“We realized we saw the characters the same way, and we could kind of riff as a symbiotic unit,” says Winter. The duo developed a shorthand almost immediately. We have kind of similar humor and interests, and then when we were working together there was something else there that was cool.” We had some stuff in common - we both played bass - and just started to talk. “When I arrived at the location for the rehearsal, I just met Alex - there was no one else there yet. “Everyone was auditioning for both roles,” remembers Reeves. At the end of the day, Reeves and Winter had the best rapport together. The team called back 24 hopefuls and mixed and matched different actors. And then we were trying to find the partner to him.” It really was kind of like, ‘Wow, he’s Ted,’ and there was a sort of lovable goofiness to him. “When Keanu came in, he was one of the first. I remember a couple times just belly laughs, although after reading the script I’m going, ‘Wow, this is either going to be a huge hit or a huge flop.’ There was going to be nothing in between, because it was very acute in its jokes and a very specific audience.”Ĭoming off the success of the low-budget Sci-Fi comedy Critters, Herek says he auditioned anywhere from 200 to 300 actors for the title roles. “They wrote such lovable characters, and their jokes are always a little off-center. “The story was incredibly laugh-out-loud,” says Herek, commending Matheson and Solomon’s sense of comic timing. To solve their dilemma, they’re presented with a time-hopping phone booth in front of the local Circle K (where “strange things are afoot”) and proceed to round up the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, Billy the Kid, Socrates, Genghis Khan, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Joan of Arc - plus a pair of historical babes for girlfriends, while they’re at it - to help with their presentation. Preston, Esq., and Ted Theodore Logan must ace their history report or risk failing the course - and changing history. Prior to principal production in the spring of 1987, writing duo Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon penned a comedy screenplay featuring two upbeat yet dim characters on a time-traveling adventure that they workshopped in college doing stand-up. And then the cherry on top is having a conversation with you 30 years later about it.” And then it’s even more gratifying that when it got released, it actually did well. “There was a period of time where it wasn’t even going to be released. “We went through a very tumultuous time, actually, even getting it on the screen,” says director Stephen Herek. 17, 1989, it went on to earn more than $40 million (about $81 million today) and became a cultural touchstone, thanks to the chemistry between Reeves and Alex Winter (aka Bill). But when Excellent Adventure opened on Feb. The film survived the bankruptcy of its production company, a major role remaining uncast with just weeks left in shooting, and an original ending that was so inadequate that it had to be totally changed.
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