Best Keanu: “Funny what makes some people happy.”

The National Film Board of Canada is an agency of the government of Canada, so we can all thank the Canadian taxpayers for gifting us with Keanu Reeves’ first-ever film role. It’s tempting here to make jokes about the NFB, but those would be unfounded, as it has a long history of contribution to Canadian film and filmmaking. According to wiki the NFB has 74 Oscar nominations, more than any other non-Hollywood film organization.

One Step Away didn’t get any Oscar nods, and it has a life on YouTube, one could assume, because it’s Keanu in a substantial starring role, holding down almost every scene for the production’s 28 or so minutes. Keanu plays a troubled teen named Ron who is physically assaulted, yelled at, degraded and/or teased by everyone in his life: his mother, his teacher, his friends, the judicial system. He’s falsely accused of stealing, gets a court date, runs away from home, and eventually comes back to his mother, who is forced to choose between her son and her apartment by a jerk of a landlord who insists she kick him out.

It’s not easy to get the point of One Step Away. First of all, one step away from what? A life of crime for Ron? Out on the streets with no place to live for his mother? Being kicked out of school for Ron? Jail for Ron? Maybe all of the above. The film doesn’t end on a super-happy note, but it does abruptly force a reunion between Ron and his mom, and Ron does leave, so she can stay, but everyone’s got a smile, as if to say, “this is all pretty tough, but we’ll work it all out.”

The actor who played Ron’s mother, Diana Belshaw, is a working actor in television, film, and theatre. Her IMDB says she had a part in an episode of Nothing Sacred, a television series I loved that’s long gone now. The biography posted by Humber College, where she founded the Acting for Film and Television Program, includes a long list of accomplishments topped off by this: “She was a regular on a number of television series, played leading roles on film and episodic dramas, and has done her fair share of forgettable day roles and commercials.” You must think a humble Belshaw drafted the bio herself, because no one would ever respectfully use the word “forgettable” in a tribute biography.

Anything I would say about One Step Away is probably included in my discussion of Flying: this is very Canadian, a stark reminder of how lousy the 80s were, and it’s an early glimpse of Keanu Reeves as the earnest and hard working young actor.

I don’t buy that people were this mean in real life in 1985. But then I am having a memory coming back to me now, of my mother telling me a story about something that happened at her job. I was a kid, so maybe it was about this time. She was a server at a restaurant and some customers harassed her about the food. She eventually gave in and took the charge off their bill. Her boss later yelled at her, asking, “was there anything wrong with the pizza?” No, she had to say, and he took the cost out of her paycheque.

Things are stupid sometimes.

But from One Step Away, we get an IMDB credit for Keanu Reeves before IMDB existed. It was an early role that led to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. And for that, we’re grateful, because without Keanu in the movies, things would really suck.

[September 2023]