‘This is Spinal Tap’: Kevin Bacon’s one and only favourite movie of all time
Thanks to the famous game bearing his name, you can link Kevin Bacon to almost anyone in Hollywood in six degrees or less, but it only takes one to tie the actor to his one and only favourite movie of all time.
His connection to the film runs much deeper than it being the greatest thing he’s ever seen, though, even if it’s a tale laced with disappointment and tragedy. Bacon has been in the business long enough to know how close to hold his cards to the chest, which is why he’s always been so reticent to discuss films he wasn’t in.
There aren’t many occasions where he’s explicitly labelled a certain picture of being a good, bad, or ugly example of cinema, but he has no bones about doing it to his own. The Golden Globe winner has always maintained that David Koepp’s Stir of Echoes is the finest feature he’s ever been a part of, even if M Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense stole almost every bit of its thunder.
He loathed almost every second of shooting Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man because he spent the duration of the mammoth production wearing a prosthetic face, and he admitted that Tremors, one of his most beloved outings, was something he only agreed to make because his career was in the shitter.
He’s happy to look inward, but when it comes to the movies he cherishes the most, he doesn’t need to deliberate when there’s only one to consider. If anything, the film only edged closer to his heart because the person who directed it also played a major part in helping him rehabilitate his fading star.
“Rob Reiner gave me a job in A Few Good Men,” Bacon explained, paying tribute to the late filmmaker. “Sometime in the ’90s, I guess it was, and I was over the moon to get that job, because people may or may not know, but This is Spinal Tap is my all-time favourite movie. When he called me, I was thrilled.”
There’s only one degree of Kevin Bacon to be found here: Bacon was directed by Reiner in the legal drama defined by Jack Nicholson’s scenery-devouring monologue, and he also helmed the most influential mockumentary of the modern era, a movie so good that no less of an authority than Martin Scorsese declared it was something that bordered on the divine.
Since he was familiar with Reiner, Bacon’s lifelong love of This Is Spinal Tap saw him shoot his shot, reach out to Reiner about a part in the sequel, The End Continues, and hope for the best. He didn’t get it, but it was worth trying, and it would have been the dream to end all dreams had he managed to snag a role in the long-awaited follow-up to his all-time favourite movie.
It’s resided at the top of the pile since 1984, the same year he broke out with Footloose, and if Bacon hasn’t seen anything in the last four decades that’s come close to troubling This Is Spinal Tap as the pinnacle, then it’s unlikely that he ever will.
