Kevin Bacon Reveals Why They Had to Reshoot “Footloose”'s Iconic, Dance-Filled Ending

"Everybody said, 'We don't want slow motion, we want to see people getting down,' " Kevin Bacon recalled of early audiences' reactions to the 1984 movie's original ending

Kevin Bacon is sharing how Footloose's final moments changed during production.

On the latest episode of the actor's Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon podcast, Bacon, 65, recalled that the final scenes of his 1984 classic musical film were altered to remove slow-motion sequences that did not test well with early audiences.

"The ending of Footloose has this big dance sequence and in the original, when we originally shot it in Utah it went into slow motion," the actor shared. "When they tested the movie everybody said, 'We don't want slow motion, we want to see people getting down. We want to feel the music and see everybody rocking out.' "

"So we went to California a year later and reshot the ending but not in slow motion, with new choreography and new dancers and a whole bunch of new things," he added, noting that he believes the changes made "definitely helped the movie a lot."

Footloose, the movie that helped turn Bacon into a star, follows the actor as a teenager named Ren McCormack who moves to a small town with his mother, Ethel (Frances Lee McCain). After Ren and Lori Singer's character, Ariel, fall in love, they band together with their friends, Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Willard (the late Chris Penn), as well as other classmates to overturn a ban on dancing in the town instituted by Ariel's father, Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow).

Related: Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick Joke They're Starting to 'Look Alike': 'Been Together for a While'

While reflecting on his time filming Footloose, Bacon noted that it can be difficult to reshoot sequences for a movie months later because he tends to move on mentally and emotionally from his characters.

"As an actor, it's very hard because — at least me, I don't know about other people — when I finish a character I just want to say goodbye to him," he said. "I've been so in his world that I don't — I just want to let it go, so to step back into his shoes a year later when my head is already in a whole other place is always a strange kind of adjustment."

Related: Footloose Star Lori Singer Reveals Her Idea for a Sequel with Kevin Bacon: 'You Never Know' (Exclusive)

Footloose was the sixth highest-grossing movie of 1984 at the domestic box office, per Box Office Mojo. The movie has received a Broadway musical adaptation and a 2011 remake that starred Kenny Wormald as Ren, Julianne Hough as Ariel and also featured performances from Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell and Miles Teller.

The original movie celebrated its 40th anniversary in February — and while answering fan questions on his podcast about a potential sequel to the film, Bacon shared that he does not feel the story could sustain a follow-up.

"Never say never, [but] I think it would be a disaster," he joked, after SixDegrees.org executive director Stacy Huston suggested that a sequel could follow Ren's son.

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New episodes of Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon release each Tuesday.

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