It makes me really angry when people say things like this about Matt - He was also A MAJOR STAR of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
It was very bad, and he was terrible in it.
Why do people keep forgetting about this?!
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No one in this thread is saying Keanu is a great actor. But it would be like if someone showed up today and started making jokes about Dolly Parton’s breasts. It’s like, yeah…we get the joke, it’s just not really funny anymore because we all realized that Dolly Parton is just an amazing person and is much more than just her boobs. Same with Keanu. Yeah, we get it…he’s no Lawrence Olivier. But he does play various versions of himself really, really well, and by all accounts is a genuinely nice person, in a town not exactly known for nice people. So it’s just not funny to make a joke about his bad acting anymore.
ETA: The real person to blame here is Perry’s editor. People write all kinds of stupid things in memoirs all the time, I would imagine, and part of the editor’s job is to say, “Hey, you probably shouldn’t say this, and here’s why.” All the editor had to do was pick up the phone and say, “Hey, Matt, you may have missed it but Keanu Reeves is extremely well liked nowadays. Nobody makes jokes about him being a bad actor anymore. Why don’t we put someone else in there. Harvey Weinstein, maybe. No one likes him anymore.”
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The real person to blame here is the reporter(s) looking for outrage content to drive page views.
Does anyone actually think Matthew Perry bears ill will to Keanu Reeves?
Does anyone think it odd that Matthew Perry, an actor who’s famous for a role in the late 90’s - early 2000’s, would not only write about that period but make a joke specifically rooted in the memes of that period?
Does anyone think that Keanu Reeves would feel remotely offended?
I didn’t read the book so maybe it doesn’t work in context… but this just feels like people trying to feel offended.
At least he’s comfortable enough to say in print that he’s not happy to be in a world that has Keanu instead of River Phoenix. I really don’t care if he has no high opinion of him, or if he says so in passing, but wishing him dead in print is something else entirely. Keanu might not be offended at all but it does show that Perry has very little self awareness for a person that is living in very fleeting fame. As for where i’m at is not outrage, at this point in time with so many problematic stars out there it’s just acceptance and moving on with my life knowing i won’t fuck with him in the future.
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I’d argue that Keanu Reeves is a character actor. In fact, he’s the biggest character actor in the world right now. He knows his strengths, and he picks roles that play to them. Yeah. He’s Ted “Theodore” Logan. What about it? Every staring role for the past 25 years he’s inhabited, and you’d be hard pressed to find another actor that could embody that role better.
You could plug a bunch actors into different roles and it wouldn’t really matter, but swapping in/out Keanu would fundamentally change a character.
That’s a fantastic career man.
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He’s a comedic actor! He was making a joke!!
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I think you’re right but also that it’s a bit more subtle than that. I’m sure he was aware that everyone loves Keanu now. It’s just that being stuck in the late 90s, as you say, he thought everyone was being ironic about it, as was the style of the times. He hasn’t caught up to the fact that we don’t really do irony anymore, except for the shitty 4chan edgelords.
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I don’t think it is missing the point to point out that acting ability doesn’t determine what a life is worth
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He’s very good to cast and crew he works with. Fighting for them to be well paid and treated on set. That’s exceptional. It’s why people want to work with him
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I think Keanu Reeves probably feels sorry for Perry and has probably sent referrals for really good and affordable mental health care experts.
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So’s Keanu.
But Keanu is funny.
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“I just chose a random name…”
He mentions Keanu more than once in the book. Doesn’t sound very random to me.
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Even if that was true it would mean he was making a wholly unfunny “joke” about the death of River Phoenix.
If anything, a guy who is ostensibly a professional funny person should be held to a higher standard of joke-telling than any random asshole. “People just can’t take a joke anymore” is a sign that the joke-teller has failed, not a sign that the public has failed.
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Perry is from Ottawa, Reeves is from Toronto. I suspect he followed Reeves’ career fairly closely because he was another (much more successful) Canadian actor from the same province. And he probably likes to take shots at him because people from small cities like to take shots at people from big cities in the same region.
He wasn’t making a joke about the death of River Pheonix, he was talking about tragedy of River’s death. The dig at Reeves was just a variation on “the good die young” to lighten the mood. He seems to have been in the middle of discussion about how many of his more talented and famous contemporaries died of the same substance abuse issues he had been dealing with. In that case a bit of dark humour is pretty common.
Of course, I’m just guessing since humour is all context and none of us have read anything beyond the couple of short excerpts.
There are many attempts at humour that are rightly found offensive.
One actor taking a minor dig at another, much more successful actor, is not one of them.
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This would be a very Keanu thing to do.
Also, mentioned earlier, but Point Break is my favorite action movie, and he was great in it. I can’t mention this fact whenever someone mentions the movie.
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In Veep, they made a joke about the death of Tom Hanks, but made sure they had his approval before using the gag.
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Saying something is a “joke” doesn’t make it less shitty.
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