Interview: Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson

A conversation with the screenwriters of Bill and Ted Face the Music.

A /film interview with screenwriters Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson who have written all three movies in this series: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, and the latest installment Bill and Ted Face the Music.

Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey were both well-received when they came out, but it feels like in recent times there’s been a resurgence in appreciation for Bill and Ted and their feel-good legacy. Did you feel from the beginning like you had created something special or was it something that slowly dawned as the appreciation for the films grew over the years?

Ed: I think when we first started, we were truly only trying to make ourselves, the two of us, laugh. And we had no idea that they would catch on in any way. This movie went through so many different starts and stops that we never knew if this movie would ever even get out to the public. I personally didn’t feel like we’d hit anything culturally until somebody sent me a T-shirt from the Clinton-Gore campaign. And the front of the T-shirt said, “Bill and Al’s Excellent Adventure” and the back of it says “George and Dan’s Bogus Journey,” and I thought, “Whoa, did we actually put a footprint in culture?” And it kind of shocked me. Chris, you have a different take on that?

Chris: I never really had much of a sense of its place in the world. It sort of just crept up on me. I don’t even think I really perceived it until pretty recently, the last five years. A little bit. It still shocks me.

The third Bill and Ted had been talked about for so long that it almost became one of those Hollywood projects that would always be discussed but never made, until suddenly things kicked into gear three or four years ago. At what point did you seriously consider making Bill and Ted 3, and bringing the whole gang back together for it?

Chris: In 2008, Ed and I had a notion, a starting point, which was that it just hadn’t worked out [for Bill and Ted], that that all this time passed, and they hadn’t saved the world and they hadn’t achieved what they set out to achieve.

Ed: It’s the pressure of having been told you’re going to be the greatest people who ever lived or that your music’s going to save the world. What that must actually feel like and really living with that pressure.

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In the process of all the different scripts for Face The Music, were there any ideas that never made it to the table? Or were you basically given a blank canvas for the craziest and out-there ideas because of how beloved the series has become?

Chris: Yeah, I mean there were a lot. We worked on it…it was 10 years from the time that we started, and 11 years from the time we started our first meeting with Alex and Keanu, before the cameras rolled. So in those 11 years, there’s a lot of drafts. And there’s actually a lot of really funny stuff in those drafts, that either conceptually didn’t make sense as the piece evolved, or just financially it was not affordable. As we got close to production, there were some pretty funny set pieces that just fell by the wayside as we moved along.

Were there any you can talk about that you wish that you would have been able to follow through with, or is that something that you’ll save for later extra bonus features?

Ed: I think Chris and I both feel like there were a few scenes that either made us laugh or moved us emotionally in certain ways that, for a variety of reasons, didn’t make it in the movie. Some was budget, some didn’t seem like the movie as the movie was evolving. I think the two of us feel like after the movie is out, we might just release the script pages to people and let them read them and see, you know, just to share with people.

Chris: Just to give you a little idea, one of [Bill and Ted’s] ideas to solve their problem was, “Well, why don’t we go back. Maybe the way to solve this problem is let’s go back, not forward.” They’d go back to when they were kids or teenagers and try to change it then, and their interaction with their child selves and their teenage selves, were pretty ridiculous and pretty fun.

That sounds like such a fun idea.

Chris: [The idea was] let’s go back and just change ourselves from within, like let’s go back and tell ourselves, you have to be different, and then they try that. It was funny. It was really, really funny. I loved that.

A trailer for the movie:

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