For a lot of fans online, June 9 is “Bill and Ted Day.”
The reason for it is so simple it’s kind of silly — Bill and Ted, as a concept, runs pretty hard toward the “silly,” so that’s alright. What it boils down to is that in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the titular duo meet time-traveling versions of their future selves in one scene and, by way of making future Bill and Ted prove their true identities, ask their doppelgangers to tell them what number they’re thinking of.
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“Sixty-nine, dudes!” is the reply. So 6/9 — June 9 — became Bill and Ted Day.
Even Alex Winter (Bill) and Diane Franklin (Princess Joanna) have chimed in on the event’s Facebook page.
But how to celebrate such an…excellent…occasion?
Well, earlier this week, Shout! Factory announced that they’ll be bringing Bill & Ted’s Most Excellent Collection, a box set including both Bill and Ted movies, to Blu-ray in September.
History’s favorite time traveling duo land on September 20, 2016 in a deluxe Blu-ray box set from Shout! Factory. The bodacious set includes Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the Blu-ray debut of the sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and is fully loaded with an entire disc of bonus features, including new interviews and commentary, deluxe packaging, a Wyld Stallyns-branded guitar pick, vinyl stickers for both films, and previously released extras including “The Original Bill & Ted,” “The Most Triumphant Making-Of,” “Air Guitar Tutorial,” “The Linguistic Stylings of B&T,” “From Scribble to Script,” “The Hysterical Personages of B&T,” and radio spots.
Shout! Factory will also have a limited edition set, now available for pre-order, complete with an exclusive lithograph and exclusive action figure of George Carlin’s character Rufus (the first character seen onscreen in the film).
NECA, which created the figure, will also have a Bill & Ted action figure set available in July 2016.
If you haven’t seen the films yet — and you really should — the high concept is that a pair of late ’80s slackers get a little time-traveling help on their history report, when it turns out that the success of their garage band is key to the world’s future.
Yes, really.
Here’s the official synopses for the films:
The biggest concern for Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves), two totally excellent dudes from San Dimas, California, has been that their band, the Wyld Stallyns, “will never be a super band until we have Eddie Van Halen on guitar.” But now they’re on the verge of failing history class, and Ted’s father is threatening him with military school. To keep the Wyld Stallyns together, and save the future, they need to deliver an epic history report, so a messenger named Rufus (George Carlin) arrives in a time traveling phone booth to help them out. As they travel through history they pick up some new friends, like the “Bodacious Philosopher” Socrates, “One Very Excellent Barbarian” Genghis Khan, the “Short Dead Dude” Napoleon and “Noah’s Wife” Joan of Arc, and put on one outrageous presentation.
In the sequel Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, the daffy duo travel to Heaven, Hell and points in between as they meet robot versions of themselves, Albert Einstein, the Easter Bunny, and beat the Grim Reaper at a video game. Bogus Journey features an all-star cast including Keanu Reeves (The Matrix), Alex Winter, George Carlin, William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption), and Pam Grier (Jackie Brown). At the time of its release, Roger Ebert described the film as “a riot of visual invention and weird humor that works on its chosen sub-moronic level, and on several others as well, including some fairly sophisticated ones.” In other words, not bogus at all, dudes.
Bill & Ted’s Most Excellent Collection is part of Shout! Factory’s new home entertainment series Shout Select, which shines a light on films that deserve a spot on your shelf. Debuting this August, Shout Select boasts an exciting slate of fan-favorite releases making their Blu-ray debuts.
Titles include the pulp sci-fi rom-com classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, John Carpenter’s Emmy Award® -nominated biopic Elvis, the brilliant action-comedy Midnight Run, and the rowdy action-thriller Road House. Each title will be presented in anamorphic widescreen, and when possible will be released as a Collector’s Edition, with new bonus content, archival materials, collectible cover artwork, and more.
