My Heart Is A Bus That Never Slows Down: Speed (Jan De Bont, 1994)

Clayface: Celebrity Dirt #2 is out now at comic shops and digital platforms. Issue #3 is coming on September 9.

ALSO: Though I forgot to add this yesterday, my weird gay vampire short story "The Model" is in EC's Catacomb of Torment #14, available at comic shops everywhere. You can check out a preview here.

In the meantime, you can pick up Be Not Afraid in collected edition; DILF in both book and smell form; and put in a pre-order for the collected edition of Dead Teenagers, due out October 6.

In the past month, I’ve tried to revisit the gay cinema of the ‘90s, particularly the movies I wasn’t allowed to watch, due to being a repressed Catholic teenager. However, I don’t want to give you the impression that I was deprived. This week, I want to address the gayest movie of the 1990s, which I did watch, many times, upon its release: New Queer Cinema classic Speed (1994), starring Keanu Reeves. 

It’s commonly believed that Speed is about a bus that cannot slow down. This is an example of how queer art can sometimes be impenetrable to cishet audiences. In fact, Speed is a movie about how you, the bookish young lad watching it at home, are sexually attracted to men, a gender shared by both you and the actor Keanu Reeves. 

Let’s examine some of the subtle homoerotic coding within this movie. 

1) There’s a part where Keanu Reeves looks like this: 

2) Keanu Reeves chews gum consistently for at least the first ten minutes of this movie. Discovering bombs, disarming bombs, engaging in banter with his partner about the discovery and disarming of bombs: In none of these scenarios does Keanu Reeves not chew gum, nor does Keanu Reeves run out of gum to chew. Every moment of action in this movie is accompanied by the hypnotic rippling and flexing of jaw muscles in the face of Keanu Reeves. This is foreshadowing that you, the viewer, are going to be attracted to men. 

3) There’s a part where Keanu Reeves looks like this: