Keanu A-Z News Reports
Friday, August 18, 2000
Soap opera school
[Calgary Sun August 2000]
Keanu Reeves is still having an excellent adventure
EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
Keanu Reeves is having an excellent career.
He’s pulling down $15 million US a picture and his dance card is filled until the fall of 2001.
Not bad for one half of the spaced-out duo of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the little 1989 movie that turned into a cult comedy hit.
Fans of Adventure and its 1991 sequel Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey still call Reeves Ted.
“I love that people still see me as Ted. I did that character for a year of my life and I loved every minute of it. Alex Winter (who played Bill) and I always joke that we want to play Bill and Ted at 40.
“They’d be in some second-rate Vegas bar.”
And where will Keanu be in four years when he turns 40?
“Hopefully he’ll still be acting. I love acting more and more with each passing year. I feel grateful and blessed that I can do it.”
Replacements has fun with old formula
[The Calgary Sun August 2000]
Keanu Reeves in The Replacements
The Replacements
If the pint-sized ragamuffins from The Little Giants grew up and still wanted to play football, they’d be the mismatched rejects of The Replacements. Only the sizes of the players have changed — otherwise, The Replacements is just another Bad News Bears, The Mighty Ducks or The Big Green.
The most unlikely collection of wannabe athletes is whipped into shape by a coach who has seen better days.
And against these odds, this motley crew not only challenges but defeats the best team in the league.
This scenario worked for baseball players in Major League and hockey players in Mystery, Alaska —
and here it comes again using football players in The Replacements.
It’s just a few games away from the playoffs when the gridiron stars of the Washington Sentinels go on strike for higher wages.
Instead of caving in to their demands, owner Edward O’Neil (Jack Warner) decides to call their bluff.
He goes to his old friend and former Sentinels’ coach Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) and asks him to put a new team together and have them ready in one week.
Jimmy assembles a team that makes the recruits in Police Academy look promising.
There’s a sumo wrestler (Ace Yonamine), deaf college star (David Denman), a Welsh soccer player (Rhys Ifans), an inmate of the local prison (Michael Jace), an over-zealous SWAT team commando (Jon Favreau), a sprinter (Orlando Jones) and a pair of hulking bodyguards (Faizon Love and Michael Taliferro).
McGinty considers each of these men a secret weapon just waiting to be unleashed.
The glue he needs to bind them into a team is Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), a once- promising quarterback who made one big mistake that cost him his career.
There are some great belly-laughs during the initial training scenes as the players attack one another on and off the field.
They quickly turn their aggressions on the striking professional players and end up in jail for what proves to be one of the biggest laughs in the film.
Jones leads the other actors in a hilarious kick-line version of the Gloria Gaynor disco classic I Will Survive.
It’s such a great moment that it’s repeated during the closing credits.
Director Howard Deutch allows each of the supporting actors a moment in the spotlight, wisely delegating more time to Jones and Ifans, who are great slapstick comedians.
Hackman glides effortlessly through his role, bringing weight and credibility to a film that is pure sports fantasy.
There’s even a cheerleading squad comprised of lap dancers and strippers.
Falco was a wise choice for Reeves.
It’s a predominantly physical role and Reeves is definitely up to the demands.
He looks like a quarterback and the film doesn’t require Falco to do much talking, so Reeves doesn’t break the illusion too often.
He broods a great deal and when he woos the head cheerleader (Brooke Langton), it’s more with glances than words.
Like the substitute Sentinels, The Replacements scores, winning points against incredible odds.
It gets laughs and cheers from tired, cliched material because it plays safe.
It’s not trying to be as good as The Longest Yard, but just another Major League.
That’s The Replacements’ secret weapon and it pays off nicely.
Role researched in strip bars
[Calgary Sun August 2000]
"I watched a lot of pole dancing"
NEW YORK -- To research her role in the football comedy The Replacements, Brooke Langton visited numerous Los Angeles strip bars. Langton plays Annabelle Farrell, the cheerleading coach for the fictional Washington Sentinels.
When the players go on strike, her cheerleaders walk in support.
Annabelle has to look for replacements of her own and the only dancers available work in a local strip club.
It makes for some interesting choreography to say the least.
"I watched a lot of pole dancing and some rather interesting duo acts to get the moves we had to use in the film," reveals Langton who is best known as Samantha Riley on Melrose Place and the girl on the run in the TV version of Sandra Bullock's hit film The Net.
"The actual cheerleaders in our film are all Broadway dancers."
"They are completely uninhibited which was a blessing in disguise."
"I didn't get to see my cheerleading costume until a couple of days before filming. I was shocked at how scant they are."
"For the first couple of days, I'd wrap a blanket around me as soon as the cameras stopped rolling.
"The other girls were so comfortable with their bodies and it eventually rubbed off on me."
In The Replacements, Langton plays Keanu Reeves' love interest.
She says she was impressed how the star handles his celebrity.
"When we were filming our driving scene, people would hang out of windows or yell from street corners."
"They love Keanu and he was so generous with his responses. There was never even a hint that he found any of this intrusive."
Langton insists she doesn't remember any details about her big kissing scene with Reeves.
"I compare it to being in a car accident. There's so much adrenaline rushing through you that you remember being in the accident but you don't remember any of the details."
"I know it was a great experience. I just can't be any more specific."
Sunday, August 06, 2000
For love of the game
[Toronto Sun 06/08/2000]
Keanu Reeves puts up with fame so he can act
NEW YORK -- Team player, good guy, no guff, miraculously attitude-free, hard-working, a total professional.
These accolades for Keanu Reeves come from fellow actors in The Replacements, a new summer sports movie that opens Friday.
Orlando Jones, the Mad TV star who plays one of Reeves' strike-breaking team members in The Replacements, offers this tribute: "I'll tell you, Keanu's a completely different cat than what people see on film. When I see him in interviews, he always talks reserved, as if he's clawing for his privacy.
"In person, he tends to be sort of gregarious and kind of funny. His perspective on life, it's not at all what you'd expect from a guy who is a movie star. I found him to be a lot more of a regular guy."
Brett Cullen, who plays the villain whom Reeves replaces as quarterback for the Washington Sentinels, says Reeves is "one of the sweetest guys I've ever worked with ... His work ethic was impeccable. I think he's great. He's a wonderful guy."
Welshman Rhys Ifans -- who played Spike, Hugh Grant's slovenly roommate in Notting Hill -- says Reeves impresses him for his egalitarian ways.
"Keanu was definitely a team player ... I always thought he was kind of cool, a bit of a surfer, and he is. He's a cool guy and he works very hard."
Reeves was so cool that when The Replacements started shooting under Pretty In Pink director Howard Deutch on location in Baltimore and the surrounding area, Reeves quietly let his co-stars know where he and they stood. An enormous trailer was hauled in for Reeves' use. He never moved in. Reeves quietly talked with the crew and the superstar trailer was hauled away, replaced by a modest one exactly the same as the trailers for everyone else.
"Well," Reeves says, playing it humble now, "generally I don't need much space. Just give me a room, give me some water, maybe some fruit in the morning, give me some breakfast. So I generally don't need that much."
As symbolic gestures go, Reeves scored a touchdown with his fellow actors from the get-go. It helped the movie's final outcome, too, Reeves believes.
"In the spirit of the film, us coming together as actors and working on the piece really did mirror what occurred on screen (in the story) and I think that benefited the film."
The trailer incident, and the accolades of his co-stars, run deeper than The Replacements, too. Reeves' laid-back personality and idiosyncratic career serve as a template for how to have a satisfying life, a lasting career and a good personality in Hollywood.
Reeves, after all, is not one of the greedy superstars who has deliberately gone out of his way to grab the big bucks. He passed on a role with Pacino & De Niro in the cops-and-robbers thriller Heat to do his own Hamlet in Winnipeg. He turned down $11 million for the Speed sequel to go out on the road with his bar band, Dogstar. Artistically, that was smart. The sequel stunk. All it cost Reeves was money.
Eventually, Hollywood insiders were publicly doubting his star power: "If an actor has nine lives," said one pundit in 1999, "Keanu Reeves certainly is working his way down the list."
Then came The Matrix, a megahit last year, and Reeves was hot again. The Replacements is his first role since.
"Keanu's a whole other animal," enthuses Jon Favreau, a writer, director and actor who took a small role as a crazed player in The Replacements just to be in the same movie as Reeves and Gene Hackman, who plays the team's coach.
"He doesn't want to be famous, I think. He just loves acting and he loves the life of the filmmaker. But, when it came to going out at night, it was very hard to get him to do anything social because he didn't want to have to deal with that. He didn't want to be out in the bars, out in the streets, and be mobbed by people. He's been famous all his adult life and it's not a novelty to him."
Fame, says Reeves (who was born in Beirut and raised largely in Toronto), is just the price an actor pays if he wants the opportunities that he cherishes.
"I want to work in Hollywood," he says. "The experiences I've had have been some of the best in my life, and I want to act. So, if a film is successful and that has other kinds of consequences, then I'm willing to go through that. Sometimes, it's fun."
The worst part, though, is no surprise. "The loss of privacy sometimes is frustrating," says the intensely private Reeves. He fights to keep his private life private. "Of course, of course." Asked how he succeeds in staying so private, he gives up one of those Keanu classics that makes it clear the subject is closed. "Because I'm so private."
So no one really knows who he dates and whether his unnamed girlfriend really was pregnant last year, as the press reported during the filming of The Replacements.
What is public is Reeves' love of the game -- of acting.
He also happens to be an enthusiastic National Football League fan, although, as a youngster growing up in Toronto, he never dreamed about playing football. Instead, he fantasized about what he now calls "ice hockey" for the benefit of Americans who might think mere "hockey" is played on roller blades and not a sheet of glistening frozen water.
"I always wanted to play for Canada in the Olympics," he remembers. "I always wanted to be an Olympic goalie when I was playing the game."
Reeves played diligently until he left Toronto permanently in 1985 for an acting career in Hollywood. He was good enough to get a tryout from the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League.
The 6-foot-1 Reeves still plays casually in Los Angeles. But his dedication runs to finding authenticity in his acting roles. So, for The Replacements, that meant bulking up by 23 pounds to a playing weight of 192 for his football scenes.
"It was important to me to be believable as a quarterback," he says, "so I did all I could to achieve that, and part of that was to have the body and embody it."
It's part of his own game plan. "My ambition is to hopefully play different types of characters and to do different kinds of films in style and scope. I guess it's just me wanting to act and not wanting to be just one thing."
The latest on Matrix sequels
[Toronto Sun 06/08/2000]
NEW YORK -- For only the second time in his career after Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Keanu Reeves is preparing to do a movie sequel. Two of them, simultaneously.
"I'm looking forward to playing the part again," Reeves says of reprising his role in The Matrix in two sequels, which will both begin filming in November and continue shooting until the end of 2001.
"I had a very special time to make that picture," Reeves says of the original, which became a surprise megahit. "I had no expectation. I really didn't know how it was going to be received. When I saw it, it was better than the film I thought I had made."
As for the sequels, Reeves is over the moon about the possibilities. "It's an extraordinary circumstance. The films have an extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary ambitions."
Reeves will commit four months to training, and then 13 months for shooting. Scenes for both sequels will be shot at one time on specific locations that figure in both stories. With a year of post-production necessary, fans won't see the first of the sequels until late in 2002, Reeves says.
Back in the game
[Calgary Sun 06/08/2000]
Keanu Reeves in The Replacements, top, and in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, above
NEW YORK -- Thanks to The Matrix, Keanu Reeves' career is back up to speed. Since he arrived in Hollywood in 1986, Reeves has flirted with fame and success, enjoying a charmed if somewhat inconsistent career.
His performance in River's Edge brought him to the attention of studio heads who quickly cast him in such prestige projects as Dangerous Liaisons, The Prince of Pennsylvania and Parenthood.
The roles were good, but as far as audiences were concerned, he was just another of Hollywood’s young guns.
EXCELLENT
Then in 1989, he starred opposite Alex Winter in the low-budget teen comedy Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure that quickly turned into a cult hit.
It spawned the sequel Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey and gave Reeves much better roles in films such as Point Break, I Love You to Death, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Little Buddha and My Own Private Idaho.
Directors wanted to work with him, but he was still considered a supporting player.
That all changed in 1994 when Reeves starred opposite Sandra Bullock in the action comedy Speed.
The film was the summer’s runaway hit and a sexy, bulked up Reeves became a teen heartthrob.
Instead of basking in his new-found glory, Reeves opted to star in a string of prestige independent films such as A Walk in the Clouds, Feeling Minnesota and The Last Time I Committed Suicide.
He returned to studio films for Chain Reaction and Johnny Mnemonic, both of which died quick box-office deaths.
It looked as if Reeves' star was fading until he starred in 1999's mega hit The Matrix.
REVITALIZED CAREER
It revitalized his image and his career.
He's now commanding upwards of $12 million US for his studio pictures, though he is willing to work for less in smaller independent films.
Reeves' first post Matrix film is the football comedy The Replacements in which he plays a washed -up quarterback who is given a second chance when a league team goes on strike.
"I thought the script was really funny and I liked the challenge the project presented me."
"For the movie to work, I would have to convince audiences that Shane Falco, and therefore Keanu Reeves, was a quarterback," explains Reeves.
To that end, Reeves gained 15 lbs. and trained for two months -- and then attended a football camp with the other actors from the film.
"I was always athletic, but I never played on a football team. Hockey was my team sport."
"The training was a killer. My entire body ached. I had six icepacks in my freezer to alternate on my shoulders and knees."
"Even my feet got injured from people stepping on them with their cleats."
CRASH COURSE
Exhausting and painful as this football training proved, Reeves admits it wasn't as demanding as his four-month crash course in kung fu for The Matrix two years ago.
"Both demand physical dedication, but my kung fu boot camp was tougher because it was a less familiar discipline. Even though I never played on a football team, I grew up throwing a ball."
Reeves will begin training in November for the two Matrix sequels he starts filming in March of 2001.
"We're going to film the two sequels simultaneously to save money. Logistically it will just be like shooting any film out of sequence but on a much grander scale."
Reeves says in the first Matrix sequel "audiences will get to meet the world of Zion. I think that's all I'm allowed to say."
Before resuming his kung fu training, Reeves will shoot the drama Hardball in Chicago.
"I play a gambler who gets caught scalping tickets. To pay back his debt, he agrees to coach an inner-city little league baseball team."
"Diane Lane will play my love interest but I haven't heard who else has been cast."
MATRIX SEQUEL
The first Matrix sequel is scheduled for a 2002 release, but Reeves' fans won't have to wait that long to see him.
He's already completed work on Sam Raimi's dark drama The Gift, in which he plays Hilary Swank's abusive husband.
Reeves also filmed a remake of the 1968 Sandy Dennis/Anthony Newley weeper Sweet November with his Devil’s Advocate co-star Charlize Theron.
"I've had some really great fortune this past couple of years. I'm so grateful because I love acting more and more. It would hurt not to be getting offers. And in this job, time off is often imposed on you and that is so frustrating."
Reeves' band Dogstar is also enjoying success.
It has just released a new album and completed a successful tour to Japan, New York, Boston and L.A. to support it.
"We've been to Japan four times now. We have a very faithful following there. They sing the lyrics with us. It's the first place that ever happened."
Reeves says he takes time off from filming to tour with his band because "the experience is invigorating. It's like doing live theatre, where I got my beginnings (in Toronto)."
All this success in his career has helped Reeves rebound from his personal tragedy in December.
His child with girlfriend Jennifer Syme was stillborn on Christmas Eve.
