Wyld Stallyn | |
| Age: | 17 & 22 respectively |
| Occupation: | Slacker, wannabe rock star, future saviour of humanity |
| Distinguishing Feature: | His most triumphant friend, Bill S. Preston Esquire |
| What He Taught Us: | Be excellent to each other |
| And? | Party on, dudes! |
Keanu Reeves
I love Ted, I love playing Ted. He had such a wonderful take on the world. To play someone who had that exuberance and love of life was really impactful. He's extremely innocent, a total clown and a really good guy. Goofy but cool.
Ted is not spaced out. I love Ted. It changed my life when I played Ted. I tapped into something in myself that I hadn't really seen. To have a best friend, and say, "Whoa, man!" I want to live like that; to have his kind of openness and thinking and spirit - it's a real place to be in. There's a lot of joy in that guy. And mirth. He loves practical jokes and rock and roll. He's a pretty straight-up guy. He just wants to be cool and have some fun. He's innocent, and he's hopeful. I want to live like him.
Maybe Ted's an archetype, but to me he's merely a sweet slob. He has tremendous joie de vivre. And he's so non-judgmental - hyper-violent Japanese cartoons, John Woo movies... I can imagine Ted enjoying entertainment for the surface thrills without getting contaminated. Life's simple for him. He reacts with open-hearted wonder. He's easy with himself and the world. And that ease is something I found myself reluctant to give up.
He wants to see the best and is really alive in the best way. I don't know, he's in grace. Ted is a real dreamer, a bit naive, but always a positive and nurturing force within Bill and Ted's friendship. Really, they are so connected, they're the same guy. It's kind of scary - they're two dudes in a pod.
I had a lot of fun doing Ted again. He's always gonna be with me and I'm always gonna be in him. That's a part of me. And I learned a lot from Ted. That part's taught me a lot of things that I took for myself and applied to my life. There's the joy of his outlook. He is a very sincere young man, he's a good guy, and he just wants to laugh and play rock'n'roll, y'know? It's not that complicated, and it's a reaction to his environment.
And I learned so much from the character of Ted - much more than I put into it. I was really grabbed by his lifeview, his energy, his kind of joie de vivre. And he was such a kind guy. So unjudgemental. He was so turbo-charged and exploding, he made me feel really young again.
Anakin McFly
Ted's not exactly the brightest teenager out there, but what he lacks in IQ he makes up for with EQ, an interesting vocabulary and a creative mind. He's a nice guy: friendly, helpful, generous, honest except in mischief, selfless, and expects no personal gain from any of that. He holds no grudges.
Ted is easily awed and impressed by things. He goes through life with a sense of childlike wonder at stuff that the average person wouldn't find particularly interesting or significant. He has a sense of innocence about him that would probably persist even if he were engaging in various crimes and vices such as serial killing, because there would probably be some kind of justification for those acts that would make sense in Ted-logic and turn out to have ulterior motives of the mostly-good kind.
Like his best friend Bill, he is free of prejudices; he always sees the good in others, and almost everyone is a potential friend (with the possible exception of royal ugly dudes and suchlike). He has a strong sense of right and wrong, and holds a faint puzzlement towards why anyone would choose the latter.
Most of the time - especially in school - his mind is elsewhere, leading him to be cheerfully oblivious of what's going on around him. He's also kind of gullible; he trusts others too easily, and misplaced trust could have the potential to hurt him most. Yet somehow he survives. Ted will prevail. \o/
He can't play guitar, but that doesn't stop him from trying anyway. Which is good for him but not so good for those that have to listen.