#the picture of ethan hawke is from the movie before sunrise i think

[deadcrowcalling]

imagine this todd

with this neil

go on. just think of it.

[keanuital]

In praise of Keanu Reeves, the nicest of meatheads

The  Hollywood star has embraced a life without pretensions.

Rolling Stone journalist Chris Heath once asked Keanu Reeves a simple question: why do you act? The star of The Matrix, Speed, Point Break and My Own Private Idaho paused the conversation to consider the matter. And he paused it for a long time. “Forty-two seconds, he says nothing. Not a word, a grunt, a prevarication, or a hint that an answer might come,” wrote Heath. But then an answer did come: “Uh… the words that popped into my head were expression and, uh, it's fun.” When Heath later asked Reeves if he ever wanted to direct, he waited 72 seconds for: “No, not really.”

Both Coco Chanel and George Orwell observed that by 50, we have the face we deserve. The Beirut-born Reeves is now 52 (the same age as Nigel Farage, as tweeters and bored bloggers periodically point out), but he looks pretty much the same as he has always looked: solidly handsome and straightforward, yet somehow vulnerable, like a Boy Scout who wants to do the right thing in a world that doesn’t. Jan de Bont, the director of the 1994 film Speed, called him “an action hero for the Nineties”. By this, I think he meant that, unlike the muscle-bound shit-kickers of the previous decade, a Keanu hero wouldn’t go out of his way to kill for fun. Where Arnold Schwarzenegger could, in Total Recall, shoot the woman he had wrongly believed to be his wife and joke, “Consider this a divorce,” Keanu always seemed somewhat conflicted while taking care of business – as if his eyes were saying, “Sorry it had to be this way.” The Nineties were the age of hunky romantics: Jason Priestley as Brandon in Beverly Hills, 90210, Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise. Keanu fit that mould. I suppose even guys with guns had to be sensitive.

And even dumb guys, too, with or without guns – for you don’t have to be able to think in order to feel. Reeves began his career describing himself as “a meathead”. “I can’t help it, man,” he said. “You’ve got smart people and you’ve got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.” He specialised in playing benevolent meatheads, from Ted “Theodore” Logan in Stephen Herek’s Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to the spaced-out teen Tod Higgins in Ron Howard’s Parenthood (both 1989). Then he traded meathead simplicity for that of the likeable (and, as ever, sensitive) action hero in films such as Speed (1994) and Chain Reaction (1996). The Matrix series followed, as did a few smaller, more indie-ish movies (Thumbsucker, A Scanner Darkly). But the 2014 action film John Wick, whose sequel is in cinemas now, was widely welcomed as a return to form.

Reeves largely plays the assassin of the title as a primitive cinematic archetype, but he can't help but gesture towards something more profound. Wick, in both films of the franchise, is motivated by grief over the death of his wife. (In 2001, Reeves’s girlfriend Jennifer Syme died in a motor accident, a year after losing their child; perhaps the role had a personal resonance for him.) He might stab people in the head with pencils, break necks and shoot guns into crowded rooms like Chow Yun Fat after three espressos, but he’s ultimately a man of feeling.

This narrative of a career of sensitive but slightly dumb simplicity isn’t quite fair on Reeves, however. For he has, on occasion, been capable of delivering complex performances that rank alongside those of his more conventionally actorly peers. In 1991, he held his own opposite River Phoenix in Gus Van Sant’s road movie My Own Private Idaho; he has since appeared opposite Al Pacino as a wily defence attorney (The Devil’s Advocate) and Gene Hackman as a troubled sportsman (The Replacements). He has been directed by film festival favourites such as Francis Ford Coppola (Bram Stoker's Dracula), Bernardo Bertolucci (Little Buddha) and Sam Raimi (The Gift) – if not always successfully.

And he started his career not with excellent dudes, but with Shakespeare. When Reeves was 14 and living in Toronto, he was cast as Mercutio in a local production of Romeo and Juliet. An agent who saw him signed him up and secured for him a string of television roles, which swiftly took him to Hollywood. Reeves’s embarrassingly stilted attempt to portray the evil Don John in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993) makes me fear the discovery of video footage of that version of Romeo. But the fact that Reeves’s life as an actor began in this way reminds me of his seriousness about his craft. He might not have much range but he has admirable ambition. Many years later, when the studios pressured him to sign on for a Speed sequel, he ran off to play Hamlet in Canada.

In 2011, the New Statesman’s film critic, Ryan Gilbey, observed in the Guardian that Reeves had “some claim to be the most enigmatic, as well as the most warmly adored” actor in Hollywood. That assessment was based in part on the “Sad Keanu” meme that had spread the previous year, in which a paparazzi photograph of Reeves morosely eating a sandwich on a bench led to countless expressions of sympathy online (more than 14,000 people joined a Facebook group called “Cheer Up Keanu”; 200,000 comments about the picture were left on Reddit) and to the declaration by fans of a “Cheer Up Keanu Day”, which apparently takes place every 15 June.

This weird adoration and the sense of enigma surrounding the actor are, I think, closely linked. We know relatively little about Reeves’s off-screen life, which he keeps well guarded, but what we do know suggests qualities that are, for one reason or another, vanishingly rare in entertainment gossip – warm humanity and hidden depths. Hagiographic stories circulate of the actor donating millions of dollars to animal welfare charities and cancer research (his younger sister Kim was diagnosed with leukaemia); of Reeves offering stranded hitchhikers a ride; of a team of stuntmen being surprised with a gift of £6,000 Harley Davidson motorbikes, which he had quietly paid for.

“Money is the last thing I think about,” Hello magazine reported him saying in 2003. Not long earlier, he had reduced his pay by several million dollars so that the producers of The Devil’s Advocate and The Replacements could afford to hire Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, respectively. And, according to ABC News, he “handed over his valuable profit-sharing points” to the special effects and costume design team of the Matrix franchise, which he believed deserved the true credit for its success. (Some place the value of this donation at $50m.) By these accounts, Reeves is most definitely a righteous dude. He’s also a curious one. A few days after the Brexit vote, the New Statesman’s politics editor, George Eaton, was surprised to find him visiting Portcullis House as a guest of the Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi. It was “fittingly surreal”, George told me, and Reeves came across as “courteous” and “modest” when he posed for a group selfie with some of the journalists who happened to be there.

As Reeves’s star rose in the early 1990s, the American men’s magazine Details lamented: “Nearly all celebrities – nearly all people – like to talk about themselves [but] Keanu doesn’t.” I guess it’s frustrating for journalists that someone so clearly interesting should be reticent about telling us about himself.

But I don’t really have to know much about Keanu Reeves to like him, though I’ve never met the guy. And there are things that I can learn from him, too. In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Alex Winter’s Bill S Preston, Esq., paraphrases Socrates: “The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.” To which Reeves’s Ted responds: “That’s us, dude.” That’s them – and every one of us with any sense, if we’re honest. We may think we’re smart and even persuade the people around us that we are. But in the end, most of us are meatheads. Reeves shows in his life and work that meatheads can live good lives, even in the face of disparagement and personal tragedy. Maybe Chanel and Orwell were on to something – he really does have the face he deserves.

NewStatesman

[sometimesrosy]

PLEASE TELL ME THAT ETHAN HAWKE THING IS TRUE!! I love Reality Bites, but I'm a GenY girl, so I'm a Millennial, lol. ;) Anyway, if you like Ethan, I highly HIGHLY recommend Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. (It's a trilogy starring him if you haven't seen it, but the movies were released years apart and track a couple's development over a long span of time). It's very philosophical and poetic and literary. Think you'd love it. One of my favorites!! Great 100 hiatus material!

Same Ethan Hawke anon. P.S. I’m recommending this to you because you recommended North & South to us! ;) (which was brilliant)

Guurrrll. Not only is it absolutely true, I have more. I was working at this texas style restaurant called Cottonwood Cafe, and they were hosting a party for Lisa Loeb, who was from Texas. Ethan Hawke was her friend. I however was last hired and stuck on coat room duty so spent the whole party in the basement. But I was on a break so I was going upstairs while Ethan was coming out of the bathroom just as I passed and he was too busy watching me, so missed the step. I turned around and said, “careful there,” and then kept walking. I was super cute, but my friends at the cafe had warned me about Ethan. Because he was an asshole. Sorry. I hate to burst the celebrity bubble. It was definitely the consensus that Ethan was a jackass. Lisa however, was very nice and I did get to talk to her.

I loved Before Sunrise. It was definitely illustrative of my generation. Julie Delpy actually lived in the same building as one of my friends. Never met her, but I saw her there and around the neighborhood. If you want to imagine me in the 90s, you can picture Julie Delpy, but with black hair (that was sometimes a pixie rather than long)  and a native New Yorker, rather than Parisian. And not famous. People used to call me “Winona” because I reminded them of Winona Ryder, but I was more Julie. (That whole manic pixie dream girl thing? That was kind of me, but it’s different when it’s your story and you’re not a fantasy. Doesn’t always work out so good for the girl to be someone else’s plot device.)

 I loved Before Sunset, too, but I haven’t seen Before Midnight yet. I think I had kids by then and didn’t have as much time to go see movies that didn’t feature talking raccoons. I should see it. Complete the trilogy. Oh, maybe I missed the last one because it felt like it was hitting too close to home. I think I remember feeling like that when it came out. Movies like Before Sunrise, Singles, Reality Bites? Yeah, they spoke.

[nihilist-commentary]

Before Sunrise (1995) Commentary

To start this entry, please go see the trailer for this movie. It's fantastic. Which is ironic of me to say as I was on the verge of vomiting during the entire movie, but let me dive in and explain exactly why I can't stop thinking about this movie. I'm gonna save your time and my time and I will not give you a plot synopsis but just use this link and catch up, or as I said, please watch it. 

Thanks. So the movie itself is a romantic comedy, although, the usual elements of many couples being involved, a big conflict, intense crying etc. was not included, which made this movie even less usual and even more cool. And yet, why was I so “disgusted” by some of the scenes? The entire concept of the movie, meeting someone completely new and only having a short amount of time together, is something very autobiographical to me. I won't go into detail on this, but just know.

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy play the protagonists, and actually the only dynamic characters. The cast is very minimalistic, and so is the actual plot structure, as nothing actually happens apart from talking and romance. It is amazing how Richard Linklater managed to direct a movie this minimalistic, and yet so powerful and consuming. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

And yet, I was not able to watch it without feeling weird. I don't know what exactly made me cringe so much. The fact how accurately and amazingly this movie was filmed, or just about how cheesy it was. Fair enough, from an objective point of view, it was actually not even remotely as cheesy as normal romcoms. And, since I have to be fair, a pretty damn good movie. But, I'm not here to gush about the plot and the actors, but I actually just want to share some of my insights on this basis-idea of the movie and maybe even some advice, too.

Since I have been in a similar situation before, I completely understand the need and urge to know the other person as well enough as possible, for you found this amazing person and you're trying to compensate for all the years you have missed without them. Understandable. But definitely not the way to go. 

Picture this. When meeting someone, someone you're potentially attracted to, you are your best self. Best behavior, best humor, best temper, everything. The less attractive and rather negative qualities of yourself are completely shut away, for we need to warm up to a person before we become, in a certain way, comfortable enough to let our ... shittiness (no, I could not find a word more precise and eloquent) show through. It has also to do with trust; are we ready, do we trust our opponent to accept our flaws? When you only have a short time with someone entirely new, anything as little as less than a week, three days or even just one night, you most definitely will not reveal, at least deliberately, any negative qualities of yours. I'm not saying that when we are comfortable with someone we purposely try to piss them off with a bad trait of ours, but we do become more trusting and comprehending toward the other person. 

Why are those negative qualities important? Firstly, to stay in reality. Chances are, you will try and "keep contact" with each other (which by the way, only stirs up old emotions that will be gone after a max. of six months and really just holds you back from moving the fuck on). In itself, a good idea, unless you plan on fully dating that person, in which case NO NO NO NO NO. Jesse and Celine didn’t do it, hell, they only saw each other about a decade after their encounter so really, unless your temporary romance can succeed time then please come back to this post and I will change my entire commentary. But for now, unless you are Jesse and Celine, it is very unlikely to happen.

Why shouldn’t you date the person, though? Because of the negative aspects that are yet to be revealed. As the third movie in the trilogy, Before Midnight (which was just as fucking amazing as the previous two movies) shows us, they have found the negatives in each other. You have to wait, just like they did. For the real person to come out. As honest and carefree you may be with that person in that short time you have with them (which I'm sure felt like an "eternity" and you've "never felt more alive and understood" and yadda yadda - come on. Be real with me), you do not get the real version of them. Instead, it is some illusion-love drunk person who is doing everything in their power to forcingly accelerate the process of warming up to a person. Bad, bad, bad. Secondly, negativity is part of the human. And we cannot know someone without knowing their flaws. 

Skipping the "you piss me off" phase and jumping straight into "I have never met anyone like you and I want to be with you forever" is rarely ever a good idea. If you have never been in this sort of shithole before you might think it is exaggerated, both the movie and what I'm saying here. But no, inevitably, if you end up in this situation, you will be thinking about merging futures. I suppose experiences like this really put you into some sort of hallucinatory phase where you see the world through love-drunken eyes. Kind of gross, eh? Ew, romance. 

Understand that it may take years until you are fully close with someone, and understand that making rash decisions while you're in this kind of state of euphoria and lust and love and whatever else that may be, is not good. And if you do keep contact, you will eventually see the negative traits. But it will be too late already, as you firstly only had the best of them on your plate, and then suddenly you get bits and pieces of a shitty personality and a bad opinion on political issues. When meeting someone in a more average context, all of our traits and characteristics tend to show and hide every now and then, and the only reason that is possible is due to the time. It takes TIME. And when you have seemingly everything, love, wine, and your amazing new person that you will definitely marry in 10 years to come, you will know that none of it really matters unless you have time to fully enjoy it. 

So, what do you do when it comes to this? Well firstly, stay focused. Stay focused on life, on where you are, on what you have to do next. Be aware that you have a rosy filter over your eyes, and don't make any rash decisions. Neither the ones that affect your new-found love, nor the ones that may be impacted by it in your own circle. Partners, friends, hookups, think about them, too, and realize that, as harsh as this sounds, the person in front of you is not made of marble. They are not perfect, they are not replacements for anyone, and they are also capable of hurting you. Understand that usually, feelings like this are temporary. Not so however in Before Sunrise. Marvelous plot, and it even has two sequels which I have mentioned before, and the actors have done an outstanding job in it. The movies are the best-case scenario, yet brilliantly put and very realistic. I don’t think any other romance movie (or trilogy, for that matter), has had me this hooked and losing sleep and thoughts over it.

So, what did piss me off? How real and yet deceiving the movie reflects these temporary encounters with, what at the moment seems, a soulmate. Maybe you will have a Jesse that you meet on a train to Vienna. Who the fuck am I to tell you it won’t work, right?

Take care of yourself. And always think about the consequences of your actions.

[rebustein94-blog]

Trucks

In an interview one time, Ethan Hawke described his film Before Sunrise, in which a young guy and a girl meet on a train in Europe and fall in love, as a film about might be. The sequel, Before Sunset, he described as a film about what could or maybe should be. And the third in the trilogy, Before Midnight, a film about what is.

In a conversation one time, a friend asked me if I would meet someone on the train.

“Like in Before Sunrise,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. I shook my head. “I wish, man. Right? I mean, that’s the dream.”

“I would kill for that to happen,” he said.

And we didn’t say it, but it was just a movie, man.

***

The guy sitting across the aisle from me on the train to Salinas was this gnarly, middle-aged guy with a rounded-out belly and a hook nose. He had a thin grey mustache and barely any hair on his head other than that. But he also had these clear, keen blue eyes. Eyes that saw, man.

Sitting next to him was this gorgeous Iraqi woman. Absolutely stunning. They had been sitting kind of quietly for the first part of the journey, except he kept glancing over at her with this curious, mischievous smile. Finally, he started trying to pick her up. They carried a pretty good conversation, and she was friendly, too, but in the background, he was really going at her. Telling her she was beautiful, that she was a 10, explaining what a 10 was because she didn’t know, etc.

“You married?” he asked bluntly.

“Yes,” was the answer and you could feel everybody around shake their heads. Damn shame, guy.

But it didn’t stop ole hook-nose. Oh, no. He kept at her for four freaking hours. Just pushing her, prodding her. Needing her to make some moves with him before she was lost forever.

Some examples:

“You are so photogenic,” he said to a picture she showed him of her and her son. She didn’t say anything.

“I told myself I wouldn’t meet a woman on the train and here’s this gorgeous woman sitting right next to me! What am I supposed to do!? You ruined me!” She said nothing.

“I have to say, you are making this easily the best train ride I’ve ever had. You are so cool and beautiful and awesome. You are such a good person. I love the way you think.” She nodded.

Mostly I tried hard to ignore him, but pockets of conversation kept punching through, of course. Like when he got on a big blackjack kick for some reason.

“You play blackjack?” he asked.

“No, I don’t know how to play,” she said, in the broken English that he kept drowning in compliments.

“Oh, I’ll teach you,” he said. “It’s so easy.” Those blue eyes sparkled with adventure and please-cheat-on-your-husband-with-me-I-don’t-care danger. “Come on. It’s easy. I’ll teach you. One second.”

He got up and walked to the next car. He came back with ten new-looking poker chips and a deck of cards. Don’t know where he got them. Kind of don’t want to know. It adds to his mystique. 

“I come prepared,” is all he said.

What he thought he had been prepared for exactly is the real mystery. 

He placed five chips in front of her, five in front of himself. Showed her the ropes of blackjack for the next half hour. They played a couple rounds and, of course, he said, “You’re pretty good at this! You’re a natural!” Because the guy had shmooze coming out of his ears. 

At some point, they forgot blackjack and started talking about The Universe.

“I think everything is happen for a reason,” the woman said.

“Yes!” he agreed. “Yes!”

“Signs,” she said. 

“I believe in signs,” he said. “You know, I was living in Sacramento. My daughter had just had her baby. She’s twenty-four and I’m fifty-two. And my cat ran away. And my apartment was broken into. So I said forget it. I packed up my Hyundai and I drove to LA to see my granddaughter. And I didn’t take my eyes off my daughter for fifteen months.”

“You stay with her that long?”

“I didn’t take my eyes off her. For fifteen months.”

“Wow.”

Yeah, wow. As in Wow, this train ride is long.

“And then one day,” Hook Nose continues, and I’m not exaggerating how he told this story, “we’re sitting by this hot dog stand. Eating hot dogs from the hot dog stand. And this truck pulls up. As we’re eating the hot dogs, talking about signs. Me and my daughter. In LA. This hot dog stand. This truck pulls up while we’re eating. Right in front of us. While we’re eating. And all the truck says on it is one word. Signs. Right in front of us. As we’re eating hot dogs and talking about signs. This truck. Just: signs. Right in front of us.”

I don’t know exactly what that proved or why it mattered, but he was very impressed with it and the life it affirmed for himself. So whatever.

Then he turned to her suddenly and asked if she knew what the butterfly effect was.

“Er, yes,” she said, frightened now.

He nodded, mumbled something about the odds and how many seats there were on the train. He looked out the window for a bit, smiling deviously.  

Don’t get me wrong. A lot of their conversations were two-sided, and she really did seem to enjoy talking to him most of the time. But also. You know. 

He went on to tell her this story about how he cracked a tooth in half diving into the ocean and how, the next morning, he’d swallowed it.

“Could you ever be with a man with half a tooth in his stomach?” he asked, eyes aflutter. 

“Sure,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Who the hell does know? 

I don’t know if there was a sign in that story or not.

Near the end of the train ride, he asked, “So are you gonna give me your email address?”

“Of course,” she said, somewhat convincingly. And she gave it, somewhat hesitantly.

“I’m not gonna get you in trouble, am I?” he asked. “I don’t want to get you in trouble with your husband.”

“Is okay,” she said.

“He doesn’t mind?”

“No, is okay.”

“What do I have to do to get you in trouble? Marry you? Because I’d marry you!” And he laughed. “But I guess the question is if you’d marry me! Would…would you marry me!?”

I didn’t hear what she said but they were quiet for a while again after that, staring out the window. I don’t think he was smiling, but I couldn’t quite see.

As their parting became truly inevitable, with Salinas filling the entire window now, he poured praise on her. Told her he’d come visit her, he’d call her, write her, marry her. She took it all graciously and left. Probably threw it in the trash as soon as she left the train. Or maybe not, who knows. I, of course, dipped out of there as fast as I could and didn’t see the full end.

But it occurred to me that that guy’s entire life must be trucks. I mean, that’s what it takes to get some kind of point across to him. A full fucking truck. Otherwise, he’d keep poking and pestering What Might Be, and not see What Is. Because What Is is that the woman was married. Was polite but had no interest, a fact I could see, and which you could feel everyone sitting around us see, too.

But even then, what if he just makes up his own point? What do you do then? How do you live like that, man?

There was some beautiful scenery outside the train. I don’t think he saw any of it. I don’t think Ethan Hawke did either, for that matter.

Maybe I’m being too negative.

***

In an interview one time, Richard Linklater, who directed Before Sunset and its sequels, said that the film is a great litmus test for what people believe about love. You either firmly believe that the guy and the girl will reunite after the film ends, or you think they’ll never meet again. You’re either a hopeless romantic or not. And it’s easy to gauge what side you fall on based on how you feel at the film’s conclusion.

In a hotel room one time, I sat all alone and wondered, really, why I had been so negative about ole Hook Nose, and what that says about me, and if he was even a good litmus test at all, because all I have is What Is.  

(Salinas, CA)