Here, before you're quite ready for him, is Keanu Reeves: At the top of the driveway of the Chateau Marmont, smoking a cigarette on a low couch, like he's on his front porch.
He's been coming here since the early '90s. The Chateau was run-down and empty then—a seedier, pre-André Balazs version of itself. The faucets didn't always work. The carpets were dicey. “You didn't want to take your shoes off,” Reeves says.
It felt like anything could happen. Usually it did.
“You could have a conversation,” Reeves says. “You could have a tryst. You could fucking do drugs. You could hang out. For me, there's still that pulse here.”
He basically moved in for a while there. Could be found splashing in the pool with the likes of Sharon Stone or hiding in a corner “playing chess with his computer and smoking compulsively to fight stress,” depending which tabloid tall tale you bought.
Now he lives in a house, not far from here, up in the Hills. He's owned it for about 12 years. Sometimes he sits up there and wonders if it's the house he's going to die in. It's not a preoccupation—he's just curious, if this is going to be it, this place in the Hills. “I didn't think about that,” he says, “when I was 40.” (...)
Today the real Keanu Reeves has that same patchy beard. That same curtain of hair falling into his eyes. He's wearing those same chunky Merrell hiking boots he was wearing pretty much regardless of context long before normcore made The New York Times. You have to look close at the gray flyaways in his eyebrows to remember what year it is.
He's 54 and getting over a cold. His cough sounds like somebody punching their way out of a paper grocery bag. He zips his shaggy black fleece up to the neck. But then a Chateau guy wheels over a heat lamp for Keanu. Another Chateau guy wheels over another heat lamp for the other side of the table. Then the sun comes out, as if it, too, wants to make sure Keanu is warm enough. The sun bounces off the tabletop and up into Keanu's face. It's a nice, low fill light.
Keanu orders a BLT and a Coca-Cola. Fries, not salad. When it comes, the BLT, it'll be on ciabatta bread. Keanu will find himself missing the crispness of toast. Keanu isn't sure a BLT shouldn't leave your soft palate ground up, a little. That a BLT shouldn't have consequences. Soft bread is for soft-bread sandwiches. “Peanut butter and jelly,” Keanu says. Then, more dreamily, like Homer Simpson in reverie: “Peanut butter and honey.”
In his new movie, Reeves again plays John Wick, widowed master assassin and warrior with a broken heart. The first John Wick was shot for $20 million, without real expectations, by Reeves's old Matrix stunt double Chad Stahelski and Stahelski's co-director, David Leitch, who had been longtime stunt coordinators and second-unit directors but had never directed a feature before. And even with Reeves attached, the first Wick was not exactly a hot property at first.
“You have this over-the-hill assassin whose wife dies of natural causes, gives him a puppy, some Russian punk kills his puppy, and he kills 84 people,” Stahelski says. “How many studios do you think said no to that picture? The answer is all of them.”
Stahelski spent years doubling Reeves on three Matrix movies and knew exactly what he was capable of. “I don't know anyone that puts more into the game, collaboratively, physically, intellectually,” he says. “I've never experienced anyone that could have survived [The Matrix]. It just took a different type of person. To be open to that. To allow yourself to be constantly soaking wet, sore, tired, beaten up, for years.” (...)
The Wick films have since become a $140 million franchise, something that no one, including the people involved with them, can quite believe. Starz is making a TV series set in the John Wick universe, further leveraging the series' elaborately detailed underworld-building.
Meanwhile there's John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, which finds John excommunicado—assassins' guild parlance for CANCELED—and on the run from a $14 million bounty after killing a guy in a no-killing zone. But the true stakes are the same as they've always been. John's psychic struggle is what Reeves loves about these ludicrous, gun-crazy movies.
“He's got this beautiful, tragic conundrum—these two selves,” says Reeves. “The John who was married, and John Wick, the assassin. John wants to be free. But the only way he knows how is through John Wick. And John Wick keeps fucking killing people and breaking rules. We're really watching a person fight for their life and their soul.”
Plus in this one he rides around the streets of New York on a fucking horse. Leaked images and videos from the day he shot this scene had half the Internet screaming at John Wick: Chapter 3 to just take their money. Not since Eadweard Muybridge filmed one in the 1870s has a moving picture of a guy riding a horse made people so excited. (...)
He's determined to act like a normal person, even though his mere presence creates an atmosphere of unreality, and it's helped him pull off the nearly impossible feat of remaining an enigmatic cult figure despite having been an A-list actor for decades.
You remember. He headlined the Matrix trilogy to the tune of something like $3 billion. Changed the way action movies looked and felt and moved, changed the culture. People come up to him, say it turned them on to cinema, made them question the power structures shaping their perceptions of reality, inspired them to go to grad school.
You'd think he'd have his choice of projects. But you'd be surprised. “Movie jail” is real. He's been there. He was excommunicado at Fox for a decade after turning down Speed 2 to go play Hamlet onstage in fucking Winnipeg: “I didn't work with [Fox] again until The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
He is not in jail now, as far as he knows. But he hasn't done a studio movie since 47 Ronin, another pricey bomb. Sometimes the fan base that remains so grateful for his continued existence does not remember to vote with its dollars. Reeves's name can still help secure financing for action movies of a certain size, and sometimes those turn into a John Wick. He's not unhappy playing John, says he'll make more of these things if the demand is there. “As far as my legs can take me,” he says. “As far as the audience wants to go.”
He's been coming here since the early '90s. The Chateau was run-down and empty then—a seedier, pre-André Balazs version of itself. The faucets didn't always work. The carpets were dicey. “You didn't want to take your shoes off,” Reeves says.
It felt like anything could happen. Usually it did.
“You could have a conversation,” Reeves says. “You could have a tryst. You could fucking do drugs. You could hang out. For me, there's still that pulse here.”
He basically moved in for a while there. Could be found splashing in the pool with the likes of Sharon Stone or hiding in a corner “playing chess with his computer and smoking compulsively to fight stress,” depending which tabloid tall tale you bought.Now he lives in a house, not far from here, up in the Hills. He's owned it for about 12 years. Sometimes he sits up there and wonders if it's the house he's going to die in. It's not a preoccupation—he's just curious, if this is going to be it, this place in the Hills. “I didn't think about that,” he says, “when I was 40.” (...)
Today the real Keanu Reeves has that same patchy beard. That same curtain of hair falling into his eyes. He's wearing those same chunky Merrell hiking boots he was wearing pretty much regardless of context long before normcore made The New York Times. You have to look close at the gray flyaways in his eyebrows to remember what year it is.
He's 54 and getting over a cold. His cough sounds like somebody punching their way out of a paper grocery bag. He zips his shaggy black fleece up to the neck. But then a Chateau guy wheels over a heat lamp for Keanu. Another Chateau guy wheels over another heat lamp for the other side of the table. Then the sun comes out, as if it, too, wants to make sure Keanu is warm enough. The sun bounces off the tabletop and up into Keanu's face. It's a nice, low fill light.
Keanu orders a BLT and a Coca-Cola. Fries, not salad. When it comes, the BLT, it'll be on ciabatta bread. Keanu will find himself missing the crispness of toast. Keanu isn't sure a BLT shouldn't leave your soft palate ground up, a little. That a BLT shouldn't have consequences. Soft bread is for soft-bread sandwiches. “Peanut butter and jelly,” Keanu says. Then, more dreamily, like Homer Simpson in reverie: “Peanut butter and honey.”
In his new movie, Reeves again plays John Wick, widowed master assassin and warrior with a broken heart. The first John Wick was shot for $20 million, without real expectations, by Reeves's old Matrix stunt double Chad Stahelski and Stahelski's co-director, David Leitch, who had been longtime stunt coordinators and second-unit directors but had never directed a feature before. And even with Reeves attached, the first Wick was not exactly a hot property at first.
“You have this over-the-hill assassin whose wife dies of natural causes, gives him a puppy, some Russian punk kills his puppy, and he kills 84 people,” Stahelski says. “How many studios do you think said no to that picture? The answer is all of them.”
Stahelski spent years doubling Reeves on three Matrix movies and knew exactly what he was capable of. “I don't know anyone that puts more into the game, collaboratively, physically, intellectually,” he says. “I've never experienced anyone that could have survived [The Matrix]. It just took a different type of person. To be open to that. To allow yourself to be constantly soaking wet, sore, tired, beaten up, for years.” (...)
The Wick films have since become a $140 million franchise, something that no one, including the people involved with them, can quite believe. Starz is making a TV series set in the John Wick universe, further leveraging the series' elaborately detailed underworld-building.
Meanwhile there's John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, which finds John excommunicado—assassins' guild parlance for CANCELED—and on the run from a $14 million bounty after killing a guy in a no-killing zone. But the true stakes are the same as they've always been. John's psychic struggle is what Reeves loves about these ludicrous, gun-crazy movies.
“He's got this beautiful, tragic conundrum—these two selves,” says Reeves. “The John who was married, and John Wick, the assassin. John wants to be free. But the only way he knows how is through John Wick. And John Wick keeps fucking killing people and breaking rules. We're really watching a person fight for their life and their soul.”
Plus in this one he rides around the streets of New York on a fucking horse. Leaked images and videos from the day he shot this scene had half the Internet screaming at John Wick: Chapter 3 to just take their money. Not since Eadweard Muybridge filmed one in the 1870s has a moving picture of a guy riding a horse made people so excited. (...)
He's determined to act like a normal person, even though his mere presence creates an atmosphere of unreality, and it's helped him pull off the nearly impossible feat of remaining an enigmatic cult figure despite having been an A-list actor for decades.
You remember. He headlined the Matrix trilogy to the tune of something like $3 billion. Changed the way action movies looked and felt and moved, changed the culture. People come up to him, say it turned them on to cinema, made them question the power structures shaping their perceptions of reality, inspired them to go to grad school.
You'd think he'd have his choice of projects. But you'd be surprised. “Movie jail” is real. He's been there. He was excommunicado at Fox for a decade after turning down Speed 2 to go play Hamlet onstage in fucking Winnipeg: “I didn't work with [Fox] again until The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
He is not in jail now, as far as he knows. But he hasn't done a studio movie since 47 Ronin, another pricey bomb. Sometimes the fan base that remains so grateful for his continued existence does not remember to vote with its dollars. Reeves's name can still help secure financing for action movies of a certain size, and sometimes those turn into a John Wick. He's not unhappy playing John, says he'll make more of these things if the demand is there. “As far as my legs can take me,” he says. “As far as the audience wants to go.”
by Alex Pappademas GQ | Read more:
Image: Daniel Jackson
