August 2007 | blackfilm.com | features | SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2007 | DEATH SENTENCE

SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2007 | DEATH SENTENCE
An Interview with Kevin Bacon
By Wilson Morales

August 3rd, 2007

There’s a great Footloose montage in the upcoming movie Hot Rod.

Kevin: Yeah somebody’s told me that. I look forward to that

Where he’s doing the angry dance montage. Andy Samberg said a lot of babies were born because of Footloose.

Kevin: Oh yeah?

And I was wanting your reaction to that.

Kevin: Cool. I was very disappointed – I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. There’s a U2 video – one that’s gotten maybe the most hits of almost any U2 video ever which is called something like ‘The Evolution of Dance’. And it’s just a guy who dances and they skipped Footloose and I was heartbroken. Because I mean I really felt like sending this guy a letter because he went right from Saturday Night Fever then jumped to Michael Jackson – Billy Jean. And it hurt.

Were you a fan of Zac Efron?

Kevin: I don’t really know Zac Efron’s work but I’m looking forward to seeing it.

What you said before about ‘putting the character away’, I notice that more than any other actor you have more sequels to your films Echoes II, Hollow Man II.

Kevin: Right. What about Friday the 13th. Of course I was dead.

I just wondered, would that ever be something that would interest you to revisit a character?

Kevin: Sure.

Any one in particular?

Kevin: I don’t know. The Woodsman II.

The Return.

Kevin: Yeah. No I don’t know. Yeah, I mean it would interest me. I mean somebody asked me literally if I was interested in Death Sentence because it might have a part 2. Well, first off, that’s pretty presumptuous to think that something is going to have a part 2 and second, I kind of feel like you have to take it one at a time. With the movies that you did mention, they were all straight to DVD. So I didn’t – that’s why I really wasn’t involved.

Maybe they went straight to DVD because you weren’t in them.

Kevin: Well, I don’t know.

They were crap.

Kevin: Yeah.

They weren’t good.

Kevin: Well I don’t know. It just didn’t seem to be the right. I mean I kind of felt like, you know, if you’re going to make a part two, part one should be like a box office smash. Which it wasn’t for any of those movies. They ended up finding a following on cable and on DVD. Stir of Echoes was a huge DVD title as was Tremors and continues to be. But neither one of them made enough of an impact in the theatrical to really want to do another theatrical so.

What about directing yourself again?

Kevin: Thanks. I’d like to do it, yeah. There’s a script that I really like that I keep reading and we keep talking about looking for a director and I keep thinking, ‘Mmm, maybe I should bite the bullet’. But you know, it’s like I would be in every scene and it would kind of be – it’s kind of the next wackiest challenge, would be to do that. To try to do what Clint did so seamlessly all those times. It’s almost impossible to imagine, you know, having directed a film, what it would be like to take on all that and take on a role but I don’t know. We’ll see. Having worked with James I got really kind of excited about the idea of directing something with a little bit of action in it just because it was so much fun to see the way that he would put those pieces together. And I know that the next time that I direct a film that I want it to be a more guy oriented film because I’ve done a couple of things that are very, very female driven. But I just did another episode this year of The Closer. I did one last year and they gave me a chance to do another one. And it was great because it actually had an action sequence in it and I was coming off of Death Sentence and I was like ‘Great’. You know, whatever – think about ways to shoot this and I was really inspired to do that.

You enjoyed directing Kyra I take it.

Kevin: Yeah I did. I mean people say directing Kyra is like ‘Turn on the camera. Stay out of the way.’

Is Death Sentence meant to be kind of a larger metaphor for everything going on in the world today? I mean just reading through the press notes, I didn’t know if it was meant to be kind of a statement on our violence and getting caught up in revenge for something that was done to you, or is it just mean to be more timeless.

Kevin: You know, I don’t really know. I guess I feel like that a little bit more of a James Wan / Ian Jeffers question. We never talked about any of it as being some kind of a statement. I do think that – I wanted to make sure that as a film it wasn’t just cut and dried kind of good guys/bad guys and the fact that the violence that this guy perpetrates, brings on himself, is tragic and has a terrible effect ultimately on his life so that it wouldn’t be in a way straight up glorification of picking up a gun. But in terms of bigger kind of political and social issues, I haven’t really focused on …

Emmy nominations came out. Has there been celebration in your house for Kyra and The Closer.

Kevin: Yeah. Oh yeah. Well I don’t know if I’ve actually seen her. I’m going to see her tonight. But maybe tonight’s the celebration.

The violence of this movie, like how heavy into it – how much we’re going to see.

Kevin: It’s violent. It’s an R. I think it’s an R, yeah. So it’s definitely violent. I mean it’s not like horror violence, there’s no torture.

James was saying there’s more streets. It’s more on ground level.

Kevin: It’s ground level. It’s street level. And because I wanted to play a guy who didn’t know how to use a gun, who’d never been in this situation, the violence is very scrappy and very kind of gritty. It’s very visceral. Very visceral. I mean one of my favourite sequences in the film is a chase scene that starts on foot. It’s on foot, the whole thing is on foot. And then ends up with a fight inside of a car that’s rolling back over the edge and I mean, you really feel like you’re inside this car. And it’s very, very visceral.

Did you do your own stunts?

Kevin: I did a lot of them. I mean I did as much of – my feeling about stunts is if I can do it I’ll do it. I don’t like to push it for two reasons: one is that I am a father and I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stick around. And the other is that I don’t want to get injured so that we shut down and have to, you know, the movie takes nine months as opposed to two. But that being said, I like to try to get in there if I can and make it look good and it’s always a discussion and a balancing act about how much they let me do basically.

What’s the film you’re doing in New Jersey right now?

Kevin: I’m doing a movie called Taking Chance which is for HBO. It’s a movie about what happens to the remains of fallen soldiers overseas, how they find their way back from wherever they’re killed in action to their final resting place. And I have a movie called Rails & Ties which is a film directed by Alison Eastwood, with Marcia Gay Harden and I think that’s going to come out some time this year.

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DEATH SENTENCE OPENS ON AUGUST 31, 2007