Production
The film was shot in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area, mostly in and around Coronado High School in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1987. The school itself is near Oak St. and Scottsdale Road. Much of Coronado went through a renovation between 2005 and 2007 and the auditorium setting for the final-report scene was torn down. However, the intricate mosaic (seen in an opening scene when Bill and Ted leave from school in a red Mustang) on the outside of the auditorium was saved piece by piece and moved to the new auditorium along with unique design of the gym roof.
The scenes at Waterloo are a cross between establishing shots at Raging Waters in San Dimas, CA and shots with the actors at Golfland Sunsplash in Mesa, Arizona. The bowling alley was then a Fair Lanes branded alley, but is now the AMF Tempe Village Lanes located on Rural Road at US 60 freeway, three miles south of Arizona State University. The mall was Phoenix Metrocenter located between Peoria and Dunlap Avenues at Interstate 17. The mall has since been renovated and no longer looks as it did in the film. The Circle K store is located at the intersection of Southern and Hardy in Tempe.
Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson make appearances in the film during the ice cream scene. Ed is credited as the "stupid" waiter, and Chris is credited as the "ugly" waiter. They are given similar credits in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.
During the shot of Rufus' hands playing his guitar solo, the actual hands are those of Stevie Salas, the composer of all the guitar work featured within the film.
The film took nearly two years to materialize. Filming took place from February to May 1987 and it was originally planned to be released in 1988. However, the film's original distributor, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, went bankrupt before it could be released. Orion Pictures and Nelson Entertainment bought the rights to the movie in 1988, and it was released theatrically on February 17, 1989. As a partial result of the delay, certain dates in the film originally scripted as "1987" had to be redubbed as "1988". The copyright date of this film is 1989, while 1988 incorrectly appears on the DVD cover (though some copies still note 1989 as its release date). It was followed in 1991 by a sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
Read more about this topic: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)