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| Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures |
Actor, choreographer and director Herbert Ross started out
as a dancer in the 1940s before moving up to choreography for a number of
television shows and live stage theater including but not limited to Carmen
Jones and Finian’s Rainbow, eventually working his way up to feature
films such as The Young Ones in 1961.
Eventually working up to choreographing numbers for Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? and Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand, Ross finally
made his feature film directorial debut with a musical version of Goodbye
Mr. Chips in 1969 with Peter O’Toole.
Though it underperformed at the box office, Ross’ next film The Owl
and the Pussycat as well as the murder mystery The Last of Sheila
followed by the Oscar winning Neil Simon adaptation of The Goodbye Girl all
but helped catapult Ross into the big directorial leagues. Somewhere along the way, Ross got back to his
dancing roots with the Dennis Potter adaptation Pennies from Heaven starring
Steve Martin, a kind of jukebox musical dark satire which failed critically as
well as commercially.
Down for the count but never out, Ross did two more Neil
Simon adaptations with I Ought to Be in Pictures and Max Dugan
Returns before landing on perhaps his biggest, most successful musical film
of his 1980s tenure with the 1984 Paramount Pictures dance drama Footloose starring
Kevin Bacon. Coming on the heels of Grease,
Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance all produced and released by
Paramount Pictures no less who as a company had a keen eye on the pop cultural
shifts in the musical dance arenas, the film is at once a musical triumph of
80s needle drops co-authored by screenwriter and songwriter Dean Pitchford and
one of many hit film soundtrack albums of that year including but not limited
to Purple Rain. Partially musical
escapism, partially a look at ultra conservative small-town America still of
the belief dancing and music are messages sent from the Devil himself, the film
became a huge vehicle for budding star Kevin Bacon and further canonized Kenny
Loggins who contributed songs to Caddyshack, Over the Top and Top
Gun as the ‘King of the Movie Soundtrack’.
It’s cheesy and cornball with some occasional startling violence but in
theory is not that far away from the 1940s and 1950s melodramas that clearly
inspired its creation.
Chicagoan Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon) and his mother Ethel (Frances
Lee McCain from Gremlins) move to the small American town of Bomont,
Utah, a little community commandeered over by Reverend Shaw Moore (a stellar
John Lithgow), his wife Vi (The Lost Boys actress Dianne Wiest) and
their rebellious and carefree daughter Ariel (Lori Singer) who whiles away her
time screwing around with her hick but adventurous boyfriend Chuck Cranston
(Jim Youngs) and her girlfriends playing daredevil games including standing on
the windowsills of two moving cars.
Meanwhile Ren befriends fellow athlete Willard Hewitt (Chris Penn) and
soon takes him under his wing going to a dance party at a bar with Ariel who
soon takes a liking to Ren as well as her friend Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker),
much to the chagrin of Reverend Moore who perceives Ren’s arrival as a bad
influence on the town morale. Soon it
comes to light there’s more than just Old Testament reverence afoot in blocking
dancing and music from the town. There’s
a tragic past pointing to her late older brother who passed following a car accident
while drinking and playing music.
Determined to challenge the town ordinance against music and dancing,
Ren approaches the town council with a planned dance party, fighting an uphill
battle while trying to appeal to the Reverend’s personal loss with a story of
his own.
Though it gets a little over the top near the end going as
far as Ray Bradbury book burnings and sometimes without warning explodes with
violence including a particularly brutal physical altercation between Ariel and
her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Chuck that erupts out of nowhere, Footloose reminded
very strongly of Purple Rain and its mixture of melodrama, familial
strife and fighting an uphill battle towards uplifting escapist dancing. With its sharp and mannered cinematography by
Cobra and 48 Hrs. cameraman Ric Waite including an opening dance
musical montage of feet tapping that will surely remind of his camerawork on
the dance finale of The Great Outdoors, an original score and collection
of needle drops from Tom Snow, Jim Steinman, Kenny Loggins, screenwriter Dean
Pitchford and Miles Goodman, audiovisually Footloose is a bit of a
firestorm. Featuring some incredible
physical acting both from Bacon and his stunt doubles including a standout
warehouse dance sequence with a wealth of gymnastics, the ensemble cast from
John Lithgow giving more than his share of powerful emotional weathers and
Chris Penn as his musclebound friend he takes under his wing form a taut
ensemble cast.
Loosely based on real ordinances initiated in Elmore City,
Oklahoma which banned dancing since its foundation in 1898 to curtail drinking
and premarital sex, Footloose opened in American cinemas in 1984 to
mixed critical reception with many lambasting it as a poor man’s Flashdance. Against this however, on a $7.5 million low
budget, the film took in $80 million domestically as one of the highest
grossing films of 1984 and further still the soundtrack album became a huge hit
with the original songs Footloose and Let’s Hear It for the Boy topping
the Billboard 100 charts. In addition to
receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Music and a Golden Globe win for
Best Original Song, it also garnered give Grammy nominations for Best Original
Songs and Best Album. In 1998 a stage
musical adaptation was made and shown on Broadway and London’s West End before
in 2011, a remake from Paramount Pictures was announced. Unlike the original film however, the reboot
was a flop critically and commercially overlooked though it recouped many of
its losses elsewhere.
Looking back at Footloose now it is at once a time
capsule of a bygone era, a loosely historical biographical account of a very
real local ordinance against dancing, and a vehicle for Kevin Bacon’s eventual
foray into superstardom. A gifted
performer who narrowly won the role after ditching John Carpenter’s Christine
in a film that was almost directed by Michael Cimino before his seismic
flop Heaven’s Gate ended that potentiality, Kevin Bacon though he was in
his twenties nevertheless had the boyish look needed for the character. Arguably the one who steals every scene despite
not doing any actual dancing in it is John Lithgow in a role that could’ve been
a one note cliché but in Lithgow’s hands becomes a fully realized and
identifiable character marred by tragedy.
Sure its silly and absurd, but when you look at Herbert Ross’ own
background in Old Hollywood melodrama it completely checks out as a genre he
more than fully understands every corner of.
A little bit of fun escapism with a palpable, realistic underpinning
mixing fiction with fact.
--Andrew Kotwicki
