Exclusive: Screenwriters Talk Bill & Ted Face the Music Lost Scenes!

Orion Pictures provided ComingSoon.net with the chance to speak with Bill & Ted Face the Music co-writers Ed Solomon & Chris Matheson, who also co-wrote the first two films. Now that the film is out today and earning some most excellent reviews, we wanted to know from the pair what ideas they had that didn’t wind up getting shot for the threequel!

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CS: “Face the Music” has, as Keanu said perfectly, a scrappy quality. And Dean has stated the movie had the budget of a TV pilot. There are certainly parts that feel like the movie’s ambitions and scale are sort of being held together by chewing gum and baling wire. But were there some big ideas or sequences that had to be tossed in order to make the budget work?

Ed Solomon: Oh yeah. We had to make a lot of choices. We had to kill a lot of darlings, as they say, in order to get the movie to fit into the schedule and budget that we needed. And that meant, as Dean Parisot put it, we’re like Native Americans using every single piece of the buffalo, meaning almost everything that he shot is in the movie. And there are some sequences from the script that I think Chris and I were thinking we might actually release after the movie’s out. Some things that Chris and I like that were maybe not as strictly on-story, there were little journeys down different cul-de-sacs that we found fun or funny that we had to cut. So we might add those back in, but we definitely had to scale back in a big way.

Chris Matheson: You know, the heart of the movie comedically was, for us, act two. When they’re visiting themselves. We had two scenes, both of which I think were really interesting. One of which, I’m wanting Ed to describe, if he would like to.

Solomon: Sure.

Matheson: But the other one of which we had a scene, which I loved comedically, where they’re trying to figure out what went wrong. You know, how do we solve this problem? And they decide, well, let’s go back to when we’re children. And let’s tell our eight or nine-year-old selves what to do, so that when we get to this moment, we’ll know what to do. We’ll be better off. And so, they sneak into the house where their younger self, their nine year old self, who are already best friends, are doing a sleepover with Missy, as their babysitter. And they just proceed to absolutely terrorize their younger selves. So they’re like, “Dude, no, stop crying. All we have to do is do everything perfect forever. Don’t ever make a mistake!” And the little boys are crying. They’re horrified. They’re terrorized. They’re terrorizing their younger selves, and they leave and they can see that really didn’t work. And then, one of them goes, “Yeah, and I now realize, I thought that was a bad dream when I was a kid, and I now realize that I caused a bunch of problems for myself by doing that.” I loved it, man. I thought it was super funny, but it just didn’t fit. We didn’t need it. It wasn’t essential. And so, it had to go.

Solomon: The other one Chris is referring to was also one of my favorites, which was they decided from there to, “Well, maybe we went a little too early. When were things really the most optimistic for us?” And they go to visit themselves at the Circle K in the scene where they initially saw themselves and met Rufus. So we had this whole scene where current Alex and Keanu interact with the footage of young Alex and Keanu. And they see George Carlin there. And I thought it was a beautiful scene. In fact, Bill walks away to go into the Circle K, so Ted goes to talk to younger Ted and basically has the same experience, which is Ted is freaked out. He’s a little depressed. He goes to see younger Ted. And he just ends up freaking out younger Ted even more. And he ends up saying that he’s not even Ted, he’s just Ted’s Uncle Ted and he leaves completely having botched the situation even more. And then, when young Bill comes, and then Bill says to Ted, “I remember that moment from when I went inside.” “I’m sorry,” Ted says to Bill, “I remembered that moment from when you left to go into the Circle K, but I just thought it was my Uncle Ted.” And you know, Ted ends up saying, “I’m Uncle Ted,” because he’s so embarrassed about the way he blew it. Those two scenes were funny to us, but there were a couple of issues with them. One, the movie was moving forward and it took it backwards. And also, we just didn’t have time to shoot them. And so, we had to make decisions about what was essential for the plot.

Bill & Ted Face the Music centers on Bill S. Preston (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves), who are now fathers and have yet to fulfill their rock ‘n’ roll destinies. Their lives change when they are visited by a messenger from the future who warns them that only their song can save life as we know it.

Click here to own Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure!

Click here to own Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey!

Joining Winter and Reeves are Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) and Brigette Lundy-Paine (Atypical) as Bill and Ted’s daughters, respectively. The film will also feature Anthony Carrigan (Barry), Jillian Bell (Workaholics), Kristen Schall (Toy Story 4), Holland Taylor (Gloria Bell), Kid Cudi, Erinn Hayes, Jayma Mays, and Beck Bennet. William Sadler is also set to reprise his role as Death alongside franchise returners Amy Stoch and Hal London Jr. Newcomer.

Bill & Ted Face the Music is now in theaters and on Premium VOD!