My seventh grade teacher tacked up a Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure poster to our classroom corkboard – much to my prepubescent dismay. She did not know the difference between what was excellent (Iron Maiden) and what was bogus (“Execute them”)! She did not play air guitar or thinks Bill's mom was hot! And I hope to God she didn't know why the number they mentally chose to test the future (or past) Bill and Ted was sixty nine.
Turns out the poster was there because – damned if I learned anything – the adventure was not only excellent, but educational. Seems we learned about some historical figures in the process of being entertained – awesomely.
So we young, impressionable, burgeoning youths struggling to define ourselves as moronic valley folk, were bamboozled by the film's writers Ed Solomon (Men In Black) and Chris Matheson.
Ed Solomon resurfaces with Levity, this time as a writer/director, making an uncharacteristic attempt at a somber drama (though he never fully shakes his affinity for surrealism and comedy even in the grimness of this particular tale). Mr. Solomon told me that he discovered the story somewhere in his psyche