Keanu Reeves' Bill & Ted Casting Was A Throwback To Laurel And Hardy
In 1989 audiences were introduced to two of the most loveable dimwits the world had ever seen in the form of Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and "Ted" Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves). Along with them came some of the best catchphrases to ever hit the silver screen. The film was "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," and it spawned two sequels; "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" in 1991 and "Bill & Ted Face the Music" in 2020.
The premise takes a little explanation if you haven't seen it. (Please remedy that right now.) High school students Bill and Ted are best buddies, and they're super dopey but sweet. One would assume these guys would grow up to do nothing but smoke weed in their parents' basements, but friends, they're going to save humanity. In the year 2688, the world became a utopia, based on the music from Bill and Ted's band Wyld Stallyns. To make sure things come to pass the way they're supposed to, the guys must pass history class, which is absolutely not a given. Rufus (George Carlin), a man from the future, travels back in time to San Dimas in California in 1988 in a time machine shaped like a phone booth to help them out. (Kids, these were tiny boxes on the street that you could go into to use a payphone ... or change into your Superman costume, I guess.)
It's the cutest buddy comedy, and it all came down to comedic chemistry casting, something director Stephen Herek compares to the early film duo Laurel and Hardy in Little White Lies' oral history of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K
"Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" was a different kind of teen movie than the ones we were getting in the late '80s. As Alex Winter said of the audition:
"What struck me at the time was the language; it was very distinct for what was presented as a teen comedy. It wasn't like other teen comedies — god knows you'd audition for a tonne of those. If it wasn't a John Hughes movie it was a knock-off John Hughes movie and the language was always the same: teens acting like 40-year-olds in therapy. [Bill and Ted] were very childlike and spoke in this ornate way. That stood out. It was more fun."
No ragging on John Hughes movies from me (outside of the fact that they're dated), but this was definitely different than what we were seeing at the time. Hughes took teens seriously and gave them a real voice for the first time, but "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" let them just be goofy kids. It was the other side of the coin. Winter said the audition was an "exhaustive process" and that he and Keanu Reeves became fast friends with so much in common. "We could have been friends whether we got the part or not." Stephen Herek echoed that, saying that the guys would have lunch together and generally hang out, and "that's how I wanted to portray [Bill and Ted] on screen. That clinched it for me."
The chemistry is palpable on screen, and Herek said that the casting depended on it.
Most outstanding
In the film, Bill is more of a funny guy, while Ted's comedy is less deliberate. He's the "straight man" type. Stephen Herek explained:
"For me, [casting] was a throwback to the straight man/funny man thing that goes back to Laurel and Hardy. Strangely enough, even though Keanu [Reeves] hasn't done that many comedies, he had a handle on the comedy. It was born out of an honesty in his performance. He really became Ted. I needed a straight man and it was hard to find that chemistry."
If you're not familiar with them, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were a British-American comedy team who were a huge part of early Hollywood comedy, starting back in the silent film era. They, unlike so many others, successfully made the move to talkies, making a total of 107 films. Laurel was a goofy, fun-loving guy and his friend Hardy was sort of a stuck-up jerk. They used a lot of slapstick humor and pratfalls and cartoon-style violence. Overall though, they were a comedic buddy team that so many others have copied or paid tribute to through the years. Joey and Chandler from "Friends" or Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly's "Stepbrothers," immediately come to mind.
This is also a rare case where that chemistry carried over not only through the first sequel but over three decades later to the second one. Give your psyche a boost and do a rewatch. Party on, dudes!