Keanu Reeves: Most Triumphant: The Movies and Meaning of an Irrepressible Icon

by Alex Pappademas

Overview

A tribute to and exploration of the magic behind one of Hollywood's most legendary and unknowable stars, Keanu Reeves, and the profound lessons we can learn from his success

There can be no doubt: Keanu Reeves is a phenomenon. He’s at once a badass action star, a hunky dreamboat who People magazine has called “the Internet’s boyfriend,” a vintage motorcycle enthusiast, a niche art book publisher, a living meme, and a legend. He seems to upend every rule governing celebrity in the 21st century. But how?

In Keanu Reeves: Most Triumphant, cultural critic Alex Pappademas attempts to address Keanu’s unmatched eternality and the other big questions raised by his career arc. Sharp, funny, deeply researched, and fully celebratory of the enigmatic actor, this is the first book to take Keanu’s whole deal as seriously as it deserves. Yes, even Johnny Mnemonic, where Keanu mind melds with a dolphin. Along the way, Pappademas reveals the lessons we can learn from Keanu about Hollywood, our broader culture, and even life itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647001995
Publisher:	Abrams
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Alex Pappademas is a writer, editor, and occasional podcaster who lives in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor of reported features and critical essays to the New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, the Los Angeles Times, GENMag.com, Men’s Health, and Airbnb Magazine. He has also written for Grantland, Esquire, Spin, and Rolling Stone. From 2015 to 2017 he was the executive editor of MTV News; prior to that, he was a staff writer at Grantland and the cohost of the acclaimed pop-culture podcast Do You Like Prince Movies?.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Radio Free Albumen ix

Part 1 Like A Young Robert Urich

1 Keanu Reeves Creates, Through His Mere Presence On-Screen, the Sense That Something Cinematic Is Happening, Even When That's Not Actually the Case 3

2 Keanu Reeves Fires a Shotgun into the Freshly Dug Grave of His Father, Andy Griffith 7

3 Keanu Reeves, as a Child, Plays on the Lot That Will One Day Be a Four Seasons Hotel, in What Will Become the Fifth-Most-Expensive Retail Corridor in North America 17

4 The Assassination of Charles Bronson by a Savage, Young Keanu Reeves 27

5 "You Run This Rotten, Evil Forest, and You Stole Those Cookies to Discredit Me" 33

6 Youth of America 39

7 Crash Dummy 53

Part 2 Bogus Journeys

8 Nonthreatening Boys 65

9 Dick and Ronnie Know Their Jobs (The Boy Looked at Johnny) 71

10 The Boy Who Came Down from the Hill 85

11 Keanu Is an Evil Robot Doppelganger and a Breakfast Cereal and a Man with a Dog's Face 101

12 Opera Envy 111

13 Transubstantiation Wedding 119

14 Plastic Roots of the Bodhi Tree 125

15 The Space of Free Action 133

16 The Laziest Boy in School 141

17 They Saved Keanu's Brain 149

18 Quattro Formaggi 157

19 That Florida Stud Thing 165

20 Jean Baudrillard's Dragula 171

Part 3 Wholesome God

21 Safe House 189

22 Wolf at the Door 195

23 Keanu Reeves Sings Chet Baker 201

24 In Every Immaculate Nancy Meyers Dream Kitchen a Cardiac Episode 207

25 Giving the Architect the Finger 211

26 A Bible Written in Hell 217

27 Philip K. Dick Energy 223

28 Keanu Reeves Is an Architect Who Says "Come to Papa" to a Bowl of Soup and Sandra Bullock Doesn't Know How to Pronounce "Dostoevsky" and without Ever Touching They Fall in Love 231

29 Translucent Placental Blubber 235

30 And Featuring Keanu Reeves as "Keanu Reeves" 241

31 Good, Clean Fun 247

32 Room 214 257

33 Flawlessly Tailored Kevlar Hair Shirt 271

34 Digital Ghost 279

Conclusion: The Essence of the Forest 291

Quod Debitum Sanguine 302

Endnotes 303

Editorial Reviews

Highlighting the cultural moments surrounding Reeves, as well as some of the acting choices that have made him such an intriguing performer over the years, this is a solid addition to any library’s pop culture collection.”
—Library Journal

From the Publisher

02/04/2022

Writer and editor Pappademas's look at Keanu Reeves, who has received renewed critical attention since starring in the John Wick films, is part of a new crop of celebrity books that are less biographies than ruminations on an actor's position in popular culture. Pappademas adopts a detached, fly-on-the-wall style, understandable given that his only previous interaction with Reeves was for a magazine profile. Descriptions of scenes from Reeves's films take up perhaps more space than is necessary, but they help illuminate his earlier and lesser-known roles. Pappademas also frequently notes Reeves's nonstandard Hollywood personality and offers plenty of examples of the actor's self-effacing remarks from past interviews. VERDICT Highlighting the cultural moments surrounding Reeves, as well as some of the acting choices that have made him such an intriguing performer over the years, this is a solid addition to any library's pop culture collection.—Claire Sewell

Library Journal