You know, I think it would be to,
you know, to just tell my 16-year-old self, just kind of calm the F down
and keep doing what you're doing and everything's gonna be okay.
Tell me a little bit
about what young Alex
was like. What were you like at 16?
Well, when I was 16, I was working on Broadway
in Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan in New York, so
I was a high school kid during the day at a regular public high school.
And then
every single day I would take the bus into the city and do a show that night,
matinee on Wednesday and four shows on the weekend.
Wow.
So it was kind of an insane schedule, and I did that for for a couple of years.
So there's eight shows a week
for a few years.
So I was, you know,
leading a kind of double life.
You know, when I got the script for Bill and Ted,
I thought it was really funny and really sweet,
but it was an independent movie.
It wasn't a particularly big budget movie
and I didn't expect it to do huge business.
Can we go anywhere we want, at any time?
You can do anything you want.
I don't think either of us thought it was ever going to
be a big movie.
I think we just thought it was going to be like
a movie would catch on cable, like at two in the morning and have a laugh about.
Put them in the Iron Maiden.
Excellent!
Execute them.
Bogus.
You know, when I did Lost Boys, it was a relatively small part, but
it was a big Warner Brothers movie and there was a lot of...
there was a sense that the film was going to be a hit while we were making it.
Don't be scared, Michael!
Bill and Ted was the opposite.
We were left alone, we shot in Phoenix and then we went to Italy.
Nobody knew we existed. We had a ton of fun.
We were just kind of making a movie by our own terms.
And so in a way that was kind of a sweeter victory
because we really had no expectations for it.
If you guys are really us, what number we thinking of?
69 dudes!
Wow.
I didn't earn a lot of money on Bill and Ted.
When I earned money it was great
and it paid for me to make films and to pay my rent and everything.
But it wasn't like it changed my life very much. So...
while I was waiting for that film to come out, I was shooting music
videos and doing all kinds of other stuff and not really thinking about it.
And then suddenly there was this giant hit.
So it was very... in a way it was kind of jarring because it was
suddenly I had notoriety in a way that I hadn't
had before, on that scale.
So when we made that film,
you know, we were two young
kind of scrappy guys from the East Coast, mostly from a theatre background.
We both rode motorcycles, we both played bass,
we became friends while we were making [Bill and Ted] one.
And neither of us were famous at that point.
So it was really like just a friendship of like two scrappy people who hit L.A.
at the same time, trying to navigate young adulthood on our own.
I mean, I formed friendships on that movie that I've had in my whole life.
That's some good advice then for your younger self, maybe,
to hold onto those friendships that you make?
Those strong friendships?
Yeah, I think that. And
I think the
affirmation that
while the industry
and the adult world in general can seem kind of daunting
or intimidating that you end up forming
communities that last
and that you end up forming bonds that last.
And that really does carry you through.
It's not as isolated as you fear at that age.
You know that, oh my God, the big bad world, right?
There's the sense of community
and you can all kind of move through it together.
My family, my mother's side is all from Ukraine.
So I mean, I'm guessing at the moment is a really difficult time.
I mean, it's been...
It is in terms of it coming to a head.
They've been struggling.
They've you know that region has struggled for its entire existence
for, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years.
My family, you know, left during Czarist Russia.
But a lot of the same persecution
that's going on there now was going on there, then.
So, you know, it's just a very sad history.
But, as we're seeing,
they're pretty fierce people and they don't give up.
I'm very attuned to my ancestry, which is
which is very fiercely independent on both sides.
There's that side, then my dad's side, they're Australian,
all by way of Scotland.
They were Glencoe people and they were really fierce.
They left
during the Glencoe uprisings and like literally created towns
in Australia, like dragged tractors over mountains, they were very,
very tough people and very independent.
And I, you know, I like that on both sides.
I think the thing
I've learned about the business now is that,
if you don't come from money or you don't come from a family
with a lot of connections that will open doors for you automatically...
it doesn't mean you won't get ahead.
It just means you have to work really hard and not quit.
And that can seem like advice that doesn't work.
Like, oh, well, anyone could say that, right?
But it really does seem to work.
Most people that I know
who have survived in the business and done the things they wanted to do,
they honestly, they just work a little bit harder than other people.
They just do.
There's a lot of people who give up or
who don't work as hard, and
that really does seem to be the secret sauce, for the most part.