BORN TO BE WYLD

NEARLY THREE DECADES AFTER EMBARKING ON AN EXCELLENT ADVENTURE AND A BOGUS JOURNEY, BILL AND TED ARE PREPARING TO FACE THE MUSIC. CREATORS CHRIS MATHESON AND ED SOLOMON TALK ABOUT THEIR RETURN TO SAN DIMAS

- RICHARD EDWARDS

BOWLING AVERAGES were supposed to be way up, mini-golf averages were supposed to be way down. Alas, you only have to look at the news to see that the utopian future ushered in by the music of Bill S Preston, Esq, and Ted “Theodore” Logan has yet to come to pass. Turns out there’s a good reason for that…

When we catch up with the duo also known as Wyld Stallyns some three decades after their Bogus Journey, history hasn’t quite panned out as they expected. They’re still best friends, of course – Bill without Ted is like Kirk without Spock – but they’re yet to write the song that will bring the planets into universal harmony. Instead, in long-awaited threequel Bill & Ted Face The Music, original stars Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves are back as a pair of fiftysomething guys trying to work out why life hasn’t gone to plan.

“We knew that comedically that had to be the case,” Bill and Ted co-creator/Face The Music co-writer Chris Matheson tells SFX. “If they had written the song, well, we kind of had an idea of where that would go and we didn’t think it was funny.”

“I remember the idea that Alex and Keanu responded to was, ‘What would happen if it didn’t happen?’” adds Ed Solomon, the co-screenwriting Ted to Matheson’s Bill. “‘If this destiny that you heard as teenagers hadn’t fulfilled itself and you’re middle-aged now, what would that be like?’ I think it also led to the movie being more about where we are as people right now.