Bacon Bits

Been on a bit of a Bacon kick lately. Two side orders, one from David Thompson:

[Kevin Bacon] seems in every apparent way to be a decent man, a hard worker and a diligent actor. He showed plainly in Mystic River that he could be the sanest or the least troubled in the male grouping without giving up a jot of compassion for his old pals. There were even those who said of that film that Bacon's laconic restraint was a necessary counter-balance to the more studied "acting'' from Tim Robbins and Sean Penn. Maybe director Clint Eastwood needed one guy in the film who shared his own weary, unsentimental fatalism over the vagaries of human nature and the sidebars of self-conscious acting. Next to the others, Bacon was not just the natural but the proof that a man can get through life by underplaying, taut reaction shots and a manifest lack of fuss.

... and the other an interview with Liese Spencer:

When it comes to casting, Bacon's looks have worked both for and against him. Ironically - for the film that was to become the chewing gum on the heel of his career - he wasn't even a shoo-in for Footloose. Indeed, so unconvinced was the then-studio-head Dawn Steel that she famously went around Columbia flashing a photo of Bacon asking, "is he fuckable?" Sure, his high cheekbones, snub nose and deep-set blue eyes were handsome enough but there was something subversive, un-American about that knowing smirk. It's this ambiguity, this almost-pretty, almost-mean thing that makes Bacon so compelling.

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