ALEX & KEANU’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves are making history once again

Have Bill and Ted got wiser with age?

Alex Winter: You know what? I think we have, a little bit.

Keanu Reeves: They’re not jaded, though. I just think they have a lot of life experience. They’ve got children, they’ve been in a relationship, they’ve been having the hard knocks of their lives, of trying to write this song, but I don’t think they’re jaded. I think they’re a little bit weary, but that indomitable spirit is still in there, and that’s really what the course of this story is about.

Winter: These aren’t cartoon characters, they’re human beings. So, what has that time done to them? Who are they now? A lot of the comedy and the pathos lives in that core idea.

With the whole of existence on the line, the stakes couldn’t be much higher this time out…

Winter: Ambition-wise, I don’t think the intention with this ever was to “go bigger” than the other movies, but I do think that there was, on the writers’ part, a real desire to take the characters further emotionally. Which you can do now because we’re older and the stakes are so much higher for us personally.

Even forgetting the “ticking clock” stakes of our mission, it’s our relationships with our daughters, our relationships with our wives, our relationship with each other. All our ideas about what life means – it’s all on the line. So it’s certainly more ambitious on a personal level, which for a comedy can be a really good thing because you can mine that in a lot of ways.

What do Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine bring to the roles of your daughters, Thea and Billie?

Winter: They felt like our kids without it feeling like they were knocking off our characters, which is not easy. Not easy!

I was really, really impressed. Because my guess was that they would go either completely not trying to represent us at all, or they would just dive totally into representing us. Instead, they very wisely, very effectively, did neither of those things. They found their own characters, who had a taste of who we are, because they’re our kids, but who are very much their own characters, which is great.

Reeves: I thought their costumes were really good too. They were really in the spirit of the whole thing. They worked with Jennifer Starzyk, our costumer, and the direction they took with all that was fantastic. Bill and Ted always had their own kinda style, and they have their own unique style too.

Most friends fall out sometimes. What did you last fight about?

Reeves: I don’t think Alex and I have ever argued!

Winter: I don’t remember ever getting into any serious disagreement with you! It’s weird. I mean, it’s cool. It’s like a fraternal relationship. I guess brothers can fight, but ours has always been a very magnanimous relationship. It’s always had a lot of equanimity. I think that’s part of what works on the screen with those two characters. There’s a genuine equanimity between them.