Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

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Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Directed by	Stephen Herek
Produced by	Scott Kroopf Michael S. Murphey Joel Soisson
Written by	Chris Matheson Ed Solomon
Starring	Keanu Reeves Alex Winter George Carlin
Music by	David Newman
Distributed by	Orion Pictures
Release date(s)	17 February 1989
Running time	90 min
Language	English
Budget	$10,000,000
Followed by	Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)
IMDb profile

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) is a comedy/science fiction film based on the idea of time travel. It is also a prime example of a buddy film.

The film was released by Nelson Entertainment and Orion Pictures, written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon and directed by Stephen Herek. It starred Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq., Keanu Reeves as Ted "Theodore" Logan, and George Carlin as the mystical Rufus. (See cast list for the "personages of historical significance.") A motif in the film is the reliance of the two upon rock lyrics for philosophical and practical guidance.

The film was made in 1987, but due to the bankruptcy of the film's original distributor, the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, the project was not released theatrically until 1989. As a partial result of the delay, certain dates in the movie originally scripted as "1987" had to be redubbed as "1988". The copyright date of this movie is 1988 and the same date appears on the DVD cover.

The film's taglines ("Be Excellent to Each Other" and "Party On, Dudes!"), as well as other California slang phrases, enjoyed a brief surge in popularity in the U.S. following the film's release. The film's "no way"/"yes way" exchanges received new life in 1992's Wayne's World, though shortened to "no way"/"way."

It was followed in 1991 by a sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

Two spin-off television series were produced as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. The first, an animated series (originally featuring the voices of Carlin, Winter, and Reeves for season one, though they were replaced in season two), ran for 21 episodes in 1990 and 1991. A later live action series, featuring none of the cast from the movie, lasted just seven episodes in 1992. A spin-off comic book, Bill and Ted's Excellent Comic Book, (following on from Bogus Journey) was produced by Marvel Comics. There were also multi-level Game Boy, NES and Atari Lynx games released, which were very loosely based on the film's time travel aspect. A PC title and a nearly identical Amiga port were made in 1991 by Off the Wall Productions under contract by Capstone Software and followed very close to the original movie.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure the 50th greatest comedy film of all time.

This film is number 24 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

1 Plot
2 Time travel
3 Wyld Stallyns
4 Cast
5 Production
- 5.1 Origins
- 5.2 Differences from original script
6 Legacy
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Winter) and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Reeves), simply referred to as "Bill & Ted," are teenagers in San Dimas, California who are in danger of flunking out of high school. A guitar-playing guru named Rufus (Carlin) arrives from a future San Dimas to help them pass a vital history test, because their garage band ("Wyld Stallyns", pronounced "Wild Stallions") holds the key to world peace and ultimate truth. However, they will not achieve this destiny if the duo fail the exam and Ted's authoritarian father carries out his threat to ship him to Oats Military Academy in Alaska. Rufus lends them a time machine disguised as a phone booth, which they use to meet—and "collect"—various historical figures: Napoleon Bonaparte (described early in the film by Bill as "a short, dead dude"), Socrates (mistakenly pronounced "So-crates", and given the surname "Johnson"), Billy the Kid ("Mr. The Kid"), Sigmund Freud ("frood"), Beethoven ("Dave Beeth oven"), Genghis Khan (Bob Gangus Khan), Joan of Arc ("Miss of Arc")and Abraham Lincoln, to help them with their vital history presentation.

[edit] Time travel

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The movie's entire plot is a model example of a Predestination paradox, wherein Bill and Ted are entrusted with the means to dramatically improve the entire universe of the future by a citizen (Rufus) of that very future. Near the end of the movie, Ted solves the problem of breaking into the jail by exploiting this paradox, demonstrating an unexpected (probably to himself as well) level of temporal insight. Knowing that time travellers (themselves) in the future world can provide aid to those in their current situation (as Rufus does originally), they resolve to help themselves break into the jail by stealing Ted's dad's keys from a couple of days ago and leaving them where they will be found at the exact moment of the resolution. The astute viewer may reflect at this point that Ted's dad complained about having lost his keys at the beginning of the film, which Ted at that time knows nothing about. This accordance with the Novikov self-consistency principle, suggests that there was never any possibility for Bill and Ted to fail. The same accordance lends validity to the fact that their removing critical figureheads from history does not cause the world of present-day San Dimas to be drastically different (Although, Bill and Ted might have pulled them out of history after they have done what made them famous.) Moreover, and perhaps more relevant, their history project remains impressive insofar as the history produced by the characters has not been modified by their absence. Bill and Ted are paradoxically bound to return them all afterwards, unscathed.

The abundance of flagrant macroscopic time travel flouts the chronology protection conjecture, which one may handle via suspension of disbelief.

Rufus never says what his name is. Instead, Bill and Ted tell their past selves to "listen to this dude Rufus". This is an example of an ontological paradox, in which predestined events necessitate prerequisite information to appear from nothing.

[edit] Wyld Stallyns

The Wyld Stallyns (pronounced "Wild Stallions") is the fictional metal band from the film that later proves responsible for bringing peace and harmony to the world and creating a utopia on Earth. The founding members were Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan. They are later joined by Elizabeth and Joanna, two princesses from medieval England.

In the sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, the villain De Nomolos tries unsuccessfully to stop the band from creating a peaceful future by replacing Bill and Ted with robotic doubles. Later, Bill and Ted destroy the robots and make their world-wide debut at the 4th Annual San Dimas Battle of the Bands. As predicted by time-traveller Rufus, they bring peace to the world and eventually play a sellout tour on the planet Mars.

One of the bands they competed against in the Battle of the Bands was real-life California band Primus, led by Les Claypool. The song Wyld Stallyns performs at the competition was "God Gave Rock And Roll To You", which in real life was originally performed by Argent, and later covered by KISS. It was the KISS version of the song that was used in the actual movie, albeit with a more elaborate intro.

[edit] Cast

Keanu Reeves - Ted Logan
Alex Winter - Bill S. Preston, Esq.
George Carlin - Rufus
Terry Camilleri - Napoleon
Dan Shor - Billy the Kid
Tony Steedman - Socrates
Robert V. Barron - Abraham Lincoln
Rod Loomis - Dr. Sigmund Freud
Al Leong - Genghis Khan
Jane Wiedlin - Joan of Arc
Amy Stock-Poynton - Missy Preston
Jeff Kleinmann - Taj

[edit] Production

The film was shot in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. In real life, Waterloo was the Golfland (now Golfland Sunsplash) located at the intersection of highways AZ 87 & US 60 in Mesa. The bowling alley was then a non-franchised locally-owned alley, and is now the AMF Tempe Village Lanes located on Rural Road at US 60, three miles south of Arizona State University. The mall was Phoenix Metrocenter located on Peoria Road at Interstate 17. The high school was Coronado High School in Scottsdale. The Circle-K store, subsequently demolished during the construction of the Loop 202 Red Mountain Freeway, was located on McKellips Road near AZ 87 in Mesa. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Origins

The characters of "Bill & Ted" were created and played by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon in improv theater (originally, it was "Bill, Ted & Bob" although the third character was eventually dropped). Matheson and Solomon have described Bill & Ted as an idealised version of their friendship (Bill & Ted = Chris & Ed). In the original improv pieces, Ted was described as having a stoner pseudo-intellectual older brother. This was changed for the movie, although Bill's stepmother Missy did make the transition from theater to the film. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Differences from original script

In earlier drafts of the script, Rufus was 28 years old, and historical figures Bill & Ted plucked from history included Charlemagne (whom they referred to as "Charlie Magnay"), Babe Ruth, and a non-famous medieval person called "John the Serf." John is listed in the credits. ^{[citation needed]}

In the original ending, Bill and Ted delivered their oral report in the classroom, with the historical figures displaying their views on the blackboard. This was discarded in favor of a more spectacular ending. ^{[citation needed]}

At one point in the movie, a character utters "San Dimas High School football rules!" This was inserted at the behest of the town of San Dimas in lieu of the previously-written line for the character, which was "Stage fright, go away!" The writers felt the "football" comment more humorous. The Ataris wrote a song called "San Dimas High School Football Rules" which does not actually mention San Dimas at all.

Originally, the time machine was to be a 1969 Chevrolet van, but the idea was nixed as being too close in concept to the DeLorean used in the Back to the Future trilogy. Instead, the time machine was styled after a 1960s American telephone booth. In hindsight, this was quite similar to the time-traveling British police box-shaped TARDIS of the BBC's television programme Doctor Who, to the point where the Cracked parody of the film had the Third Doctor threatening to sue Rufus; however, the Bill & Ted telephone booth lacked the huge interior spaces of the Doctor's TARDIS.

[edit] Legacy

Since 2004, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure" has been performed at the Universal Orlando resort every October during Halloween Horror Nights. The show differs from year to year, with various pop culture icons making appearances and being spoofed. The main plot involves Bill and Ted being threatened by an evil villain from a popular film that year, and a host of villains, heroes, and celebrities showing up. The show usually includes elaborate dance numbers, stunts, and mutliple double-entendres for the late night event crowd. ^[1]^[2]

The phone booth used in this movie was given away in a contest presented by Nintendo Power magazine (in honor of Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure), won by a boy in Mississippi. ^[3]^[4]