Keanu Reeves: A Love Letter

good morning Hank it's Tuesday so I've seen up close how the celebrity industrial complex can manufacture heroic narratives around almost any person or for that matter manufacturer villainous ones whichever is more fiscally useful and I'm disturbed by corporations commodifying human souls to sell movie tickets by the way I'm on my way to get a haircut and I know the only reason people are talking about Keanu Reeves right now is because he has a new movie out and various PR machinations are incredibly good at getting us to give that movie free advertising but still I freaking love Keanu Reeves and haircut now listen I don't think Keanu Reeves is like a golden God or anything if you want people to admire look to teachers and librarians not actors or for that matter novelists I don't think he honor Reeves has like achieved enlightenment or whatever I just think that from what I know of him Keanu Reeves has come closer to achieving enlightenment than any other famous person but let's start with his work Keanu Reeves is a great actor some people don't get his acting which is fine some people don't get why Shakespeare was a great playwright but he still was speaking of which when Keanu Reeves turned down 11 million dollars to be in speed 2 and instead played Hamlet in Winnipeg Manitoba the Sunday Times critic called his performance one of the top three Hamlet's I have seen for a simple reason he is Hamlet look I don't labor under the delusion that Keanu Reeves has never been in a bad movie but I do believe he's never been bad in a movie he's a great comic actor Bill and Ted as a classic he's a wonderful dramatic actress II for instance his wrenching performance in my own private Idaho and he's an action icon there's an old line Hollywood producers ask about actors sure he can act but can he hold a gun Keanu Reeves can hold a gun but what most fascinates me about Keanu is his work off screen in dealing with the press and in being a famous person who is seemingly able to maintain a sense of self which I can report is a tricky business even for those of us who aren't the faces of billion dollar movie franchises Keanu is the kind of person who might in an interview say that he respects Buddhism but has not quote taken refuge in the Dharma or he might dismiss Hollywood gossip by saying that it exists in another universe that doesn't have much to do with me or he might refer to the endless minification of his life as quote that internet deal Hank as you pointed out in your video what makes Keanu so brilliant at interviewing is that he really listens he listens to wisely the question that is being asked and then he answers it carefully before I knew any actors I thought that acting was about pretending like I basically thought it was a form of lying but really I think acting is mostly about listening right so because of all these interviews and because he's been a public figure for decades there's a lot we know about Keanu Reeves we know that he's dyslexic that he attended four different high schools that he has written a funny book about being sad called ode to happiness we know that he plays the bass and reads Proust and co-founded a motorcycle company but really we don't know much at all about Keanu Reeves as he once noted on Mickey Mouse they don't know who's inside the suit indeed we don't when I was younger I wanted to be famous because I thought it would be nice to have people like me but when my work became publicly known I never felt as if people liked me I felt as if they liked Mickey Mouse I became interested in Keanu Reeves because he seemed to have found a way through that complexity and what I've concluded after reading interviews and stories about him is that we don't know who's in his Mickey Mouse suit but Keanu does and that's all that matters and yeah it is nice to be able to sit on a park bench without having to worry about being photographed but with that problem which is very real comes opportunities which are also very real not just opportunities to lend your voice to causes that matter but also opportunities to make people's days better by taking selfies with them or by photobombing their wedding pictures now of course it's easy to make people happy when you're wearing a Mickey Mouse suit but each of us has the opportunity every day to be kind to others and to listen carefully to them thanks for teaching me that Keanu Hank I'll see you on Friday

Channel: vlogbrothers

Views: 373,905

Rating: 4.980711 out of 5

Keywords: keanu reeves, hollywood, john wick, movies, actors, acting, films, john green, vlogbrothers, nerdfighters

Id: 9Hol7m8nTPQ

Length: 3min 49sec (229 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/rajc6]

John Green mentioned my city... (No one notices Winnipeg. It's a big deal.)

[u/honeyangel318]

hi only John Green could go on a tangent about this while walking to get his h a i r c u t

[u/nick-sheard]

He’s inevitably