Posted in: Movies, Orion Pictures | Tagged: alex winter, Bill & Ted, Bill & Ted Face The Music, bill & ted's bogus journey, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Dino De Laurentis, keanu reeves, Stephen Harek

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Dir Stephen Herek Recalls Obstacles

The idea of two lovable stoners time traveling via phone booth at one point was considered too zany even for the 80s recalls Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) director Stephen Herek. On the heel's of the franchise's latest installment from Orion Pictures in Bill & Ted Face the Music, the original director of the first film shot 31 years ago spoke with Yahoo Movies UK about how it was far from a slam dunk to sell the idea. "Everybody hates the movie. Hates it," Herek said. "Somebody wanted to say that it was going to go straight to video and it's not even worth the cost of the videotape. There were really hateful and nasty things being tossed around."

Conceived by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson, their passion project was in danger of being permanently shelved when the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) folded following the film's completion. The 1989 film was Herek's second feature after the cult-classic horror film Critters (1986). Excellent Adventure eventually found its way to Orion Pictures, where it became a megahit making more than six times its budget back paving way for Bogus Journey (1991). Herek opted out of the sequel pave way for Peter Hewitt to take over. The original title was Bill & Ted Go to Hell. "I wanted a lot of script changes because I thought that script was sort of mean-spirited," Harek said. "It seemed to be almost a parody of a parody, at least in the original form of it. They didn't want to change the script much, so we parted ways. I just didn't think it would survive, the way it was written." You can read the rest of the interview at Yahoo Movies.

Excellent Adventure finds the duo played by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves as aspiring musicians as the Wyld Stallyns trying to get by high school trying to present their history project by kidnapping iconic figures in history. Bogus Journey finds the duo killed by robot doppelgangers, on a path to redemption and resurrection to clear their names. Face the Music finds them middle-aged discovering they still haven't found out how they united the world with their talents. As Bill and Ted travel to the future, their daughters (Brigette Lundy-Paine and Samara Weaving) have their own plans to help their dads achieve their destiny. Bill & Ted Face the Music comes to theatres and on-demand on August 28.

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