Johnny's a cybercourier; the job bytes.
Written by William Gibson - the award-winning cyber-punk writer of all time, who visited the set and cryed. I heard about this movie a bit after I became "officially" obsessed with Keanu. So that was around October 1994. It was shot here in Toronto around June 1994.
Anyway, I was very excited that a new Keanu movie was coming out. I spent the next few months starting up my obsession. (If you don't know how it's done - try it). The word 'mnemonic' was foreign to me at the time. I was convinced that the first 'm' was pronounced.
Long story...let's make it a bit shorter...
The movie came out on May 26th, 1995 (on May 26th, meet the ultimate harddrive... that's how I remember that date). I bought and read the bookstore-published screenplay about a week before and I was very excited about what I would be seeing. There wasn't much to the story, but it would look neat. Especially with Keanu!
It was pretty much like the screenplay. And it was good. I thought it was good. Keanu looked good. The lines, props and scenes were interesting. I read a few more Gibson novels and short stories (including the original 'Johnny Mnemonic' short - which is totally different) and I felt it was an accurate adaptation of his books and his writing style. The critics didn't care about that obviously.
The story is about a mnemonic courier named Johnny (Keanu), who's past has been striped from his brain to make room for a wetwire system of data entry. Mnemonic "couriering" is illegal but the safest way for the client to get data from point A to point B. Originally, the story is that he wants one last run so he can get enough money to get his memory restored, but apparently all through shooting this idea was thrown back and forth (one shot he wanted it back, the next shot he didn't), making it an awful task for Keanu to play the part. (Keanu even asked William Gibson what Johnny wanted but he didn't help him at all.) Anyway, this run of data is from Bejing to Newark, it is way above his storage capacity, the download code is missing and the client has been killed. Johnny has to find the good people (Jane - a bodyguard played by Dina Meyer, and the LoTeks - an "underground" gang led by J-Bone, played by Ice-T) and stay away from the bad (the Yakuza mostly), while fighting off a giant headache which will kill him in under 24 hours.
tracks include:
Very heavy, interesting sounds. All except track 1 are featured in the movie. Track 4 has "additional" sound in the movie though. If you like Stabbing Westward-type music or Henry Rollins it's worth owning. Available from Sony, even though it's from Columbia Records.
1. Stabbing Westward "Lost"
2. Cop Shoot Cop "3 AM Incident"
3. Helmet "Complete"
4. Orbital "Sad But True"
5. KMFDM "Virus"
6. Rollins Band "I See Through"
7. God Lives Underwater "No More Love"
8. Bono And The Edge "Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk / Korova 1"
9. Stabbing Westward "Nothing"
10. Brad Fiedel "Send It Out"
Keanu Reeves....Johnny
Dina Meyer....Jane
Ice-T....J-Bone
Takeshi Kitano....Takahashi
Dennis Akayama....Shinji
Dolph Lundgren....Street Preacher
Henry Rollins....Spider
Barbara Sukowa....Anna Kalmann
Udo Kier....Ralphie
Tracy Tweed....Pretty
Falconer Abraham....Yomamma
Don Francks....Hooky
Diego Chambers....Henson
Sherry Miller....Takahashi's Secretary
Arthur Eng....Viet
Johnny Mnemonic - the future's most wanted fugitive, a novel by Terry Bisson.
Now a Motion Picture from TriStar Pictures starring Keanu Reeves. Based on the short story and screenplay by William Gibson.
Johnny's a slick young twenty-first century hustler with a lot upstairs - and all of it's about to blow. A wetwired courier with an 320-gigabyte data-storage chip embedded in his brain, he smuggles information for a living, and he isn't particular where it comes from. But with this latest job, his lucrative memory bank has given way to a major headache.
The information he's carrying is hot-stolen from a powerful company that wants it back in the worst possible way. Data-overload is about to crash him permanently. The download code is missing, his employers are dead, and there's nothing between him and an army of high-tech Yakuza thugs - nothing but his street-smarts and a beautiful girl with a bad attitude and a hardwired taste for mayhem.
If this were the movie; the movie would be a lot funnier. It has a lot more cheesey lines and details. No continuity problems. No I WANT ROOMSERVICE monologue though! (How good can it be?) Worth owning for the Sci Fi fan...borrow it from the library if you can stand the genre.
He has won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards and his writing is really rather interesting.
Neuromancer (1984)
Exherp from Neuromancer: (a good description of The Matrix... even though he didn't write it.)
Burning Chrome (1986 - a collection of short shories written from 1977-1985)
Count Zero (1986)
"The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games," said the voice-over, "in the early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks." On the Sony, a two-dimensional space war faded behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spacial possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taght mathematical concepts...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexit. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...."
-Co-star Dina Meyer, had a big crush on Keanu years before she made this movie with him.
-Keanu's "anti-gravity" hair. (Don't laugh - I wanted that hairdo for a while!)
-Despite my reluctance to meantion this - Keanu does come off very well as being a spaced out guy with a headache. (Be quiet! That doesn't mean he ALWAYS does!)
-The I WANT ROOMSERVICE monologue.
-The fact the movie was filmed in Toronto and I visit Union Station (Hospital scene) as often as possible because of that.
Keanu Quotes:
© June 1999 station1@hotmail.com
"You don't look like the type of people I usually work for." ["We are...new at this." (scientist guy...)] "No shit."
["Your storage capacity?"] "More than adequate."
"Hit me."
"We've got...ice..."
"I've got the goods Ralphie, now I just want to get them out of my head."
"All my life I've been careful to stay in my own corner; looking out for number one - no complications. Now suddenly, I'm responsible for the entire fucking world! And everyone in this motherearth's trying to kill me, if - IF my head doesn't blow up first!!!" ["Maybe this isn't JUST about you anymore." (Dana Meyer as Jane)] "Listen...you listen to me...see that city over there? That's where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the rats and the garbage and the fuckin' last month's newspapers blowing back and forth! I've had it with them. I've had it with you. I've had it with all this...I WANT ROOM SERVICE!!!! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold mexican beer, I want the ten-thousand dollar-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laudered like they do at the Imperial hotel, in Tokyo."
"I had to dump a chunk of long-term memory." ["You had to what...?" (Jane)] "My childhood..."
["Where did you learn to do that?" (Jane)] "I once had a summer job breaking and entering."
["What are you doing?" (Jane)] "I have to make a long distance phone call."
"I got mine in Signapore."
"Just Johnny."
["Man owes me 3 grand and he's stealling my phone card." (Jane)] "And it's still our first date!"
Internet Movie Database: Johnny Mnemonic (1995)