Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • -30 years ago, our first guests introduced us to Bill and Ted.

  • Gosh, has it been 30 years?

  • Who were trying to pass their history class

  • and write a song that would save the world.

  • Now they've reunited for a third film

  • called "Bill & Ted Face the Music,"

  • which is currently available on demand and on Blu-ray.

  • Here are Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.

  • Yeah!

  • Welcome to the show. Come on.

  • This is so cool to have you both here.

  • This is awesome. -Thank you, sir.

  • -People have been waiting for this movie for so long.

  • First, it was "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure,"

  • then "Bogus Journey," "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey,"

  • which ended with them having to write

  • the most important song in history.

  • Where do this one pick up?

  • -Well, we haven't written the song yet, Jimmy.

  • [ Laughter ]

  • -Yeah, we kind of blew it. -Yeah, okay. Yeah.

  • -So it's like all those years later, decades later,

  • they're still trying to write the song,

  • but they haven't written the song yet.

  • And that's put some pressures on their wives,

  • the family, the daughters.

  • And then at the same time,

  • the future comes back

  • and has a little wom-dinger for us.

  • -Yeah, they're not happy with us in the future anymore.

  • We've lost our cred.

  • -Wow. -And so they've asked us --

  • They've said, like, now it's you have to write the song

  • in order to save the world,

  • and all of reality as we know it.

  • [ Laughter ] By a certain amount --

  • By a certain moment in a certain location.

  • -Yeah. Keanu's gotten really good at that Zoom closeup,

  • by the way. -Yeah, I can't even do that.

  • Oh, it's fantastic. You've nailed it.

  • I thought it was so fun and so cool.

  • Kristen Schaal was great.

  • How did it feel... -Thank you.

  • ...for you guys to get into the characters again?

  • Do you remember the day that you were officially like,

  • "We've got to do the characters?"

  • I think I'm kind of getting into it now.

  • -Kind of, yeah. I mean, it took a long time

  • to get the film made.

  • Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon wrote a draft,

  • we worked on it for years,

  • worked on getting financing together for years,

  • bringing Dean Parisot, who's so amazing, on to direct

  • and Scott Kroopf who produced. -Oh, yeah.

  • -It was a long process.

  • And in that process, rehearsing and doing script work...

  • -Fitting the puzzle pieces together.

  • -And never did we actually do the voices.

  • -Yeah, we wouldn't do the voices.

  • We would work on the script.

  • And so we had some script readings,

  • and Dean the director would be like, "So..."

  • We'd be like, "No."

  • -The writers would be looking at us like,

  • "Are they going to do it?

  • Are they gonna actually do the thing?"

  • -"Are they gonna do it? They gonna --" Yeah.

  • -So Keanu came over to my house in New Orleans,

  • like pretty much the night before We started shooting.

  • And we were rehearsing, which we would do,

  • and he looked at me as he was about to leave.

  • I was like, "What?" He's like,

  • "You want to just try the characters,

  • you know, before we, like, shoot at 6:00 in the morning?

  • -It's just great. I just was so happy

  • to see you guys come back together.

  • Did you guys meet auditioning for this movie

  • or were you friends before this film?

  • -No, we met on the first --

  • earlier auditions we met for the first time

  • and became friends pretty instantaneously.

  • I mean, we both rode motorcycles,

  • so we both walked in with motorcycle helmets.

  • And the auditions went on for months and months

  • and they kept pairing us off with different people

  • and changing our roles.

  • And we became friends over the arduous

  • "Bill & Ted" audition gauntlet

  • without assuming we were actually going to be cast.

  • -Wow! -And they did something

  • very unusual, where they had different actors, artists,

  • all audition-- like ten people,

  • and like two would go into a room

  • and then two would come out.

  • And then another two would go in, and then one would come out.

  • And we were both playing Bill and Ted,

  • and it was a kind of like --

  • it was like an audition gladiatorial gauntlet

  • of Bill and Ted. -Torture event, yes.

  • -I always disliked auditioning.

  • I thought it was the worst part of the whole business.

  • It's so kind of -- -Yeah.

  • -They just -- -There's a fun to it, too.

  • Like, Keanu and I actually had fun

  • in the auditions playing the characters.

  • It was funny, because we -- A lot of time has gone by.

  • We'd forgotten about the early auditions

  • and the specifics of them.

  • And we thought we brought all this stuff to our characters

  • way later once we'd had time to really think about it

  • on a deep level, and then someone showed us our audition,

  • and we literally walked in on day one as Bill and Ted,

  • like, just, like, no method. It's like --

  • -You just nailed it.

  • -I've got my shirt tied around my waist, like --

  • -I got shorts. -He's got shorts and a jacket.

  • We're like ripping -- it's like the whole thing

  • is literally there on day one.

  • -It was meant to be.

  • -There you go with that Zoom, you nailed it.

  • -I'm not even gonna try to compete with that closeup.

  • It's so good. -It's that confidence of youth,

  • but I love it.

  • Obviously it exploded,

  • became part of not just -- I mean, just making a movie

  • is so hard enough.

  • But when the movie is a hit, that's another thing.

  • But then when it becomes part of pop culture

  • and people start saying "Be excellent"

  • and then doing air guitar and saying, like,

  • "San Dimas High School Football rules!" and like --

  • You must have been -- -The best --

  • -I know. Do people -- I mean, you're probably like,

  • "Don't say that again," and people are yelling it to you,

  • and you're like -- oh, my gosh.

  • But then you became toys, action figures.

  • You were a cartoon, you were a video game.

  • It was pop culture at its most.

  • What was the craziest Bill and Ted thing that you saw?

  • Could it have been...

  • the breakfast cereal? -Ah!

  • -I've got PTSD now.

  • -What, you've got a cereal?

  • Where did you get that?

  • -Yeah. -Wow.

  • -Cinnamon oat squares and marshmallow notes.

  • It sounds pretty good actually.

  • -Yeah, please don't eat that. Please. We care about you.

  • -It's vintage, yeah, I will not eat this.

  • -It's not. -But how cool is that?

  • You were a breakfast cereal.

  • -Yeah, I lived in a weird part of L.A. foe a while,

  • and I remember walking to the grocery store

  • at like 1:00 in the morning to get eggs or something

  • and seeing both our faces on a cereal --

  • 'Cause they never told us anything.

  • Like, they never said, "Oh, on Thursday,

  • a cereal will come out." They didn't pay us, either.

  • But they didn't tell us any of that stuff,

  • so you would find out about it when everyone else did.

  • -And so you walked into your deli --

  • -So you walked into the store and there in front of you

  • was a Bill and Ted cereal? -Yeah.

  • And it was like 1:00 in the morning.

  • -Whomp, whomp, whomp. -I thought I was, like,

  • you know, having flashbacks. -In the Twilight Zone?

  • Yeah, Rod Serling's gonna come out and be like,

  • "Could you imagine? Space and time..."

  • I mean, that is so cool, man.

  • I have to ask because I started with comedy,

  • so George Carlin -- what was it like working with him?

  • Was it -- did you -- were you a fan of his going in?

  • Obviously you probably were.

  • -Look how he's looking at us. [ Laughter ]

  • -He's like -- -Deep respect and admiration.

  • -Deep respect and admiration. [ Laughter ]

  • -He's like, "I'm eating lunch in my trailer by myself today."

  • -Oh, God. -He was -- I mean,

  • for both of us it was such an honor.

  • I mean, we just were such huge fans of his

  • and familiar with his work and...

  • And though he gave us that look, he was acting.

  • -Yeah. -And...

  • -He was really nice to us, right?

  • -He was. He was a much gentler person

  • than you would expect from the kind of razor --

  • the barbed nature of his standup,

  • which was, you know, coming up in our era, was it, right?

  • He was a cultural titan. -Yeah.

  • -So we were pretty starstruck, I think,

  • and grateful that he was as sweet to us as he was.

  • And, you know, he was a gentle guy.

  • We would bump into him even after the second movie

  • out and about.

  • He was always very lovely.

  • -Yeah, I love it when those casts come together

  • and it's like, there's no one else that could do it

  • besides you three.

  • -No, amazing. -It just worked out.

-30 years ago, our first guests introduced us to Bill and Ted.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it