For Your Consideration: Keanu Reeves

For Your Consideration: Keanu Reeves

by Larissa Zageris, Kitty Curran
For Your Consideration: Keanu Reeves

For Your Consideration: Keanu Reeves

by Larissa Zageris, Kitty Curran

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Overview

This illustrated collection of humorous essays and fun extras makes the case for one of our most iconic celebrities, from Bill and Ted to John Wick.

Critics have long debated Keanu Reeves’s career, but one thing is for certain: over the course of thirty years, the seemingly immortal actor has constantly subverted Hollywood stereotypes and expectations of A-listers, without (always) sacrificing commercial success. He’s the type to start his own publishing company, quote Hamlet, give away his salary to film crews, and generate memes through the simple act of eating lunch. Along the way, he has transcended the ironic gaze of the internet to become the true object of its affection, prompting a cultural phenomenon known as the Keanussance.

Composed of five critical essays and fun extras, For Your Consideration: Keanu Reeves looks at the distinct phases of the legendary actor’s career, from Bill and Ted to the John Wick franchise, and examines the ways in which Keanu strives to be excellent and kind in work and life.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781683691525
Publisher: Quirk Publishing
Publication date: 10/15/2019
Series: For Your Consideration , #2
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 144
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

Larissa Zageris and Kitty Curran are a creative duo based in Chicago. They are the authors of My Lady’s Choosing (Quirk, 2018), the viral Kickstarter novel Taylor Swift: Girl Detective in The Secrets of the Starbucks Lovers, and the comic “13 Go Mad in Wiltshire,” which appeared in The Wicked + The Divine: The Funnies Special (Image, 2019).

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

We grew up taking Keanu Reeves for granted, first as the sweet but dimwitted kid in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, then as a complicated heartthrob in Point Break and My Own Private Idaho, and later as a full-bore action hero in Speed and The Matrix. Between the blockbusters, we embraced him ironically as he was cast (and miscast) in a dizzying array of prestige and genre movies that we rented from our local video store on Friday nights.
     For a certain generation of fans—that nebulous space between Gen X and Millennial—Keanu was both an object of desire and an afterthought. But the irony of loving someone ironically is how earnest that devotion can become. And in our moment in culture, it’s not hard to earnestly appreciate the man who has launched a thousand internet memes—and inspired the era in which we currently live: the Keanussance.
     But why the need for irony in the first place? Much of the reason is Keanu’s style of acting.
     Often charged with being “blank” or “expressionless,” he is blank much as a piece of paper is. He gets filled up by his role, the story, our perceptions, and the ideas he invites us to form with a look through his long-ass bangs or a gesture you could blink and miss. He is a cipher, but he’s also active and present, inviting the audience into worlds built for their entertainment, not just for his celebrity.
     And Keanu is, admittedly, not a knowable celebrity. He rejects the traditional trappings of stardom in favor of walking the path of the artist, often in a perfect-fitting T-shirt and well-worn
suede boots. He likes his privacy. He selects movies based on his own secret criteria, an algorithm which meant that we saw him in A Scanner Darkly and The Lake House back-to-back in 2006. (This was the beginning of what would be a notable commercial dip in his career, before he reascended with John Wick.) He is enigmatic but clearly driven by his own desires and interests. We can’t pin him down, and that’s part of the fun.
    At the same time, he’s made a career of learning new things his Thing, all while steering clear of the outsize and awful behavior typically expected (though definitely not encouraged) of a male star. His vulnerability, his love of art and literature, and his long-running friendships with female co-stars like Sandra Bullock and Winona Ryder make him a tender and complicated example of nontoxic masculinity—or, at the very least, a person striving to be kind and excellent in work and in life. In this endeavor, he helps us imagine that we could be ourselves but better, too.
     In this book, we will explore what we talk about when we talk about Keanu because we believe he merits study. We will riff lovingly on his persona between critical essays because we’re your cool teachers who let you pass notes and eat candy in class. We’ve never met him personally, but we’ve grown up with him, in a sense. To us he seems decent. He seems good. He seems actively engaged. In the words of the man himself: “The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.”
     Let’s pay Keanu Reeves some attention.

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