Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure opened in theaters 25 years ago today. Does that make you feel old? If so, you are not alone. In honor of the occasion, let’s all step into the phone booth and travel back to even earlier, when the concept for the movie came about.
1. BILL AND TED WERE BORN IN AN IMPROV CLASS.
The idea for the characters of Bill and Ted came about in 1983, when UCLA classmates Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson formed a student improv workshop with a few of their peers. “One day, we decided to do a couple of guys who knew nothing about history, talking about history,” Solomon recalled to Cinemafantastique in a 1991 interview. “The initial improv was them studying history, while Ted’s father kept coming up to ask them to turn their music down.” (Solomon played Ted, Matheson was Bill.)
2. ORIGINALLY, IT WAS BILL & TED & BOB.
When the skit originated, there was a third character, Bob. But “Bob” wasn’t as into it as Solomon and Matheson, so the trio became a duo.
But the initial concept changed a lot more over the course of writing the script and casting the parts. You’ll learn about those changes in a list of movie trivia at mental_floss.
In 1989 I was given a cassette tape containing the song 'Breakaway' by Big Pig, and was asked to design the main titles to that film, as were several other people working together with me at a Manhattan design firm. My concept consisted largely of a slow pan across an evolving historical tableaux depicting different times and places, but tied together by overlapping neon accents, and accompanied by the music. It was the 80s, and I was probably influenced by the Museum of Neon Art 'Mona Lisa' now that I think about it. I made the storyboards with heavy black card stock (which took colored pencil for the 'neon glows' nicely), as well as an airbrush and some photocopies of Art History imagery. This was pre-Photoshop. I was told my design was picked, but my recollection is it turned out pretty different when it was finally produced.
That's my Bill & Ted memory.