Nice to see Kevin Bacon win a Golden Globe tonight for Taking Chance. Below is the interview we did with Kevin on the role last March, which originally appeared in Venice Magazine.
Kevin Bacon: Hollywood’s Long Distance Runner
By Terry Keefe
Memo to young stars: If you want to know how to manage an acting career, study the project choices of Kevin Bacon. After Footloose, he was as big as any of the young stars of the 80s, but, a few years later, deftly avoided being lumped in with the pop culture relics of a fading decade by a small role he took in 1991’s JFK, for director Oliver Stone, then at the height of his filmmaking, and press-creating, powers. Bacon’s screen time was brief as gay hustler Willie O’Keefe, who was a key witness in the conspiracy case being but together by Kevin Costner’s character, Jim Garrison, but Bacon was able to showcase his acting chops in a role unlike any he had been seen in before on-screen. Perception-wise, he was also in some very good acting company in JFK, a film which starred Kevin Costner, then one of the biggest names in Hollywood after Dances With Wolves, but also boasted a stellar supporting cast of extended cameos, which included the likes of Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland, and....Kevin Bacon. And with that, he was no longer regarded primarily as a young star for young audiences, but as a serious actor, in it for the long haul. (To be fair, his promise for more dramatic fare was showcased nearly a decade earlier in 1982’s Diner, but memories of both Hollywood and the public are short.) Strong roles followed from then on, right through to today in A Few Good Men, Murder in the First, Apollo 13, Mystic River, and The Woodsman (a very strong, and under seen, indie in which Bacon plays a pedophile who has been released from prison and is attempting to fight his compulsions), to name just some of the highlights.
Bacon continues to be willing to take supporting roles when the material and the director are strong, and can currently be seen in theaters in director Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, in which Bacon plays Jack Brennan, who was Nixon’s real-life Chief of Staff during his post-Presidency years. He and Frank Langella, as Nixon, share one of the film’s most moving scenes when Brennan, who is as protective of Nixon as if he were his father, cautions the ex-President during a break from the interview taping about the long-term implications of what he might be about to reveal to the interviewer David Frost (played by Michael Sheen). It’s one of the few moments when Nixon is seen to let his guard down, and acts as a climax of sorts to the character arcs of both Nixon and Brennan. Bacon will also be back at the top of the masthead with his headlining role in the powerful HBO film Taking Chance, based on the real story of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, a Marine who volunteers for military escort duty for the remains of a 19-year old fallen Marine, Lance Corporal Chance Phelps. The Department of Defense provides uniformed escorts for all fallen servicemen and women to wherever their final resting place is, and part of the job of the escort is to make sure that the remains are treated with the proper respect at every step of the journey home. Directed by Ross Katz, Taking Chance takes its time to concentrate on the small details of the trip, from the time the body of Chance Phelps is in the Dover Port Mortuary, at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, to when Bacon’s Michael Strobl takes charge of the transportation, and it is this concentration on detail that the film finds its story as Strobl interacts with numerous Americans along the way. Likely of every political stripe, they nonetheless find a connection with both Strobl and the memory of the young man he is taking back to his parents.
We reached Kevin Bacon by phone on Super Bowl weekend.
Hi, Kevin. Thanks for talking with me on a Saturday morning. I appreciate it.
Kevin Bacon: Hey, happy to do it.
I wanted to talk first about Taking Chance. Did you spend much time with the real Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl in preparation?
Yeah, we spent a couple of days together. I saw his home life, his family, and his kids. A couple of his friends came over, and they hung out there too. They took me around Quantico, where I'd actually been before. Because I had done the research for A Few Good Men. And we went around the Pentagon. He's been working with the Pentagon now for a while. Yeah, so that was pretty much it, you know.
(Above: Kevin Bacon as Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl in Taking Chance.)Did you feel the responsibility to kind of portray him, personality-wise, close to how he really is? Or, was it more of his spirit, and the spirit of the task he had undertaken, which you wanted to capture?
Well, I think that, there's a certain - I mean, I feel responsibility, obviously, to make characters real people. And I haven't really played many real living people that many times in my life. Actually, real people, living or dead. I didn't feel a responsibility in the sense of trying to do an imitation of him, because, you know, he's not like an iconic public figure. It's not like playing Nixon or something like that. On the other hand, I don't want to feel like me, when the camera's on, you know? And the time between “Action” and “Cut” is the time when I want to feel like I'm walking in somebody else's shoes. So, it was powerful for me to try to, you know, go as close to Mike as possible, and as close to who he is as possible. Even with something technical like the hair. Nobody knew that he had that sort of premature-grey hair thing going on. But, it just seemed like, when we first talked about it, it seemed like that in order to feel like him, and sort of lose myself in the part, that it might be something that we could try. So when I go to work and I put that uniform on, etc., it's nice to have the kind of external stuff, along with the internal thing as well. And also, the mannerisms, the way he sort of moves and speaks and gestures and all those things. So, I did try to get as close to him as I could.
Did you accompany any actual military escorts yourself?
No, I didn't do that, no. I don't know that - first off, I think I would feel kind of uncomfortable doing that.
Okay. That's understandable.
And I also don't know that the military would be all that, you know, hip to doing that. But one thing that was very, very helpful was that we had -- the Marines will, if you work on a film, and they have signed up or agreed to be involved in a film, there's kind of a Hollywood office that'll send technical advisers to work with you. And that was helpful, but even more helpful was, we got some of the guys from the Dover Port Mortuary. And the Mortuary obviously plays very heavily into the film. As it turned out, one of the guys, who not only volunteered and worked at the Mortuary, but also had done like six or seven escorts, he was on the set with me, you know, pretty much the whole shoot. And he was extremely helpful, not just to me but to a lot of the other actors who were playing with me. You know, I had the benefit of having months to prepare, to do a good job with it. Whereas, one of the other actors [in a smaller role] comes in and has an audition, and then they just have to play it for one day -- it's equally important that they know what they're doing.
What do you think drives the people that work at the Dover Port Mortuary? They are portrayed as near-angelic in the film.
It’s a good question, because this guy from the Mortuary, for instance, during Iraq, had done at least two tours of duty. Then in an attack, like six or seven of his friends were killed, and he was wounded himself---and then he wants to go, and be so hands-on, you know, in terms of that job [at the Mortuary]. And that truly has to be a difficult place to work, and yet, it's on the wall there - it says, “Dignity, Respect, and Honor." I mean, this is what they feel, they feel honored to work there, they feel honored to have this job. Something about it sort of transcends just basically working in a funeral parlor. I don't know, there's something about it that's a little more...obviously a little bigger than that.
A big part of the story are the many people Michael Strobl meets along the way that show their support and respect for both his duty, and the loss of Chance Phelps.
That was the thing that Mike Strobl said that really struck him, and, as you know, he's a co-writer on the film, so there's very little embellishment in regards to those scenes. It's very much similar to what his experience was, and I think the thing where he was really knocked out, was how people did react with such compassion and sadness and respect for this kid that they'd never met and they would never see, you know. I think that Mike Strobl was really sort of surprised by that, and also by the fact that, as he told me, he assumed that, given the amount of people he ran into, they probably cut a pretty wide swath in terms of their political views. And yet, universally, they had this similar kind of reaction, you know, so that was kind of part of what the film was about, in terms of transcending the politics of whatever you happened to be feeling about the war.
I think that, whatever side of the political fence you're on, Americans have been dealing with great regret with how the soldiers were treated coming back from Vietnam for a lot of decades now. And I see that change in their treatment of the Iraq veterans, regardless of whether they support the war or not.
Yeah, I don't think it's the same kind of thing as it used to be, in terms of these guys coming back from Vietnam who would often talk about being spit on. For myself, another interesting thing that happened to me is that, because of the structure of the film, I'd go, typically to one location for a day, maybe two, and then we'd move to another location. But at each spot, there would be new actors, and new extras, and new people, you know, involved in the process of making the film. And it involved actors or extras who would just sit by and watch it part of the time. And they were incredibly moved and touched by the whole thing, and even though there was obviously no body in the box, right? But they still had reactions that were similar to characters in the movie, so they would come and they would speak to me about friends and family members who were serving or who had been killed. They would come up to me and say, “Thanks so much for doing this," which, for me - I was a little embarrassed, because it was kind of like "I'm just the actor, you know?" I'm doing the job and I'm getting paid for it, but for some reason people wanted to thank me for making the film. And, like I said, I was a little embarrassed, and I think that was just a little of the feeling that Mike had, when he was thanked for his service in the escort, and he was feeling like it was nothing more than a duty.
Your character has a lot of silent time onscreen, where you're not even really playing against other actors, and so you're kind of playing Mike’s internal life a lot of the time in this film. You have to do a lot sometimes with no dialogue. How do you approach that?
Well, I think that it's one of the challenges with a part like this. It's a reactive kind of part. But it's one of the things that I've tried to do more as I've got a little bit older - the idea of trying to do more with less. I mean, I sometimes will go through, you know, with the script, and go, “Do I really need to say this?” I just think there are sometimes things than can be more powerful than words on a page. The Woodsman was a lot like that. We did a lot of cutting of stuff. I would just go through with the director, and say, “I really don't need this, I don't need this line.” I mean, I guess the challenge is to try to get, somehow, the feeling, and, for lack of another way to say it, sort of put it in your guts, and hope it comes out through your eyes. That's the work. And, you know, luckily I had a director who trusted that that was going to work, that that was going to play.
There’s a very methodical nature to the film. Particularly with the procedure of preparing the body for the shipping, which is pretty detailed. At the beginning, I was worried that this type of pacing would become dull. But the methodical pace of the preparation procedure, and then the escort sequences, just starts to slowly sweep you up into it, and becomes very powerful. You don't even realize it's happening, which is a testament to the filmmaking, but I'm sure this type of pacing was something that was of some concern to [director] Ross Katz, and perhaps you, also.
Yeah, because the impulse is certainly to dramatize it. I think, you know, Ross - his instinct was just to duplicate what the process was for Mike, and if you cut any of that out, then you're not really showing what the process is, and what they go through. I think it was kind of cool that he did that. And I'm glad that you feel that way, because I feel like it does slowly sweep you up, and what, you know, is at first kind of the simple telling of this thing, becomes an emotional journey without your even realizing it, and I think that's really what happened to Mike Strobl. I don't know that when he set out he knew how emotional this journey would be for him. Certainly, a kid from his home town was killed, and nobody ever wants to have to deal with the loss of a life. But I don't think he was quite aware of how much this would affect him.
Let’s talk about Frost/Nixon. You met with the real Jack Brennan, who you portray in the film. How did that meeting go and what were you hoping to learn from it?
Well, you know, interestingly enough, I was in a situation, if I remember correctly, where I had to meet with Jack, almost right after I met with Mike Strobl. Because I think I was starting Taking Chance and then jumping right into Frost/Nixon afterwards. But again, I wanted to sort of try to find the essence of Jack, you know. Frost/Nixon is a much more theatrical presentation of the story. And, again, Jack is not like Nixon - it's not a character that you're going to go, “Oh, my god, he looked and sounded just like him!” [laughs]
But I wanted to sort of get the essence of him, and I spent time with him. I listened to his feelings about Nixon, about his feelings about Nixon's family, and about the time that he spent with him. I have a hard time describing what it is, exactly, but there is something that's kind of different about Marines. And Jack was a Marine. He was a Marine when he met Nixon. Nixon took a liking to him, and I think admired him, and was kind of enamored with Marines, because they were the stuff that he was not made of, you know?
And, then when Nixon left the White House, he asked Brennan to go with him, to become his Chief of Staff, and Jack left the Corps, and started working for Nixon. And I think that his thing was, you know, a sense of duty. He was an honest, hardworking, and committed guy to his Commander-In-Chief, and I also think he had a real admiration of Nixon's intellect. And I also think that, as was the case with many people, in Nixon's kind of inner circle, you could only get so close to the guy, you know, before a wall would sort of come down.
It’s often said that very few people really knew Nixon.
He was socially awkward, and in some ways very, very guarded. They played golf, probably, what, like three times a week or something like that -- and in some ways he felt like he still didn't know him all that well.
(Bacon and Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon, above)Did Jack tell you what he thought of the film?
I saw him briefly after the film, and he said, you know, he was happy with what I did. He’s seen the Broadway show, and his quote to me was, “I think it's a fascinating and fantastic piece of theatre -- as long as nobody calls it history.” So, I think that some of the dramatic details, he may have taken exception to.
Was that midnight phone call [from Nixon to Frost] one of them?
You know, I never spoke with him about the midnight phone call.
Frank Langella. What really struck me about his performance was that Nixon has been so parodied, that when you see the real Nixon in old films and tapes, it's hard to take him as seriously as you might have at the time. What you get with Frank's performance is how formidable Nixon really had to have been. Did Frank tell you anything about what his process was in developing his Nixon?
Well, to tell you the truth, I saw Frank on the very first day of shooting, for a brief moment, as “Frank.” And on the very, very last day -- but for the rest of the time, he was “Nixon” [laughs].
Really!
Yeah, he came to the set, full makeup, wardrobe, and in character every day, and stayed that way until we wrapped at night. And I never saw him, outside of the work. And so, I would never have the occasion, you know, to ask about what he was doing.
So he kind of treated you as he might have treated the real Jack Brennan then?
Exactly.
Do you remember the Frost/Nixon interviews being aired at all? I only remember them very vaguely.
I remember vividly the Watergate hearings, but I don’t remember watching the interviews. And you know, it's interesting, because I was thinking about why that was, and if you just look at the timeline: When I was a junior in high school, and the Vietnam War was raging on, I was a child of a pacifist household -- we were vehemently anti-war, and anti-Nixon, so when Watergate rolled around, and there was a chance he was going to go down, even though I was a kid, I was fascinated, and was thrilled with the opportunity of watching him, you know, eat it. And then, by the time the interviews came around, which was what, '77, I guess, I had now moved to New York, and was, you know, in my late teens, and off to the races with a movie career, and was completely apolitical. Because I was seriously, you know, trying to become a movie star. Well, if not a movie star, just trying to make a living as an actor, you know, and to get out of the restaurants [laughs]. So, no, I don't remember the interviews at all.
Let’s talk a little bit about The Woodsman. I really love your work in that film, and it has to have been a difficult character to portray, because you wanted to make him somewhat sympathetic and likeable, just so you could watch him onscreen. But you also have to be truthful to what he is.
Yeah, it's not a nice place to want to go to work every day, you know, to step into those shoes, but what I really feel is that often the word “monster” is the one word that comes up when you talk about someone who's committed these horrible, horrible crimes against children. And the truth is that if they were monsters - monsters don't exist - if they were monsters, then we could send a hero to kill them, or there would be a sort of anti-monster laser gun, that could, you know, zap them out. A much more frightening piece of this puzzle is that there are teachers, friends, family members, people in the clergy, politicians, regular people living down the street. And so, all I wanted to do, was rather than just say, “Let me make this guy creepy and as monstrous as possible,” which is the usual kind of approach to playing a sex offender or child molester, I wanted to turn him into a real human being. And that was kind of the point. Generally, the use of the child molester in filmmaking is to make him the worst possible guy so that the hero gets the chance to kill him, and the audience gets to stand up and applaud. You see it time and time again. That’s where that story ends up in cinema. And I actually have kids of my own, so I totally get that. It’s just not what this movie is about. It was trying to look at the person as a human being.
(Kevin Bacon in The Woodsman, above.)
I wanted to ask about the supporting character of Candy, that your character is watching out the window, and who is a potentially another child molester on the prowl that your character intends to stop from doing any harm. In your head, did you play that as if Candy were a real person, or a representation of your character’s own demons?
I played him as though he was real, because I feel like that's the way to play it, but certainly, when he's sitting there beating him up, all of a sudden you realize he's beating himself up. There's a lot going on in his head that just kind of rips him apart. I think that my character in The Woodsman is certainly a paranoid sort of guy. And I think that he is someone who has convinced himself that he's done the time, and so now he's fine, and he's rehabilitated, and, you know, he's paid his price. There's a tremendous amount of denial that's going on with that character -- you know, it's like an addict that thinks they no longer have a problem. That's what's going on with him. I think that movie is about his realization that this is something he's going to have to live with for the rest of his life. That he does have a problem, that it's something that's not going to go away because he got out of prison.
Let’s talk about JFK and your work as the imprisoned gay hustler, Willie O‘Keefe. Looking through your filmography, that film was when I started to look at you a little bit differently as an actor, as you started to transition into more adult roles. Career-wise, did you get a similar reaction from your work in JFK?
It wasn't so much the adult nature of it, as it was the character nature of it, with JFK. Because, you know, I was kind of rolling around, and spinning my wheels, and doing some leads in movies that just weren't turning out, and those were starting to go away, and I remember that, for whatever reason, agents, and people in the studios or whatever, would say, “Once you've played the lead, you have to keep playing the lead.” But it wasn't really working for me, you know, and also, creatively, it wasn't all that interesting to me.
So, I worked with an agent at the time, who said, “You know, you were on the stage, in New York, in the '70s and early '80s, and you were doing, you know, really kinda out there character work. So why can't you do that in movies?” And I said, “Well, I can,” so at that point, I had this meeting with Oliver Stone, and he said, “You got the part," and I went in and did the part, and it completely turned things around for me. It was just great, because, all of a sudden, now I was getting parts that were kind of all over the map. And that's continued. I mean, you know, to go from child molester to Marine --- I'm very grateful that when I do get offered things, that they are a pretty wide variety of guys.
(Bacon as Willie O'Keefe in JFK, above.)
Was the real Willie O'Keefe still alive at the time and did you speak with him?
Well, the name Willie O'Keefe was kind of fictionalized.
Oh, it was a composite character. I never knew that.
Yeah, but there was a guy who Oliver hooked me up with, who Willie was kind of based on, and he was a guy living in New Orleans, who was gay. And so, I had a very, sort of wild night, going around with this dude to sort of like, you know, hardcore gay clubs, stuff like that, and just getting this guy's take on the world. And again, I'm not doing an imitation of him in the movie, but it certainly was helpful to try to get a little bit of his perspective.
Going further back, do you have a favorite of your '80s films at all?
I know this sounds strange, but I really don't go back and look at films. I mean, I do see them. I see them when they come out, maybe twice. I've had a couple of opportunities recently, where people have been nice enough to kind of do retrospectives, and they'll put together kind of like a reel, and it'll really surprise me, because I'll see scenes in films that I have...I just have no memory of having shot [laughs]. And that's kind of fun. But, I mean, in terms of favorites, no, I don't, really.
What’s coming up with the Bacon Brothers Band, in which you play and record with your brother Michael?
We’ve got a brand-new CD, it's called New Year's Day, and we're doing quite a lot of touring. We're really happy with the CD. It's starting to get airplay, which is great. It's been a long time since we've had anything resembling that. And, you know, we're just rattling along.
Have you and your brother played together since you were kids?
Yeah, you know, I started writing songs before I actually even took an acting class.
I was probably around 12. My songwriting was about being heartbroken. When I was very young, I just seemed to always be heartbroken [laughs]. I was always in love with somebody who wasn't in love with me. That's when I started writing songs. And my brother, who's nine years older than me, he was already off on a music career. But we would write together, and I started backing him up with his band, when I was about thirteen, I guess, or fourteen. And in high school, I was playing in bands. And then I took an acting class around the same time, and just kind of fell in love with it, and since my brother was being a musician, I said, “Well, I'll do something else,” so I became an actor.
And then, you know, when I got out of high school, I moved to New York, and started pursuing an acting career. But I alway kept writing, and kept playing, and always would kind of dream, of playing, and playing with my brother. And then, we put the band together, it was like, I guess, thirteen or fourteen years ago, and we just really did it for one gig. And then, with that one gig, somebody else asked us to play. So, we played another one, and then somebody else asked us to play, and then we got a record deal, you know, it just kept rolling around. And we never kind of set out to say, “Okay, I've had an acting career, now it's time for our music career." It was really kind of unexpected. And, in a way, I feel like we sort of follow the Bacon Brothers - it's not like we're leading it, we're just kind of following it.
Do you keep writing songs while you’re on film shoots?
Yeah, I think probably because, you know, if you're working on a film, you have to be emotionally, sort of, in-tune, you know what I mean? Because you're creating, and reliving, or replicating emotional kind of situations. And songwriting, for me, is certainly an emotional exercise. I don't really write like...I won't just come up with a chorus and then try to build a song around it. It's more a question of keeping your heart open, your mind open, and, you know, living experientially, and then finding a song out of that. People have different things that they do in their trailers. Some people do yoga, and other people watch movies, read books. I have a guitar, and I have a computer and a microphone, and it's really a studio. I mean, I basically have a little home studio in my trailer.
You’ve started a website called Six Degrees, with the nonprofit group Network for Good, an idea that was partially inspired by the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.
Yeah, a few years ago, you know, having lived so long with the Six Degrees concept, I started Six Degrees.org (http://www.sixdegrees.org/). And it was the idea of...I was thinking, if you take me out of the equation, the idea of Six Degrees is kind of a beautiful idea, in that it just connotates that we're all connected. And that there is this kind of small-phenomenon, and that whether it's social or environmental, if you do something in your neighborhood, it can affect people down the block, and around the world. And I was trying to look for something to do to give back. So, I started this organization where you can go on the website, and you have all the million charities that you can donate to.
If there's anything at all that's going on in the world that you're interested in helping out, whether it's, you know, a disease, or a place in the world where you think people need help, or the environment, or whatever it is, you can with a thing called Good Cards, and Good Cards are these cards that you can buy, from twenty-five dollars up. And if I buy a Good Card and give it to you, then you can also go on SixDegrees.org, and redeem it for that value, towards the charity that you want.
That’s great. We’ll definitely include links to the site. What was your reaction when you first heard about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game?
At first, I kind of thought it was a joke at my expense. I hadn't really gotten my head around the idea that these guys actually were fans of mine [laughs]. I kind of thought they were going, “Isn't it hilarious that this jackass would be linked to some of the great actors in history?” But eventually I just sort of warmed up to it. I really honestly thought that it would have gone away a long time ago. You know what I mean? I was shocked that it's had the hang-time that it's had. You know, but it's actually, it stayed so much in the zeitgeist for so many years, and I think because...I think it has very little to do with me...I think it's more that this idea of connectivity is true. And as we, you know, with the internet, as our connections grow exponentially, through networking, or information, the information highway, we start to realize more and more how connected we all are. And certainly that's been an important part of the environmental movement. And, so, since it was kind of dogging me for so long, I just said, you know, “Fuck it, I'll try to do something cool with it!” And so now, I'm thrilled to be connected to it. It doesn't cause me any kind of grief at all.
It was a pleasure talking to you, Kevin.
You too. Take care.
Taking Chance debuts February 21, on HBO, at 8 PM ET/PT. Frost/Nixon is currently in theatrical release.
The Six Degrees website can be accessed at http://www.sixdegrees.org/.
The Bacon Brothers Band have information on their tour dates and recordings at http://www.baconbros.com/.
The Taking Chance trailer can be viewed below:
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