Keanuthon

11:47am – “Speed”, 1994

Immediate to check to make sure there is no KeeanuCommentary (AKA KeanuCom) on this, as we suspected, we only have producers and director (who said Keanu was unimportant or had nothing to offer to the sequel – what a bunch of tripe) options, as we remembered, there is not any KeanuCom (yet another dream deferred). Felt kind of unnatural to have a pause (if only for 15 seconds) in the ‘Thon to look at DVD menus, but it did seem important.

This is one long elevator shaft.

I think our FAQ section on the website should be titled “Pop Quiz, Hot Shot.”

Matt points out the cultural cross-section that is the people in the elevator as it falls. It is much like the cultural cross-section of the bus, but with fewer people.

The totally gratuitous car jump shot when Jack and Harry arrive at the highrise is a metaphor for how committed and insane Jack Traven actually is. I think we know this is going to be an eXtreme movie!

“Dennis Hopper is probably one of the most assholy actors in any Keanu movie” – scratch the probably, it is official. He is the most assholy actor.

The classic “Shoot the hostage; take her out of the equation” quote appears. It is gems like that that make this movie so great?

“Two years” (spoken in that odd Polish Saturday Night Live accent)

The bus driver’s name is Ortiz. As we all know, since we all watched “Freaked” Keanu’s role in it is named Ortiz. He just happens to be the dog boy, whereas the bus driver is decidedly NOT a dog boy.

Cans. Cans.

12:46 – Keanu in the interview about the movie calls Jack Traven “aggressive,” which is true, but Jack also has (as all of Keanu’s characters do) a sense of helping and caring and sharing, which in this case he uses to help and care for and share with the passengers of the bus.

Wildcat!

His hair here is buzzed, making us realize how far we’ve come from the first twenty movies or so where he’s being a goofy teenage punk who likes to wear his hair in his face.

We have a little mid-Speed snack of ollalieberry cobbler, quite tasty and just in time to give us energy to go over the jump of our lives! Keanu seems unfazed. This really is a good Keanu movie, partly because it’s just all Keanu all the time. We see Keanu get aggressive, we see him get pissed off, we see him get tender, we see him acting on his gut feelings… the only terrible parts are when we have to see him talking to the ever-creepy, ever-assholy Dennis Hopper, the same fuckhole who had the gall to say he was in Keanu’s first ever movie. I don’t know where he was (maybe off spelunking somewhere), but we watched six movies before we even got to “River’s Edge”! Maybe if someone like, say, Crispin Glover, or Andy Griffith, or Billy Zane was the bad guy… we all agree that just about anybody would be better than Dennis Hopper.

Sandra Bullock decides that, oh my God, he IS insane.

This is a crazy movie to watch after the beautifulaciousness of Little Buddha, because Speed is very fast and crazy—although it definitely appears that Keanu has learned that the middle way is the best way to go. Finding the middle way, of course, means that when you go under a bus you go right in the middle, neither towards one wheel nor towards the other. He’s also learned compassion, or least compassion towards hostage-type people with whom you’re trapped on a bus which Dennis Hopper has rigged with a bomb.

Wildcat! (again)

Dennis Hopper is really pissing Keanu off, perhaps as much as he is pissing us off. This doesn’t stop him from looking really hot, though, and we find a nice potential still of him standing at the front of the bus looking really sexy in his cargo pants. Matt comments, that, like the people on the bus who are being held at the whim of a madman, we, too, are in peril because of Dennis Hopper. Dennis, it turns out, thinks by moving his fingers in front of his face (while touching his upper lip).

We all appreciate Keanu doing most of his own stunts, especially in hot hot cargo pants (before cargo pants were “hot”). Lest we forget he is doing his stunts in his hot hot hotness also.

Here is comes. Here we are. End of the movie #4. On the train. Time for Dennis Hopper to be even assholier & even crappier than ever. Killing indiscriminately, delivering lines poorly and whatnot. At least in “River’s Edge” he had some inadvertant comedic value. In this, with the exception of the purple paint on the face, he has little value (comedic or otherwise) to us. And why does Hopper only have problems with the thumb when he is talking on the phone, not when doing anything else (like shooting the gun).

CKPL: “Let’s take this off, shall we?”

Reminder to self, nothing in LA (this movie) is ever finished. The freeway. The airport. The train tracks. The storyline.

Spelunking. Two years.