Actor Keanu Reeves is making box-office headlines with his groundbreaking John Wick movies, and while the Arch Motorcycle co-founder turns heads with his company's latest model, the Method 143, many may not realize it was his personal early '70s Norton Commando that he rode from Toronto to Florida to hand deliver Gus Van Sant's script for My Own Private Idaho to convince fellow actor River Phoenix to join the cast in December 1990.

Reeves and Phoenix met while Reeves was filming Parenthood with Phoenix's brother Joaquin in 1988. The two acted together for the first time in Lawrence Kasdan's I Love You to Death the following year. Gus Van Sant had written a screenplay loosely based on Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V, and wanted Reeves and Phoenix as his main protagonists. The story involves two friends, Mike and Scott, as they embark on a journey that takes them to Mike's hometown in Idaho and then to Italy in search of Mike's mother.

Thomas Edward Lawrence — better known as Lawrence of Arabia, made famous by David Lean’s 1962 classic movie of the same name — loved his motorcycles, specifically the spendy and powerful Brough Superior. He owned eight of these beauties.

‘The Road’ is Chapter 16 in Part III of T.E. Lawrence’s book The Mint, written in 1929 but published posthumously 20 years after his death in 1935 (as per his wishes). Lawrence writes about ‘Boanarges’, the name he gave his 1928 Brough Superior SS100, his only earthly indulgence.

This week’s Bite-Sized blog includes stories of riding near Lake Cuyamaca and Borrego Springs outside San Diego, seeing the latest Indiana Jones movie on opening night, and meeting new and old friends in Toluca Lake on my home to wrap up a great motorcycle adventure.

Author Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, No Country For Old Men, The Road) died on June 13, 2023, five weeks shy of his 90th birthday. The Coen brothers’ film adaptation of No Country (2007) raked in $171 million on a $25 million budget. Of its eight Academy Award nominations, it won four, including Best Picture. The Coen brothers won Achievement in Directing (Best Director) and Best Adapted Screenplay. The Ridley Scott film The Counselor (2013) was McCarthy’s first spec script, and while it didn’t have as much success as No Country, it included motorcycles and drugs.

Here’s an excerpt from the screenplay, first published in The New Yorker on June 3, 2013. The film was released on October 25, 2013, grossing $71 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.