"Bill & Ted's" Quotations

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 08:55:04 -0700, Dave Wilton wrote:

>> The two big lines in the film _Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure_ are
>> "Party on, dudes" and "Excellent!"  Can anyone tell me for each of
>> these whether they are lines spoken by one of the two main characters
>> exclusively, or are they sometimes spoken by one of them and sometimes
>> spoken by the other?
>
>The script is available online:
>http://www.angelfire.com/tx3/80schild/bill1.html
>
>"Party on, dude(s)" is spoken by several people: Ted, a telephone
>operator, a person from the future, and Abraham Lincoln.
>
>The other key term is not "excellent" (which is used throughout the
>movie, but is not a signature term), but rather "be excellent to each
>other." This is also spoken by several people: Bill, Rufus, and Abraham
>Lincoln.

I associate the interjection "Excellent!" (along with "Party on!") more
with "Wayne's World". See, e.g., the skit's first appearance on SNL on
Feb. 18, 1989: <http://snltranscripts.jt.org/88/88mwaynesworld.phtml>.


--Ben Zimmer