THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE
When chatting to Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, it’s sometimes tricky to know which one is talking. They finish each other’s thoughts and sentences, speak with the same laidback cadence and seem to operate on a similar low frequency – all unhurried modesty and unfailing politeness. Though they don’t actually use the vernacular of the characters they’ve now played for 33 years, they’re rocking serious Bill & Ted energy (so much so that Total Film inadvertently refers to them by their character names at one point, much to their amusement). “Keanu and I have known each other and have been good friends a very, very long time at this point,” says Winter, “the relationship we have off-screen is… you know, we’re two grownups, right? It’s not like ‘Bill and Ted’ play at all.”
Admittedly they don’t jam together in an atrocious rock band, mime fretnoodling when delighted, time-travel in a phone booth and – as far as we know – hang out at the Circle K. But Reeves and Winter’s strong bond, and that of the team who first put Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure together in 1989 and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey in 1991, is a driving force in evoking a belated third installment. Because though the films have achieved cult status and Reeves has become a globally bankable megastar, Hollywood wasn’t knocking at their door to make another. No way! Yes way…
Let’s travel back in time to the mid-’8os, when writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon came up with the idea of two naive “guys we thought were funny in high school” who they anticipated maybe figuring as skits in a sketch movie. But having worked them into characters of two music-loving, sweet teens, they expanded the concept to a movie and sold the script to uberproducer Dino de Laurentiis. During auditions, then-23-year-old Keanu Reeves and 22-year-old Alex Winter clicked, and their shared vision of Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan snagged them the roles that would resonate throughout their careers.
