Alex Winter Delves Into Silk Road and Internet Freedom in 'Deep Web’

Alex Winter, best known for dude-ing out as one Bill S. Preston, Esquire in the Bill & Ted movies, has reinvented himself since retiring from full-time acting in the early '90s. These days the 49-year-old is finding a comfortable niche in documentary filmmaking, specifically in dealing with the evolving and complicated world of digital law, freedom, and privacy.

First there was Winter’s 2013 doc Downloaded, which explored the explosion of file-sharing services like Napster. For his follow-up, Deep Web, Winter turned his camera to the case of the online drug market Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht, who today was sentenced to life in prison for his role as “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise.” The film, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March and debuts worldwide Sunday on Epix, is narrated by Winter’s most famous co-star and longtime friend, Keanu Reeves.

Related: Alex Winter Reunites With Keanu Reeves for SXSW Doc 'Deep Web,’ Gives Latest 'Bill & Ted’ Update

“After making Downloaded, I was very interested in the continuing of this movement online,” Winter told Yahoo Movies at SXSW in Austin, where he sat down with Ulbrict’s mother, Lyn. “Internet freedom movements, privacy, anonymity online — really all these growing communities online that started with the beginning of the Internet and really exploded with the invention of Napster.”

Winter was immediately drawn to the case of Ross Ulbricht when the FBI arrested him in October 2013 and charged the 30-year-old with being Silk Road’s mastermind known online as Dread Pirate Roberts. Silk Road had been in operation for more than two years as a black market for illegal drugs, where anonymous buyers could place orders using bitcoin.

Watch an exclusive clip from 'Deep Web’:

Winter said as he was following the Ulbricht case, he felt like much of the story was being mythologized and misreported, similar to how he viewed the events that unfolded around Napster. Making Deep Web wasn’t an “activist’s motivation,” though, Winter insisted. “It wasn’t like, 'I’m gonna tell the truth!’ I understand, to some degree, why sometimes these things get misreported, because they’re confusing. Encryption is really confusing. The Internet is technologically confusing. Bitcoin is totally confusing. Even mathematicians don’t understand it. So it’s not like I have some righteous indignation, but I do think these stories are important.

"I did not want to make an 'issues’ movie, because I think that’s very distancing for people. I know it is for me, and you only make movies that you know you’d want to watch. I know if I feel like I’m being lectured to, I just switch off. I’d rather read journalism, or a book.”

Winter believes the implications of the Silk Road case extend far beyond the sale of illicit drugs: “There are Fourth Amendment issues, rights to privacy,” he said. “In Ross’s case, it would appear that the way they even got the servers of Silk Road in the first place was by illegally obtaining them. [It was a] breach of the Fourth Amendment, so laws needed to be implemented in the digital age that protect people from search and seizure just like they do in the physical. And right now that is way out of balance.”

Deep Web, like many documentaries, is intended to stir up dialogue: “My point isn’t to say that everything is so black and white, or to say the deep web and online drug markets are good or bad. We really need to be having much more grey, much more nuanced debates about it. And that’s what this story is trying to tell.”

Deep Web premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. on Epix.