Keanu Connection

As always Keanu continued his own journey and what would come to follow it would throw him for roads still ignored. The total stardom, turning a revolution in male roles in action movies: Speed.

Keanu accepted the role in an unknown director’s film and a premise almost stupid: a policeman has to block a bus walks below certain speed through the streets of Los Angeles, or it explodes. It didn’t seem a hit, and many in Hollywood referred it as the “that bus movie.”

Keanu still had another problem: the movie producers wanted him with the "Point Break" look, and it was easy because Keanu has his hair almost on shoulders. But in the beginning of the work, he appeared with the head scraped. He said that there were no SWAT policemen with long hair. The producers wanted a wig, but Keanu refuses to use. The director, then, convinced the producers that in two weeks his hair would increase a little bit, but there were not changes only in the hair. Keanu worked out a lot and arrived to the set with a physical body stronger as never seem before.

Keanu and River Phoenix

Everything was fine. Keanu was happy, he did a lot of action scenes with no stunt double. His relationship with movie partners, as Sandra Bullock and Dennis Hopper, was the best ever. However, everything turns down with River Phoenix’s death, during the eighth week of filmings.

Phoenix was one of Keanu’s best friends. In the night of October 30, 1993 he had an overdose in front of the Viper Room (that belonged to Johnny Depp at that time). Keanu refused to talk about it and to do homages to him. He didn’t go to the wake or the funeral. After a while, he just said “it was a terrible shock and an accident. I don’t get to understand how it happened.”

The Speed director, Jan de Bont, reorganized the calendar of filmings to accomodate Keanu’s feelings without having to stop totally out, mantaining him working in a way to forget a little that tragic event. Times later Keanu would say: “Everything that I can saying is that I never felt anything as that in my life. It was very sad, more than that, I cried hours and hours.”

Samuel and Keanu at left. At right, Samuel during an interview.

When Speed was launched in the summer of 1994, was an huge success. It made $ 330 million of dollars around of the world and it elevated Keanu’s career to the top. Until his haircut it turned habit among the youths. In the middle of that phase full of interviews, magazine covers, hallucinated fans, once again Keanu’s life suffered a blow. Abandoned for his father when was a child, and without seeing him for 17 years, he saw Samuel turn headlines of the tabloids when being arrested in Hawaii by heroine traffic and sentenced to 10 years of prison. The media, ofcourse, ran behind the history, and Samuel gave countless interviews speaking about his wish of reconciling with the son, that refused giving him a chance.

To worsen, a rumor, that had begun with a note in a gossip magazine, took the world and thousands of people started to believe in the speculations about Keanu’s sexual orientation. The history was that he there was married in a secret ceremony in Hawaii with the magnate, partner of Dreamworks, David Geffen (assumed gay).

In the cover of OUT magazine

Geffen denied the rumours, saying that he never had meet Keanu. but, of course, telling that he would love to met him someday… Keanu laughed of the rumor, finding everything very funny. But the things left control and probably their agents forced him to do an official report explaining everything. And he did it, to OUT, a popular gay magazine, that dedicated to him a special edition where he denied the marriage, giving one of his best interviews but, once again, do not declare his sexual option, leaving for each one to find what wants. In his classic sentence Keanu says “No, I´m not gay, but ya never know...”