“FOOTLOOSE” (1984)Screenplay Written by Dean Pitchford
Directed by Herbert Ross
This particular entry was one I had not planned on writing but I fel that I needed to get the following off of my chest…
I hope that the new remake of “Footloose” bombs!
Yes, I said it. I hope the movie bombs. And not just a standard box office bomb. I hope that it is a complete disaster, that its failure is so extreme that it will make the brainless bean counters in Hollywood begin to re-think their plans to seemingly re-make every single film from the past 25 years instead of trying the now seemingly revolutionary act of…creating something new.
I know all of this sounds much harsher than I typically sound here on Savage Cinema but this is indeed how I feel. Really, dear readers, has it now just become too much to create a film that we have never seen before? As I have stated in the past, I am not against re-makes as a rule. There have been several over the years that I have enjoyed profusely and even a small handful of them, say John Carpenter’s extraordinary and game changing “The Thing” (1982) for instance, can even eclipse the original source material.
Even so, in my mind, there just has to be an overall purpose to a potential remake that has got to be more than lucrative. Is the remake in question updating something for current times? It is trying to take a previously uneven and mediocre work and possibly improving upon it? It is trying to place a more personal spin onto something? Any of those things would, generally be fine with me but re-making something just to remake it and solely for profits is asinine and precisely some of the most creatively lacking concepts that are just killing cinema movie by movie these days. This particular brand of remake, or re boot or re-imagining or whatever they want to call it are films with no purpose, no raison d’etre, if you will.
Take the recent remake of “The Karate Kid” starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. While admittedly it was better than it had any right to be, I still have to negate it just because there is absolutely no reason for the film to exist at all, especially when the original film from 1984 remains a beloved experience, and was even Oscar nominated to boot! Did those filmmakers really think that they could make their movie better than the original? Why are the bean counters thinking that the original films have vanished from the face of the Earth and they must be replaced by inferior remakes? I do not, for any reason understand the concept that if people enjoyed the original, then they would like the remake just as much if not more. Look, dear readers, regarding “Footloose,” if you were to recommend this film to someone who has never seen it, which one would you pick? The one that was entirely dreamed up out of thin air or the carbon copy?
Dear readers, I vividly remember seeing “Footloose” on opening day at the age of 15 back in February 1984. Admittedly, I was very skeptical to see it. You see, Director Adrian Lyne’s “Flashdance” was a blockbuster hit the year before and despite everyone else’s love for that film, I hated, hated, hated it even then. To me, “Flashdance” felt to solely exist as a plotless, emotionless music video masquerading as a movie with nothing more than some pretty puppet in the leading role as she performed none of her own dancing, bike riding scenes and reportedly even some shots of her character simply walking. “Footloose,” at first look, seemed to be jumping on the youth music video/movie musical bandwagon but when I eventually saw advertisements, I had to admit it looked to be more movie than music video. So, on that fateful opening night, my parents and I went to the Evergreen Park movie theater, I chose my solitary seat away from them and waited for the house lights to dim into darkness.
After the splendidly shot and edited opening title sequence showing a collection of feet dancing to Kenny Loggins’ title song, the film settles into the now familiar plot. “Footloose” stars Kevin Bacon as Ren McCormack, a Chicago teenager who moves, along with his Mother, to a small Midwestern town where pop music and dancing has been declared illegal, an act fueled by the efforts of the local minister Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow). After settling in with relatives, Ren quickly obtains new best friends in sassy Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker) and the kindly but rhythmically challenged Willard (the late Christopher Penn), runs afoul of the town bully Chuck Cranston (Jim Youngs), and of course, falls in love with the Reverend’s rebellious daughter Ariel (Lori Singer), who is always adorned with the sinfully red cowboy boots.
Growing increasingly frustrated with the town’s restrictive boundaries, Ren takes up a personal crusade to organize and give his high school a dance for their Senior Prom, a crusade that places him at odds with Revered Moore who is a formidable adversary. That’s it for the storyline and that’s all you need for a film like this, which is essentially not much more than a “Hey kids! Let’s put on a show!!” movie. The heroes and their cause are easy to rally behind. The villains exist to rightfully boo and hiss. And the love of music, dancing and the freedom of expression fuels the experience as a whole.
Legendary Director Howard Hawks once expressed that the key to making a good movie simply came down to the following: “A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes.” Well, as far as I am concerned “Footloose” is loaded with one terrific scene after another. Ariel’s game of chicken with a semi-truck as she straddles herself between the windows of two speeding cars. A Friday night teenage dance sequence at the local fast food drive-in set to Shalamar’s “Dancing In The Sheets.” Ren’s tractor chicken race against Chuck. Ren’s turbulent (and highly gymnastic) solo dance in the abandoned warehouse. Ren teaching Willard how to dance. The incredible sequence set at the city council hearing when Ren, fully confronting Reverend Moore, reads passages from the Bible depicting the positive usages of dancing. Ren and Willard beating the tar and stuffing out of Chuck and his cronies. And of course, the climactic and victorious Senior Prom dance itself.
I cheered, laughed, was enormously entertained and fully enraptured by the experience that Director Herbert Ross exuberantly placed upon the screen. I loved the film so very much that I actually ended up foregoing viewing other new releases at the time to just see “Footloose” again, which I saw a total of four times in the movie theater (something that was unheard of during that time in my life). And yes…I even bought the soundtrack album, on which all of the songs were co-written by the film’s screenwriter Dean Pitchford. It was a purchase which surprised even me, because those songs and those particular artists just did not fit anywhere in my own personal jukebox (I actually purchased it at the same time with Rush’s “Grace Under Pressure” album, just to give you a window into my musical world at the time). I guess, to me, the soundtrack album did not feel to exist solely as a cynical cash-in product but actually as a souvenir of the movie experience itself. It was a way to hold onto that cinematic magic long after leaving the movie theater—and frankly, that is the best quality a movie song soundtrack can have, in my opinion.
Since that night in 1984, I have seen “Footloose” countless times and as I look back upon it now, I can see it as being sort of a minor miracle. Aside from some frisky sexual content and harsh profanity throughout, “Footloose” is quite an innocent film. It is a guileless film and one that exists completely without irony. For Pete’s sakes, it’s a film about a boy who wants to have a school dance and it has the conviction to take that concept earnestly and without any cynical winking at the audience. It is a film that believes in itself and its messages, which are all filtered through a gentle rebelliousness and an overt romanticism for becoming a slave to the rhythm.
I even appreciated how the filmmakers did not turn Reverend Moore into an unsympathetic monster as well. They gave him, and his troubled wife Vi (Dianne Wiest, who has not ever appeared this dowdy in any other film since this one) some viable reasons for their private yet publicly known pain, which provides Reverend Moore the basis for his fear driven censorship. And that gives “Footloose” a somewhat provocative inner battle: Reverend Moore’s politics of fear vs. Ren McCormack’s politics of dancing, which for Ren, those politics are genuinely simple: one high school dance can change the world.
By now, you can see my passion yet I am certain that some of you may be wondering if the original 1984 “Footloose” is a film that remains so beloved by me. Well…yes and no. Is “Footloose” a GREAT film? No. Over the years, I have seen it again and again, even as recently as two nights ago when it appeared on a cable channel. For all of its sheer entertainment, “Footloose” is more than a little silly, and yes, it has grown a tad cheesier over the years. Plainly, the excitement I held for it when I was 15 has not lasted me as I have grown into my 40s. Yet, that is OK because “Footloose” is not a film designed and meant for you to necessarily grow with. It is truly designed to speak to the hope and innocence of youth and I further believe that “Footloose” was exactly and precisely the right film at the right time for the right generation. And to that, “Footloose” is and remains an iconic film. Despite being a product of its time, the longevity of “Footloose” has proven that it is a timeless film whose spirit simply cannot be duplicated. It is a one-of-a kind experience.
“Footloose” is an undeniably honest film and one of the films that clearly defined a decade in cinema and that, dear readers is something that cannot be denied. Even if you think that “Footloose” is one of the worst films ever made, its pop cultural significance cannot be debated and because of that status and impact, it is a film I firmly believe should remain untouched. In comparison, I also feel this way for “Dirty Dancing” (1988), a film I absolutely HATED but completely acknowledge as an iconic film that also helped to define the films of the 1980s. Plans are already underway to remake that film as well and I also feel that it should remain untouched.
Besides, I don’t care which male flavor of the month they cast in the lead of the new film because (and taking a cue from the soundtrack album selection by Moving Pictures) he will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER be as cool as Kevin Bacon, who is simply a PIMP in this movie!!!!! He is cooler than cool, he struts like a peacock to such an extent that I fantasized that the character of Ren McCormack possible attended a predominantly African-American public high school in Chicago before arriving in small town America! Bacon is just magnetic in the role and makes for the perfect Pied Piper with humor, intelligence, sensitivity, honor and an unshakable upbeat quality combined with restless youthful energy for change. I still greatly appreciate the fact that Kevin Bacon did indeed perform some of his own dance moves, a fact we can all still witness as his face is clearly visible at points (remember kids, this was long before any CGI technology). As far as I am concerned, Kevin Bacon’s performance is untouchable and again, it cannot be duplicated.
When I saw the trailer for the new “Footloose,” it was simply depressing to me. All of the familiar iconography from the original 1984 film was there from sets, wardrobe, the yellow VW down to actual dialogue and actual shot for shot copies. I have read that even the songs from the original film have been remade. What?! They couldn’t even get people to write new music either?!?!?! Even as I saw the trailer in the movie theater, groans and complaints of disbelief from the audience were audible, so I knew that I was not alone in my feelings.
What is happening in our current cinematic landscape? Dear readers, there have always been bad movies and there always will be bad movies but what is happening now is just inexcusable to me. Why spend all of the millions upon millions of dollars copying something when they could just take those same millions upon millions of dollars and make an entirely new experience, which could potentially have the same pop-cultural and artistic effect as the original “Footloose” had over 25 years ago. It makes absolutely no damn sense when people who have the opportunity, luxury, finances and the pure gift of creating a motion picture experience will not even try to create!! I hate it when Hollywood treats the audience as commodities anyway, but when they make it so blatant, as they are with this shameless plea for cash, it is just intolerable. The original “Footloose” was pure where this new remake is sadly cynical yet masquerading as some strange tribute, which will honor the original film. Hey! If you want to honor the original film, then go WATCH the original film and leave the 1984 original alone!!!
You know, aside from having the new film die a swift and quick cinematic death at the box office, I think that I have figured out exactly how I would wish for it to happen. I wish that on the film’s opening day this upcoming weekend, movie going patrons completely bypass the film and head straight to wherever they obtain their DVD or Blu-Ray home video selections and everyone rents the original 1984 film.
That would be poetic cinematic justice to me.
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