Emily Mack
Kevin Bacon recently cut loose with Entertainment Weekly, reminiscing on his past roles. And he revealed that the ending of Footloose almost looked very different.
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What Is Kevin Bacon Up To?
Sitting down with Entertainment Weekly to plug a new season of his Showtime drama, City on a Hill, Kevin Bacon also opened up about his extensive filmography. The actor shared some juicy, behind-the-scenes tidbits with journalist Maureen Lee Lenker.
Some major takeaways:
• Kevin Bacon made is on-screen debut in Animal House!
Do you remember the young star from this late ’70s classic? Bacon played frat boy Chip Diller, ass-kisser to the dean. Bacons said that while filming, John Belushi introduced him to a fancy new drink: the mimosa. He’d never had champagne with orange juice before!
• She’s Having a Baby broke his heart
At the height of his career, Kevin Bacon starred in She’s Having a Baby: a John Hughes movie that zeroes in on one yuppie’s tormented commitment-phobia. Among the Hughes repertoire, it’s a quieter film. And it was not successful. “It was the most personal, heartfelt movie that John ever made,” Bacon says now. “[But] it was not embraced by critics, and it broke his heart.”
• A ride on the “Vomit Comet”
To film Apollo 15, Bacon and co-stars Bill Paxton and Tom Hanks underwent actual astronaut training. As Bacon explains it:
“We shot on this thing [we dubbed] the ‘Vomit Comet,’ where we went up over the Gulf of Mexico and we’d dive and climb over and over to simulate weightlessness. I was smart and took the drugs NASA handed us every day. One day, both Tom and Bill went cowboy and decided, ‘We’ve been up there so many times that we don’t really need them.’ I will say they weren’t puking, but they were not looking good.”
From Entertainment Weekly
• The ending of Footloose originally had… no dancing…
That ‘Footloose’ Ending
“LET’S DAAANCE!” Kevin Bacon screams, famously, at the end of Footloose before the group erupts into a high-energy finale number.
Originally, though, the scene simply cut to slow-motion.
As Bacon describes it to Entertainment Weekly, “I run into the place, I say, ‘Let’s dance!’ and there’s like a moment of dancing, and then right away, it goes into slow motion. There’s glitter falling from the sky, and everyone is just moving in slow motion. This was the original ending.”
Considering the whole film builds up to some fabulous outpouring of joy, the toned down ending did not test well with early audiences. Footloose leaves viewers — like the characters on-screen — wanting to move. The tension needed release.
So, nearly a year after production on Footloose wrapped, some core cast members reunited to film the memorable last scene we know today. “It was choreographed and L.A. dancers were hired,” Bacon explained. Though Chris Penn and Lori Singer joined him for the shoot, the rest of the scene was filled with professional dancers whose hair was made to match the actors’. “That was a completely re-shot ending,” Bacon said.
Watch the final product above.
