The 1980's. It was a decade of economic greed and some have noted, a moral vacuum, captured in popular books like "Less Than Zero" and "Bright Lights, Big City." and reinforced in films like "Wall Street," "Angel Heart," and "Blue Velvet," all of which were the antithesis to the John Hughes comedies and Brat Pack phenonomen which happened at the same time. Within this pop-cultural framework stepped Neal Jimenez, a film student in San Jose who submitted a screenplay for his screenwriting class about a 1981 rape and murder of a 14 year old by her 16 year old unrepentent boyfriend.

The incident occurred in a well-off Milpitas, California neighborhood and made national headlines when it was learned that the boyfriend bragged about the killing to high school friends and over a period of days took them to the corpse (by the river's edge) and no one reported it to the police. Jimenez received a C+ from the teacher, who found the screenplay, told from the students' point of view of "corrosive nihilism" (Sheila Johnston, Keanu biographer), to be too dark to have any commercial value. Hemdale, a British producer and distributor (Platoon), disagreed, bought the screenplay, and gave it a budget of $1.7 million with Tim Hunter as the director. Hunter was known for two other teen angst films: "Tex" and "Over the Edge."

The movie was filmed over 32 days in early 1986 in three locations in California: L.A., Tajunga, and Sacramento, all of which became a mid-western town in the movie to match the dreariness of the subject matter.
Hemdale postponed the release of RE when it experienced financial troubles, despite positive reviews at a Seattle preview in October, 1986. It then was shown at European film festivals, noticed, and bought by an independent distributor called "Island." RE was finally released in the U.S. in May, 1987, backed by an ad campaign calling it the "most controversial film you will see this year." It made $4.6 million, but when it was released on video, it became a cult hit, with several lines frequently quoted by teen fans. Not bad for a movie which made no effort to entertain its audiences with, what Time Magazine called, its "bleak and deeply disturbing vision of adolescent life."

Keanu was 21 years old when he auditioned and won the role of Matt, the teen who becomes the moral center of the film after reporting the murder to the police. Keanu calls RE "great cinema." It's an incredibly slow moving film,
punctuated with explosions (Matt with step-dad, Matt at police interrogation), and bizarre characters: Dennis Hopper's Feck as a one-legged ex-biker with an inflatible sex doll, and Crispin Glover's Layne, who was so over-the-top, the writer had to add that he was a speed freak to explain his behavior. Crispin, I'm convinced, is just a visitor to planet Earth. I remember David Letterman talking off the stage while interviewing him. He won brief fame in "Back to the Future" as the dad and recently appeared in "Charlie's Angels The Movie", so he hasn't returned to his home planet. Can you even picture him with Keanu on the set and hear that conversation?

And then we have Keanu as Matt in the bag with Ione as Clarissa, making love, BUT it's interspersed with a reenactment of the murder. You've heard of Generation X, Generation Y, well this film shows "Generation-Why Bother," with none of the adults providing direction out of the moral abyss. So why bother watching RE? People Magazine called it "a youth picture...that matters." It won Best Feature and Best Screenplay at the 1988 Independent Spirit Awards. It was widely reviewed and seen by people in the industry and it made Keanu the first choice on many lists for off-beat teen movies. It certainly made Keanu stand apart from the trendier Brat Pack as their careers declined. Where are Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, and Emilio Estevez today? Movie fans did not discover Keanu with this movie, but the power elite in Hollywood did, and it transformed his career. Many of Keanu's later directors would cite RE as their reason for wanting Keanu. Of course, we have our own reasons.

RE was the first time Keanu met the mainstream media as he promoted the movie with the director. It was before Keanu learned how to go into lockdown mode with the press. So he made comments like "I'm trying to pursue what I'm curious about, trying to survive, and hopefully not be f_____up the ass by irony and the gods." You know, before the filters?

At the L.A. Independent Film Festival in 1999 they showcased one film from each of the last four decades that reflected the "cultural, socio-economic, and artistic climate" of that era. River's Edge was chosen to represent the 1980's. Not a bad way to start a Hollywood career, you think? The balcony is now open.