Alex Winter
Alexander Ross Winter is an English–American actor, film director, and screenwriter, best known for his role as Bill S. Preston, Esq. in the 1989 film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, its 1991 sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, and its 2020 sequel Bill & Ted Face the Music. He is also known for his role as Marko in the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys; co-writing, co-directing, and starring in the 1993 film Freaked; and directing documentaries in the 2010s.
Early life
Winter was born in London, England. His mother, Margaret "Gregg" Mayer, is a New York-born American and former Martha Graham dancer, who founded a modern-dance company in London in the mid-1960s. His father, Ross Albert Winter, is an Australian who danced with Winter's mother's troupe. Winter received training in dance as a child. He has an older brother named Stephen. His father has English ancestry and his mother is Jewish, of Ukrainian Jewish descent.When Winter was five, his family moved to Missouri, where his father ran the Mid-American Dance Company, while his mother taught dance at Washington University in St. Louis. The two divorced in 1973.
In 1978, Winter moved to the New York City area, where he and his mother lived in Montclair, New Jersey. During this time Winter began performing as an actor on and off Broadway, commuting into New York City.
In 1983, after graduating from Montclair High School, Winter was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. While at NYU, he met fellow aspiring filmmaker Tom Stern. The two collaborated on a number of 16mm short films and both graduated with honours.
Career
As an actor, Winter spent many years on Broadway with supporting roles in productions of The King and I, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, and the American premiere of Simon Gray's Close of Play at the Manhattan Theatre Club.After completing NYU film school, he and Tom Stern moved out to Hollywood, where the two wrote and directed a number of short films and music videos. Winter continued to find work as an actor, landing notable roles in such big productions as The Lost Boys and Rosalie Goes Shopping.
In 1989, Winter found international success when he co-starred with Keanu Reeves as Bill S. Preston in the smash-hit comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
Following the success of Bill & Ted, Winter and creative collaborators Tom Stern and Tim Burns were hired to develop a sketch comedy show for MTV. The result, 1991's The Idiot Box, was a success for the network, but the channel's budgetary problems prevented them from filming additional seasons, and it was canceled after six episodes. Winter, Stern and Burns accepted a $12 million deal from 20th Century Fox to film their own feature film, which would end up becoming 1993's Freaked. While the film was never widely released, despite positive reviews from The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, Freaked went on to become a cult favourite, through festivals, TV and DVD, and was cited by Entertainment Weekly, on their list of Top Ten Comedies of the Nineties.
Winter did not return to directing until 1999, when he filmed Fever. The film was shown at film festivals worldwide, including Official Selection in the Director's Fortnight at Cannes. New York Daily News praised the film, calling it "a claustrophobic mind bender. Winter sustains an aura of creepiness worthy of Roman Polanski."
Winter directed the of the hit Cartoon Network series Ben 10, which aired in November 2007 and garnered the highest ratings in Cartoon Network history. He directed its sequel, ' which aired on Cartoon Network in November 2009 and captured over 16 million viewers in its premiere weekend. As of 2008, he was attached to write the screenplay for the Howard Stern-produced remake of Rock 'n' Roll High School. In 2010, he was attached to direct a 3D-remake of the 1987 horror film The Gate, which was scheduled for release in 2011.
Winter's 2012 VH1 rock doc Downloaded earned worldwide critical acclaim at theatrical and festival screenings. Winter's multiple award-winning 2015 documentary Deep Web, had its world premiere at SXSW and a broadcast premiere in the U.S. on the Epix network alongside a global festival tour. The film went wide on September, 2015, opening as the #1 documentary on iTunes.
In 2013, he had a role in the thriller Grand Piano, starring Elijah Wood and John Cusack, playing The Assistant.
In 2016, Winter released a short documentary entitled about journalist Barrett Brown's release from prison. This was followed in 2017 by another short documentary, , about President elect Donald Trump.
In 2018, Winter released two documentaries, The Panama Papers, about the Panama Papers, and ', which premiered in Los Angeles on November 16, 2018. In July 2015, Winter began work on a biographical documentary of the rock guitarist and composer Frank Zappa. The Zappa Family Trust publicly gave its approval to Winter's plans for the film. Soon to be released, Zappa, on the life and times of Frank Zappa, will not only be the first documentary with access to his archives, but this project was the highest funded documentary in crowdfunding history, via Kickstarter.
In April 2011, Winter's Bill & Ted co-star Keanu Reeves confirmed that a third installment of the film series was underway. Winter confirmed work on Bill & Ted 3 was still in progress in a 2014 article on the original film's 25th anniversary. In 2016, Winter said that he hoped the film would go into production in 2017. Reeves confirmed in February 2017 that the third film is being made, and the writers have a story. "Basically, they're supposed to write a song to save the world and they haven't done that" Reeves said about the plot of the movie. Scheduled for 2020, Winter returns as Bill S. Preston, Esq. in Bill & Ted Face the Music, currently in post-production.
Technology and privacy activism
Winter is also an outspoken advocate for technology and privacy rights.Winter said he began devoting a lot of his attention to the Internet not just because he liked technology, but also because "I found this community there." Winter liked the idea of large numbers of anonymous users discussing a variety of topics in an anonymous space. "I found that really striking then. And it seemed liked the beginning of something," he said.
He criticized media companies and news outlets for exaggerating how many people used Napster for digital piracy. "Napster was a huge threat to the power structure," Winter said.
Winter's interest in technology, the Internet and privacy inspired him to make the 2012 documentary film Downloaded, about internet file sharing and Napster, and the 2015 film Deep Web, about the Silk Road, bitcoin, and the dark web.
Personal life
Winter was married to Sonya Dawson, with whom he had a son, born in 1998. The couple later divorced. In 2010, he married Ramsey Ann Naito. They have two children.Winter maintains dual British and American citizenship.
On February 2, 2018, Winter revealed that he was molested by an older man at age 13 while he was acting on Broadway.
In January 2020, Winter endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and subsequently backed Joe Biden when he became the presumptive nominee.
Filmography
Film
;Directing| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 1984 | NYU Sight & Sound Project | Co-director with Tom Stern Short film | |||
| 1985 | Squeal of Death | Co-director with Tom Stern, co-writer Short film | |||
| 1989 | Aisles of Doom | Co-director with Tom Stern, co-writer Short film | |||
| 1989 | Bar-B-Que Movie | Co-director with Tom Stern Short film | |||
| 1990 | Howie Meets the Ghost of Environmental Disasters Yet to Come | Co-director with Tom Stern Short film | |||
| 1991 or 1992 | Meals on Wheels | Co-director with Tom Stern, co-writer Short film | |||
| 1993 | Freaked | Co-director with Tom Stern, co-writer, co-producer | |||
| 1999 | Fever | ||||
| 2012 | Downloaded | Documentary film on Napster and its community | |||
| 2015 | Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and the Silk Road | Documentary film | |||
| 2015 | ' | ||||
| 2016 | Anyone Can Quantum | Short film | |||
| 2016 | Relatively Free | Documentary short on Barrett Brown | |||
| 2017 | Trump's Lobby | ||||
| 2018 | The Panama Papers | Documentary film | |||
| 2018 | Trust Machine: The Story Of Blockchain | Documentary film | |||
| 2018 | Zappa | Documentary film on Frank Zappa's archives | |||
| 2020 | Showbiz Kids | Documentary film on child actors in Hollywood |
;Acting
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1984 | NYU Sight & Sound Project | Geek | Short film |
| 1985 | Squeal of Death | Howie / various characters | Short film Aired on Night Flight and West Coast Cable |
| 1985 | Death Wish 3 | Hermosa | |
| 1987 | The Lost Boys | Marko Davies | |
| 1987 | Medium Rare | Timmy | |
| 1988 | Haunted Summer | Dr. John William Polidori | |
| 1989 | Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure | Bill S. Preston, Esq. | |
| 1989 | Rosalie Goes Shopping | Schatzi Greenspace | |
| 1989 | Aisles of Doom | Grendel T.W. Ulcerous | Short film Aired on Night Flight and West Coast Cable |
| 1989 | Entering Texas a.k.a. Bar-B-Que Movie | Mexican hitchhiker | Short film Part of Stuart S. Shapiro's Impact Video Magazine |
| 1990 | Howie Meets the Ghost of Environmental Disasters Yet to Come | Howie | Short film Part of Nigel Dick-directed Save the Planet: A CBS/Hard Rock Cafe Special |
| 1991 | Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey | Bill S. Preston, Esq. / Granny Preston / Evil Robot Bill | |
| 1991 or 1992 | Meals on Wheels | Dweeb | Short film Made for The Playboy Channel's Inside Out late night anthology series |
| 1993 | Freaked | Ricky Coogin | |
| 1997 | The Borrowers | TV Gangster | |
| 1999 | Fever | Subway passenger | |
| 2013 | Grand Piano | Assistant | |
| 2015 | ' | Uncle Keith | |
| 2019 | In Search of Darkness | Himself | Documentary film |
| 2020 | Bill & Ted Face the Music | Bill S. Preston, Esq. | Post-production |
Television
;Directing| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 1991 | The Idiot Box | 6 episodes Co-director with Tom Stern, co-writer of 1 episode: "The Best of the Idiot Box" | |||
| 2003 | Jimmy Kimmel Live! | Various segments | |||
| 2005 | Dirty Famous | ||||
| 2005–2007 | The Andy Milonakis Show | ||||
| 2007 | ' | TV movie | |||
| 2009 | ' | TV movie | |||
| 2011 | Blue Mountain State | Episodes "The Corn Field" and "The Corn Field 2" | |||
| 2011–2013 | Supah Ninjas | 5 episodes | |||
| 2012 | Level Up | 4 episodes | |||
| 2013 | Marvin Marvin | Episode "Mr. Earth" | |||
| 2013 | Betas | Episode "Show & Tell" | |||
| 2014 | Maker Shack Agency | Episode "Pilot" | |||
| 2015 | Bella and the Bulldogs | Episode "Tornado Afraido" | |||
| 2015 | Kirby Buckets | Episodes "Gimme Some Room" and "All Hands on Dexter" | |||
| 2016 | Quantum Is Calling | TV movie |
;Acting
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1985 | The Equalizer | Jeffrey | 1 episode: "Mama's Boy" |
| 1990 | Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures | Bill S. Preston, Esq. | 13 episodes |
| 1991 | The Idiot Box | Various roles | 6 episodes |
| 1993 | Basic Values: Sex, Shock & Censorship in the 90's | Stinx on Ice | TV Movie |
| 2007 | ' | Constantine Jacobs | TV Movie |
| 2007 | Bones | Monte Gold | 1 episode: "The Girl in the Gator" |
| 2007 | Saul of the Mole Men | King Mole Man | 5 episodes |
| 2009 | ' | Nanomech | TV Movie |
| 2012, 2019 | Robot Chicken | Bill S. Preston, Esq., Steve Burns, Earl the Lego Man | 2 episodes |
Music videos
| Year | Song | Artist | Notes |
| 1989 | "Higher Ground" | Red Hot Chili Peppers | Actor |
| 1989 | "Knock Me Down" | Red Hot Chili Peppers | Co-director with Tom Stern Actor, as Young Man |
| 1989 | "Taste the Pain" | Red Hot Chili Peppers | Director |
| 1990 | "Who's the Mack?" | Ice Cube | Co-director with Tom Stern |
| 1990 | "Me & Elvis" | Human Radio | Co-director with Tom Stern |
| 1990 | "Decadence Dance" | Extreme | Co-director with Tom Stern |
| 1991 | "Photograffitti" | Extreme | Director |
| 1993 | "The Jackal" | Ronny Jordan | Director |
| 1994 | "Hard Act to Follow" | Brother Cane | Actor |
| 1994 | "Milquetoast" | Helmet | Director |
| 1994 | "Wilma's Rainbow" | Helmet | Director |
| 1995 | "1 to 1 Religion" | Bomb the Bass feat. Carlton | Director |
| 1995 | "Verklemmt" | Foetus | Director |
| 1996 | "If 6 Was 9" | Axiom Funk | Director |
| 1997 | "Bug Powder Dust" | Bomb the Bass feat. Justin Warfield | Director |
| 1997 | "Exactly What You Wanted" | Helmet | Director |
| 2003 | "Talamanam Sound Clash" | Tabla Beat Science | Concert DVD Co-director with Zane Vella |