The 1980s role you couldn’t pay Kevin Bacon enough to play again: “It would be a disaster”
Any actor who maintains a decent amount of stardom over a long period of time will almost inevitably acquire at least one recurring role along the way, but not Kevin Bacon.
There aren’t many names on his level or above who haven’t played the same character at least twice, putting him in rare company alongside Richard Gere, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jodie Foster as stars who’ve been hanging around for decades without feeling the need to return to the well.
Ironically, Bacon tried and failed to do it. Tremors‘ Val McKee is the only part he’s ever played that he wanted to revisit, and he even shot the pilot episode for a TV show that would see him picking up from where he left off in the original creature feature, but it failed to secure a series order.
There have been plenty of Bacon-less sequels to movies he’s been in, with Tremors spawning a slew of follow-ups, and he was also in the first Friday the 13th, while Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man got a straight-to-video second chapter. He’s not against boarding existing franchises, either, as he showed with gigs in X-Men: First Class, Beauty Shop, and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
Thanks to We Married Margo, Skum Rocks!, Will & Grace, American Dad!, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and more, the role Kevin Bacon has played the most often is that of Kevin Bacon, which isn’t too much of a stretch. Ask if he’d be interested in taking a trip down memory lane to the smash hit that cemented him as a hot commodity, though, and he’s not having it.
His feelings on the film have softened over time, but in the immediate aftermath of Footloose, Bacon wanted to distance himself from it as far as possible. As often tends to be the case, because it was a cult favourite with some name recognition, the 1984 original got a remake, and he was offered a part.
Even though it had been written specifically for him to play, he turned it down, and he’d do the exact same thing if anyone floated a legacy sequel. “Footloose 2 has been done,” he declared, referring to the 2011 do-over. “I think it would be a disaster.”
In this day and age, does anybody want to see Bacon, who isn’t a kick in the arse away from turning 70, returning as Ren McCormack, whether he ends up busting any moves or not? There can’t be many, and the man who brought the character to life over 40 years ago definitely isn’t one of them.
“There is something about, ‘Let’s just leave well enough alone,'” he reflected. “Unless they’ve got a really fresh idea, but the other thing is, in our business, everyone wants intellectual property, and wants to revisit intellectual property.” In many cases, a fat sack of cash could get the job done, but maybe not in this one.
