Excellent!
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>> Whoa, Bill and Ted turned 30 earlier this year, and
a third installment of their excellent adventure is on the way.
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>> Party on, dudes!
>> because here are seven things you didn't know about Bill and
Ted's Excellent Adventure, probably.
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>> I'm Bill S Preston.
>> And I'm Ted Theodore Logan.
>> Yeah!
>> Bill and Ted are two characters screenwriters Chris Matheson and
Ed Solomon created in a college improv group at UCLA.
But they only ever performed it once at a show in 1983.
According to Solomon, Bill and Ted were going to first appear in a single vignette
of a Kentucky Fried Movie style sketch comedy film.
But Richard Matheson, Chris' father and sci-fi author of classics such as
I Am Legend, suggested Bill & Ted have their own film.
So thanks, famous dad!
But, even though Chris and
Ed passed the characters onto Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter for the movie, the writers
were able to make a cameo as the obnoxious waiters at the ice cream parlor.
(Crosstalk) >> And
even showed up in the credits as ugly waiter and stupid waiter.
So thanks for not sticking up for us on that one famous dad.
(Sound) >> Whoa.
>> It's easy to write off Bill and
Ted as too similar to each other mainly because Chris and
Ed didn't really care which characters said what when writing the script.
This choice or lack there of is probably why at one point Reeves and
Winter's thought they were playing the other character.
Every actor that auditioned for
Bill or Ted had to read both parts in various speed date kind of pairings.
When Reeves and Winter were cast in the movie,
they were called going to their costume fitting and
being wildly confused why their character's clothes didn't fit them.
Bonus fact, while writers Chris and
Ed visited the set of Excellent Adventure in Phoenix, Arizona, they saw Keanu and
Alex at the McDonald's across the street from the production office and
thought to themselves, those two would be perfect to play Bill and Ted.
>> What.
>> Maybe there was some weird magical thinking in there as well or
just nobody knew what the hell was going on.
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>> Napoleon getting the Ziggy Piggy button isn't a literary reference to the pig
named Napoleon in George Orwell's Animal Farm because,
you know Animal Farm is about Stalin.
But the scene does feature a different fictional pig.
The Ziggy Pig ice cream challenge that Napoleon conquers is inspired by the real
Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour pigs trough challenge.
The Ziggy Piggy button, which is also a reference to the Farrell's prize
ribbons features the comic book character Ziggy Pig, which was first published
under Marvel Comic's predecessor, Timely Comics, in 1942.
And Bonus Legal Thing, by the time the movie came out,
Ziggy Piggy had entered public domain.
So you too can make your own Ziggy Piggy pin and not get sued.
(Sound) The road to Bill and
Ted's Excellent Adventure was paved with many revisions.
For one, Rufus was a 28-year-old high school sophomore who had a dog
also named Rufus.
Of course Rufus ended up being played by the most excellent and
decidedly not 28 year old George Carlin, but aside from sharing a name with his
dog the original draft's Rufus also owned a time traveling van.
Which was a big enough deal that the original name of the movie was Bill and
Ted's Time Van.
The van also happened to be a Chevy from
19- >> 69 dudes.
>> Now, let's drive this segue into the next thing.
(Sound) To avoid comparisons to the time-traveling
DeLorean from Back to the Future which came out four years before
director Steven Herrick suggested a phone booth instead.
While the change saved them from being a Back to the Future rip off,
now they were just stepping on the toes of the the longest running Sci-fi
series of all time specifically featuring a time travelling phone booth.
But the US wouldn't really meet Doctor Who until the 1996 TV movie.
So I guess they were just getting while the getting was good.
We'll let is slide as long as the next installment doesn't feature a hot tub.
(Music)
Sadly the actual phone booth from the movie was given away as part of a raffle
by the now defunct Nintendo powered magazine to promote the Bill and
Ted video game.
The guy who won it recently hosted an AMA and is kind of of a heinous dude.
His top voted comment on his AMA was whether he's had sex in the booth because
the internet is truly non non-heinous and.
And you know what?
How about you just give us the phone booth back, okay?
We need to move on.
(Sound) >> I'm Bill, this is Ted.
We're from the future.
>> Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure didn't just make a quick
buck at the box office.
They stretched that IP out and cashed in on video games, cereals, TV shows, and
a comic book, produced by everybody's favorite mega-corporation, Marvel.
With Marvel owning at least part of Bill and Ted surely that
means the Wild Stallions will indeed save the universe once again, right?
With the third movie already in the works they might as well pop up
an Avengers Endgame too.
At least we know for sure that Keanu can take down a bad guy or two.
(Noise) Maybe Ted's super power could be head shots.
That's all we have for this episode of Things You Didn't Know but be excellent to
each other and subscribe this interfix for more trueish things about movies and
sometimes sleazy AMAs right here on things you didn't know.
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