USA: KEANU REEVES BOWS OUT OF "SPEED 2" TO PLAY A LOSER BEATNIK IN THE NEW DRAMA "THE LAST TIME I COMMITTED SUICIDE"

Record ID: 387052

  • Title: USA: KEANU REEVES BOWS OUT OF "SPEED 2" TO PLAY A LOSER BEATNIK IN THE NEW DRAMA "THE LAST TIME I COMMITTED SUICIDE"
  • Date: 25th July 1997
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) STEPHEN KAY (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) SAYING, "I'D ALWAYS WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE BEATS, ABOUT THAT GENERATION OF PEOPLE AND THEN I CAME ACROSS THE LETTER AND BECAUSE NEAL WAS AN INSPIRATION FOR SO MUCH OTHER WORK, I THOUGHT THAT THAT WAS A GOOD JUMPING OFF PLACE" THOMAS JANE (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) S
  • Embargoed: 9th August 1997 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES AND FILM lOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA6P71R6Y1TN25SRQXF8NDR28X1
  • Story Text: He was only 42 years old when he died, but poet Neal Cassady remains one of the guiding lights of what became know as the "Beat" generation.

    The new film "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" tells the story of Cassady and his unusual friendships in early 1950's America.

    Keanu Reeves bowed out of "Speed 2" to play loser beatnik Harry in the film.

    Cassady himself is played by newcomer Thomas Jane.

    While Cassady never published a book in his lifetime, his unfinished autobiography was published as "The First Third" after his death.

    But it was his letters (one of which fellow Beat writer Jack Kerouac labeled "The Great Sex Letter") that have become legendary.

    Cassady provided the inspiration for the character Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's classic novel "On the Road", and was the subject of the author's "Visions of Cody." Apart from Kerouac, Cassady counted among his friends such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr and William Burroughs.

    Inspired by the "Great Sex Letter" Cassady wrote to Kerouac, writer/director Stephen Kay uses this early chapter in Cassady's life to forecast an entire movement that based itself on restless curiosity and the rejection of conventional middle class morality.

    Kay explained he always wanted to make a film about the "Beats" and that generation.

    "I came across the letter and because Neal (Cassady) was an inspiration for so much other work, I thought that was a good jumping off place," he said.

    The film is a jazzy, impressionistic journal of one of the many incidents that marked Cassady's life before the "Beats" were officially born.

    Set in Denver, where Cassady was born and raised by an alcoholic father in the skid row hotels of Larimer Street, the film chronicles his early 50's love affair with a beautiful, but suicidal, woman named Joan (played by Claire Forlani). It also portrays his friendship with a hard-drinking, pool-playing, womanizing buddy named Harry (played by Reeves.) The film is Thomas Jane's first starring role. He has had smaller parts in the films "The Crow: City of Angels" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" is expected to open in Britain early next year.
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