Kenny Loggins’ 1984 song “Footloose” plays over Payson High School’s football field on a sunny April morning. Cutting loose to the famous chorus, punctuating his stride toward a makeshift stage, is none other than the star of the film of the same name, Kevin Bacon. Payson High School students, wearing their black, green and white letterman sweaters, crowd the base of the stage. They dance and hold tight to one another. Some cry openly, overcome with emotion and excitement, as they celebrate their accomplishment: orchestrating the return of Kevin Bacon to Payson High School, where he filmed scenes from Footloose (1984) 40 years prior.
Bacon speaks to the young crowd, evoking the themes of the 1984 film. It’s a classic intergenerational conflict, where teenagers speak truth to power (i.e.: adults, religious figures), in an era defined by the fear of progress, moral panics and censorship. Like this moment in Payson, the film celebrates the wisdom and tenacity of youth, even in the face of adults who claim to know better but are more lost and stuck in their ways than they realize. As it turns out, we all need to cut loose once in a while.
‘You won’t get
any dancing here,
it’s illegal.’
When Al Jolson famously declared, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” in the groundbreaking 1927 motion picture The Jazz Singer, he omitted the true artistic glory of the still nascent 20th-century medium. No, not computer-generated dinosaurs. Dancing.
Nothing will ever match the litheness Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers or the athletic/erotic hoofery of Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse in Singin’ in the Rain. Then came Reynolds, Sammy, Travolta, Hines…electric performers all, and absolutely the highlight of every musical or quasi-musical they sashayed into.
Except for 1978’s Grease, the traditional musical gradually fell out of fashion with box office failures like The Wiz and Annie. But the aesthetic joy of dancing never lost its kick. Films built around dancing once again began to catch fire in the 1980s. The breakthrough work was Flashdance, which, despite lacking a marketable star, grossed a stunning $92 million domestically in 1983 (outpacing pop cultural phenoms like Trading Places and WarGames). And then there was the NBC special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, wherein Michael Jackson popularized his backward gliding moonwalk—thus introducing urban-based breakdancing to the suburbs.
With hip-hop’s emergence, for the first time since the 1970s disco craze, people needed to dance. After Flashdance, Paramount knew this, so they fast-tracked a dance-centric project called Footloose.
Written by Dean Pitchford (a songwriter who’d written hits for Dolly Parton, Kenny Loggins and Irene Cara), the script was based on an Oklahoma City town that had banned dancing for 80 years. In the real 1980s, the Satanic Panic and the Parents Music Resource Council were in full censorious swing. Meanwhile, on the newly launched MTV, Twisted Sister was proclaiming they weren’t ‘going to take it,’ Cyndi Lauper asserted that “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and Paramount had a kids versus adults powder keg in the wings.
With a hot-button hit-in-the-making, the studio swung for the hottest young names on the market—and they whiffed. Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe passed on the rebellious new kid in town, Ren McCormack, while Madonna and Jennifer Jason Leigh were briefly in the running for the troublemaking preacher’s daughter, Ariel. The final choices, Kevin Bacon (familiar-ish from Diner) and Lori Singer (a big-screen newcomer) weren’t promotional rainmakers. John Lithgow, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for his portrayal of a transgender football player in The World According to Garp, was easily the biggest name on set as the dance-despising Reverend Shaw.
‘This is our
time to dance.’
The upside of the film’s low-star power casting? No paparazzi were going to schlep out to Utah County for Kevin Bacon in 1983. The Footloose production team found unconventional locations like the Lehi Roller Mill, The Hi-Spot hangout (where Ariel gets busted by John Lithgow’s Shaw for gyrating to Shalamar’s “Dancing in the Sheets”) and, most notably, Payson High School. Thus, Payson became forever synonymous with the fictional Midwestern town of Bomont, the dance-banning town in the film. (Note: Kids then and now can actually dance in Payson.)
It’s easy to find plenty of folks who rate Bacon’s breakout film their favorite Utah-made movie; the image of Bacon dancing around the Lehi Roller Mills is as iconic to ’80s-raised kids as the shot of John Wayne at the end of The Searchers is for Western fans. The Footloose story is simple: city boy Ren (Bacon) moves to a small town, only to find local religious zealots have outlawed—gasp!—dancing and rock music. Rallying the repressed teen populace (including a young Sarah Jessica Parker) to his cause, Ren convinces the fire-and-brimstone preacher (John Lithgow) that dancing is good, clean fun, just in time for the senior prom. The Wasatch Front looms in the background of nearly every scene—the production bounced from Lehi and American Fork to Payson and Orem—and we can thank Footloose for Bacon’s spiky haircut becoming the iconic look for American men in the mid-’80s.
No one can forget the game of tractor chicken between Ren and the physically abusive Chuck (Jim Youngins) outside the Roller Mill, or the clandestine jaunt to the county-adjacent bar where Ren, Ariel and plucky lil’ Rusty (pre-stardom Sarah Jessica Parker) gleefully cut a rug (before Christopher Penn’s hot-headed Willard starts a fight), the high school is the hub of the conflict, the bonding (particularly between Ren and Willard).
Payson High is indistinguishable from every rural high school in the United States of that era. Brick walls, narrow lockers, beige-colored classrooms tinted for maximum drowsiness: we know it, we loathed it and, 40 years later, it, like the movie, offers nostalgia. But, most importantly, in 1983, it made the perfect “Anytown-USA” backdrop for the film’s conflict between youth and age.
And then, 40 years later, Kevin Bacon returned to Payson High School to inspire a new class of upstart seniors to cut loose anew.
#BacontoPayson
This past April, Payson High School students successfully spearheaded a campaign to bring Kevin Bacon back to Payson High for the 40th anniversary of filming Footloose there. They started on social media with the hashtag #BaconToPayson to promote the grassroots efforts, attracting support from the Utah Film Commission and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. The students choreographed elaborate recreations of the film’s iconic scenes that went viral.
For a while Bacon demurred, but they finally wore him down and he accepted the students’ invitation on NBC’s TODAY show, promising to make an appearance at Payson High for the first time since he filmed Footloose in 1983. Payson students were ecstatic.
“We’ve worked so hard this year and done our absolute best to make this crazy dream a reality,” said Student Body President Rubie Raff. “I can’t believe that it’s finally happening and that we can say we did it! It was all worth it—we got Kevin back to Payson!”
The students were not the only ones who were ecstatic at the event. Payson High School Student Council Faculty Advisor Jenny Staheli was 11 years old when Footloose came out in 1984. She watched it with her friends, they listened to the soundtrack and, of course, they talked about how cute Kevin Bacon was. “It’s just been one of those things that’s been in the background of my life, honestly, since I was 11,” said Staheli. “I got to meet Kevin Bacon. Come on!” It was a teenage dream come true. “And it’s not just fulfilling for me. Working with these kids on this project has been just the most special experience. One of the best things I think we’ve ever done. It’s shown them, in an impactful way, that it’s okay to have a huge dream, to have something that feels impossible and to reach for it. Because, sometimes you get it. Sometimes it happens.”
Bacon’s visit was a part of his work with his non-profit foundation, SixDegrees.org. Along with Payson High School, local charitable organizations and the Payson community, they assembled and distributed 5,000 Essential Resource Kits to young people in need throughout Utah. He took the occasion to remind everyone of the film’s still relevant themes of “standing up to authority, being forgiving of people who are not exactly the same as you, standing up for your own freedoms and your right to express yourself and having complete compassion for other people,” said Bacon, addressing students. “And that’s what all of you have shown here, by turning what could be just a movie star coming back to get a pat on the back…into something really positive.” The moment came just in time as well, as the old Payson High School building is set to be closed down and demolished next spring.
The event at Payson High and the anniversary of Footloose also happened to coincide with 100 years of film in Utah. “Throughout the 100th anniversary, we are celebrating not only film and television moments that were made in Utah, but the people and places behind those moments,” says Virginia Pearce, Director of the Utah Film Commission. “Footloose is one of those iconic moments in Utah’s film history that made both an impact on Utah and the world. I am so proud of the Payson High School students and hope this celebration reminds everyone of Utah’s rich film history.” —Christie Porter
The Footloose Cast — Before and After
Kevin Bacon (Ren McCormack)
Most recently, we saw Mr. Bacon at the Payson High School prom, where he led some lucky students through a tour of the soon-to-be-demolished high school. Before that, he was in Tremors, Diner and a bunch of other movies that aren’t as good.
Lori Singer (Ariel Moore)
Singer made her feature debut in Footloose and collaborated with A-list filmmakers like Robert Altman, John Schlesinger and Alan Rudolph, but she has split her time between acting and performing as a Julliard-trained cellist.
John Lithgow (Reverend Shaw Moore)
With two Tony Awards and six Emmys to his name, Lithgow is one of the most celebrated actors of his generation. Does he have a defining role? I’ll go with his Brian De Palma one-two punch of Blow Out and Raising Cain, and his gloriously unhinged villainy in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
Dianne Wiest (Vi Moore)
As the tender-hearted wife struggling to mend the rift between Shaw and Ariel, Wiest is saddled with a semi-thankless role here. But Wiest is always worth watching, and Oscar voters agreed by awarding her Best Supporting Actress in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway. Since then she’s kept incredibly busy in theater and on television (you can watch her now on Mayor of Kingstown).
Sarah Jessica Parker (Rusty Rodriguez)
She’s been one of our most gifted comedic actors for 40 years and was spectacular in classics like L.A. Story, Honeymoon in Vegas and Ed Wood, but those two Emmys and two SAG Awards are for her iconic portrayal of Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City.
Christopher Penn (Willard Hewitt)
The youngest brother of Sean and Michael Penn made an impression in All the Right Moves and Rumble Fish, but he became a go-to character actor as rhythm-challenged Willard in Footloose. The cliche that he was always worth watching, even when the film was not, held true for Penn. Tragically, we haven’t been able to watch Penn do his sui generis thing since his death from heart disease at the age of 40 in 2006.
