By Our sweet, Alex Winter: Bill S. Preston, Esq. himself. If you thought his time was wrapped by the late-80s, you’ve been doing yourself a massive disservice—Winter’s been working tirelessly in the shadows his whole career to game the entertainment industry on his own terms and basis of satisfaction. Atop his much publicized career as your aunt’s cousin’s best friend’s sister’s favorite teen star, his maximalist, alternative-comedy efforts, alongside Tom Stern and Tim Burns, on MTV via THE IDIOT BOX drew from the wicked, bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you satire of Robert Downey Sr. and silently inspired forthcoming decades of “Did I really just see that?” experimental television. While Winter may be horrified that some of his creative prime only lives on through 240p VHS rips on YouTube, this data-moshed resolution may be the prime exhibition for his brain-fried antics. An outspoken survivor of childhood abuse, career documentarian, and nearly everyone in the entertainment industry’s secret best friend, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to famed comedian (and sometimes theoretical physicist) Stephen Hawking, Alex is an honest mensch who will take far too much time out of his day to earnestly answer fan questions on Twitter while juggling a handful of documentaries in pre-production.
Now: let’s rank his movies.
I’m going to break the cold, hard, honest truth to you here: this is not a comprehensive list of Alex Winter films. I’m only including his performances, and ranking according to a top-secret formula of “(quality of performance ÷ quality of film) x w2”. None of his highly esteemed documentaries are included and very few of his cameo appearances are present—there’s a chance I may even be missing some performances some would consider key, but I made sure that I at least covered all the films listed under the “ACTING” tab on Winter’s personal website. And to be even more honest with you, this list is one big excuse to wax poetic about #1, one of the greatest hidden gems of all time; this is definitely not the man-eating behemoth that is our Keanu ranking.
Okay. Ready?
Yeah?
EXCELLENT!
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10. HAUNTED SUMMER / Ivan Passer / 1988
If I was a betting man, I’d say Keanu’s turn in DANGEROUS LIAISONS was a cue for Winter’s agent to nab him a stuffy, English-accented role, too. Look, in his defense, there’s not a single American actor on their come-up that doesn’t do this, and nearly 95% of them are stuck in flavorless, unappealing, dry melodramas as shitty as British cuisine itself, so it’s no personal flack towards Winter that the business just stuck him in one of these. It’s a necessary badge of honor (or, rather, battle scar). HAUNTED SUMMER, a loose account of Mary Shelley’s youth and her inspiration to write FRANKENSTEIN, is deeply un-horny when its mind is steeped in sex, goofy when focused on horror, and male-focused when supposedly highlighting one of the leading female authors of modern history. I’ll be very honest with you: I have zero recollection of who Alex Winter plays. I know that he’s in this and I watched around nine cumulative minutes of his supporting performance. This might be a me-problem, I mean, let’s just list out the ingredients I do not vibe with that comprise HAUNTED SUMMER: we have an English period drama, a hoity-toity aristocratic countryside comedy, a biopic about someone right before they become interesting. a load of Caucasian sex, and prolonged shots of Eric Stoltz’s penis. I cannot recommend this film.
9. ROSALIE GOES SHOPPING / Percy Adlon / 1989
Women be shopping!! Part CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL and part John Waters sleaze-o-rama lampooning the American middle-class’s programmed obsession with consumerism, ROSALIE GOES SHOPPING is a German-American production that plops different styles, lighting configurations, characters, and themes onto the screen like a lunch lady scooping so much Thursday special sloppy joe on your tray that it drips on your shoes. Alex Winter plays a horny brat relegated to the sidelines while his mother, Rosalie, embarks on a journey of shopping addictions and deeper debts. Shout-out to the out-of-their-minds food stylists on this movie, the meals are literally to die for, and, you know what, shout out to sitting on your girlfriend’s lap. Let’s normalize sitting on your girlfriend’s lap like a little baby boy.
8. MEDIUM RARE / Paul Madden / 1987
Fever dream. Who? What? Huh? Excuse me? Alex Winter kills a porn star mid-coitus with a giant drill ripped right from THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. King shit only.
7. DEATH WISH 3 / Michael Winner / 1985
This is Biden’s America!! Look, Alex is barely in it (he gets killed in SPECTACULAR fashion, though), but I just need everyone who doesn’t know about DEATH WISH 3 to know about DEATH WISH 3, a film most closely akin to a ‘90s Capcom arcade brawler than really any other film ever made. There are few film franchises as noxiously conservative as DEATH WISH and Charles Bronson is a certified freak, but I think everyone is allowed one bit of D-grade garbage in their diet. Fuck these old fogies, but sometimes the most unhinged of them made movies in the 1980s and the results are cultural relics worth studying with a beer in hand then flushing down the drain. Make DEATH WISH 3 your next bowel movement.
6. GRAND PIANO / Eugenio Mira / 2013
I think if GRAND PIANO was a smidge more ballistic, it’d have been a midnight favorite at your local arthouse for the past seven years. Following Elijah Wood as a disgraced pianist making his epic return to the limelight after an onstage breakdown years ago, he’s found pinned down by a sniper perched on the top-level of the theater he’s performing in. Like a western outlaw making a poor cowpoke dance by shooting rounds at their feet, the sniper (oh, by the way, he’s played by John Cusack hahaha) threatens to blast a laser-sight round through Wood’s forehead if he doesn’t perform a perfect concerto: miss one note and you’re dead. GRAND PIANO is insane B-movie bullshit that does not nearly capitalize enough on its insane B-movie bullshit, spending way too often at half-speed instead of doubling or tripling its tempo. Winter’s in the thankless role of “Staffer Who Angrily Whispers Into Earpiece.” There’s a shift, though. A mirror shatters as a socialite’s head is bashed against it. Winter picks up a shard and slices it across her neck like a bow across a cello. It’s choosing John Lithgow for BLOW-OUT, or Dan Ackroyd for GROSSE POINTE BLANK, or Robin Williams for ONE HOUR PHOTO—Winter’s face has always been home to a kindly expression, but his angular bone structure naturally invites a menace that’s hardly been utilized. It’s short-lived in GRAND PIANO, thanks to screenwriter Damien Chazelle treating every side character as a shooting range target, but no less entertaining to behold.
5. ANYONE CAN QUANTUM / Alex Winter / 2016
I’ll make an exception to the bit-part/cameo rule for this cute short for Caltech about Paul Rudd and Dr. Stephen Hawking squaring off in an online chess match, in large part because I think it really clearly illustrates that people in Hollywood fucking love Alex Winter. Alex loves them too, but genuinely—his 2000s could’ve been ripe with straight-to-VOD raunchy comedies and Redbox thrillers, but that’s not the art that thrills him. He’d rather know people who inspire him than puppeteer them to everyone’s embarrassment. Yeah, he’s got a couple BEN 10 TV movies under his belt, and SMOSH: THE MOVIE, too, but c’mon, wouldn’t you want to make movies for your kids if you had the chance? He’s a miracle: for every Alex Winter, there’re 3,000 vultures looking to schmooze with whoever gets their 15-minutes and set them up for a shot-on-video actioner. Anyway, Rudd commands a room with only his bearded presence and Winter pops up for a split-second cameo where he rips out a “Shut up, Ted!” like BILL & TED was still churning out installments since 1991. It’s as playful and comfy as a production can be where you only have 37 minutes to shoot with each of the primary actors.
4. BILL AND TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY / Peter Hewitt / 1991
I like hanging out with Bill and Ted. Actually, I take that back: I love hanging out with Bill and Ted. Sitting around watching STAR TREK, wailing away at instruments they don’t know how to play, and sitting outside Circle K’s pleading with strangers for some pointers on Mongolian history is my idea of a rock-n-roll Saturday night. So then why does BILL AND TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY spend so much time away from Bill and Ted? Unexpectedly dense with lore, jokes, and more lore, Keanu and Alex get so much more to do in the sequel, now apartment-dwelling young adults, but so much less time to be comfortable. This sequel is very new-concept forward, its predecessor’s brief, quiet moments of hang-out chilling now seen as opportunities for gag effects and off-shoot sketches. The madcap imagination on display is admirable, especially in a studio-funded ‘90s comedy (it reminds me a lot of fellow outcast JOE VS. THE VOLCANO), but it loses sight of the appeal of these characters. BILL AND TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY received the cult status treatment that I wish this list’s #1 selection had, but its central message is still empowering: wedgie Death and defy his doctrine, then invite him to jam in the band.
3. THE LOST BOYS / Joel Schumacher / 1987
I often have to be reminded that Alex Winter is in THE LOST BOYS. It’s not his fault—I mean, acting as one of Kiefer Sutherland’s cronies no doubt keeps you firmly as a member of the orchestra. Hell, I think of Sutherland in THE LOST BOYS before I even think of the protagonist, Jason Patric. Winter’s an odd casting choice here: not childish enough to play a Frog brother, but still cherubic enough to be the odd baby-face out in David’s cabal of bloodsuckers. There’s a lot to say about this ‘80s essential (so iconic that it’s probably further up on this list than it should be), but I’d rather refer to Winter’s own take on THE LOST BOYS, which is way more interesting than anything I could muster, relaying the film’s recontextualization of vampiric lore’s lurid subtext so it remarks more on the works of Nicholas Ray than Bram Stoker. Good fucking take. What can I say, I really like this Alex Winter guy.
2. BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE / Stephen Herek / 1989
Of the ‘80s’ BACK TO THE FUTURE knock-off, himbo comedies, BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE is the only one of the bunch that can stand crown-to-crown beside the king. It’s a dirty shame we think of this movie as “Oh, that’s where Keanu came from!” when Winter is performing with the wisdom of somehow having lived his teenage years thrice over. Like, it’s true, when Keanu gets to yelp something as incredible as “Do you know when the Mongols ruled China?” then, yeah, Bette Davis would be in his shadow, too, but it doesn’t make the reality of the present any dirtier. Bill S. Preston, Esq. is an embittered young man using extreme positivity and a reliance on SAT vocabulary to heal the generational wounds known as “my middle-aged father is cucking me by fucking my high school crush turned step-mom in my bedroom.” The dark magic of BILL AND TED is that the boys’ effusive positivity is motivated by the necessity to keep their heads up in an America where the adults either stomp on your wishes or send you to the military. They might be airheads, but they’re airheads with the conviction to learn and do better in the face of opposition—even if their push to grow is a trans-dimensional phone booth carrying a future prophet deeming them the most important musicians of the far future. Ted’s the sweet-talker, but Bill’s the one you have dialing the phone to get the show on the road. Dare I say, Bill S. Preston, Esquire is one of my favorite straight-man comedic performances ever.
1. FREAKED / Alex Winter, Tom Stern / 1993
FREAKED is one of the crown jewels of the 1990s, a testament to the innocently youthful idea that moviemaking was simply the transference of imagination to screen. The rules of filmmaking, any knowledge of production, and the world outside of the screen blur into bokeh and the only thing left is an anything-goes rampage of fuck-yous, claymation, and spurting ooze. Picture: the goop’n’gore of EVIL DEAD 2, the 25-jokes-per-panel of MAD! Magazine, and the variety-show shock-and-awe of KABLAM! Think of everything that’s ever made you piss your pants laughing and FREAKED harnesses its energy, and then some—it’s the concept-forward thinking of BILL AND TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY, but following characters that we want to see put through the ringer, characters we want to see get thrown through sheet glass and electrocuted like they’re in a Tex Avery cartoon. FREAKED, a cautionary tale of fame and fortune through the lens of a makeshift freak-show monster factory, was ahead of its time and still is. Winter commands this vessel, with carefully planted jokes providing some of the most expert pay-offs you’ll ever see, but also maintains a leaking nuclear reactor of chaos peeling the metal panels off the walls. If you can imagine it, FREAKED has it. Rumor has it that if you watch FREAKED without blinking, you get RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK’d. Face? Melted ice cream, just irreparably emulsified. Winter directs and acts his absolute heart out, forcing himself into a monster prosthetic that leaves him drooling buckets in every scene. This is what maximum effort looks like; this is what maximum satisfaction feels like.
I can’t quite pin-point what FREAKED stands for (gun to my head, I’d explain that it’s a stark, anti-corporate refutation of the accepted, limited practices of genre), but I know it’s a Ludovico Technique experience in undiluted entertainment. We’re lucky to live in a world where FREAKED exists, but it’s appropriate that something so invigorating is damn-near impossible to watch. There’s a YouTube rip out there, but, as opposed to THE IDIOT BOX, the low-res video does a grave disservice to the utterly magnificent make-up and special effects. Where’s the Shout Factory Blu-Ray? Where’s the Criterion? Where’s the fucking Arrow Video release or the Vinegar Syndrome special edition? Goddamn, where the fuck is the Kino Lorber Blu of FREAKED?! This is the part of my list where I give Alex Winter my utmost sympathies: to create a defining, groundbreaking amalgamation of all your passions, have it flop on release, and then still not have a reliable platform with which to show it off nearly 30 years later. Those of us hungry enough for an adrenaline shot to the nervous system have sought out FREAKED; Winter’s magnum opus has not been lost to time. This 24-year-old found it, and he’s been tirelessly making each of his friends watch it, too. I HEREBY CALL FOR THE WINTERSSAINCE!!
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