What Happened To The Phone Booth From 'Bill & Ted' Is Heinous
Good news for fans of time travel and unnecessarily theatrical school presentations, Bill and Ted are back -- and in an actual movie, not a crappy TV show starring two porno parody-quality lookalikes. As we mentioned earlier this week, the first trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music just hit the internet, and it looks pretty great, featuring not only the titular duo but their old pal Death and, of course, the return of the iconic phone booth. Which made us wonder: whatever happened to the original phone booth from back in the '90s?
Well, it turns out they just gave it away. At least one phone booth that was used in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey served as the grand prize in a Nintendo Power contest -- which is the most 1991 sentence imaginable. Not only did the phone purportedly work, but Nintendo Power also offered to pay the bill for "an ENTIRE YEAR!" And really, who wouldn't want to make all of their home phone calls while standing in a coffin-sized enclosure?
The winner was a kid named Kenneth Grayson, who not unsurprisingly, couldn't fit the damn thing through his bedroom door. His father had to remove the window "frame and all" and hoist the phone booth through the gaping hole, presumably while wondering why Nintendo couldn't have just mailed a goddamn check instead.
Here's where things get weird. In 2011, someone claiming to be Kenneth Grayson did a Reddit AMA, which was requested by a Nintendo Power fan. Grayson's AMA is full of specific details about winning the contest, including how the phone wasn't actually a real phone, as Nintendo suggested. He was allegedly forced to buy a real phone and was later reimbursed by Nintendo. He also mentions that he used to "stash" all his "porno mags" in the booth, and now it's in storage. He also makes a lot of derogatory comments about women and claims to have had sex in the booth multiple times. Including with a woman who wouldn't remember "much of that night." Which is bogus, to say the least.
Seemingly this famous piece of film history went to a total douche, who fundamentally misunderstood the movie's central message -- Bill and Ted preach "Be excellent to each other" not "Be the guy who creeps on women using 1980s movie memorabilia."
Or it could be the case that someone was merely catfishing fans. Though, really, pretending to be the small boy who won a contest held by a video game magazine several decades ago seems like the saddest con in the history of cons. The "Kenneth Grayson" on Reddit offers no proof of his identity. If you're a collector looking for a Bill & Ted phone booth of your own, there's always this almost $9000 replica. At least you know for sure that it hasn't been defiled.
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Top Image: Orion Pictures