An oral his­to­ry of Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adventure

With boda­cious three­quel Bill & Ted Face The Music final­ly shred­ding its way into cin­e­mas, we chron­i­cle the cre­ation of the film that start­ed it all, Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, with writ­ers Chris Math­e­son and Ed Solomon, direc­tor Stephen Herek, pro­duc­er Scott Kroopf and star Alex Win­ter… *Air guitar*

Jan­u­ary 1981. Stu­dents Chris Math­e­son and Ed Solomon meet at UCLA and form a fast friend­ship that quick­ly leads to the for­ma­tion of Bill and Ted…

Ed Solomon (Screen­writer): Chris [Math­e­son] and I met in a play­writ­ing class. We shared this unique, ridicu­lous sense of humour and became like pre-school chil­dren who just play in their own lit­tle fan­ta­sy world – much to the annoy­ance of peo­ple in our close vicinity.

Chris Math­e­son (Screen­writer): I realised Ed was a kin­dred spir­it. We were sim­i­lar in cer­tain ways and dif­fer­ent in cer­tain ways but there was an over­lap of what we thought was fun­ny. We rent­ed this lit­tle the­atre in Hol­ly­wood so we could do improv and Bill and Ted emerged one night.

ES: It was Chris who sug­gest­ed we do a cou­ple of guys who were study­ing his­to­ry but knew noth­ing about his­to­ry. Orig­i­nal­ly it was three guys: Bill, Ted and a char­ac­ter named Bob who has long since gone away. Chris and I loved play­ing the char­ac­ters so much we went to a cof­fee shop lat­er that night and con­tin­ued goof­ing around doing them.

CM: We liked them from the start. We stayed in char­ac­ter and got to know them, build­ing their back sto­ries: their dads, moms, sib­lings, and rela­tion­ship with each oth­er. They were alive to us. We wrote let­ters back and forth as Bill and Ted and had phone con­ver­sa­tions as Bill and Ted. By the time we decid­ed to put them in a movie, we knew them pret­ty well.

ES: It was actu­al­ly Chris’ father, the famous sci­ence fic­tion writer Richard Math­e­son, who sug­gest­ed these guys could have a whole movie to them­selves. That began a process of try­ing to fig­ure out what that’d be. We spent sev­en days in a café in Lake Tahoe doing a detailed, hand­writ­ten out­line, then four days in an LA cof­fee shop doing a crazy rough draft.

CM: Once we put pen to paper we’d just go back and forth writ­ing dia­logue. When­ev­er my hand got tired, I’d hand the pen to Ed and he’d write for a while and when he got tired, he’d do the same. It was real­ly fast because we knew them so well. Our orig­i­nal script fea­tured Hitler – just take out Napoleon and put in Hitler. I don’t know where they picked him up, maybe the bunker. They called him the evil mous­tache dude. Of course, we couldn’t do that.

ES: [The first draft] was called ​‘Bill & Ted’s Time Van’ and had most of what the movie has although there were some sig­nif­i­cant changes. Rufus was a 27-year-old high school sopho­more and drove a van that trav­elled through time for no rea­son we cared to explain, prob­a­bly because we didn’t know how. It seemed to blow a hole in the real­i­ty of the film, so to fix that we had an idea that made us laugh: What if 700 years from now their music lit­er­al­ly saves the world? We then switched the title to Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adventure.

With the script finalised, Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture enters pre-pro­duc­tion backed by leg­endary Ital­ian film pro­duc­er Dino De Laurentiis…

Scott Kroopf (Pro­duc­er): The script was on the Black List. Every­one around town knew it and loved it, not only for its incred­i­bly goofy, fun­ny qual­i­ty but for the way Chris and Ed used lan­guage to cre­ate a whole ​‘Bill & Ted’ speak and unique take on friend­ship. It was very infec­tious. We imme­di­ate­ly start­ed look­ing for a direc­tor and found Stephen Herek.

Stephen Herek (Direc­tor): I read it and was laugh­ing out loud and falling off my chair. It’s the usu­al thing peo­ple say when a script is fun­ny, but it was. I told my wife that this is either going to be the biggest flop in the world or a pret­ty big hit.

Alex Win­ter (Bill S Pre­ston, Esq): Bill & Ted was just anoth­er audi­tion. What struck me at the time was the lan­guage; it was very dis­tinct for what was pre­sent­ed as a teen com­e­dy. It wasn’t like oth­er teen come­dies – god knows you’d audi­tion for a tonne of those. If it wasn’t a John Hugh­es movie it was a knock-off John Hugh­es movie and the lan­guage was always the same: teens act­ing like 40 year olds in ther­a­py. [Bill and Ted] were very child­like and spoke in this ornate way. That stood out. It was more fun.

SH: For me, [cast­ing] was a throw­back to the straight man/​funny man thing that goes back to Lau­rel and Hardy. Strange­ly enough, even though Keanu hasn’t done that many come­dies, he had a han­dle on the com­e­dy. It was born out of an hon­esty in his per­for­mance. He real­ly became Ted. I need­ed a straight man and it was hard to find that chemistry.

AW: It was an exhaus­tive process. It didn’t get seri­ous until the last audi­tion. They’d call us in and have us read [with dif­fer­ent actors]. I read with Keanu, I read with oth­er peo­ple, he read with oth­er peo­ple – then they start­ed let­ting actors go who they didn’t want. Keanu and I became friends at the first audi­tion. We hit it off and had lots of sim­i­lar­i­ties. We both showed up with motor­cy­cle hel­mets, both played bass, both liked the same the­atre, lit­er­a­ture and cin­e­ma… We would’ve been friends whether we got the part or not.

SH: I start­ed see­ing Alex and Keanu drift off togeth­er. They’d be in the cor­ner talk­ing or get­ting lunch. They seemed to bond pret­ty quick­ly and became friends, and that’s how I want­ed to por­tray [Bill and Ted] on screen. That clinched it for me.

AW: I was very into music. I was quite close with the Red Hot Chilli Pep­pers at the time and the But­t­hole Surfers and The Meat Pup­pets. I was intrigued by the idio­syn­crat­ic way this Bill & Ted project seemed to be com­ing at music, because they’re not head­bangers, ston­ers, surfers or met­al kids. It’s not an imme­di­ate get.

CM: Just a few days before pro­duc­tion start­ed, Ed and I went to this McDon­alds across the street from the pro­duc­tion office and there were a cou­ple of young guys in line ahead of us. The way they were talk­ing, inter­act­ing and laugh­ing… Ed and I lit­er­al­ly said, ​‘Damn, could you imag­ine if those two guys played Bill and Ted?’ and it was Alex and Keanu, which makes us sound pret­ty dumb.

SH: When we start­ed out, I dubbed [Alex and Keanu’s style] the pup­py fac­tor. It was uncon­di­tion­al love. They just have an excite­ment for life and an exu­ber­ance like pup­pies. We dis­tilled direc­tion down to ​‘this scene needs more pup­py fac­tor’ and they got it imme­di­ate­ly. It affect­ed the way they moved, walked and turned their head. They clued into it quick.

ES: [Alex and Keanu] are real­ly charm­ing, smart and good look­ing guys. When Chris and I ini­tial­ly wrote the char­ac­ters we pic­tured spot­ty guys with low rid­er jeans with their box­ers stick­ing out, heavy met­al t‑shirts and long hair. What Alex and Keanu brought was a more win­ning and charm­ing per­son­al­i­ty, and what they embody that’s cru­cial to who Bill and Ted are is a benev­o­lence of spir­it and pos­i­tiv­i­ty. As soon as it was them, it was them. There was no look­ing back.

Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture begins film­ing in ear­ly 1987, with two weeks on loca­tion in Italy – but not before anoth­er ​’80s movie forces a few last minute tweaks…

SK: Every­one was excit­ed – and then Back to the Future came out and that real­ly threw us for a loop because it was a time trav­el movie also fea­tur­ing a car. It was one of those moments where every­one went, ​‘Hang on, this might be deriv­a­tive’. Steve Herek came up with the very fun idea of the phone booth.

SH: [Orig­i­nal­ly] it was a van but visu­al­ly all I could come up with was an image of Scoo­by Doo. I tried to put a cer­tain believ­abil­i­ty to it. The idea that there’s these phone lines – the cir­cuits of time – and you can dial a num­ber, con­nect to a cir­cuit, go through these wires and then boom! You’re spit out into this phone num­ber in time. It felt like it could be a lot of fun but also had a cer­tain log­ic to it.

ES: Being Cal­i­for­nia boys with no inter­net, we had no idea of Dr Who.

SH: I hadn’t seen Dr Who at that point. Unfor­tu­nate­ly a lot of good ideas are used before. We just threw cau­tion to the wind and ran with it.

AW: [The pro­duc­tion] was tiny. It was most­ly young peo­ple. Roy Forge Smith was our Pro­duc­tion Design­er who had done Holy Grail and was like a titan, we all fol­lowed him around like chil­dren ask­ing him Mon­ty Python ques­tions. Every­one was at the begin­ning of their career and there was no expec­ta­tion. It was like my film school expe­ri­ence: a bunch of scrap­py peo­ple who real­ly want­ed to make movies com­ing togeth­er to fig­ure it out. It was lib­er­at­ing because there was free­dom to play and exper­i­ment, and we had so much faith in Steve Herek.

SH: Roy built our phone booths a lit­tle larg­er so we could accom­mo­date [more peo­ple]. The more his­tor­i­cal fig­ures Bill and Ted brought back, it start­ed to get a lit­tle more cramped. The cast were stuck in there for a lit­tle bit [dur­ing shoot­ing] but they all liked each oth­er and there was no COVID-19 so they weren’t too wor­ried about it. It was more about cos­tume smells. Even though we washed them every day, unfor­tu­nate­ly things start­ed to get a lit­tle stinky.

SK: We kicked around a bunch of peo­ple [for Rufus]. The stu­dio thought we should go for Char­lie Sheen which would’ve been a whole dif­fer­ent way of going. We didn’t cast George Car­lin until we were well into shooting.

CM: We talked about David Lee Roth, the lead singer from Van Halen and I loved the idea of Ringo Starr. Car­lin brought this very sophis­ti­cat­ed comedic ele­gance. Our orig­i­nal con­cept of Rufus was basi­cal­ly a home­less 27-year-old who lived in a van with his dog who he’d named Dog Rufus – that’s very dif­fer­ent from George Car­lin in his cool suit and sunglasses.

AW: Dino De Lau­ren­ti­is had unbe­liev­able access in Italy. We were shoot­ing in build­ings that no one had stepped in for 100 years. The Medieval Cas­tle we shot in was a real cas­tle. It was fun days. It was a big part of my youth and I have real­ly fond mem­o­ries of that whole shoot.

SH: We were all kids just hav­ing a good time. We didn’t real­ly give a shit whether the movie made mon­ey or not. It was fun to wake up in the morn­ing because we knew we were going to laugh.

Short­ly after pro­duc­tion wrapped, Dino De Lau­ren­ti­is went bank­rupt, leav­ing the film with­out dis­tri­b­u­tion and tem­porar­i­ly shelved before Nel­son Enter­tain­ment stepped in…

SH: When it came out and the pub­lic final­ly saw it, it became this lit­tle train that kept on mov­ing but the hard­est part for me was the process of actu­al­ly get­ting it out there because of the bank­rupt­cy. The stu­dios hat­ed it. They thought it was the worst movie ever made. At the time we didn’t have the oppor­tu­ni­ty of spe­cial effects temps. I think they might have been under the mis­un­der­stand­ing that this was a fin­ished product.

CM: We wrapped pro­duc­tion in April of ​’87 and it didn’t come out until Feb­ru­ary of ​’89 – almost two years. For about a year it just lan­guished and was going to go straight to video. We’d go to meet­ings in Hol­ly­wood and they’d be like, ​‘Too bad about Bill & Ted, that was a good script…’

ES: The movie sat on a shelf unfin­ished for a year before Nel­son Enter­tain­ment picked it up, put some more mon­ey in and got it fin­ished. It got a release by Ori­on but crit­ics just pum­melled the crap out of it, yet weird­ly, audi­ences respond­ed well.

SH: When the film was released, I left town. I didn’t want to read reviews or have any­thing to do with the release of this film any­more because it was a very hard year. I came back home in the mid­dle of the night and there’s like 70 mes­sages on my machine. I’m like, ​‘Oh shit, what’s hap­pened?’ But they were all con­grat­u­la­to­ry. The movie was a hit.

SK: I went to a the­atre in Pasade­na and the movie played so unbe­liev­ably well. Kids loved it and sur­pris­ing­ly old­er folks thought it was pret­ty fun­ny too. The day was saved which was great.

CM: The first time Ed and I [saw it in a the­atre] was open­ing night. We went to see it in West­wood which is where UCLA is and the audi­ence liked it. They laughed. It end­ed and I remem­ber one of our friends turned to us and said ​‘the audi­ence has spo­ken’. Peo­ple gen­uine­ly liked it.

Three decades on, Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture remains a firm favourite for fans old and young. Not bad for in-joke that start­ed between friends…

AW: I deal with Bill & Ted fans every sin­gle day and have since the movie first came out. For both Keanu and myself, it had a huge impact on our lives and how we’re viewed. There’s no way [Face The Music] would’ve hap­pened if there wasn’t a large enough fan base that felt a con­nec­tion to this world and these char­ac­ters and like they’d grown up with them. It’s very sweet. Today I get approached by peo­ple from my gen­er­a­tion but just as many, if not more, young peo­ple. From tod­dlers to peo­ple in their 20s, it had a huge impact.

CM: We just bumped into [Be Excel­lent to Each Oth­er]. To us, it was a joke. The pres­sure was on Bill and Ted and they bet­ter say some­thing deep so: ​‘Be Excel­lent To Each Oth­er’. We thought it was fun­ny and still think it’s fun­ny – but it’s actu­al­ly kin­da true too. You could def­i­nite­ly put a worse phrase out into the world. I’m glad that’s out there.

ES: Bill and Ted were cre­at­ed 100 per cent out of the spir­it of play. We did not expect any­thing from this film to endure; we didn’t even expect it to get made. I’ve had a long career with a lot of things that’ve worked and a lot more that haven’t but if I had to go to the grave hav­ing left one thing on the plan­et, I think ​‘Be Excel­lent To Each Oth­er’ is not a bad thing to have left.

SH: I’m so gen­uine­ly grate­ful for the ride this thing has tak­en. I could sit and get all intel­lec­tu­al as to why it did what it did, but I don’t fuck­ing know. I don’t think any­body knows. It just hit a chord at the time and peo­ple remem­ber it fond­ly – maybe more fond­ly than it real­ly is – but that’s okay. Even though I’m a bit of a cyn­ic, I do believe in mag­ic and there was some­thing mag­ic caught there. It’s still rid­ing the cir­cuits of time.

Bill & Ted Face The Music is released in cin­e­mas on 16 Sep­tem­ber. Both the 4K restora­tion of Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture and Chris Matheson’s book ​‘The Bud­dha Story’s Sto­ry’ are avail­able now.