You Don't Have to Be a Total Piece of Shit to Jokingly Want Keanu Reeves Dead; No Wait, You Do
Matthew Perry’s upcoming memoir is getting a lot of attention for reasons you might not expect. We as a culture have been waiting with breathless anticipation for Perry to spill the beans regarding Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and, to a lesser extent, Friends.
Unlike Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Perry’s book is attracting seriously bad buzz for a very good reason. In Perry’s confessional Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing the sitcom superstar jokingly wonders why beloved actors like Heath Ledger, River Phoenix and Chris Farley had to die young while Keanu Reeves continues to walk the earth.
A “quip” like that might have flown twenty years ago, when Keanu Reeves was widely seen as a joke and a terrible actor and cruel jokes could be dismissed as edgy humor only uptight squares could possibly object to.
A whole lot has changed over the course of the past two decades, however. I would argue that Keanu Reeves is universally beloved with the caveat that ONE PERSON and ONE PERSON only apparently hates Reeves so much that he he “humorously” pines for a world where Chris Farley, River Phoenix and Chris Farley are all still alive and well while Keanu Reeves died after shooting up speedballs one tragic Hollywood night sometime in the late 1990s.
People don’t just love Keanu Reeves as an actor who has very successfully re-invented himself as an action movie badass deep into his fifties. The public also loves Reeves as a person. He has an impeccable reputation as a consummate nice guy and mensch.
Even if Reeves was not literally one of the most beloved celebrities in the world it still would not be appropriate to wonder why he didn’t die a horrible death instead of actors ostensibly more talented.
We inhabit a culture where you can’t make jokes about The Rolling Stones being old or Donald Trump being fat or unattractive without online scolds accusing you of being ageist or engaging in fat-shaming.
It doesn’t matter that the Rolling Stones are rich, white, straight and insanely powerful or that people have been making jokes about The Rolling Stones being old for decades now.
If you tweet about the Rolling Stones being old there’s a pretty good chance that someone will criticize you for making fun of old people in general, not just Mick Jagger or Keith Richards.
On a similar note, if you make fun of Donald Trump for being fat or ugly, there’s a good chance you’ll be scolded for fat-shaming. It will be assumed, not without reason, that you’re making fun of overweight people as a whole, not just the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president in particular.
So the idea that Perry could REPEATEDLY joke about wanting a beloved figure like Keanu Reeves, who hasn’t done ANYTHING wrong, dead, and get away with it, is surreal to me.
I have published multiple memoirs with big publishing companies like Scribner so I know firsthand how much thought and effort and consideration goes into the production of a book.
I’m guessing that Perry’s book went through a lot of drafts so Perry had ample time to really think about the content of his book. A book like Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is permanent. It’s forever.
When Perry is cold and in the grave Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing will survive as his definitive statement on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Serving Sarah.
I blame Perry for being tone-deaf and cruel enough to wish death upon one of the nicest and most liked men in show-business. But I also blame Perry’s literary editor.
It’s the job of a book editor to save the authors they work with from themselves and their worst instincts. Perry’s editor should have told him, in no uncertain terms, that his jokes about Reeves are not funny and liable to enrage the John Wick star’s vast army of loyal fans.
When I write something that might cross a line I ask myself whether what I’ve written is funny enough to make up for being mean. In this instance Perry’s quips were vicious but also brutally, violently unfunny.
Why did Perry take shots at Reeves? I suspect it’s because Perry is famous for being funny but it’s a very specific, limited kind of funny. Perry is not a stand-up comedian. He’s not a screenwriter. He doesn’t do improv.
Perry’s brand of funny involves delivering the words other people write for him. He’s dependent on the words and talent of other people. So, like a lot of emotionally stunted people, he apparently mistakes a juvenile conception of edginess for raw wit.
Unsurprisingly, Perry responded to the tsunami of bad press that greeted his Keanu-bashing by publicly apologizing and claiming to be a Reeves fan who chose the actor at random for his dark-humored laff-em-ups. .
I can relate to that on some level. When I was conceptualizing my almost disturbingly popular clickbait parodies featuring Cary Elwes and David Hyde Pierce I chose them at random as the kind of minor but very recognizable celebrities who would be featured in a genuine clickbait article like the ones I was spoofing.
The crucial difference is that with my pieces the satirical targets were clearly desperate, pandering clickbait articles that try to scam clicks by casting sinister, unwarranted judgment on famous people, not the actors themselves. I was obviously not making fun of Elwes or Pierce, although people who do not understand my sense of humor or the nature of my clickbait parodies assumed, bewilderingly, that the articles were not ironic or satirical and that they were both sincere and motivated by jealousy. That was weird!
When someone beloved dies I invariably ask myself, “Why couldn’t it have been Donald Trump?” because Donald Trump really is a pox upon humanity whose death would be a huge relief.
From now on I’m also going to ask why Matthew Perry also couldn’t have died a horrible death. It’s funny, right, because I don’t care for him as an actor or public figure (with the exception of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip of course) and consequently it is VERY amusing imagining him lifeless in a coffin, dead as a doornail and unable to defend himself from my HILARIOUSly mean style of comedy.
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