The Keanu Reeves Project - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES (1993) - Julian Gitche

A few posts ago, I felt relieved to know that I would never have to watch another Gus Van Sant movie again in my life as I do not enjoy his work and basically hated "My Own Private Idaho."

Unfortunately, I did not realize ahead of time that I'd be subjected to yet another Van Sant piece of garbage known as the 1993 movie, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

I feel like I have a lot to say here so this post might be just a tad bit rambling.

First, I'd like to start off with the first two paragraphs of Roger Ebert's original review:

I haven't read the Tom Robbins novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.  Perhaps it would help if I had.  Perhaps the book would make the new movie of the sane name explicable if not enjoyable.  I cannot say. 

What I am sure of is that "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" is one of the more empty pointless, baffling films I can remember, and the experience of viewing it is an exercise in nothingness.

He went on to express how much he hated this movie and ended up giving it half a star, which frankly, might be a generous rating.

What really annoys me about this movie is the lies it tells in the opening credits.  I suppose it's an ensemble cast with Uma Thurman being the only person in more than three or four scenes.  But Keanu Reeves is 4th billed in this and he has maybe three lines in the whole film and appears in a whopping two scenes.  But the list of recognizable names in this is extensive:

Lorraine Bracco, Pat Morita, Angie Dickinson, John Hurt, Ed Begley Jr, Carol Kane, Sean Young, Crispin Glover, Roseanne Barr, Buck Henry (Liz Lemon's father in "30 Rock but probably most famous for writing "Get Smart"), Heather Graham, and Ken Kesey.  What the fuck is Ken Kesey doing in this movie?  For the uninformed, Ken Kesey wrote the excellent novel and screenplay for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and his appearance in this movie as Uma Thurman's father is baffling.

The opening credits end with a dedication to River Phoenix, who died in 1993.  If I was close to Gus Van Sant and he had dedicated this piece of garbage to my memory, I'd haunt the shit out of him for the rest of his life in return.  

If any actor should have been second billed for this 90 minute waste of time, it should have been River's sister, Rain Phoenix.  I didn't know anything about Rain Phoenix prior to this movie, including whether Rain is a man or a woman.  In fact, given how little most people were actually in this movie, I thought this guy was Rain Phoenix when he first appeared on screen:

NOT Rain Phoenix

It wasn't until the real Rain Phoenix showed up moments later that I realized my error because she looks, well, exactly like her other brother, Joaquin:

NOT Joaquin Phoenix with long hair

Okay, how about a short synopsis of whatever the fuck this movie was?

Uma Thurman plays Sissy, a young woman who was born with freakishly large thumbs, which her father jokes will help her become a great hitchhiker one day.  The joke is on him though because that's exactly what she becomes as she gets older - a homeless drifter who travels back and forth across the country using her enormous thumbs to hitch rides.  Uma Thurman wears comically large prosthetics which I didn't bother taking a screenshot of.  

Better movie if she had been murdered here

She travels to New York to meet up with John Hurt playing The Countess, an eccentric gay man who runs a douche factory and for whom she used to model in ads for.  Upon her arrival, the Countess offers to set her up on a date with a young artist friend of his, Julian Gitche played by our hero, Keanu Reeves, who is apparently supposed to be 100% native American and may or may not be wearing brownface:

Native American Keanu Reeves

Sissy meets up with Julian, who is taken aback by her beauty and immediately has an asthma attack and is rendered unable to speak.  A number of his friends rush to his side to help him into a taxi and take him home.  His friend group includes many of the notable actors mentioned above - Carol Kane, Ed Bagley and Crispin Glover.  There's a brief scene back at Julian's apartment where all of his friends get to know (and attempt to rape?) Sissy, and that's the last we see of any of them.  Just another pointless scene in a completely pointless movie and the only reason I'm mentioning it is because it includes the only three minutes Keanu is in.

And that's it for Keanu Reeves, despite his near top billing on this one.  He coughs out two lines, is dragged helplessly to a taxi, and then he's gone forever from this movie.  And yet I had to endure another 70 minutes.

From there, this movie meanders with no real purpose until its conclusion.  Sissy winds up at a ranch owned by The Countess, which is run by "The Cowgirls" and their leader Bonanza Jellybean played by Rain Phoenix.  I suppose with a name like that you'd think she'd be fun or interesting, but she's really not and much like everyone else, adds nothing to this.

The Cowgirls eventually stage a violent takeover of the ranch and start getting all the whooping cranes in the United States to stop migrating and instead live on the ranch by feeding them peyote.  This eventually draws the attention of the president who sends in the army to free the cranes, or something.  Also, Pat Morita, known as "The Chink" lives on the hill next to the ranch and is supposed to be some sort of wise prophet/mystic who advises Bonanza and Sissy, or something like that.  Once again, pointless, although there is an implied sexual relationship between him and Sissy and him and Bonanza which is...weird.  

WAX OFF

The movie ends after a standoff with the army in which Bonanza is shot and killed.  Sissy leaves the ranch and gets back on the road, and nobody could give a shit including me.

If my short synopsis sounds shitty or lacking in information it's because this movie is an utter piece of trash with no direction and no point.  I read that after its initial screening and subsequent boos it received in theaters, it was shelved and heavily re-edited for a rerelease.  I can only imagine how bad the original was because this was a real slog to get through.  At least it clocked in at a cool 90 minutes and change.

I can't say I'm too surprised that I hated this as it is now the fourth or fifth Gus Van Sant movie I've endured and utterly hated, but at least this time I'm not alone, which I'll get into briefly below.

Overall, the movie has the tone of a John Waters production minus any of the heart or talent that the limited number of his films I've seen usually have.  I hated every single minute of this, including the three that Keanu was in.

A few additional notes on "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues": 

One fun thing from this project is that I am starting to recognize other actors who have randomly popped up in some of these early films.  For instance, this is the second appearance we've seen of Pat Morita (also in the made for TV piece of trash "Babes in Toyland"), the second appearance of Heather Graham who has one line in this (previously in "I Love You to Death"), the second appearance of Uma Thurman (previously in "Dangerous Liasons"), and the second appearance of two actors who I assume are Gus Van Sant favorites - Susan's mother from Seinfeld and the weird German guy from "My Own Private Idaho."  I'm sure all of these people regret their decision to appear in "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

*This movie marks the third Phoenix sibling that Keanu Reeves has appeared in a movie with - the previous two of course being River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho," and Joaquin Phoenix in "Parenthood."  I'm not sure if there are any other Phoenix siblings but after seeing Rain in this one and knowing that River is dead by this point, I really hope not.

*This was based on the novel of the same name, which was apparently pretty well regarded.  After seeing this movie, I can say conclusively that I have no interest in reading the book.

*This movie features the single worst performance by any actor in any movie I've watched for this project so far (name unknown).  This guy - 

The worst performance of 1993 goes to this guy

I would almost even recommend watching this movie just for this scene of an emergency room doctor who gives the news that the Countess is not going to wind up a vegetable after being punched in the face by Sissy.  I couldn't even find his credit on the IMDB page so I'm just going to go ahead and assume he is somehow related to Gus Van Sant because this was one of the worst on screen performances I can remember in recent memory that you just sort of have to see for yourself.

BEST PART: There is literally nothing good about this movie.

WORST PART: Take your pick: writing, acting, bad prosthetics, useless cameos, and on and on and on.

Box Office Mojo Information: $1.7 million ($3.7 million inflation adjusted) on a $8 million budget.  BOMB.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 19% Critics, 28% Audience - unlike the previous Gus Van Sant movie which had some critical acclaim despite my feelings to the contrary, it seems like nobody was a fan of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."  Probably because it was fucking terrible.

IMDB: 4.4 - still too high.

My Movie Rating: 3/10.  This was just a pointless, meandering, aimless waste of time.  The only reason I'm not giving it a lower rating is because 1s and 2s really are reserved for movies that get everything wrong.  At least Gus Van Sant is an actual filmmaker (even if I don't like his movies) with a cinematographer, an editor, and a sound guy.

Keanu Rating: 3/10.  It's a little hard to give him a rating because he really only has two lines in this movie, but even the two lines he gives are done pretty shittily.  Frankly, I'm upset that I had to watch this entire movie to learn that bit of information, otherwise I would have skipped it.  

Up next: the 1993 movie, "Little Buddha"  I've never seen this but I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll at least find it entertaining if not good.  And I'm pretty sure Keanu has more than two lines in it.  

The Keanu Reeves Project - Much Ado About Nothing

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (1993) - Don John

Ok, it took nearly twenty blog posts in this journey but I finally did it, I cheated.

Look, I've sat through a wide range of Keanu Reeves movies so far.  Some of them were new to me and downright mediocre to terrible like "My Own Private Idaho," and "The Prince of Pennsylvania."  Others were new to me and relatively enjoyable if not "good" like "The Night Before" and "Permanent Record."  And then of course there is the third category of movies I've seen dozens if not more times like "Point Break," and both "Bill and Ted" movies.  My emotions have ranged all the way from completely bored to utterly excited.

But if there's one thing I just cannot stand, other than the sound of children singing, it's the works of William Shakespeare. 

I fucking hate Shakespeare.

Fuck you

My hatred for all things Shakespeare started in 1999 during my final semester of high school.  I was never a great student and spent the majority of high school cruising through as best as I can, never particularly challenging myself in nearly anything because, you know, laziness.  I did graduate high school with a 3.5 average but that was mainly due to the fact that I never took the hardest classes available to me because that would have probably required studying and or paying attention in class which greatly interfered with my video games and not talking talking to girls habits.  

It's for this reason that I opted for mainly honor's classes rather than anything with the letters "AP" in front of them, which is how I found myself in my senior year of high school reading Hamlet instead of stuff by Chaucer or whatever the fuck they were doing over in AP English.  

I had two different English teachers in my senior year.  My teacher in the fall was an older man whose name I cannot remember, but he was approaching retirement and had all but given up on teaching, which was basically perfect for a student like me.  I feel like we did a lot more movie watching in his class than actual reading or discussing of literature and the only thing I can really remember of the fall semester was reading and then watching "The Natural," which from what I remember was a pretty decent book and not a bad Robert Redford movie.

However, come fall I wound up in the classroom of a different teacher, the notorious Dr. Viccellio, or Dr. Vick for short.  Dr. Vick had gotten her PhD in English from somewhere or another. and was downright fanatical about Shakespeare.

I don't know what the curriculum was actually supposed to be back in the spring of 1999 for seniors because the only thing Dr. Vick's classes were doing was reading Hamlet.  From what I remember, I would talk to my friends in other classes who had moved on to other books while Dr. Vick's three honor's English classes did nothing but this fucking play for an entire semester.

We would literally dissect every single fucking line from that motherfucking play.  We would read it, aloud, every day for three months, never getting through more than a handful of pages at a time.  

What does Shakespeare mean when he writes, "Where hath thine gone, Horatio?"

Uh, bitch, he means "where did you go Horatio?"

It was interminable.  And whenever a question came around to me, my answers were never good enough for her.  

"No, Jordan, what is Shakespeare really saying here?"

I.  DON'T.  CARE.  

Look, I think Dr. Vick was a perfectly capable teacher and I'm sure she was far less obnoxious in her other classes.  She even taught a few AP classes that some of my friends were in, and somehow they managed to breeze through Hamlet over the course of a few weeks, so clearly Dr. Vick wasn't some sort of incompetent maniac, but for whatever reason she shoved this goddamn play down our throats so far that I was going home every day ready to take a gigantic Shakespearean shit.  

Once we were done reading that fucking play we split into groups and all had to perform scenes from it.  

With each passing day I hated Hamlet and in turn Shakespeare more and more.  By the time I had finally graduated and escaped 12th grade English it was an inevitability that I wanted nothing to do with William Shakespeare ever again.

Even this guy isn't redeeming Shakespeare for me

So, when the film version of "Much Ado About Nothing," showed up on Keanu Reeves filmography as my next film I was....unhappy.  Not unhappy in the way that I felt going into "My Own Private Idaho" because of my dislike of Gus Van Sant, but a different kind of unhappy.  12 grade English unhappy.

So it is with my great disappointment that I have to announce that I did not make it all the way through this movie.  I tried.  I really did.  

The movie itself is shot well and features an absolutely star studded cast including Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson, Keanu Reeves and a very young Kate Beckinsale among others.  But, Shakespearean english makes my ears bleed.  I was doing my best to follow along with the plot and try to give a shit if only for the sake of this project.  But I couldn't do it.  Once I realized how unimportant Keanu Reeves was in this movie as some sort of emo villain I decided to just turn it off and never come back to it.  This was somewhere around the 45 minute mark of about a 100 minute long movie, so I made it just about halfway through.

I'm sorry.  I know all three of the people who read this blog had higher hopes for me.  I mean, I even sat through the two and a half hour long TV movie "Babes in Toyland," and I wanted to throw myself out the window for the entire duration of that one and yet, I just can't do Shakespeare.  It's where I draw the line.  

And with that, I have failed in this project, at least to some degree.  I hope this is the only movie I don't end up making it through because the point of this project is to watch everything he's in minus voiceovers and brief cameos.  I'm sorry.

Box Office Mojo Information: $36 million on a $8 million budget.   70th highest grossest movie of 1993.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Critics, 86% Audience.  As mentioned above, I'm sure if you don't hate Shakespeare in the way I do, this is a perfectly fine film.  That said, fuck William Shakespeare.  

IMDB: 7.3

My Movie Rating: N/A.  Not fair for me to rank a movie I couldn't finish.  On its merits, I'm sure it is a perfectly fine film, but my judgment is far too clouded to give it a rating.

Keanu Rating: N/A.  Part of me wants to give him a 1 but that's not really fair either.

Up next: the 1993 movie, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."  Oh, well fuck me, right?  This is another Gus Van Sant movie?  I thought I was done with this guy!  I'll get through it, I promise.  

The Keanu Reeves Project - Bram Stoker's Dracula

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992) - Jonathan Harker

Long before "Twilight," "Let the Right One In," "What We Do In The Shadows," and countless other vampire stories, there was the 1897 novel, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and it only took almost 100 years for it to become the latest movie I watched for the Keanu Reeves Project.

Given that I'd never seen this movie and all I really knew about it going in was that Keanu Reeves is supposed to give a horrendous performance, I had little to no expectations and boy was I not disappointed.  

We as a society went through a prolonged vampire craze in the mid to late 00's which really, never ended but certainly hit a peak somewhere between five to seven years ago.  There were tons of vampire movies during this period: the Twilight Saga," The Underworld series," Dark Shadows," "30 Days of Night," "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," and so, so many more.  There were enough of these films that even an incredibly shitty vampire spoof movie, "Vampires Suck," was released in 2010 and while I've never seen it, I can pretty much guarantee that this movie, indeed, sucks.

Not to get too off track here, but I blame the Waynes Brothers for the never-ending torrent of abysmal spoof movies that were released around 2005 - 2012.  "Scary Movie" was far too funny for its own good and in my opinion is the reason that we were later subjected to things like "Disaster Movie," "Meet the Spartans," and "Epic Movie."  If you've seen any of these films and find them funny you should do us all a favor and jump off your favorite bridge.

But I digress.

There have been, of course, plenty of "Dracula" adaptations over the years, but the 1992 movie, "Bram Stoker's Dracula," is one of the only ones to truly stay the course of the novel, or at least from the ten minutes of research I did prior to writing this.

And after sitting through the nearly two and a half hours of this movie, it's a bit of no surprise that many of the adaptations strayed off script.  This movie is just really weird.  And boring.  

The story meanders a bit but the general gist is that a barrister had visited Dracula and returned to London completely crazy and was confined to an insane asylum.  In the opening minutes of the movie (after a flashback to the 1400s where we meet a young Dracula and his wife), the replacement barrister Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is sent to Transylvania to secure a land deal with the very odd Dracula.  Upon his arrival, Dracula notices from a photograph that Harker's very lovely fiance Mina (Wynona Ryder) is the spitting image of his long-dead wife.

"I uh...love what you've done with the place."

Rather than secure the land deal, which by the way I still don't understand, Dracula instead imprisons Harker in his castle and sets off to find and seduce Mina so he can give her eternal life and stay with her forever.  Or something.

To be honest, I kept getting lost in the incredibly strange imagery and odd decisions that Francis Ford Coppola took time and time again in this movie.  Wait, Francis Ford Coppola?  Yes, that's right.  Hard to believe that the same person who made "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" also directed "Bram Stoker's Dracula."  

Eventually, Dracula seduces Mina's friend Lucy while transformed as a wolfman and infects her with his vampire blood.  I guess this is such a turn-on to Mina that she also falls in love with Dracula and decides to let him turn her into a vampire too.  Or something.  I really had a hard time following what was going on for many parts of this movie.

Just a little wolf on woman bestiality

The strongest performance, by far, is given by Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing who had at least a handful of funny moments whether intentional or not.  After Lucy is infected and starts to go completely mad, Van Helsing arrives on the spot to diagnose her as infected with vampire blood and despite not being able to save her life, does do a pretty good job at killing the undead version of her.

You're not supposed to see me before the wedding!

In the end, Van Helsing and his determined group of followers track Dracula down and nearly kill him before Mina finishes him off.

I...did not like this movie although I definitely learned a lot about the classic version of Dracula that I didn't know before.  For instance, Dracula can basically turn into any form he wants - young Dracula, a pack of rats, green mist, a terrifying demon.  There are basically no bounds to what he can be.  Maybe this will give me a better appreciation for the next episode of "What We Do in the Shadows," which unlike this movie, is spectacular in every way possible.

Just a few other quick thoughts before wrapping this up:

*I came into this expecting a terrible performance by Keanu Reeves and while he's certainly not good in this, he's far less worse than I was expecting.  

*Aside from Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman is pretty fucking great in this movie and is genuinely terrifying.  He's another actor I wouldn't mind doing a full filmography watch when I'm done with this one.  I don't think I actually know what Gary Oldman looks like in real life because I think he takes his movie roles based on how absolutely insane makeup artists often make him look:

Fuckable

Totally fuckable

Super fuckable

So yeah, that's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," a movie I'll never watch again and forget about entirely by tomorrow.

BEST PART: Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman are both pretty good in this, particularly Hopkins.  He adds some pretty fun comedic parts to an otherwise dreary movie.

WORST PART: Pacing?  Keanu's accent?

Box Office Mojo Information: $216 million on a $40 million budget.  Holy shit, I'd call that a major box office success, the 12th highest grossing movie of 1992.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 71% Critics, 79% Audience - these both seem entirely too high to me.  

IMDB: 7.4

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  Was this a horror movie?  I really don't know, but it was far more weird than scary.  Aside by the really outstanding performances by Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman, this is just not a good movie.  

Keanu Rating: 5/10.  Look, he's not good in this but I also think my expectations of him were so unbelievable low that he had nowhere to go but up for me.  

Up next: the 1992 movie, "Much Ado About Nothing."  I hate Shakespeare and so I'm going to go ahead and guess that I'm not going to enjoy this.  

The Keanu Reeves Project: My Own Private Idaho

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991) - Scott Favor

Welcome back to the Keanu Reeves project, an on-going movie watching project where I'm sitting down and watching Keanu Reeves' entire filmography from start to finish.  Why am I doing this?

Well, everything is closed due to COVID19, and even though it's not like I'm frequently out partying on the town, I've found myself with more free time than normal.  Also, I love Keanu Reeves, which you can read more about in my previous posts and despite my long-time fandom that dates back to 1989, he has quite an extensive filmography full of movies I've never actually seen.

So, even though I've got a Google Sheet with over 100 movies I plan on watching one day, I've resigned myself to watching (and rewatching) approximately 80 movies that in some way, shape, or form feature Keanu Reeves.  This can lead to some interesting and new experiences of movies I've never heard of, like my first ever viewing of Permanent Record, and it can also lead me down roads I've chosen not to take before for any given reason, like disliking the filmmaker in this post about "My Own Private Idaho," Gus Van Sant.

I've only seen a handful of Gus Van Sant films and now that I've watched "My Own Private Idaho" I think I can safely say that I don't need to see anymore.  I watched "Good Will Hunting" against my will as an assignment for a college "class" I had to take my freshman year which probably colored my views on the movie and while I barely remember it, I don't need to see it ever again.  

That summer, while working at a video store (that's a thing that used to exist and one of the best jobs I ever had), my friend Russell and I watched an earlier Van Sant movie called "Drugstore Cowboy," another movie that I've completely forgotten so it clearly left no mark on me.  And for some reason, I also once rented "Elephant," which is less of a movie and more of an art piece about the Columbine shooting.  I am appalled by its 73% Rotten Tomatoes score.  

Based on this picture, you'd think this movie might be interesting or even good.  You'd be wrong.

So it was with a minor sense of dread that I sat down and watched the 1991 movie, "My Own Private Idaho," starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix as a pair of street hustlers willing to have sex with just about anyone if the price is right.  

Very loosely based on the Shakespeare play "Henry IV," the movie follows the travels of Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves) as they go between Idaho, Portland, Seattle, and even Rome as they search for Mike's long-lost mother.

Getting some grub after a night spent running a train on Susan's mother from Seinfeld.  No really, that happens in the first 10 minutes.

Look, I'm not an arthouse cinema guy.  I can appreciate a good artsy movie but there's a reason I hated "Elephant" and a reason why I'll never watch the Brad Pitt movie, "The Tree of Life," even though Brad Pitt is my second favorite actor after Keanu.  This shit is just not for me.

I just felt...bored for a good chunk of "Idaho."  It was hard finding any sympathy for the two main characters, particularly Keanu as we find out he's a trust fund baby who hangs around all of these street people, killing time until he turns 21 and inherits a big chunk of money.  Mike, at least, suffers from narcolepsy which often puts him in very dangerous positions particularly as he makes money by having sex with random men he meets on the street for money.  He's also in love with Scott even though Scott claims to really only be gay for pay, which again, makes little to no sense to me since when we meet him he's about a week away from becoming rich.

Not even gonna touch this one.

The pair spend most of the movie aimlessly wandering around from city to city, interacting with all of the street rats they seem to know, including Bob, an older, wiser (?) street person who seemingly taught the two of them the ropes when they got started.  I couldn't help but be distracted both by the fact that Bob looked way too much like Tommy Wiseau as well as the fact that the movie often and for no seemingly clear reason continuously jumped back and forth from regular language to Shakespeare-esque.

The most entertaining street rat

There are just too many odd choices in this movie for me to appreciate it.  For example, there are two sex scenes that are shot in a montage of stills, except they're not actually stills as you can see the actors breathing or blinking.  It reminded me far too much of Arrested Development and while it might have worked for some viewers, I absolutely hated it.

Imagine this, except with less clothes and having sex with other men and women

A few other observations just to note - 

Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is in several scenes as Bob's buddy and another street person.  He's actually pretty good and oddly, this makes the second movie of the last three that had a member of RHCP in it (as you'll recall, Anthony Kiedis had a small role in "Point Break").  Just something to keep in mind should you find yourself in a rousing game of Keanu Reeves Trivia.  It's still TBD if any other members show up in later films but I could definitely see Dave Navarro fitting in perfectly in Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Also, both Keanu and Will Ferrell were in the "Between Two Ferns" movie and as we all know, Will Ferrell and Chad Smith are the same person.

Come on McFly, what are you, chicken?

This is the first film that featured Keanu on a full-on motorcycle.  He rides around in a fancy scooter a bunch in the very forgettable "Prince of Pennsylvania" but unless I missed something, this was the first true motorcycle on film for him.  Very exciting.

Way more fun in John Wick 3

Toward the back half of the movie Scott and Mike head to Rome in search of Mike's mother (they never find her).  This really annoyed me - Scott clearly comes from money so it wouldn't surprise me for him to have a passport and the ability to travel.  But Mike has been a street person for what is implied to have been at least a few years, he has no fixed address and no money.  How'd this dude get a passport on short notice?  Plus they travel from Seattle to Rome with no luggage.  Even pre-9/11 that's gotta raise some red flags for someone, right?

Thankfully, this is the last Gus Van Sant movie I'm ever going to watch.

BEST PART: Good enough performances by Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix.

WORST PART: How fucking boring this is.  All of the unnecessary Shakesperian dialogue.  

Box Office Mojo Information: $6.4 million/$13.8 million inflation adjusted, 128th highest grossing movie of 1991 on a $2.5 million budget.

Rotten Tomatoes: 81% Critics, 80% Audience - honestly, this doesn't particularly surprise me.  Maybe it's not a bad movie, but it's just not for me.

IMDB: 7.1

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  I was mostly just bored for long stretches of this and constantly taken out of it every time they fell into and subsequently abandoned the Shakespearean dialogue.  The more artsy parts of the movie, like the dream sequences Mike's character has when he has a narcolepsy spell and the bizarre sex scenes just didn't do it for me.  

Keanu Rating: 6/10.  Keanu is totally fine in this but River Phoenix gives a much stronger overall performance.  As many of us know, Keanu was very good friends with River Phoenix and even drove across the country to hand deliver this script.  Just one of the several tragedies that Keanu Reeves has been through in his life.  

Up next: Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Oh boy.  I've never seen this one either but this is one of the movies used by Keanu haters as evidence of what a "bad" actor he is.  Hoping this is so bad it's good!

The Keanu Reeves Project - Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey

BILL AND TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY (1991) - "Ted" Theodore Logan

Well it looks like I've been slacking a little bit on the project here but I'm back on the case.

If you had not seen, the first piece of tragic news was announced last week when it was announced that John Wick 4 is being delayed a full calendar year due to coronavirus complications.  While I cannot say that this is unexpected it is extremely disappointing to say the least.  I mean, I understand that you can't exactly film a movie right now.  I think even John Wick would find it difficult to kill a bunch of dudes with pencils and other household items if he had to socially distance.

I do wonder what John Wick would do under a social distancing scenario though.  Maybe take his dog on some long country drives.  Maybe target practice.  Who knows.

With that said, as of right now, the very long awaited "Bill and Ted Face the Music," the third (and final?) installment in the Bill and Ted series is still slated for release in late August.  The problem of course, is that I don't know if movie theaters are going to be operational and how summer movies are actually going to come out.  I certainly was and still am planning on seeing this on opening day but now I'm really just hoping they do a digital release so I can watch from the comfort of my couch where it's a lot less likely I could catch a potentially lethal disease.

Stop, I can only get so erect

I could swear that "Face the Music" spent 15 years in pre-production as I've been hearing rumors about this movie for what certainly feels like forever and I couldn't even believe my ears when Keanu and Alex Winter released an announcement just about a year go.

I'm going into this one with exactly zero expectations.  I am assuming the movie will be little more than fan service and that's just fine with me.  I'm going to do everything I can to avoid reading or watching anything about the movie so I can continue to temper expectations and go in watching with a totally clean slate.  

So anyway, I watched Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey the other night for the 150th or 200th time and what can I say, it's still completely wonderful.  It's actually a bit surprising to me that they even made a sequel.  The first movie was certainly a success but it's not like it was a mega-hit movie.  But in 1991, there I was with my best friend Michelle whose mother was nice enough to take us to see it in the theater despite having absolutely no interest in it herself I'm sure.

Much like "Excellent Adventure," I spent countless hours from 1991-1998 rewatching "Bogus Journey."  It's not quite as good as the first movie but still has plenty of good laughs, and every time Bill, Ted, and Death mug a group of people and recite song lyrics to God while trying to get into heaven I still get a good laugh.

From 8th - 10th grade I must have watched "Bogus Journey" with my friend Vincent at least 50 times and we reached a point where we could recite the full movie by heart, much to the annoyance of our other friends.

I really only have two reasons to nitpick the movie and why it comes in as just a slightly worse movie than "Excellent Adventure":

I truly hate the alien character they meet in heaven, Station.  Station is just this really ugly, greasy looking creature that is supposedly the smartest living being in the universe, and while they/he/it does create "Good Robot Us-es" I would think it would be able to add some more value in general.  Also, Death scoffs and Bill and Ted for assuming that the smartest beings in the universe are humans yet we don't see any other aliens walking around heaven.  I just hate this part of the movie.

You're in the wrong movie, alien dudes.

I've also never been a fan of the childhood flashback sequences in hell.  The Easter Bunny and Scary Grandmother (also played by Alex Winter) always creeped me out more than they made me laugh.  Gotta love the hell version of Colonel Oats from the Alaskan Military Academy though, particularly when he demands that they "get down and give me....infinity" leading to the question, "I wonder if he'll let us do them girly style."

But remove these two aspects and the movie is still, well, excellent.  William Sadler as Death is a goddamn revelation and the sequence of him battling Bill and Ted in various board games is as funny in 2020 as it was in 1991.

What can I say, I fucking love this movie.

BEST PART: William Sadler as Death is so goddamn good in this movie, so I'm going with the scene where Bill and Ted are playing against him at various board games.  Sure, it's a spoof of an older movie but it's just so funny.

WORST PART: Okay, this movie isn't perfect.  I've always hated the part in hell where they relive their biggest fears, Bill seeing his grandmother and Ted's encounter with the Easter Bunny.

Box Office Mojo Information: $38 Million/$81 Million inflation adjusted, 33rd highest grossing movie of 1991 on a $20 million budget.

Rotten Tomatoes: 54% Critics, 56% Audience - this is a notable drop from the previous film, further proving that everyone is fucking stupid.

IMDB: 6.3 

My Movie Rating: 9/10.  Just slightly worse than Excellent Adventure for the reasons noted above.  Other than that, this is still a movie I'll probably watch at least 50 more times in my life if I don't die soon from COVID19.

Keanu Rating: 10/10.  Yeah, he's still perfect as Ted.

Up next: My Own Private Idaho - I've never seen it but I've got low expectations because I don't like anything that I've seen that's associated with Gus Van Sant.  

The Keanu Reeves Project - Point Break

POINT BREAK (1991) - Johnny Utah

In just my last post about "Tune in Tomorrow...", I referred to movies lost to time.  Well, if "Tune in Tomorrow..." was lost to time, then the 1991 movie "Providence" is a full on collective memory loss.  "Providence" was supposed to be my next entry in the Keanu Reeves project but it's as close to never existing as is possible in the internet age.

"Providence" is on Keanu Reeves IMDB filmography although then things get a little bit weird.

First, it isn't available to watch anywhere.  Forget mainstream services - they've never heard of it and the closest I found was the 1999 teen comedy "Outside Providence" starring a guy named Tommy Bone who clearly didn't see his calling in the adult film industry.  I even checked a pirate site or two and the closest thing I found was horny divorcees looking to meet up, even in this time of COVID19!

A quick Google search comes up with very spurious results, there are almost zero still images from the movie and the only video available on Youtube that has about the same quality as the Zapruder film:

By the way, this was uploaded by some weird Russian account, and the only description of it is this:

Фильм "Провиденс" с 1991 года значится в фильмографии Киану Ривза, но этот фильм практически никто не видел. Есть только этот ролик, где мы можем минуту наблюдать за Эриком, персонажем, которого играет К. Ривз.

Now, I don't know what that translates to, but I'm going to take a guess:

Providence, 1991.  Hahahaha, stupid Americans, don't you know that this movie has been smuggled off to Soviet Russia?  You will never know the glory of the movie Providence!

There are only a handful of comments in here and most of them are Russian except for one English one that says if this was a Canadian movie then it might be available in libraries, in Canada I assume.

And while that's possible, it seems odd to me for this to be a Canadian movie.  Keanu Reeves might not have been a household name or a megastar in 1991 but he was a known quantity at the time.  He'd come off roles in some major movies by then including Parenthood, which grossed about $100 million dollars and his starring performance in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure which was the 31st highest grossing movie in 1989.  My point is that I would find it hard to believe that Keanu Reeves would still be making low budget Canadian movies by the time 1990 rolled around.  I suppose that Providence theoretically could have been filmed in 1985 or 1986 as a Canadian film and not released until 1991 but why would you shelve a low-budget CBC movie for five or six years?  Maybe because now Keanu Reeves is a burgeoning movie star and you want to put your movie out?  I suppose that could be true except even in the grainy footage pasted above Keanu is looking a little older.

The IMDB page is extremely limited on information with a grand total of zero user reviews and a 5.5 score of 137 viewers.  I mean, there's not even a single insane Keanu Reeves fan trolling IMDB saying they saw this movie!  Amazon has never heard of it, you can completely forget any of the mainstream streaming services.

As I fell down my rabbit hole I tried to find some answer to the question, "does this movie actually exist?"  I even got on Ebay and my top hit for "Providence 1991" was this:

And these worthless Providene Friars cards could be yours for the low, low price of $2.95

This movie has fucking vanished.  As far as I can tell, 137 people either saw this movie or pretended to see this movie and then it disappeared forever.  That's weird, right?

Without launching a full scale investigation and calling in the FBI on this one, I decided it was time to give up.  For whatever reason, someone very powerful out there wants us to forget this movie ever existed as it has been scrubbed from existence, if it ever existed at all.  But that's okay, because speaking of the FBI, giving up on "Providence" led me to a movie I've been very excited to watch again as part of this series of blog posts that at most, four people will ever read - the 1991 action classic and one of the best Keanu movies, if not all movies, of all time: Point Break!

Where do I even begin?  This is a movie I've seen so many times and could potentially be only third to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey in my number of rewatches.  Conservatively speaking, I've probably seen Point Break between 50-75 times.

Look, don't judge me.  Here's just a small list of all the awesome aspects of Point Break:

Keanu Reeves!
Skydiving!
Surfing!
Bank Robberies!
Patrick Swayze!
The wisdom of Bodhi!
Gary Busey!
The Ex-Presidents!
I AM AN FBI AGENT!

"Point Break" has to be one of the top five or ten movies from the 90's and one of the best 50 movies of all time.  I was shocked and appalled when they attempted to remake it several years ago and apparently turned it into some sort of stupid extreme sports movie instead of just allowing perfection to stand alone forever.  Unfortunately, that remake has not been vanished but I guess if we're lucky then in 30 years nobody will have ever heard of that before either.

I'm not sure what it is about "Point Break" that makes it so goddamn special.  First, you've got Patrick Swayze coming off of two mammoth performances.  First for "Ghost," a movie that I had an odd fascination with as a child and was the top grossing film in 1990. But more importantly for the 1989 ass-kicking movie "Road House," which while not as big a blockbuster as "Ghost" has probably had a bigger impact on society as a whole.  I mean, Swayze rips a dude's throat out in this movie and it is fucking awesome.

"I used to fuck guys like you in prison." - That is an ACTUAL LINE from this movie!

Next, you've got Gary Fucking Busey in one of his first roles after a life-threatening motorcycle accident that left him the maniac that he is today.  Busey took his newfound maniac energy and turned it into one of his best roles of his career hardened FBI Agent Pappas (first name?  last name?  We'll never know).  Busey is so over-the-top and hilarious in Point Break that no matter how many times I've seen it I still get a chuckle at some of his mannerisms and general performance in this.

Pile in a ridiculous FBI Director in John C. McGinley, Lori Petty and a splash of Red Hot Chili Peppers' front man Anthony Kiedis and you've got one great fucking early 90's action movie.

What I got I gotta give it to your moma

But then, of course, you have Keanu Reeves as Johnny Utah, one of the best movie names of all time.  I'm just glad they didn't go with their second choice - Billy Mississippi.  Would have changes his whole character.

I know I've already said it in previous posts, but Keanu Reeves is 100% fucking perfect for this roles.  He exudes Johnny Utah.  He is Johnny Utah.

"Point Break" also holds a bit of a special place in my heart as it was one of my closest friend's favorite movies and something we used to quote together ad nauseam.  We even attended an absolutely amazing live performance by a touring show called "Point Break Live!" in DC about five years ago and I hope and pray they eventually start touring again one day as it's one of the funniest, most brilliant pieces of theater you could ever hope to see.

There's a picture somewhere of me on the Keanu face, where I truly belong.  But this one is just as good.

Look, I'm not going to do a synopsis of this one, but I will tell you that not only did I watch it again last night for the 60th or 70th time, but I also went through and watched all of the special features and a 45 minute documentary about the movie that mainly features a couple of dudes from Bodhi's gang that nobody has heard of and never acted again.

What I will do is tell you that "Point Break" is fucking awesome and if you've never seen it and you're somehow reading this blog post, cancel your plans for the rest of the day and go watch this movie.  I truly believe that this one holds up and is certainly one of my favorites.

BEST PART: Impossible to choose just one, this movie is spectacular.  If I had to choose, I'll just say the chase scene where Keanu is after Swayze through the streets of LA.  The way it is shot is excellent.

WORST PART: N/A.

Box Office Mojo information: $43 Million Domestic, $83 Million Worldwide (26th highest grossing movie of 1991 on a $24 Million budget)

Rotten Tomatoes: 69% Critics, 79% Audience

IMDB: 7.3

My Movie Rating: 10/10.  What, you don't think that I think this is a perfect movie?  

Keanu Rating: 9/10.  I'm only taking a point away for some ticky tack shit, like his hilarious delivery of the "I am an FBI agent" line but he's basically amazing as Johnny Utah.  And if anyone can find this shirt anywhere and send it to me, that'd be great because I used to have one but literally wore it out.

Please send me this shirt

Up next:  The 1991 movie follow-up to Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.  I could watch it or I could recite it for you by heart.

The Keanu Reeves Project: Tune in Tomorrow...

TUNE IN TOMORROW....(1990)- Martin

For whatever reason, some movies get lost to time.  They come out, a handful of people see them, and then society as a whole forgets they ever existed.  They never air on any channel on television, nobody ever talks about them and you can't even find them to stream on literally any service.  Tune in Tomorrow, starring Peter Falk, Keanu Reeves and Barbara Hershey is one of these movies.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to track down Tune in Tomorrow, a movie that I'm sure you and nobody you know has ever even heard of, before eventually finding it uploaded in seven parts on Youtube.  I suppose I should have looked there first.

The movie takes place in the early 1950's, where Peter Falk plays Pedro Carmichael, a writer of serialized radio programs with a penchant for dressing in costumes and making jokes at the expense of....Albanians?  Yes, Albanians.

Somehow, not a horror movie.

Keanu Reeves plays Martin, an up-and-coming radio newsman, who also happens to fall in love with his 36 year old aunt Julia (NOT blood related we come to learn).  After burning bridges at a radio station in Detroit by apparently pissing off the wrong group of Alaskans, Pedro shows up in New Orleans ready to start his new radio show.

The movie features a lot of cuts to a story within a story as Pedro's radio program is acted out by a slew of other actors including 80's TV icon John Larroquette.  We come to learn that Pedro's stories are often inspired by if not completely stolen from his real life interactions, as we see him constantly spying on Martin and using his interactions with Julia to incorporate them into his radio show.

There is a significant plot hole here worth mentioning, in that Pedro's radio program features on a well-to-do southern family where a young man falls in love with and wants to marry his...sister.  The incest story line is supposed to be borrowed from Martin's own relationship with his Aunt Julia, except Pedro doesn't even learn of their relationship until after he's already starting writing the incest storyline into his own show.  Why so much incest?  I don't know.  Thankfully, towards the end of the movie we discover that the fictional brother and sister aren't even related but by this point of Tune in Tomorrow, who could really care.

I was once berated at a Halloween party for wearing the same outfit but when Peter Falk does it it's all gravy, baby

There are countless jokes at the expense of Albanians so eventually, all the Albanians in New Orleans start getting pissed off and start to picket the radio station, eventually setting it on fire towards the close of the movie.

None of this really matters of course, as Pedro plans on skipping town again.  Apparently he doesn't really have anything against Albanians, or Alaskans for that matter, he just likes to rile up trouble in whatever city he happens to be working.  It's all pretty stupid.

50's Keanu

I guess this movie is supposed to be a comedy based on a handful of IMDB reviews I read but the only thing I found funny was Keanu's supposed Cajun accent.  More on this momentarily.

Overall, I think there's a reason this movie has been forgotten by time.  The only thing that might be considered notable about this movie was the opening credits as they are done in a way I've never seen before.  In keeping with the radio show motif, the opening credits are read aloud by a radio performer, it took me a second to realize this until I literally heard a voice saying that the movie co-stars Keanu Reeves and Barbara Hershey.  I don't know if it worked or not as gag but it was certainly unique in its execution.

BEST PART: I mean, this isn't a good movie, so even though it was super weird, I'm going to go with the weird way they did the opening credits.

WORST PART: Peter Falk dressed up as a French maid.  This is what nightmares are made of.

Box Office Mojo information: $1.8 Million (169th movie of 1990 on an 11 million dollar budget - ouch

Rotten Tomatoes: 50% Critics, 52% Audience

IMDB: 6.2

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  Other than those weird opening credits, there's literally no reason to watch this one unless you're a huge Peter Falk fan and like seeing him act like a goof.  

Keanu Rating: 3/10.  I'm just going to get this out of the way now because it's going to come up again in at least two future movies I can think of: Keanu should not be asked to do accent work.  In Tune in Tomorrow his cajun accent comes and goes scene to scene and when it's on it's....weird.  I am not looking forward to a repeat of this when I get to The Devil's Advocate, a movie I'm already dreading having to rewatch.  And though I've not seen it before, I think his English accent in Bram Stoker's Dracular is notorious for its dreadfulness.  All that said, he did have good on-screen chemistry with Barbara Hershey as Aunt Julia but even the die-hardest of Keanu Reeves can skip this movie.  

Up next:  The 1991 movie Providence.  Nope, never heard of this one either.