I think that I can say without reservation that Footloose is one of the defining movies of my teenager-hood... that and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I saw Footloose on a whim with some friends the first weekend it came out and all my girlfriends marveled at how much the guy I was dating at the time looked like Kevin Bacon... at least Kevin Bacon without the funky haircut. I had no idea who Kevin Bacon was before watching that flick, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time and felt somehow closer to a future dazzling Hollywood career because of it. So we went to see it.

I didn't know until later, that the movie had been filmed in Lehi, Utah (which was near Provo) and that the building used in the long shot for the flour mill was the self same, covered with graffiti building that we always drove past and stared at on our annual trek through Utah from the Southwest to the Northwest way to visit my grandparents in Idaho every summer. I also found out later that my cousin, who was in college at BYU at the time and had been involved with the BYU folk dancers, had been offered an opportunity to dance in the movie and he turned it down becuase he thought it "sounded dumb."

As we sat through the movie that first time though, it became less about the star's resemblance to a boy I would only go out with a few more times in the next six months and more a Gestalt moment of philosophical awareness. The scene toward the end, where Ren McCormack addresses the town council, spoke to us. We left the theater with new found entitlement to our place in the world. We had the sudden realization of how oppressed we were and how the adult world would just never understand us -- despite the fact that none of us was barred from dancing, reading any books and we hadn't felt a drop of oppression just three hours before. We resolved to fight back and take back Our. Moment. To. Dance. "This really is OUR TIME, right? It's so true! Like, fer sure!" The soundtrack from that movie would be played in the background of my life for the next four years.

Don't you just love how melodramatic you were capable of being in adolescence? It's completely embarrassing and I'm just glad that I was never Lindsay Lohan in the position of having all my stupid decisions and experiences captured on video tape for all the world and my posterity to see.

Anyway, Footloose is a big reason why I love Kevin Bacon. That and his sense of humor about himself:

See more Kevin Bacon videos at Funny or Die


I just read that Zac Efron is possibly starring in a Footloose remake....

noooooooooooooooooooo!

Whom do we contact to stop this??? Someone please get to this boy and keep him from ruining my movie. Next they'll be remaking Better Off Dead and then all my adolescence will have been spoiled.