Keanu Reeves

Jay Mohr: Good afternoon. We thought it was a good game. He pitched his heart out. John Corbett will be my starter for game seven.

Emmanuel Itier: We heard that this was one of the more aggressive and darker characters that you were playing from David Ayer and that you took it really seriously. Can you talk about the attraction to this character – this sad alcoholic at the end? Is he a hero or a good guy?

Keanu Reeves: Tom Ludlow. Is he a good guy? Yeah, he’s a good guy. Good sense of humor. Just don’t get on his wrong side, I guess. It was a great role and I really liked the story, and I guess it was kind of fun. It was fun to be pushed to a place that I don’t normally live in. I guess David called me a hippie. The director’s calling me a hippie and I get to kill eight people, so that’s a good role to play.

EI: Did you tap into Johnny Utah from Point Break for this character at all? Because there were some similarities…

KR: Not that I was conscious of.

JM: I used a lot of Johnny Utah.

KR: You could tell, yeah.

JM: Yeah, you were the only one I let in on it.

EI: I know you’ve done a lot of weapons training, but what did you learn this time around?

KR: What did I learn? Practice, practice, practice. You have to practice. I needed a lot of practice. I wasn’t very good. I just wanted to be able to look like I knew what I was doing, and so I had the benefit of working with Rick Lopez, who’s here, and just practicing, learning great techniques, some footwork and entrances and different kinds of reloads – all that kind of stuff.

JM: Is it true that you’re going to be on Dancing With The Stars next year? Yes or no? Just say it now.

KR: No, but I really enjoyed the part. It was really fun.

EI: I broke two nails in the virtual shooting range. So were there any injuries during the filming of this?

Almaury Nolasco: I didn’t break any nails.

KR: When we’re going in that car, there was a lot of kicking, wasn’t there? I kicked you in the chest, didn’t I?

AN: There was me beating you with the rubber gun…

KR: Yeah, the hard rubber gun and ripping his face off for a couple of days…

John Corbett: Yeah, they pulled this car up, I think it’s called a Go Mobile, and it’s this car with a 500 horse power Cadillac engine in it. A guy sits outside of your car and a cameraman is in the backseat. Keanu is in the backseat and I’m driving. Amaury is in the passenger side. So we’re actually driving through the streets of L.A. in a kind of choreographed stunt with the real cars coming at us. A couple of times, we smacked off the side of a bus and there’s really no special effects. We’re flying about 50 miles an hour for almost a mile and a half, and Keanu has a handcuff in my mouth and I’m trying to drive, but of course the guy on the side is driving, though you never see him. These two are going at it with full force and his fist is swinging by me, and the wind is like a hurricane coming by as they go at it, kicking each other. There’s no choreography to it. It was just on “Action” that they started going at each other, hitting each other with everything, and then the director would yell “Cut” and we’d have to go back again. They’d be sitting there rubbing their shoulders and wiping the blood off their lip. It was pretty intense, that scene there.

EI: How did you feel about the police before doing this film, and did doing the film make you see them in a different light?

AN: I can speak for myself. I’ve always had a problem with authority, but I have to say that I have the utmost respect for the guys in blue, putting themselves on the line all the time. I guess we don’t realize it all the time either. We call 911 when we have petty little things. I guess we don’t realize how they put themselves on the line for so much stuff that when we get a bad attitude coming from them, we were expecting them to be smiling and whatnot. That’s not the case all the time. For my character, one of the things that I wanted to do is get to the fact that every cop joins the force because they had a dream of becoming the good guy, solving crimes, and getting the thieves. No one joins the force to become a corrupt cop. In order to become corrupt, there has to be something that happens–some reason, whether it’s one day you stopped a kid with $20 and some pot and you kept the $20, or you don’t want to go through the whole paperwork thing, or maybe you have a kid and you’re not making enough money and you need to get the kid medicine. The point is that I wanted to justify why cops do become corrupted. Every cop has a reason, and I’m not saying that every cop is corrupt. Working with Rick and the real guys showed me a lot. We had Darryl Gates in the movie too.

JM: I’ve always been pro-police.

KR: I just had a different sense of the man, the person in the uniform. I have a deeper appreciation for them. They didn’t just become a cop and a man in a uniform. It’s a deeper appreciation for the person in the uniform. Some of the things and the stories that I’ve heard–with that appreciation, I guess have a real deep respect for them. It’s not only the life in the job, it’s the life outside of the job. I think that with the experience of this film, I got to have a greater knowledge of what it is to live outside of the job. It’s not an easy job. It’s not an easy job to just “live with.” It comes home with you.

JC: Believe it not, in 1982 I went through the LA County Sheriff’s program and it took about a year. I was working in a steel factory. I was a boiler maker. My dad tried to become a Deputy Sheriff in the late ’60s and he didn’t make it, so I tried. It took about a year. Every three months or so, you go on and you do your physical agility and you pass that and move on to interviews and orals and stuff like that. Ultimately, I didn’t make it. I wasn’t Deputy Sheriff material, but I wanted to do it. I’ll tell you a funny story. When we were doing that scene at the funeral, I was talking to a street cop and he told me a cool thing. He said that whenever he pulls over a car, if it’s got kids in it, he never gives a ticket because what happens is that he gives that dad a ticket and that dad drives away going, “Damn cops,” and the kids pick that up. But now the dad drives away and says, “Cops are pretty cool,” and the kids grow up with a whole different idea of cops. I like that philosophy.

EI: Can you talk about working with Forest Whitaker?

JM: [Doing impersonation] Working with Forest… is… pretty amazing. Notice… when Forest acts… none of it comes out… .all at once. That’s the only time that I’ve been taken out of my game in rehearsals–when Forest was yelling at Keanu. I thought, “Oh, my God!” Then I went, “Oh, my God, the next line!” Then I thought, “Say something!” I blurted out what I thought the line was and it wasn’t even close. [Laughs] He can be very intimidating and scary, but I don’t know. I mean, come on, we all watched The Oscars last year. You watch The Oscars and then you’re in a back room in Korea Town with the guy. That sounds a little odd, but you understand.

KR: Yes, the guy is amazing. He’s absolutely amazing. I think that I had the same experience as Jay because when you’re working with him, there’s such a non-actor type of thing. He’s just really present and real, and it’s just “Action” and you’re in there. You don’t see his craft at all. It’s a different kind of pretend with him because he’s not really pretending. [Laughs] It’s pretty intense.

AN: He’s pretty intense.

JM: I’ll tell you something that happened. We did that scene where you [Keanu] and him get into that argument in that back room. He wasn’t sure if he should shove you or not.

KR: Oh, really?

JM: He pulled me aside on, like, my second day on the film and he goes, “In your opinion, do you think I should, you know, really push Keanu?” I said, “You just won an Oscar and you’re asking the club comic how to act? I’m at La Brea Improv. Let me make 300 people laugh and I’ll get back to you on that, Oscar. I talked to my opening act. He thinks you should layoff.” So he didn’t shove you.

KR: No. Thanks.

EI: Keanu, have you had the chance to reconnect with your former co-star, Patrick Swayze and offer him any support right now?

KR: No, I have not. No. That’s something to do.

EI: Can you each talk about working with David Ayer as a director?

JM: [Doing an impression] Jay Mohr. Out-fucking-standing. Jay Mohr. That is classic. I love working with David. I like anyone who hires me. I think it’s phenomenal. I’m in over my head and I’ve been in over my head for about 17 years now. So, like Irwin and David, they’re the best because they said, “Him”–so the best.

AN: I have to say that it was definitely a great experience working with David. I don’t know if you saw Harsh Times, but he’s raw and he tells it like it is. He’s not afraid of showing what people might not like. I saw Harsh Times and I remember saying, “I would love to work with this director.” Six months later, I get a call for this movie. I think that I was a little star struck when I walked into the audition and saw him. I don’t know if you know it or not, but David is fluent in Spanish, which is my first language, and we just went off and he gave me a lot and let me play a lot, and he gave me a lot of great light. He just let us play. That’s why he was bruised and I was bruised.

EI: What do you think about the idea of doing whatever it takes to get the job done, that the ends justify the means with the behavior on the job as police officers?

JM: Oh. I thought that you were talking about the director. That’s not a joke.

AN: In my book, and I think I’m the wrong person to ask, but I think yes. If you put yourself in that situation and those are your kids, you’ll do whatever it takes, and I think that’s why Ludlow is a hero in my eyes, whether he’s going through all those problems–alcoholism, whatever his wife went through… He’s not the typical hero that we’re used to seeing in Hollywood movies, which goes back to what I was saying about David–he loves to put it out there. We’re not perfect. Nobody is. The thing I love about him is that he’s got some imperfections, but it balances out.

EI: In the case of your character setting up all the Koreans, for example, in the beginning, and killing them all to save the kids, do you think the end always justifies the means?

KR: I don’t think you can say that, depending on the context. The story of the movie is that if you do what Ludlow does, then that allows something else to happen. As a law enforcement officer, if you can control a crime scene and if you can make a crime scene not a crime, even if you’re justifying your means to have your version of what’s wrong so that it’s okay to kill these people who have kidnapped and hijacked these young girls… If I’m allowed to go do that, if I can fix a crime scene and kill these people who I don’t deem to have the right to justice because they don’t deserve it in my eyes, if I can do that, then what else can I do? It can get so corrupted. In the specific case of Ludlow, no I don’t think you can justify them. That’s part of what the story is to me. It’s almost the extension of that. It doesn’t matter what it is, it doesn’t matter what happens – it’s what it looks like. So if I can control what it looks like, if I can get away with what it looks like and not what it is, then you can have a lot of problems. I think that can happen in the police force. That can happen in business. That can happen, I think, in any organized entity. In the end, does it justify the means? I think there are certain situations where that might be, but again, like what one of the characters, Naomi Harris, says, “Blood doesn’t wash away blood.” A violent act against a violent act–I don’t know if that puts out the fire violence or what that is, but there’s a place for it, obviously, and I think that’s another part of the line in this film, that there is a place where you need violent people and you need violence. But it’s a tenuous box.

EI: What did you learn from working with cops and interacting with them?

KR: “Interacting with Cops on Fox!” [Laughs]. That’s all I had.

JC: What did I learn? I’ve always had respect for cops, as I said earlier. I just want to talk about David for one more second. I live in Santa Barbara, and the only time that I’d ever been to East L.A., and I’ve lived here for 20 years, was on this movie. So I get down there and this guy has a shaved head and he’s covered in tattoos, and he doesn’t just talk it–he still lives there. His building gets graffiti’d every night. Every night there’s more graffiti and everyday they clean it off, and the next day it’s back on. They have this whole system down there. David knows everything about every weapon. He lived on submarines. He was in the military. He’ll stop a take if your finger isn’t in the right place because he wants it to be so real. That’s my David story.

EI: We know that you love music and are a musician yourself. Was part of the attraction to this movie that you were going to be working with two of the most popular rappers today, and did you get a chance to talk with them about music and share insights with Common and The Game?

KR: Yeah, I met Common and Game as actors. They’re obviously very dynamic people with a lot of talent. You had something cool. Weren’t you listening to The Game when you got this part? No. You saw him.

JM: I was at 24 Hour Fitness listening to The Game, and The Game walked in right up to the desk. I thought, “That guy looks just like The Game, but I can’t ask him. He’s going to think that I’m profiling him.” Then I thought, “But he’s got LA tattoos on his face and I think that’s pretty much The Game’s game.” So I said, “You’re The Game.” He said, “Yes, I am.” I was like a child. I said, “I’m listening to you right now.” He goes, “That means you’re going to have a good day.” Then he goes, “That means I’m going to have a good day.” Then he left.

KR: But meeting with him, talking about The Game–he’s producing films, making music, he’s acting… Common is acting, and we also worked with this other gentleman, Clay Bone. Again, just really dynamic people. In terms of the music side of it, I got to hear them speak a bit on it. Common was speaking a bit to Clay about East Coast/West Coast and some of the more kind of historical aspects to music and the history of what was going on in L.A., so it was cool to sit and listen to him.

EI: Are you still interested in doing music? Is that still a part of your life?

KR: No, I don’t play anymore.

EI: Common said that a lot of the actors on the set where asking you questions about The Matrix. Do you feel that will always be a part of your life and career, and that sci-fi will be a parallel career to your other movies? I know you just did a The Day The Earth Stood Still remake which is kind of sci-fi…

KR: No, it’s not. I guess, hopefully. Maybe, yeah.

EI: Do you feel like you have two separate careers, though?

KR: I’m the ambassador for the Matrix trilogy. My operating hours are… [Laughs]

EI: Can you talk about how you measure success in your career, whether it’s money or box office, and are you on pins and needles about the opening of this movie?

KR: Yeah, we hope that people like it. I like it.

JM: I’m sure you’re much more nervous than we are. You’re on the poster. The three of us got painted out. I noticed it. I looked at it and went, “There’s a few guys missing… “

EI: The car made it.

JM: Yeah, The car made it. I’m glad the car’s in it, and the city of L.A.

KR: I think you guys are on the other poster.

JM: I’m on the other poster. How do you measure success for the film?

EI: No, for you personally.

JM: Oh, I have a child. I’m in bonus time now. I have a five-year-old and he’s great.

JC: Nobody wants to be in a movie that’s not successful. That’s the thing. You want to be in a movie that you’re proud of and that people go see and come up to you and say, “I saw that and it was great.”

JM: But you can’t control it so it’s silly to worry. It’s like Yogi Berra once said: “If people don’t want to come, we can’t stop them.” So of course you want it to do well. So spread the word for us.

KR: I know that you look disappointed and frustrated.

EI: I’m not disappointed and frustrated. I still love you madly.

KR: But to answer your question, yeah. To enter any project that you work on, you hope to realize the role, to realize the film, and at the end of the day you have your personal journey and you have the work that you were a part of, and hopefully when it opens… I’m nervous about the film opening because you want people to like it and you want to see what it’s going to be. That’s what you hope for. In terms of measuring success, I don’t know if that’s a real thing, other than I think that we all hope to have a career. So maybe that’s one of the things that you measure success with. It’s just one of those things that I guess you could look at from the money side too, and the artistic side of it. I think that it’s as complicated as life is. I guess it’s also one of those things that you can measure if you don’t have it. It’s easier not to measure. Maybe it’s that way. If you don’t get to do the work, if you don’t get the chance, if you don’t achieve what you hoped to achieve, then you weren’t successful, I guess, but I don’t know. That’s a tough one.

EI: Was it important to you for you to make this guy likable?

KR: I think that I wanted to have him hopefully have some things that we could recognize, not necessarily in ourselves, but in the world. It wasn’t specific like that, like, “What can we do to make him more likable?” But hopefully he’s sympathetic, or maybe there’s something in his vulnerability to make him kind of understandable in some sense.

EI: What do you see as his inner dilemma? What’s wrong with him?

KR: Well, he’s got a lot of things. He’s got grief. He’s got the question of “Why?” He has the pressures of his job. I think that he’s in conflict with what he’s good at in his work, but he doesn’t know how to be good at that in life. There’s a scene that we’re all in where we’re at Forest’s house for a kind of get-together and Tom Ludlow looks like he doesn’t know how to talk to people. He doesn’t know how to be. These guys all have a connection and an ease about them, but then when you look at Ludlow, when he’s in his job fighting, killing and punching, he’s most alive and comfortable. I think that he knows that about himself, that he’s in a dilemma and the consequences of the job that he’s deciding to do, to be the point of the spear has some living consequences for him because he’s all soft and vulnerable on the inside, but he’s got to be something else on the outside.

EI: Would you want to play him again?

KR: Sure.

EI: This was a serious subject matter you were all dealing with while shooting, but was there any light moments on the set that you can remember?

KR: It’s interesting. When you’re dealing with a violent environment, the jokes get pretty dark and the humor gets pretty – what – loose, sardonic. It’s pretty black humor, but it would make us laugh.

JM: I usually horse around all the time, but Keanu’s work that he had to do was so, so dark that you don’t want to come in and go, “Hey, you hear the one about the farmer who shot the dog and then kicked the guy in the balls?” You don’t want to be cracking jokes when the guy has to have like a nine-minute fight scene in about 30 seconds. So just out of respect to Keanu, you pull back on it, which is frightening if you’re on set.

EI: The political scene in the country right now is in the forefront. I thought it was interesting that you were called a nigger in this movie. How did it feel to be in a situation that black people are in quite a bit these days?

KR: I don’t think that I was. I don’t think that’s true.

EI: Common called you a nigger.

KR: Yeah, man, but that doesn’t really count because my character has no respect for that guy. So to me, I don’t think I was. They just had their mouths moving and I was just thinking about seeing them later. I don’t think that I can speak to that because I don’t think that I was.

EI: Can you talk about The Day The Earth Stood Still? Was the original important to you, and what were your thoughts on updating it?

KR: It’s a classic film. Hopefully we have a shot at making it a good film. I just finished it last week and they’re still filming. It’s got Kathy Bates, Jennifer Connelly, John Cleese, Jaden Smith… it’s got a great cast. Scott Derrickson directed it. Hopefully we’ll do the original right. It’s more of a reinvention, a kind of extension of that and sort of appropriated to our time, just as that felt right for then.

EI: David said, when they were auditioning, it was hard to find someone to stand up to you, that you were so angry and intimidating. How did you get to that place?

KR: I doubt it was that. I think it was just probably because I was the older guy, if that’s true. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but maybe they were just working with an actor that they’d seen before.

EI: I love it when you surprise me in a movie like you did in Much Ado and As Good As It Gets. Do you go into those types of films thinking it’s important that people see you do something you don’t normally get to do, a different side to you?

KR: I’m just hoping to be able to work in different genres and play different roles. I think that we all hope to do different kinds of work and be challenged and stretched, and hopefully to explore all that we can do as artists.

EI: Is there a secret wish list of things that you’d like to do and haven’t in a while? A comedy maybe, like the way you started out?

KR: Not today. I’m just kind of getting to work with Rebecca Miller in May, and so I’m really excited about that.

EI: Is the movie with Rebecca Miller going to be a tragedy?

KR: I don’t think so.

EI: Did you see Hot Fuzz?

KR: No. I wanted to, but missed it.

EI: Do you have a favorite among all the things that you’ve done?

KR: I’ve got so many favorites.