Why We All Want to be Like Keanu...

Keanu in is his total badness.

BY BRIAN PRIVETT

REGULAR GUY AND JUST A LAWYER

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of good sense, must want to be more like Keanu Reeves.

It is almost a cliche that Keanu Reeves, Neo of the Matrix, John of the Wick, is probably the most liked person currently on the planet.  He has spawned 10 million memes about his kindness, humility, generosity, and just general Keanu-ness.  Equanimity is the word - calmness at all times in the face of stressful situations, and remaining so.

Action hero, biker, poet, bass player in his own rock band, Keanu is not just a nice guy.  Tom Hanks is a nice guy.  Your co-worker, Jim, is a nice guy.  Keanu is cool nice, nice with an edge.  He hacked into our alien captors holding us as batteries in the Matrix.  He created Biblical destruction in John Wick because someone killed his beagle (I get it).  In real life he wrecked his motorcycle terribly, and the greatest effect on him was how brightly white his shin bone was without its skin. 

My own beagle as a pup.. I would fight motorcycle ninjas for her. Definitely.

That move in the John Wick movies where he reloads his gun by releasing the magazine at the same time he tilts the gun sideways?  He created that move.  According to Jocko Willink, Navy SEALS use that move now.  Keanu is a bad dude, but his name in Hawaiian means "cool breeze".  Yep.  That's about right.

Keanu has not always been seen as the bad ass, wisdom dispensing, Caine in Kung Fu, sage, though.  When he first gained attention as Ted "Theodore" Logan of the Wyld Stallyns in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure in 1989, he was so associated with that character that everyone, including me, assumed that he was a brainless surfer.  Characters in Speed and Point Break reinforced that stereotype. 

When he was cast in Kenneth Branagh's version of Much Ado About Nothing, I remember us making jokes - what, lo, is that a dagger before me, dude?  Even through the Matrix movies, and some of John Wick, Keanu still had that reputation as the surfer dude chic.  Sure, some stuff would trickle out, about his generosity on set or with his stunt men, but come on, Wyld Stallyns rule.

Then, he landed on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

It is not often we get to see public perception of someone change at the time it happens.  And this did.  The short version - Colbert asks, "Keanu Reeves, what happens when we die?"  Keanu takes a beat, has a very serious and calm look on his face and slowly says, "The people that love us will miss us."

That one sentence is everything.  That one sentence is true.  It contains a wisdom that anyone that has lost a person they love carries with them in a part of their body, a bone ache.  It feels known.  It was vulnerable.

Colbert was speechless, there were "aww's" from the crowd, then applause. 

Here's the break down of the full interview (you can view it below).

The power of that answer really has meaning by the surprise of it - that it was against expectations - seen in the context of the full interview.  This appearance was in promotion for John Wick 3. Colbert and Keanu were having fun, talking about fighting ninjas on motorcycles, fighting while riding a horse, and  the danger of the Malinois that trained with Halle Berry for the movie which Keanu was told, "don't look them in the eye."  Colbert then brings up the just-then announced sequel to Bill & Ted.  They're talking goofy, having fun, surfer dude type stuff.  Keanu explains that if Bill & Ted don't write the perfect song, then the whole universe will end, cease to exist, poof.  Absurd. Funny, right?  The actual movie, meh.

Colbert takes a beat with a smirk on his face - he asks Keanu the question, which in the context it seems to assume he wants to be funny or get some empty-headed, goofy answer. The audience actually laughs. But Keanu lays the bomb.  Expectations, destroyed.  Profundity laid.

We, the watchers, are Stephen Colbert in this scene, no blame on Colbert.  We are along for the fun action-packed ride.  Bill & Ted - shoot, yeah that's funny.  Totally ridiculous.  Then we're as speechless by Colbert at the end.  It's all good, Stephen.  He surprised us, too.

One fact that also informs this - and that gets left out of the cultural context.  Keanu's first wife had a still born baby in 1999.  They separated after, then reunited.  Soon after they reconciled, she died of a car crash in 2001.  Keanu was being honest from his lived experience.  When people die, we miss them.  Still.

I have watched this clip a bunch, a whole bunch, probably on the verge of obsessively.  I am awed by the profundity of the moment, of the jarring humility in it, of the shock of goodness.  I watch it every time it pops up on a social feed, which seems to be a lot.  Thanks, algorithms. 

But the truth of the statement's greatest meaning comes in the face of negative expectations.  That Keanu as action hero and motorcycle dude has that amount of wisdom, of thought, of a lived experience, and that on a TV Talk Show, the genre of which deals in easy political humor and vapid entertainment conversation, when he didn't have to be, Keanu chose to be open and speak his truth.

That's the take-away and why Keanu is a model for us all.  Not that being cool, or nice, or a cool breeze is the goal of life.  No, it is that if we, especially in the face of negative expectations, each one of us, are brave enough to speak our truth, bravely, with humility and vulnerability, that makes all the difference. 

Rock on, Keanu.

Brian Privett is an attorney in Central Kentucky. In his daily life he thinks "what would Keanu do" but he needs a motorcycle.