Reeves and Winter party on
Dude, get this: Real-life friends back onscreen as Bill and Ted in long-awaited follow-up
In the chronicles of late-20th-century popular culture, you will find few friends as excellent as Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan. The dopey Southern California dudes and bandmates always stood faithfully alongside each other, whether bumbling through time in their 1989 film debut, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” or wheedling themselves out of the afterlife in the 1991 sequel, “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.” These movies helped bring a bodacious bounty of slang into the wider lexicon while providing early career boosts to their leading men, Alex Winter (Bill) and Keanu Reeves (Ted).
Three decades later, the actors, both 55, have remained close friends. Reeves is now the star of franchises such as “The Matrix” and “John Wick,” and Winter is a director of documentaries such as “Showbiz Kids” and the upcoming “Zappa.” But they’re forever connected by “Bill & Ted,” and the fact that they genuinely like each other, as they explained in a Zoom conversation earlier this summer.
“There’s very little constancy in this business,” Winter said. “You come together on a set, you’re like, ‘We’re like a family!’ And then it’s, ‘OK, bye.’ You never, ever see them again.” But with Reeves, Winter said, “I think of him as my brother.”
Reeves said: “We enjoy each other’s company and our thoughts and takes on the world. When we come together, it’s like, ‘What are you thinking?’ ‘I don’t know, but this is kind of funny.’ ‘Yeah, that’s kind of weird, too.’ ”
Now they are reuniting in a third film, “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” which after a lengthy and occasionally heinous development process, was released on demand and in theaters on Friday. The new movie, written by the “Bill & Ted” creators, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, and directed by Dean Parisot, finds the title characters muddling through middle age, still chasing their unfulfilled dream of uniting the world with their music — this time with the help of their daughters, Thea Preston (Samara Weaving) and Billie Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine).
Reeves and Winter spoke about their experiences on the “Bill & Ted” films. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
Q: You both started acting when you were young. Had you ever crossed paths before you made “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”?
Keanu Reeves: Nope! Alex Winter: We met in
the audition process. Keanu had come to Hollywood from Toronto. I had come from New York. ... We hit it off early on in the audition. We had similar training and similar interests, about acting and drama and the plays we liked.
R: And cinema!
W: When they told us we both got the part, we were both like, ah, that’s great that you got it. It’s like
when you start at a new school, you’re like, oh great, you’re going to be in my class. It was that vibe.
Q: What was the spirit like when the film went into production?
W: Everybody involved was super-young. (The director) Stephen Herek was in his late 20s. Chris and Ed were only a few years older than Keanu and
myself. Everybody didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
R: But Stephen Herek had a real vision, and we were all on board. Tonally, no one was off on their own. Let’s make this real, but it’s hyper-reality. Bill and Ted were Chris and Ed’s characters, but they really let us have our voice.
Q: Was it meaningful to
you that you got to work with George Carlin, who played Rufus, your timetraveling guardian?
W: We didn’t know who Rufus was going to be until well into shooting, and it was scary. There were names that were being floated around — they were great actors, but just not right for that role. Scott Kroopf (a producer of the “Bill & Ted” series) had worked with Carlin before, so that was where he came in. Keanu and I were blown away that it was George. He was an extremely grounded, downto-earth person off-camera. And I would say he was very charitably nice to both of us. (Laughter) We were well aware of the gravitas of having him.
R: We were young, and we were trained, but it was very helpful to have people to help elevate us. We felt very fortunate about that.
Q: What took so long to get “Bill & Ted Face the Music” made?
W: Oy. Where to begin? R: It’s show business, right? Many moons ago, the writers had an idea. And we said, yes, that’s a good idea. Let’s go try and do it. Then we brought on a producer, then we found a director. And then we got into the business.
W: (Makes squealing noise) That’s a record scratch. (Laughter) To the fans, it was a no-brainer. To the marketplace, the movies have never been a nobrainer until they come out.
R: There’s a lot of, um, creative and business challenges to bringing it onscreen.
Q: Did it always center on the idea of Bill and Ted growing up to be middle-age losers?
R: That’s been the core premise from the very beginning — of course that’s what would happen.
W: That was the heart, the comic engine that we responded to in the first place. The longer it took us to get it made, in a way, the funnier that got.
R: I think it’s safe to say that future versions of Bill and Ted are living the lives of the consequences of our present failure. (Laughter) For me, there was always a deliciousness to playing the dark side, the grumpier versions. I loved playing Evil Ted in “Bogus Journey.” There’s such a whimsy to it.
Q: What was your experience like working with Samara Weaving and Brigette LundyPaine?
R: They did amazing work. They looked to the past films for how they would be, but then they created their own dynamic together. They have a unique fashion sense. They’re more modern. They’re connected to us but different.
W: They really are their own people. They played the characters as two good friends who have grown up together from birth. They took a page from us, in terms of being our kids, but were by no means trying to be us. They picked up a little bit of surface-y stuff, just a couple of nuances that would just help connect us all, and they came at the characters in a very authentic way.