we're at home with uh keanu reeves and alex winter um it's bill and ted face the music time and thanks for bringing the franchise back there's so much wrapped up in the bill and ted's experience beyond the writing and the acting and the movies themselves and music plays such a significant role and when you started doing the first film were you fans of this type of music or did you have to get into role in
order to appreciate a band like extreme yeah often times the music for me was like you know van halen was kind of like the source for bill and ted um and often times the music other than people who are on camera the music and maybe steve vi yeah the music came after when alex and i were were finished yeah like so you guys didn't really know at the time when you were working on the film
exactly where it was going to land so they could have put anything in there yeah on either film in fact sometimes they were talking about bands that didn't ever end up in the soundtrack now there's a there's a spirit to the movies a certain kind of rock and roll spirit and the soundtracks tend to kind of imbue that spirit with the times with whatever is kind of happening at that time so
to keanu's point with bill and ted one you know our the references for us are like mega death van halen uh sort of other kind of pretty heavy hard rock bands uh yeah the soundtracks have never tended to really represent much of that kind of music they tend to be a little poppier i knew about extreme i actually did a music directed to music video for extreme i mean after bill and ted won
uh but i mean to answer your question fairly keanu and i are very different than the characters and you know we're not we're not two guys from the valley we're not from the west coast at all and uh i think there's some crossover in our musical interests with uh some of the things that bill and ted like but we're very different than them so our own musical taste is quite different than
bill and ted's musical taste kiss and god gave rock and roll to you too which is you know kiss is a band that's referenced in the weezer video which we're gonna get to a little bit later on which is really fun too and kind of getting to to do some work with rivers in the band um anyone got a good kiss story growing up because factor into your life in any way shape or form beyond bill and ted
i mean that's a really good song i think too by the way kiss was the first big concert i ever saw i was a kiss fanatic when i was a kid i was a member of the kiss army i still have it's very yes it's very sweet i found my old uh family photo albums recently and it's very dog-eared and and i had like three pages of my of my photo album there's like my mom my dad my brother my cat
three pages of that photo album are all my kiss army memorabilia like in my photo album like lovingly taped in and like placed so yeah i saw i saw kiss at the st louis checkered home in 1977. it was an era when concerts were so loud that none of us could hear for like two full days after the show was just like a ringing sound and they had the hydraulics and fire and all of that so i told gene simmons that story when
we met him um actually i got to meet him even before we did bill bill and ted i met him they came backstage and i was doing peter pan on broadway and i was completely star struck um but i remember telling him how big an impact they had on me as a little kid i think he thought that was funny wait what did you get when what did you get in the kiss army in kiss army you got a a patch like a kiss
army arm patch cloth arm patch you got like special stickers like yeah i had like like two two pages of my photo album or like are like st or like collector stickers of like all the different you got like a special version of the destroyer cover yeah it's dude it was it was it was off the chain um but at like 12 years old that was it that was like my whole universe i'd imagine that once you're in the
kissimmee you're always in the kasami right i think if i look at the terms and and terms and conditions that i i think i am eligible for recon i think they can call me back at any time yeah and i would have to go yeah reaper rap i remember this moment because rap was so new and so fresh and felt so important at the time and this was like wow volunteers is going down this road
with steve i this is crazy um and i want to talk a little bit it just leads me into the whole idea of death in your relationship with death in the movie and working with william sadler and how much fun that was in the roles within that triangle because they're so instrumental to the success of the film yeah i was uh working with sadler i mean he's he's a genius i don't know i mean i remember just us
working with him and him embracing us and then just it was awe like it was like let's go like it was ah yeah right yeah there's a there's an aspect to the roles and it's this kind of physical comedy i think where uh keanu and i we discovered in the audition process for bill and ted one that we came at the characters very similarly and there was a real groove to working to each other in a physical
kind of instinctive almost like the way a band is together right which is not uncommon in acting but it can be uncommon to find someone you connect with that way um we love working with everyone we always get great ensembles in these movies that are incredible actors but sadler is really that other member of the band like he's like when we're working with billy it's like
when i'm working with keanu he's just like you don't think about it at all you could literally improv for hours and just it would just keep going and there'd be no it would all work it was like very much like the band just got back together in that way yeah there's an important member of the band that's uh not with you guys on this on this particular adventure you know and um a song
by master don called rufus lives pays respect to that character played by the late great george carlin and i wondered if one of you wants to sort of share you know a really nice story about working with george carlin who was a genius on screen gosh i mean he was so nice to us he was such a professional i mean alex and i were gobsmacked to meet him working with him both you know such
you know just amazing yeah i think from the first film to the second film he was kind of like hey nice to see you guys how's it going you know the first the first one he was total pro but i think there was a part of him that was like and and this is kind of cool of him is that there might have been a part of him i don't know alex if you feel this way but like kind of like what am i doing here
but i'm here and i'm gonna do the gig and i'm gonna do it really well and i'm gonna play it straight i'm not gonna comment and i'm gonna understand what we're doing and he's rufus i'm rufus and you're bill and ted and here we go yeah i think so i think that honestly a lot of people had that feeling on bill and ted one i would say probably other than you and me and stephen herrick and chris
and ed we all kind of knew the playground that we were in and a lot of that credit goes to steve herrick who directed bill and ted one who just who created a very specific playground that we could all have kind of rules and boundaries in uh but george i think that was kind of his view of his life on this planet you know i think that george was like what is this thing we call the human race
and and society and politics and morality and and i'm going to commit to it and i'm going to comment on it but i'm going to do it with heart and sincerity and but you know there was always i mean that's in his in his performance right what does it mean i don't know you know uh i think he was like that when he showed up and he looked at me again like who are these guys i don't know can they
act i don't know maybe they can you know but i'm going to remember in front of the circle okay i mean he was like yeah like he was like the grown-up in the room he was like he really was yeah yeah it was it wasn't it was acting and it wasn't acting i remember that i remember really feeling very small and very childlike in his presence i want to ask you alex um because i know both of you are real music fans
um you know alex you you have you know directed music videos been involved in creating documentaries i know music plays a big role in your life um keanu you're you know you're a musician you're a professional musician mate i've been on tour you've been on tour you've got you got a laminate yes i've got a couple alex first of all how's the zappa documentary how's it all coming together because
that is a huge undertaking uh to take on that kind of story of someone who words i can't i i've tried to describe frank zappa to my kids before and i fail miserably every time so how are you getting on oh well we're done i mean we finished the film uh frankly before i left to go do bill and ted uh and uh then i did a little bit of posts on it when we got back i was it's a six year
journey um but then kovid really kind of stopped us in our tracks we were about to start a big global festival tour uh with the world premiere at south by southwest literally the week that kobud shut the planet down so um very happy that we uh made a deal with magnolia films who are amazing and one of my favorite companies in the business and we're rolling the movie out at the end of
november i'm really proud of it it was very very very hard um and that was i knew that going in that like i pitched this thing to gail to frank's widow um as a film that would hopefully really convey who he was as an artist um and the time that he lived in and we get into the history of music we get into the you know the sexual revolution and the mtv revolution and the czechoslovakian revolution
and frank was at the middle of the center of all of these things so uh it's just an extraordinary life and i'm really really grateful we got to make it so hopefully folks will like it keanu i've got to ask you you know i know that you know music is a passion of yours regardless of whether you know you're playing a character involved in it or you're getting to to tour or make records or do the things
that you've achieved um where does it fit into your life now you know what in amongst all your other work um how do you sort of go to music and and use music do you still play do you jam with people do you write do you do it just for fun the band broke up over a decade ago uh like 15 years i guess almost um i still play bass i jammed a jam with the drummer and and then i guess the past
year um uh brett dom rose and robert male house where i played in dog star with we've gotten back together and started uh playing the old songs and starting to try to write some new stuff um so that took a time so i mean we hadn't played together for i don't know 12 years or something like that 15 years but um but it's been fun i jumped off that ledge which is always a little
sketchy you know when you first meet someone you're like oh yeah hey nice to see you i interviewed you uh probably about 25 years ago in auckland you were there with dog star and you're on tour with john bon jovi yeah oh that was a fun tour we got you know we got to play for the security people in the daytime and you know all the security people and the vendors who are showing up at
the event you know so like you know what they say about those thoughts kiana you get the best catering you get the best seats in the house you're done by one you're done by one yeah [Laughter] i'm excited you guys are back and i want to say this to end these films have become part of the pop culture lexicon they have been something that generations have come to over and over again but
the deep core value of what these films represent is be kinder to one another and search for positive energy through challenge and i think that's why you guys are back playing these roles and why this movie matters now is because in and amongst all the fun and the bogus and the most excellent is the idea of kindness and their volunteer searching for kindness that may be doing
in a goofy way but they're searching for ultimately for kindness and i want to say thanks very much for bringing the movie back because there's some subversive going on here you know what i mean thank you man i really appreciate that thank you so much yeah we really do we appreciate it appreciate being having the chance to do it again and to hopefully make some people smile a little bit right now you