(I didn’t have cable as a kid, but I can still remember catching that video multiple times at other people’s houses.) The big rollout made sense. The video was a big, splashy statement, and it was all over MTV for months. This guy just died and lost his girlfriend to Keanu Reeves in about a 30-second span. The chronology is a little unclear, but I think it’s implied that they go fuck in an empty house. Then, when everyone is standing around processing the grisly ending they’ve just witnessed, Paula Abdul and Keanu Reeves find each other, hold hands, and escape through the crowd. Keanu jumps from his car before it falls, but the boyfriend gets stuck and plummets to his death.
(This is that same odd chicken variant from Rebel Without A Cause, where they both drive at a cliff instead of towards each other.) Paula Abdul isn’t remotely worried about it in fact, she drops the flag to start the game. But maybe not.īefore long, Keanu and the boyfriend challenge each other to a game of chicken. Maybe they’re lucky that Keanu doesn’t John Wick their asses up. Eventually, the boyfriend and his goon squad catch up to Keanu at Griffith Park Observatory, and they pull out a switchblade and slash his tires. Abdul’s boyfriend isn’t cool with her being buds with Keanu, and you can understand why he might feel nervous about it. In the “Rush Rush” clip, Paula Abdul has a boyfriend, but she also has a flirty thing going on with Keanu Reeves, who is at the peak of his early gawky, dazed beauty. And since “Rush Rush” really isn’t that interesting of a song, let’s talk a bit more about that video. It’s Paula Abdul’s video, but Keanu Reeves is the real star. The clip takes place in the ’50s, a time when Keanu Reeves’ floppy-hair situation would’ve been inconceivable. Instead, the auteur responsible was Stefan Würnitzer, one of the few big-deal music-video directors of his era who never made the leap into feature films.) The video is an extended riff on Rebel Without A Cause, with Reeves and Abdul playing, respectively, James Dean and Natalie Wood’s characters. Lucasfilm produced the clip, and there were rumors that George Lucas was the director. Paula Abdul’s “Rush Rush” video was basically a movie. Before all that, though, Keanu Reeves had the “Rush Rush” video. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen an actor appear in three better films in a two-month period. In September, Keanu was in Gus Van Sant’s independent-film landmark My Own Private Idaho. That movie didn’t do much business, but it has aged beautifully. Exactly one week later, Keanu was back in theaters as Ted “Theodore” Logan in the bugnuts sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. In July, our boy Neo starred alongside Patrick Swayze in Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break, an actual masterpiece that stands today as the first step in Reeves’ journey to becoming the greatest star in the history of American action cinema. Really, anytime is a good time to be Keanu Reeves, but summer ’91 was a banner moment for the man.
The summer of 1991 was a good time to be Keanu Reeves. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
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