“Shit, we’re doomed”: the only director who made Keanu Reeves nervous
Keanu Reeves has long been considered the internet’s boyfriend, a reserved and likeable figure with a deep love of the arts in all its forms.
Whether he’s making music with his band, Dogstar, or portraying everyone’s favourite hitman, John Wick, Reeves is one of Hollywood’s most recognisable stars, even if some people aren’t convinced that he’s all that talented as others make him out to be.
Sure, he delivered a pretty terrible performance in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but he was unforgettable in My Own Private Idaho, which saw him turn in a moving performance alongside River Phoenix. Moving between indie films and blockbusters, he is every bit the action star as he is capable of playing sensitive roles, and it’s this versatility that has kept him in the public eye for so long: could you imagine anyone else as the bullet-dodging Neo in The Matrix?
During his career, Reeves has worked with some huge-name directors, like Francis Ford Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, Richard Linklater, and Gus Van Sant, but there was one prospective meeting that actually made him nervous, and funnily enough, it wasn’t someone who was even directing him. In 2012, when he starred in the documentary Side By Side, which he also produced for his friend Christopher Kenneally, exploring the difference between film and digital, it had him talking to some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including David Lynch, and it was the first time in his life he was genuinely anxious to meet a filmmaker, perhaps because he admired Lynch so much.
The director was a pure master, an idiosyncratic talent who completely devoted himself to his own world, where nothing was as it seemed, dreams and nightmares intertwined with reality, and beauty could be found beneath the greatest tragedy, with his style becoming an adjective tacked to anything that evokes even the slightest edge of uncanny valley.
He was interviewed for the documentary, having used both film and digital (even cheap handheld digital cameras as seen in Inland Empire) throughout his career, but soon Kenneally started to worry that he was far too out of his depth. “Just hearing David Lynch saying Keanu’s name. ‘Well, Keanu…’ So, when we were about to go into David Lynch’s house, I thought, ‘This is crazy. What am I doing? I’m making a movie about digital cameras? Nobody gives a shit. What am I doing?’ It was that imposter syndrome,” Kenneally revealed to Slash Film.
If you think that he at least had Reeves for support, it’s worth noting that he realised that even the actor was shitting himself at the prospect of interviewing Lynch in his own home, which also served as his creative hub. “Then I see Keanu out there, waiting to do the interview, and he goes, ‘Hey, man… I’m so nervous’, I thought, ‘Shit. We’re doomed if you’re nervous’”.
Reeves in a David Lynch film would’ve been a sight to witness, and I can guarantee that he would’ve fit right in, given the perfect role. The closest he ever got to a Lynchian movie was perhaps Ellie Parker, a surreal low-budget movie starring Naomi Watts and some of her Mulholland Drive co-stars, taking inspiration from the film itself. Maybe there could’ve been a place for Reeves in Twin Peaks: The Return, but, unfortunately, a Reeves-Lynch collaboration is something that’ll stay limited to our dreams.
