EXCLUSIVE | 'Bill & Ted Face the Music': Time travel film or comedy? Writers Chris and Ed put debate to rest
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are back as Bill & Ted in 'Face the Music' and have been the talk of the town for the last couple of months as the release date edged closer. Directed by Dean Parisot, and written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. Winter and Reeves reprise their roles as the respective titular characters and will embark on a journey to save the world as we know it. This time, the duo work with their families, old friends, famous musicians, and each other to save mankind.
Ahead of the film's release, MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) spoke exclusively to writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon as they talk about returning to writing for the third film, the challenges, the evolution of the characters and what the audience can expect.
When plans for 'Bill & Ted: Face the Music' finally started taking off, what was the excitement and the feeling like?
Chris: There was a degree of excitement, but it was always like we were on the brink of death pretty much from the beginning and till the day cameras rolled. And maybe even beyond that. It just was very precarious, and it came together... it fell apart... came together... fell apart. So it was exciting, but it was nerve-wracking. Initially, in 2010, we delivered our first draft, and then we did a rewrite for Alex and Keanu in 2011.
Ed: And then we picked it out. They weren't interested. We took it to every studio in town. They weren't interested. We went to independent financiers, dozens, dozens, no one was interested. We rewrote the script. We kept trying. So it was always that sense that it could die at any minute. And even as we were getting ready to ramp up with actual production happening, we lost financing and it got cobbled together at the last minute. I had a horrible fantasy two nights ago that we'd find out that the movie wasn't finished and couldn't release and just fell apart. I guess it would be called a nightmare, not a fantasy, but yeah, but I think we're past that now.
Considering the first two films were big hits, how much of a challenge is it when you sit down and come up with a third installment?
Chris: Well, we started with just the guys. For us it's it was just about Bill and Ted. And it was thinking about will and what would have actually happened to them? Where would they really be? How would this have actually played out? And we quickly understood for a variety of reasons that it had to have not worked out the way that they thought it was going to work out. And that would lead to a lot of pain and difficulties. That leads to comedy, or generally, it can. And we felt it did. We came at it through the guys and they're trying to reaccess their inner lives, their needs, their emotional centers, and doing it that way, I think has generally helped us steer in the right direction.
Going back to film one, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, classicists remember this as the only film to ever combine Van Halen with Greek philosophy. Bogus Jenny had a Marvel comics adaptation. So the way it exploded in pop culture is huge. So, is this something that you're expecting to happen with Bill and Ted Face The Music as well?
Ed: I haven't even thought about the movie in that way. Well, a lot of musicians get to play together that wouldn't have played together otherwise. Yeah. You know, maybe that's it. (Chris: I don't know. It is a good question. I think just off the top of my head, it's hard)
Is it like an evolution?
Ed: I think the idea that when you're a teenager, you have a certain fantasy and in a way that was Chris, and my fan fantasia, when we were writing this, like we'd have a rock band that would save the world and then we'd get princess babes as a gift, you know, which is a very juvenile point of view, to be honest. And we're older. The world has changed and we've changed. And we were really interested in exploring the idea of what would happen if your fantasy as a child would become your destiny, and you were told was your destiny, but it didn't happen. It didn't work out.
What if life didn't go the way you thought it would go when you were a kid, how would you reconcile that? And what do you do with your dreams and what's important in your life and what do you leave on the planet? That is really meaningful. And I think for both of us and that we both believe that our lasting legacy is our children and the world is for them now.
There’s a debate raging on Twitter, whether Bill and Ted is a time travel film, or is it a musical comedy...
Chris: So I actually had to note down the exact words. From my standpoint, it's a comedy, we're using time travel as a way to make comedy as a way to get at certain character things. I'm not just inherently fascinated by time travel.
Ed: I think it's a comedy. One of my favorite scenes in 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure' is the time travel that takes place in getting the historical figures out of the jail cell. And it's just conceptual comedy, basically. It’s if we can think about it when this is done, let's go back in time and put something here where we need it. And it emerged because we had to figure out a way to get the historical figures out of the jail cell and had no budget and couldn't really do any special effects.
And to me, that's a comedic construct, and Bill and Ted facing themselves moving forward over the course of their lives. The antecedent to that for us was, Dickens’s 'Christmas Carol', or maybe a little bit of 'It's A Wonderful Life.' What happens if you get to see your life as it would have been led, that's actually not even a comedic concept. That's more of a serious theme. I think every choice that we make is guided more by the defining rod of, is it funny to us or not?
Do the rules of this movie make sense for itself? We wanted to make sure, we're never breaking the whatever internal rules we set up for this movie because I think the audience and we, as the filmmakers' consents, when you cheat your own, your own rules, (Chris) I guess there are no actual rules for time travel anyway. Cause there is no actual time travel.
How would you describe the evolution of Bill and Ted??
Chris: We have a scene where they're like, whatever they are 90 years old and they're still Bill and Ted and we had a scene that didn't make it into the movie where they were eight years old and they were still Bill and Ted. And when we made an excellent adventure, they're 17 and they're Bill and Ted. So to me, there's a kind of a fundamental sort of Bill and Ted nature that carries through all the movies. It's a way of looking at the world. It's the way of looking at other people.
It's the way of understanding life or something. But the externals change and as the externals change, that does have an effect on them. They're not so kind of like stuck that they don't evolve. As you said because they've been married for a long time. They have been dads for a long time. They've been the most famous guys on earth briefly. There have been flashes in the pan and kind of failures for a long time. They've dealt with very extreme ups and downs, these guys.
So yeah, evolution is a really good word, but the DNA of who they are, I think has stayed the same throughout. Yeah. What if they live to be 10,000 years old, they'd still be Bill and Ted at 10,000 years old.
Ed: In 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or even 'Bogus Journey', they didn't really have time for the effects of their disillusionments in their life and the effects of the world to wear on them. Certainly, we didn't think it would be funny or truthful to go back and try to make a movie about Bill and Ted who have the same exact psychology, the same lightness. In that first couple of movies, we felt that the world has seeped in there. Their failure seeped into their psychology. They're still Bill and Ted, but they're grappling with bigger issues because they've lived longer.
What is the biggest takeaway for the audience when they watch 'Bill and Ted: Face The music'?
Chris: What we wanted was to bring Bill and Ted back. I mean, they are very recognizably themselves. But they're grown men. We’re not bringing them back, like 17-year-old boys in 50-year-old bodies, they're grown, men who've lived. And so hopefully there's more depth to it. That’s what I hope people get out of it. I hope.
Ed: I agree with Chris. I think that's really well put and I hope that people appreciate that. You know, there's a different tone. It's still a Bill and Ted movie, but again, they've been through so much and they're a lot older. It's not as jokey, let's say as ‘Excellent Adventure’, but it also has more themes running through it. I hope that people take away just a fun diversion, a silly, absurd comedy about disillusion and loss and mortality.
'Bill & Ted Face the Music' releases on August 28 in theatres and VoD.