“We Were Genuinely Trying To Be In Their Heads”: How Alex Winter And Keanu Reeves Found The Heart Of Bill & Ted

When we think of Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan, we think of a friendship so iconic it literally saved the future. But for Alex Winter, the journey to the Circle K began with a simple audition and a couple of motorbikes. Looking back at the 1989 cult classic Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Winter reveals that the magic of the “Wyld Stallyns” wasn’t just movie luck, it was a combination of genuine friendship and a complete lack of cynicism.

Long before they were traveling through time in a phone booth, Winter and Keanu Reeves were just two young actors trying to land a job. Interestingly, neither of them expected the movie to get the green light. Winter recalls their first encounter with characteristic humility. “I met Keanu in my first audition to play Bill,” he told The Guardian in 2018. Neither of us thought we would end up actually making the film. You don’t get 90% of the jobs you audition for as a young actor, so we just enjoyed hanging out. We clicked over a couple of superficial things: we both showed up on motorbikes, we both played bass. And we were both from artsy, European, quasi-intellectual families.”

This common ground created a shorthand between them that translated perfectly to the screen. While other actors were busy mocking the characters, Winter and Reeves were busy becoming friends.

Finding the sincerity in the silly

One of the secrets to the film’s lasting success is how seriously the lead actors took their roles. Coming from theatre backgrounds, they avoided the trap of playing “dumb guys” for cheap laughs. Instead, they applied “Method” acting sincerity to the clownish theatricality of the script.

“At that time, everything was ‘method’ in terms of the sincerity with which you’d look at your character. We were both marrying a clownish-type theatricality with this sincere take. We tried to find the distinctions between them. There’s more of a floppiness to Ted, whereas Bill is making more of a concerted effort to attack the world – but he’s failing completely.”

Winter also drew inspiration from his real life in Venice Beach, which at the time was a hub for “ex-hippies and skate punks.” He explains: “The backwards baseball cap thing with the giant shock of hair through the front was a direct lift from a kid who used to be on my street: it had always cracked me up. The crop top was all the wardrobe people, although it was my idea to draw a Wyld Stallyns symbol on the back with a marker.”

Trusting the script

While the actors brought their own physical comedy — like the Star Wars inspired sword fight in the castle — they were careful not to change the unique language written by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson.

“The British comedies I loved growing up in the UK were in my head – Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, that sense of play and silliness… We didn’t mess with Ed and Chris’s language, though: it had so much going on in the rhythm. It’s very floral, so paradoxical to how you think dumb Valley guys would speak.”

The impact of the film was immediate, Winter remembers. He recalls walking into a diner in Austin the weekend the movie opened and seeing the “whole place go crazy.” Decades later, that energy hasn’t faded. “I get it every day, from all ages,” Winter says. “Maybe it’s because Bill and Ted are written completely without cynicism.”

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