Can't Get Enough of Keanu

And now…a time travel episode. In October 2019, Kendra James joined the boys to discuss a film starring Keanu and Sandra Bullock and a time traveling mailbox. The episode was scheduled to drop in April 2020, and so a lot of time was spent trying to predict what would be happening in the future. Some predictions were correct! Most were totally wrong! It’s a loopy episode and boy oh boy it is weird to listen to it now! Time travel!

The boys are back and discussing Keanu's latest, "Bill and Ted Face The Music." Look, we're a little rusty and it maybe took us a bit to get to the film, but we DO get there. Jake and Matt annoy Patrick their opinions and...should nicecore even be a description of something? Either way, all agree this was a nice movie and the bonhomie of Bill and Ted lives on, even in their progeny. 

Ok folks, we've reached it. The big one. The crucial juncture. The Matrix (1999)! What to really say about this film? We live in a simulation created by machines in order to keep us blind to our captivity and usefulness merely as an energy supply for said machines. As a metaphor, consistently apropos. And if you haven't seen this film and are listening to this podcast you are a statistical outlier. Mostly the brothers Torpey give Patrick the space he needs to wax poetic about one of the biggest films of his young life. This is another long one, as we anticipated it being from the beginning. And that's good since we've burned through our banked episodes from our previous hiatus and there is a distinct lack of addressing certain "current affairs." So enjoy this nice long conversation about a seminal movie in Keanu's career that's deservedly praised and rad as hell.

Big episode, big movie, big acting! Scott Thomas returns to join us for "The Devil's Advocate" (1997). Keanu plays hotshot Florida criminal defense attorney Kevin Lomax, who ain't never lost a case. His bona fides (as well as a preternatural ability to choose a jury) get him an offer at a prestigious firm in NYC. There, Kevin and his young wife (Charlize Theron) are given a lavish parkside Manhattan apartment and go up a great many tax brackets. But could this have been....a deal with the DEVIL? Obviously we're all here for one of the great big Pacino roles of his career as John Milton, head of said firm. For whichever stragglers have not seen this I'll keep it spoiler-free, but obviously it all goes to shit. Pacino is surprisingly quiet and sinister in this, rising into a fiery crescendo only at the end. We discuss the lamentable decline of the big-budget "high concept" drama, and take many, many tangents. In the words of John Milton (the fictional one of this film): live deliciously.

"The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (1997) by Stephen Kay. This one's about Neal Cassady (played by Thomas Jane), muse of the beat writers, amphetamine popping driver of The Merry Pranksters, during maybe the most boring part of his life, rendered duller still by being treated so reverently. A young Neal is listless and dissatisfied in small-town Colorado, working at a tire factory and trying to suss out life's mysteries. These mainly consist of what type of girl is better to have sex with: The suicidal brunette Joan (Claire Forlani) or bubbly blond nympho Mary (Gretchen Mol), ultimately choosing neither. Adrian Brody appears as Neal's friend and Allen Ginsberg analog Ben. Our dude Keanu (who put on weight for the role!) is the believably sleazy barfly Harry. The whole movie is based on a letter between Cassady and Kerouac, and that feels about right since this is meagre fare. Almost like something written by someone on speed in their twenties and translated to a feature film.

Coming to you from an undisclosed bunker, bug out bags stocked, armed and ready. The show must go on! Content dispatch episode 29 "Feeling Minnesota" (1996) by director Steve Baigelman. It certainly feels like the product of a young mind; all the preoccupation with sex and criminality is there, violence as punctuation mark. What this film DOES have is a stacked cast who --most of them--manage to squeeze some drama and pathos from this script. Freddie (Cameron Diaz) is being forced by crime boss Red (Delroy Lindo) to marry his crooked bookkeeper Sam Clayton (Vincent D'Onofrio), until Clayton's brother Jjaks (Keanu Reeves) shows up. Freddie and Jjaks immediately fuck at the wedding and run off with Sam's money...the very money he stole from Red in order to force the marriage with Freddie! Yikes! What ensues is a comedy of errors and needless violence. Look, it's not great, but D'Onofrio is a national treasure and what else is your quarantined ass gonna do to pass the time?

We break our deafening silence with "Chain Reaction" (1996) by Andrew Davis. Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu) is an idealistic young scientist who finds a source of unlimited hydrogen energy by playing music to water or something. Unfortunately Eddie and his team are secretly funded by the deep state and it's chosen representative,  the coldly pragmatic Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman), who wants this revolutionary tech for himself and those he works for. What ensues is a real meat-and-potatoes chase thriller in which Keanu and Rachel Weisz are the loose ends everyone wants dead. It's dumb. It's expensive. Enjoy the episode and go watch "The Fugitive".

Merry Christmas! This week we’re jumping back to the beginning of Keanu’s career to discuss the made-for-TV film Babes in Toyland, in which our dude co-stars with a young Drew Barrymore. Together they sing songs about the great city of Cincinnati, travel to a magical land of toys, and get framed for the crime of grand cookie larceny. It’s a short episode because time is tight around the holidays, but the boys are drinking Corona Light so you know it’s a good time!

This week: now that Keanu is a full-fledged leading man, it’s time to star in a sweeping, romantic period piece. He teams up with Alfonso Arau, hot off the success of Like Water for Chocolate, to make A Walk in the Clouds, in which our dude plays the nicest soldier in the world, who returns from World War II and finds new meaning in life by hanging out with a Mexican family who owns a vineyard. All this plus classic stories about Jake and Matt’s dad!

William Gibson, largely considered the first cyberpunk author you read as a teenager according to an objective study, adapts his own short story with 1995's JOHNNY MNEMONIC, directed by Robert Longo! Our dude plays the titular Johnny, a data courier in a corporate dystopia where we are at once inundated with data to the point of illness, and denied anything not approved by aforementioned corporations. A real murderers row of stars here: Ice T, Henry Rollins, Dolph Lundgren and Takeshi Kitano. Johnny finds himself in a deal gone wrong with a whopping 320GB stored in his 160GB capacity brain. Thus commences a ticking clock until complete cerebral meltdown where Johnny learns to make friends and stick it to Big Pharma. Joining us is Gita Jackson (Kotaku), who teams up with Patrick to steer things towards The Matrix constantly. This is a fun film, all style without substance, but GREAT style. Watch Electric Dragon 80,000V or Tetsuo The Iron Man if you haven't and you like this shit. Cheers.

Reeves, Hopper, Bullock, Daniels, Morton, Jan de Bont at the mf helm, winner of 1995's Academy Award for best sound editing/mixing: it's SPEED (1994)! This is a big one for our boy, setting him up as a bona fide action star as LAPD SWAT member Jack Traven (more like Jacked Traven right?!). Hopper plays Howard Payne, disgruntled ex bomb squad who honestly just wants his damn pension, even if it entails elaborate extortion games with explosive-rigged speedometers. Hapless commuter Annie (Sandra Bullock) and Jack vibe under the highly erotic threat of possible death. Vehicular mayhem ensues and if you don't already know the conceit of this one then that's sad and I won't spoil it here. Guest Andy Webb returns to help us discuss da freakin' bus that couldn't slow down! Strap in.

This week it's Little Buddha (1993), by Bernardo Bertolucci. Every now and then you run into these films by critically lauded directors tackling some large philosophical/theological/metaphysical theme and it just ends up....hollow. That's this! And it's for kids supposedly. Tibetan monks go to Seattle in search of the reincarnation of their old Buddhist teacher lama Dorje, seeing him in the person of Jesse Konrad, a little blond bowlcutted(?) boy. His parents are passive nothings. Eventually Jesse goes to Bhutan with his dad and meets other vessels for lama Dorje. Nothing really comes of it. Keanu plays the Buddha in a fascinatingly weird case of miscasting. Even visual wizard Vittorio Storaro can't save it. It's too long. Not fun to watch, but fun to pick apart.

Hey now! Keanu's second collab with the talented Mr. Gus Van Sant; This time we have the mystifying and often incoherent Tom Robbins adaptation of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues", a surreal tale of one Sissy Hankshaw (played by Uma Thurman), a huge rubber-thumbed hitchhiking savant who feels it's her destiny to forever remain a nomadic free-wheeling spirit; that is, until she get's embroiled in a strange political battle at the Rubber Rose Ranch, an escalating plotline involving liberational Cowgirls, drugged-out Cranes, and literal douche bags. It makes almost no sense. Keanu has asthma and is pretty funny in it, though :)

We have a very special objet d'art here with 1993's "Freaked." Directed by none other than Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) himself, who also stars and helped write the film! Winter plays celebrity simpleton Ricky Coogin who is hired by the Everything Except Shoes corporation to put a pretty face on a bad PR problem: claims they're fertilizer Zygrot 24 is wildly toxic. Hilarity ensues. This cult classic was basically strangled in it's crib for claims of being too weird. We've got Brooke Shields, Mr. T, Randy Quaid, Rastafarian eyeballs, music by The Butthole Surfers and an uncredited role by our dude Keanu which I will not spoil here. Have a listen!

The Bard doth speak in the immoderate winds of galvanic plenitude most loquacious by familiar visages and....it's our episode on Much Ado About Nothing by Billy Shakes. We are joined for this pithy, digression-heavy episode by Rachel Schenk (@IAMRachelSchenk), who once played the role our very dude plays, Don John, the villain! We discuss Kenneth Branagh's career, do a southern-accented Joker character, and attempt to tackle this adaptation of heavy literary material which stretches the abilities of your dummy philistine hosts. So sit back, fold clothes or do some chores or whatever. This is a long one. Don John is a man of few words, we are not.

Hello boils and ghouls, we have a nice long (they're all long tbh) Halloween spooktacular for y'all: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)! We have a Halloween soundboard and everything! This needs very little introduction; it's the classic Dracula story with the major addition of a romance between the titular count (Gary Oldman) and Mina Harker (Winona Ryder), maybe involving reincarnation (?). As far as Keanu's legacy this is maybe most famous for saddling him forever with the popular idea that he's a stiff, wooden actor who is "bad." Now, is this performance labored? Yes. Is he clearly JUST struggling to deliver lines in something resembling an English accent and still failing half the time while forgetting to ACT in the process? Maybe. But for real it's not that bad and otherwise this movie is a visually sumptuous masterpiece and a must-see, not just for horror fans, with extremely memorable performances. Get on it and happy Halloween!

Who's ready for some Gus Van Sant and his laugh riot exploration of longing and search for human connection? It's My Own Private Idaho this week, a film about male street hustlers constructed from three separate creative endeavors (including an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV) into a surprisingly coherent and moving art house hit. River Pheonix plays Mike, the emotional focal point of the film, prostitute, former ward of the state and hapless narcoleptic. Mike is in love with Scott (our dude Keanu), scion of a wealthy family, who is essentially LARPing as an impoverished person with no options, knowing full well he will claim his birthright and leave his "friends."

This week's episode is a beefy one: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991). Adam Lance Garcia (WIRED) joins us to discuss the second installment in the adventures of Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu) and Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter). We crush Twitter beef, veer all over the place and speculate on B&T's upcoming 2020 elaboration on their universe. This movie really blows open the door's further, having Bill and Ted journey through heaven and hell to secure the safety of their maiden babe wives and defeat evil robot versions of themselves. There's an alien named Station with a huge ass. Wyld stuff.

The prodigal son returns! Lost scion and Philly jawn Michael Curran joins us to discuss Point Break (1991), Kathryn Bigelow's action masterwork about two men obsessed with each other: Fresh-faced agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) and the sexily charismatic surf guru/bank robber, Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). We also have Utah's partner Angelo Pappas, played by an unhinged Gary Busey fresh from a serious motorcycle accident which hurt his brain! It's the best. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are in this because they love California. So is Lori Petty as love interest Tyler, but we all know where the real romance lies. The boys all agree Johnny Utah is a dogshit FBI agent.

This week's ep is about Tune In Tomorrow (1990). What to say here? It's an adaptation of the somewhat autobiographical novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa, but set in New Orleans in 1951. Keanu plays Martin, a young radio writer with an incestuous infatuation with his aunt, an older woman who isn't connected by blood, so it's, like, incest lite. And yes, this means he takes a stab at a Cajun accent and it leaves much to be desired. This movie is a bit of a mess, and even Peter Falke, powerhouse that he is as Pedro the visionary soap opera schlock writer, cannot save it. Also, I don't think we know what magical realism is. What is it?