Caroline's Casting Couch: In Defense of the Real Footloose

By Caroline Kepnes Jul 15, 2007 11:00 PMTags
FootlooseParamount Pictures

No. No. NO, NO, NO, NO. Kevin Bacon is so damn amazing there is a drinking game that revolves around him. He is Footloose. Spontaneous, stoned dancing was never so sexy and downright masculine. (Except maybe for Emilio Estevez's blazed gymnastics number in The Breakfast Club.) And now comes news that Zac Efron may be starring in a musical Footloose. My heart breaks for Ariel, for John Cougar Mellencamp's "Hurts So Good" and for Dianne Wiest.

We all know this movie is going to bite. It's not just going to bite, it's going to bite hard.

Efron is such a likeable kid. At the Hairspray junket he was all blushing and shy, so not a cocky little product of the tween entertainment machine.

And Footloose is like The Big Chill (which is, as I've reported and railed against, also set to be remade): It's an '80s movie. The theme was so '80s. It belongs in the '80s. You can't just take it and plop it into the 21st century. The whole idea of urban kid goes into small town where nobody knows that the Police are a band is firmly rooted in pre-Internet culture. The. Premise. Is. Outdated.

Paramount, you owe my generation an apology. In lieu of an apology, we'll accept an inability to get a script nailed down and excessive production delays leading to the project's collapse.