Kevin Bacon Recalls ‘Trippy Experience’ Of Seeing His Footloose Audition Tape

Summary

• Kevin Bacon’s career spans a range of films, but he will always be remembered as an ’80s icon.
• Bacon’s most iconic role was Ren McCormack in
  Footloose
  , representing youthful rebellion through dance.
• Bacon’s nostalgia for the film is evident in his reflections on his audition tape and continued appreciation for the movie’s impact.

Kevin Bacon has had a long, respectable career that’s done nothing short of show an incredible range. But in a way, he’ll always be seen primarily as an ’80s icon. And for good reason, as he was a part of two John Hughes movies (She’s Having a Baby and a cameo in Planes, Trains & Automobiles), the underrated Diner, and had one of film history’s most famous death scenes in the original Friday the 13th.

But his greatest contribution to the decade’s cinematic output would undoubtedly be his lead performance as Ren McCormack in Footloose. A big-city teen transplanted to a small town (to paraphrase the theatrical poster), McCormack was and remains the role with which Bacon is most often associated, even if Tremors’ Valentine McKee gives him a run for his memorability money.

At a recent Tribeca Film Festival 40th anniversary retrospective event for the classic dance flick, Bacon had some words to say about not only the film itself, but his experience viewing his own original audition tape for it. People reported on this event, fittingly called “Footloose with Kevin Bacon” and quoted the legendary performer:

Many years ago, there was a DVD extra that came out, and on the DVD extra they’d gone into the Paramount vault and found my screen test…and I was so knocked out by seeing that person.

Bacon elaborated further, explaining just how odd it was to see a version of himself 40 years junior his current self. Anybody who’s looked at their high school yearbook decades later can surely relate.

There’s something about the [Footloose] audition, that I could really see a big younger version of me. If I look at a movie that I was in many years ago, I don’t really see a younger version of me — It’s the character that I was playing…but this screen test had something about it.

The Apollo 13 star then went into detail about how viewing the audition tape was different from, say, watching himself in Tremors or even his 1978 cinematic debut in National Lampoon’s Animal House. And, for that matter, what it was that made his look into the past so special.

What Made Watching the Screen Test Such a Nostalgic Treat?

Before elaborating about how he didn’t initially register the importance of dancing in the movie, Bacon had this to say about watching the audition tape:

I’ve literally never done this before, but I put it on pause and I went into the bathroom and I looked in the mirror and I thought to myself ‘Is that the same guy? Are you the same guy as that guy over there?’ It was very weird. It’s a real trippy experience.

And, yet, even with that bit of understandable dissociation given four decades between the movie’s release and now, Bacon has hardly distanced himself from either the film or the role. He even stated that he and his brother Michael’s band, The Bacon Brothers, often play the title track.

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Why? Because, in Bacon’s words, he likes to “make people happy.” It’s hard to imagine that experience not bringing a smile to one’s face, as even just sitting and watching the movie in the afternoon after kicking off one’s Sunday shoes has the exact same effect…all these years later. We all need a hero, and for many, McCormack is just the vent-dancing ticket.

Footloose
can currently be streamed in several places, including Netflix and Paramount+

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