The 1998 movie Kevin Bacon called “the trashiest piece of crap” and the scene ruined by a real dead body
Most productions can plan for any eventuality, but one Kevin Bacon movie couldn’t have accounted for one of its scenes being ruined by a very real and very dead body entering the shot.
A cast and crew can put plans in place for fires, natural disasters, injuries, and virtually anything else that could and might go wrong on a set or location, but the discovery of a corpse is one of those things that nobody would account for, at least until the deceased begins interfering with the schedule.
It’s not something that happens every day, and the filming of an erotic thriller would definitely be one of the least likely scenarios for it to happen. It did, though, with Bacon preparing for his next scene in 1998’s Wild Things when things ground to a halt at the discovery of an unidentified cadaver coming into view.
A moderate hit that’s since become a cult classic, Denise Richards and Neve Campbell star as two high school students who falsely accuse Matt Dillon’s counsellor of sexual assault, with Bacon’s corrupt cop suspecting that shenanigans are afoot, leading to several twists and a far-reaching conspiracy.
Despite taking top billing among the cast and executive producing the picture, the Footloose denier wasn’t sold on Wild Things at first. “When I first picked up the script, I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is the trashiest piece of crap I’ve ever read,'” he admitted, and it kind of is, to a certain extent, but the unpredictable narrative eventually won him over.
Had he listened to his gut, then he wouldn’t have had a near-miss with a corpse, where the actor’s Ray Duquette investigates the disappearance of Campbell’s Suzie Toller, although he has the sneaking suspicion she’s been murdered. With the cameras about to roll, an unfortunate discovery was made.
“They had floated a raft out there so that they could put out a light,” Bacon recalled. “All of a sudden, I hear across the walkie-talkie, ‘Hey, uh, I think I just saw a floater’. And it was a body that was floating by. It was kind of indicative of the vibe of the movie.”
Director John McNaughton made sure to call the police, but it didn’t sound like he did it to be a good citizen, since he remembers that the cops “actually grabbed the body and kept it from getting in our shot,” as opposed to dealing with it while there wasn’t an increasingly impatient Hollywood production crew gathered around and waiting to get back to work.
Either way, it was a wild experience for Bacon, who was preparing to read lines from the trashiest screenplay he’d ever laid eyes on in his career, only to be forced to hold fire when an unnamed dead person floated down the river and almost into his shot to cause chaos.
