Strange things may or may not be afoot at the Circle K, but, man, this video of Keanu Reeves talking about potential directions a third Bill & Ted film could go is as awesomely oddball as his Herzog impression is on target.
Let’s face it, they’d need an auteur like Herzog to bring to the fore the more nefarious contours of the aggressive sexuality of Missy (I mean, Mom) as it waxes, wanes, and collides with her stepson’s midlife crises a quarter-century later. (Hopefully with more goofy laughs and double entendres than Jeremy Irons’ family sex downer Damage.) If Amy Stock is unavailable, I nominate the esteemed exhibitionist Dame Helen to help pull it off. Imagine the nuance Mirren could have brought to this scene, if not those pants:
When the Keanu bit first surfaced it seemed mostly like a joke, but after poking around I now see Alex Winter is down to duuuuuudde. (My apologies to those Decibel readers disappointed in how lax I’ve been with my MTV blog reading; I realize to at least a few of you this news seems as old as the medieval dickweed who tried to kill Bill…) That something much more interesting than a terrible Bieber/fatty-from-Two-and-a-Half-Men remake with a ironic Keanu cameo might actually happen, albeit without a certain short recently dead dude–RIP Carlin, sorry Bill & Ted 3 didn’t come along before Jersey Girl!–is cause for celebration. This, happily, is a future, not history, report, though I trust the finished product will include the apropos historical babes and excise any overblown Inception-like dream sequences (though after the jump there is a well-constructed glimpse of that alternate universe).
Despite several tumultuous intervening years, today’s world is not entirely removed from 1989. Iron Maiden is still excellent. Torture is still bogus. Some updating, however, will obviously be necessary: Um, where for art thou, phone booths? The boys will also clearly need a different, less cranky guitarist to launch Wyld Stallyns from obscurity than Eddie Van Halen. After all, if dudeguy can’t get along with someone as chill as Michael Anthony…well, let’s just say touring with Genghis Khan, Billy the Kid, and evil robot Bill & Ted (“total metalheads”) will be a stretch, not to mention Freud is liable to have Wolfgang Van Halen too tore up after his first daddy issues session to rock the bass onstage in a manner in any way comparable to the Grim Reaper.
May we suggest a cutting edge up-and-comer like Scott Hull or Kurt Ballou?
Whomever they choose, here’s hoping Alex and Keanu once again deal with the oddity of time travel with the greatest of ease. (Kudos to them for embracing rather than running from their most excellent past.) And since we referenced Sir Jim Martin in the title of this post below is a short interview with the woodpecker from Mars on his role in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey–less interesting for Martin’s cinema explication than his 1992 fashion sense and expressed openness to a movie career, which makes a chubby kid wearing a Faith No More T-shirt scoff–and his band’s contribution to the soundtrack of that film, which also included a great Megadeth song, a (very) guilty pleasure Kiss track, and what is probably Steve Vai’s shining moment, “The Reaper Rap.”
