E-mail a friendKevin Bacon
airdate June 8, 2009
Actor Kevin Bacon's body of work includes an extensive range of supporting characters and starring roles. The Philadelphia native began his career on the New York stage and made his film debut in Animal House. His turn as a rebel dancer in Footloose was a breakthrough role. Equally skilled at comedy and drama, Bacon alternates between the stage and screen. He added director to his skill set with Losing Chase and, along with his older brother, has a successful country-folk rock band, The Bacon Brothers.
Taking Chance star discusses how a film about the remains of fallen servicepeople actually changed policy. (3:01)
Full interview. (12:35)
Kevin Bacon
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Kevin Bacon back to this program. The star of seminal films like "Diner," "Footloose," "Apollo 13," and so many more is out now on DVD with his latest project. It's called "Taking Chance." The film premiered earlier this year on HBO and tells the story of a Marine colonel and his journey home with the body of a fellow Marine. Here now, a scene from "Taking Chance."
[Clip]
Tavis: I assume you figured this out by now, but every time you put on a uniform, we believe you.
Kevin Bacon: It's so crazy, because the last thing in the world I could ever do would be a Marine. It's definitely not in my DNA.
Tavis: What is it, though, about these roles where you put the uniform on that we - you kill these things.
Bacon: Yeah, I think that one of the great things about being an actor is getting a chance to walk in somebody else's shoes, and so I think that the time that I spent back from "A Few Good Men" just kind of with Marines and getting a sense of that lifestyle, and there's something that's, like - there's something about them, they're different from you and I. I don't know, maybe you were a Marine.
Tavis: No, no, no. My father was in the Air Force, but not me. When you said earlier you could never have been a Marine, I'm the first to tell my dad I love him to death, 38 years in the Air Force - hi, Dad - but it's something that I could - my hat's off to him, but I could never have done it. I know my reasons, but why do you say you could not have been a Marine?
Bacon: Well, I think that just the ability to throw yourself in harm's way in that kind of deep way, and also to be willing to have a gun in your hand and take another life, it's just - I don't think it's something that I would be able to do.
I also think that just - my ego probably wouldn't survive boot camp. (Laughter) Having some guy yelling at me all day, I don't know - I don't think I could handle it.
Tavis: Yeah, that's not like being in Hollywood?
Bacon: Although I did work with Oliver Stone, so.
Tavis: Oliver Stone does that.
Bacon: Yeah.
Tavis: Give me the - this movie premiered on HBO, got huge ratings, lot of great response on HBO so it's now out on DVD. For those who didn't see it on HBO, the storyline is?
Bacon: Well, it was actually written - co-written by Lieutenant Colonel Mike Strobl. It started out as kind of a diary that Mike wrote about his experience volunteering for what's called escort duty, which is -
Tavis: This is a true story.
Bacon: True story, yeah. It's the duty of taking the remains of a fallen serviceperson back to their final resting place. Generally it's done by someone who has some sort of relationship and usually is closer in rank than the actual serviceperson. In this case, Mike was a lieutenant colonel and just read about this young guy, PFC Chance Phelps, who was from his hometown in Colorado, and volunteered to take him home.
And the movie is kind of about his journey and his - it's a very kind of simple story, but it's a powerful story because you see the kind of respect and honor that the remains are given and you see the way that the people along the road react to seeing this casket and seeing this lieutenant colonel transporting this kid home.
Tavis: Every fallen soldier, though, does have an escort to take him or her back home.
Bacon: Yeah.
Tavis: You read a script like this, and again, to your earlier point that the Marine way of life is not for Kevin Bacon, so when you read this particular script you connect to what, specifically?
Bacon: Well, first off, it was a process that I knew nothing about, that I had never seen. There was actually a policy in place in I think 1991 that we weren't actually able to see any flag-draped coffins coming back from any of the wars, which has subsequently to changed, I'm happy to say, since the film's come out.
The care that's taken with the remains, down to the finest details of the uniform - often when remains aren't even going to be viewed. In this case, nobody was going to open this casket and yet everything about his uniform and everything about the way that he was prepared was perfect.
There's an amazing set of rules in terms of the way the honors are rendered and the process of moving the body from place to place. All that stuff was new to me and I thought it was fascinating, and I sort of felt like it would be good to sort of see that and for us to understand it.
The other thing was that the character is a man of very few words, so basically I have not a lot of lines, which is not the reason I took the part, but it was good to sort of go through the exercise of really, really trying to convey as much as I possibly can with just looks and eyes and thinking and not with words.
Tavis: What's the challenge to an actor to do that - to make the character come to life when you have so few words to work with?
Bacon: I think you take the history and the essence of who the guy is, and whatever that is emotionally - fear, pain, joy, sadness, regret, guilt, all those things - you put it in your gut, for lack of a better word, and then you hope that it comes out through the eyes and you have to sort of trust that it will.
When I was younger, it was a very difficult thing for me to do. It's really the old kind of cliché of less is more, and as in life you have to stay true to who the guy is. This is a guy who is a Marine, he's a very - he doesn't kind of wear his heart on his sleeve. There are characters that are much more demonstrative and talk a lot, and you try to do that one.
Tavis: I would suspect, though, that to play a role like this, where there are so few words, where you have to go to some emotional place so that we can see this on your face and believe you on screen, I would think, I would suspect that having lived more life and been exposed to more pain and to more hurt gives you a place to draw on when you don't have words?
Bacon: Totally. Every experience that you have, good or bad - and a lot of times, frankly, the bad is a lot more helpful than the good - becomes part of - I think of it as sort of a pot that's kind of boiling there and when you need to use it, you just dip into it. When you have a part that requires something strong, emotionally, you dip into it. But you just keep it there around, boiling away.
Tavis: Without getting into your process, when you have to go to these places for whatever emotion it is you're trying to pull out, you go to the same places or you go on different experiences in your life?
Bacon: Yeah, sometimes it's a little - I wish it was like a tap that you could just sort of turn on and off, and I wish that I knew enough about it so I know if I go to this place that's where it's going to be.
I don't really know all the time. I think that it's hard to know what you're definitely pulling from, and sometimes it's little things that surprise you. You can be, like, sort of unconnected to a scene and not really feeling it, as we say, and then you go and you put on your headset and you listen to a piece of music and all of a sudden now it's there and you understand it.
And any other piece of it is also - I think that a certain amount of it - having come from the stage and after you've been doing a show for three months and it's a Wednesday matinee and there's more people on stage and the cast than there are in the audience, you really don't feel like being there, you have to act, too. You have to just kind of pull it up, and I like to think of us as professional pretenders.
Tavis: What do you make of the fact that - and I've said this publicly, so I can't run from it now on this TV show; I've said it publicly in other places - but I'm one of those persons who was very disappointed in the Bush administration for not allowing us to see those soldiers when they came back to Dover Air Force Base. I think the media got rolled by the Bush administration in accepting that.
So I've said that publicly before, so I'm not going to run from that now, but I find an irony in a film like this, to your earlier point, that does so well on HBO, I'm sure now will do well on DVD, that lets us into that process through the telling of this life of this one soldier that we were denied for these eight years of the Bush administration.
Bacon: When they came to me for the film, there had been a lot of films had been made about Iraq and a lot of it very, very good. And most of them, people really just didn't go to see, and I think part of it was that we were - it's a strange thing to creatively kind of comment on and create a piece of entertainment around a war that still rages on.
It's confusing to us. If you look at Vietnam, World War II, we were kind of - we had some perspective on it before as an entertainment community we started to comment on it.
The thing about this film is that I don't think that - it's hard to avoid politics. I don't think that it had a strong political agenda. I think the agenda of the film was a simple sort of telling of this story, and I think that people respond to it all across the political spectrum, and I think that's really a testament to the filmmakers, to Ross Katz and the director and to Mike Strobl to be able to create something that gives us some enlightenment about this process without necessarily pushing us in some direction politically.
Plus, at the time the film came out, everybody knew how they felt about the Iraq war. It wasn't like we were trying to make a film that was going to influence you one way or another. I think that the war's already left a (unintelligible).
Tavis: Well, that's the point I was trying to make, that the humanity comes through and that's what so many Americans were denied by the administration, the previous administration, not being able to see these soldiers when they came home.
Bacon: And the Secretary of Defense actually came out and said that one of the reasons that they changed the policy was because of this film, which really blew my mind because it's not that often as an actor that you get to be involved in something - I don't think "Footloose" changed anything. (Laughter) Major policy. Although maybe there was a town that didn't allow dancing, and they had to come around to that.
Tavis: Did I read somewhere that "Footloose" is being done again?
Bacon: They are doing it - they're doing a film of it, yeah.
Tavis: Kevin Bacon's not going to be in this?
Bacon: Not as far as I know. I'm still waiting for the phone to ring.
Tavis: Before my time runs out, congratulations to you and your wife, "The Closer," Kyra.
Bacon: Yeah, it's funny, I was looking - I was watching the game last night and I said, "Honey, I don't know how you feel about this but they're starting to call Kobe 'The Closer.'"
Tavis: (Laughter) I say congratulations, for those who don't know - earlier today, here in L.A., in Hollywood, his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, "The Closer," got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which makes you and - you already have one.
Bacon: We're actually right next to each other.
Tavis: Right next to each other.
Bacon: Yeah, and -
Tavis: So how rare is that, for a husband and wife to both have a star?
Bacon: It's the first time. Well, it's not the first time that a husband and wife have had a star, but it's the first time a husband and wife have been actually right next to each other.
Tavis: It's a great honor, and I'm glad to have you on the program.
Bacon: It's fantastic.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Bacon: Thanks.
Tavis: "Taking Chance," Kevin Bacon's film, now out on DVD.
Back to June 8, 2009