Hollywood Q&A

Q: Does Kevin Bacon actually do all his own dancing in “Footloose” or did he have a double to do all the moves?

A: Here’s how you know the 1984 classic “Footloose” is a dancing movie: Kevin Bacon actually had four dance doubles, while also managing to do most of the dancing himself.

In an interview with People magazine in 2011, when the remake of the film came out, Bacon opened up about his experience doing the movie that would make him a star.

He said he did the majority of his own dancing, until it came to the over-the-top warehouse scene. For the few people on Earth who aren’t familiar, the premise of the movie is that Bacon’s character moves to a small town that has banned dancing, and he riles up the local youth to fight the unjust (and very un-’80s) rule. At the character’s low point, he runs off to an abandoned warehouse to just dance out his feelings of frustration. What follows is one of the strangest and also most beloved solo dance scenes ever put to film — one that’s as much a gymnastics recital as a dance sequence.

Indeed, two of Bacon’s four dance doubles were actually gymnasts — they were there along with a traditional dancer and a stuntman. “There were five of us in the f——— outfit, and I felt horrible,” Bacon told People.

If you’re wondering why he gets so swear-y, he says that he was angry at the time — and still is, though he can laugh about it — that the director wouldn’t let him do all the dancing.

“Are you kidding? I was furious,” he said. “It’s like a starting pitcher getting taken out of a game – no one wants to be told they can’t get the guy out.”

Q: Was Ted Danson buried alive in the movie “Creepshow”? I seem to remember that, but it can’t be right, can it?

A: It is right, and it can be right because “Creepshow” isn’t your average schlocky horror movie. The 1982 anthology film is more like a tribute to the grossout horror stories that came before it. And so, as a lighthearted homage rather than a sincere attempt at low-budget horror, it managed to get some big names to participate.

Well, relatively big. Ted Danson was starting to make a name for himself at that point, but it’s worth noting that “Cheers,” his star-making show, didn’t premiere until after “Creepshow” was released.

When “Creepshow” first came out in the summer of 1982 (in limited release, prior to a wider release in the fall), Danson was just a (very) handsome face with a few guest spots and small film roles on his resume.

That could be why he wasn’t even the main character in his part of the film. “Creepshow” was divided into five segments telling five different stories. The star of Danson’s segment, “Something to Tide You Over,” was actually Leslie Nielsen. Nielsen was quite famous at the time, enjoying a career renaissance as a comedic leading man, having previous established himself as a supporting star in dramas.

In “Creepshow,” Danson plays the handsome younger man with whom Nielsen’s wife is having an affair. Nielsen takes appropriately creepy revenge on them by burying them both up to the neck at a beach, just below the tide line.

However, the real star power behind “Creepshow” wasn’t even the actors. The movie was a collaboration between legendary horror director George A. Romero (who made 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead” and its various sequels) and even more legendary horror writer Stephen King. The two had long been friends and decided to do this together for kicks.

Though King’s main involvement was writing the script, he also, again for fun, starred in one of the segments. His performance was not well received, but of course that’s not really the point.

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