Be More Keanu by James King

Author:James King [King, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473580961
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

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It’s hard not to think about all the films Keanu and his late buddy River Phoenix might have made.

It was River’s girlfriend Martha Plimpton and his brother Leaf (aka Joaquin) who were friends with Keanu first, thanks to their working together on the movie Parenthood in 1989. ‘Then I met up with him on I Love You to Death’ River explained to Interview magazine a few years later. ‘And I liked the guy. I wanted to work with him. He’s like my older brother’.

Keanu was so inspired by the script of My Own Private Idaho that he rode over a thousand miles on his motorbike to give it to River. Later River helped Keanu get into the right zone for the tender arthouse film at a time when he’d only just finished filming its polar opposite: the high-octane Point Break. It was a partnership; you can see it in the film, read it in the interviews they did together at the time. A love.

Realising the power of true friendship – and the sadness when someone decides to end it – is what My Own Private Idaho is ultimately all about. Neither Keanu nor River came from conventional families and their characters Scott and Mike are the same; drifters, searching for answers.

So if you can’t rely on your family, form your own surrogate one from friends. After all, friends don’t have all the Freudian complexities that families have (‘My dad doesn’t know that I’m just a kid’ Scott says in the film. ‘He thinks I’m a threat’). Or as Keanu’s character Tod proclaims in Parenthood: ‘… you need a licence to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a licence to catch a fish! But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father!’

Not all of us are born into the families that are the best for us. Yet we all have the ability to cultivate the friendships that are exactly that. Look at the relationship between Tod and Garry (Keanu and Leaf) in Parenthood – a simple and strong surrogate father/son bond in a comedy all about the complexities of blood ties.

Plus, of course, your best friend doesn’t even have to be human. Just ask John Wick.

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