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In 30 days it'll be 30 years (!) since Bill & Ted opened. In honor of that (& to keep some promises), I'd like to share a few things over the month. The image below is the first (and ONLY) time Chris & I did Bill & Ted in front of an audience - early 1983 at the UCLA Comedy Club. 
(I'll let this stand as rather painfully obvious evidence as to why @Winter & #KeanuReeves have since carried the performing torch..) The photo's from a show in Dykstra Hall (a dorm) at UCLA. We were answering audience questions *as* Bill & Ted. (I don't remember who was who.)
We first came up with Bill & Ted in an improv workshop that @marcjaffe2, @ryanwrowe, Mark Cendrowski, Chris Matheson & I formed a yr earlier. The idea was to just work out & see what came. We never took notes, recorded anything, or even had an audience - that wasn't the point.
In hindsight, I'm so grateful that 21 yr old us's had the foresight to just work out for the sake of working out. Had we been trying to "create characters" to "showcase" ourselves, or to "strip mine" for "material" - or whatever - literally NONE of this would have happened.
In a way, having all that unremembered material (we did it for years) just pass under the bridge helped instill in me a core belief: if you're gonna be a writer (or any kind of artist), it's not about one sketch, one idea, one character, one script. It's about a lifelong FLOW.
Anyhow, one day, halfway through a random Monday night, Chris said "What if we did two guys who know nothing about history studying for a history test?" He called me Ted, I called him Bill (though after that we didn't differentiate). And we just started.
Then we went on to some other sketch. Then another. But something about the characters called to us - & later we revisited them in a coffee shop. We continued to do them - on and off, for fun - for a yr. Chris left for grad school & we'd sometimes write letters as Bill & Ted.
Then one day - in spring of 1984 - we decided to actually try and write them down, with no idea what would happen. Tomorrow I'll post the very first notes we ever took on what eventually became the movie.
Lastly, for now, to anyone still reading: thank you so much for being here for this. Chris & I have often said (& I've posted here before) that if we did nothing other than help usher the phrase "Be excellent to each other" into the world, that wouldn't be so bad.
UPDATE: the next thread starts here:
