noo?
Ke-yahnoo.
END OF INTERVIEW
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