‘The Bondsman’ star Kevin Bacon joins Condé Nast Traveler to test his movie location knowledge. From the 80s classic ‘Footloose’ to Clint Eastwood’s ‘Mystic River’, can this Hollywood legend remember some of his most iconic movie locations?
The Bondsman is streaming exclusively on Prime Video
The Bondsman is streaming exclusively on Prime Video
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Dancing was definitely not encouraged,
00:02nor was smoking or drinking, you know,
00:04having premarital sex.
00:05These were all things that I'm very fond of.
00:07Hey, I'm Kevin Bacon and I have filmed in a lot of places.
00:12Let's see if I can remember that.
00:17All right, here we go.
00:22Oh, I think this is Utah.
00:24Must be Utah, right?
00:25This is probably the movie Footloose.
00:29Provo, or Orem, or Payson, or Lehigh.
00:37These were all the surrounding areas of Salt Lake City
00:41that we shot Footloose.
00:44And, you know, probably this is where the tractor race was,
00:49or something like that, yeah.
00:55The experience as a young man
00:58of being part of a troop and rolling into a town
01:03that was so far, I mean, when I landed here,
01:06I had never seen these mountains.
01:09I'd never seen mountains, even anything like this.
01:12It was completely mind blowing.
01:15I'll never forget.
01:16I mean, just literally, like, I'm looking out the window,
01:19and just, like, going, holy shit.
01:22But, you know, the fact that you get a chance
01:24to be on the road and learning how to survive,
01:28and nobody knows each other,
01:29and you sort of have to make friends with each other,
01:32with the crew, with the cast.
01:34You're all thrown into what was really very much like
01:38a foreign kind of land, in a way.
01:40I thought this was a party!
01:41Let's dance!
01:42I was a city kid who was thrown into a, you know,
01:46super rural world.
01:49And also a very, very strict, you know,
01:53people who were raised with a very strict
01:55religious upbringing.
01:56Dancing was definitely not encouraged in that community,
02:00nor was smoking or drinking or, you know,
02:05having premarital sex.
02:06These were all things that I was very fond of.
02:08Dancing, smoking, drinking, premarital sex.
02:11I'm not necessarily in that order.
02:12So, like, and I think that most of the crew
02:14and most of the cast was, you know,
02:16kind of in line with me.
02:18There was some stuff that was kind of scandalous, you know?
02:21I think John Lithgow was, went skinny dipping
02:26in the pool at the hotel.
02:28That sort of got around.
02:29I just feel closer to my lord out there.
02:32Do you remember any of those?
02:34A move?
02:35No.
02:36You don't remember any of the dance moves?
02:37No.
02:38No.
02:39Do people ask me that all the time?
02:40Yes.
02:41Okay, let's see what we got next.
02:48I think this is Lone Pine, California.
02:54When we were making Tremors,
02:59if I remember correctly, am I right?
03:02We're, like, jumping from rock to rock.
03:04Yeah, jumping.
03:05Pole vaulting.
03:11Pole vaulting from rock to rock,
03:13because the graboids can get through dirt,
03:18but they can't get up on the rocks or something like that.
03:21They were, a lot of Westerns were shot up there in the 50s,
03:26but also they were hotspots for people to go and do psychedelics,
03:32you know, peyote and mushrooms and stuff like that.
03:34And, you know, when you're up there,
03:36there is a kind of, like, psychedelic vibe to them,
03:38and you can, there's kind of carve outs.
03:41It's funny, you know, one of the few things that I know how to do
03:45is ride a horse, and I've never been in a Western.
03:50I think maybe Tremors is the closest I've ever gotten
03:52to being in a Western.
03:54And I did get a chance to ride a horse a little bit.
04:00I remember one time they wrapped me
04:05because of what we call turnaround.
04:08You know, you have to have 12 hours off between the time
04:11when you start shooting and the time when you wrap at night.
04:14And they decided to use a stunt double
04:19for this very, very wide, wide shot of Val and Earl
04:24galloping across the desert.
04:26And I was so pissed that they didn't let me do that.
04:30I was like, you know, and honestly, I wasn't that crazy
04:33about the way he was riding.
04:36Reba, I think, I feel like maybe Tremors was her first acting gig.
04:40Um, and of course, she was fantastic and hilarious.
04:51You didn't get penetration even with the elephant gun.
04:53Shit.
04:54It was also because of Reba's involvement
04:58and because of the fact that we were shooting in Lone Pine,
05:02which is even though it's probably about three, three hours
05:07or three and a half hours north of L.A.,
05:11the only
05:13options for radio, there weren't a lot of radio stations.
05:16The only radio stations I could get was country stations.
05:19And, you know, I'm a kid from Philly.
05:20And up until that point, I didn't really listen to
05:24or have much of an appreciation for country music at all.
05:27And between Reba's involvement
05:30and the fact that aside from my, you know, cassette player,
05:34the only thing I could listen to was country
05:37made me really start to appreciate it as a, as a, as a musical genre.
05:41So let's see what's next here.
05:44Oh, I know exactly.
05:47I have no idea where this is.
05:49Is it the Hellgate Bridge?
05:50No, that's not the Hellgate.
05:52It doesn't really look like New York.
05:54And it's, it's, it's, it's not Philly.
05:57Oh, Boston.
05:58This is Boston.
05:58This is the Tobin Bridge.
06:00Hey, Devine.
06:06What you looking at?
06:08The old neighborhood.
06:09We were making a movie, Mystic River.
06:11I believe I'm in this scene.
06:12Yeah, on the, on the, on this bridge.
06:16It's been a long time since I've seen the movie.
06:19And it was unheard of because this is one of the main arteries
06:23in and out of Boston and Eastwood closed it.
06:28And it was like this crazy, crazy traffic jam.
06:32People's heads are just exploding, but because it was Clint,
06:35it's like, yeah, we're just going to close the bridge and it'll be fine.
06:39But I think because of Clint, you know, Eastwood, who directed the film,
06:45he's so beloved and admired and, you know,
06:52kind of respected that for whatever reason
06:57we got Boston or he got Boston to, to open up their arms to Mystic River.
07:02And it was one of the most fun shoots that I've ever had.
07:07The one thing you can be sure of is that if you're doing a Boston accent,
07:11nobody from Boston is going to like it.
07:13They're just very, very protective of that accent.
07:17And I remember pulling into town.
07:23I think it was to start City on a Hill, which was another Boston-based character that I did.
07:29And I roll up to the hotel and I got my dog and I'm about to walk the dog in the common.
07:38And there's a guy sitting in a car there.
07:41This guy's window rolled down and he looks at me and says,
07:43Hey, how come you get to play all the Boston cops?
07:48And I said, well, he said, how come you get to play the cops?
07:51And I realized that he was probably, I don't know, an out-of-work actor or something.
08:00This might be, um, is this Camp Crystal Lake from Friday the 13th?
08:07Wow.
08:07I'm pretty good at this, actually.
08:09This is where we shot Friday the 13th, which was the first Friday the 13th, uh, in about,
08:16I don't know, 1979 or something like that.
08:20I know exactly where it was.
08:21It's in Blairstown, New Jersey.
08:29Yep.
08:30I remember that.
08:31This lake was so fucking cold.
08:35And the thing was, is that for some reason, we started, I feel like we started kind of like
08:41at the end of the summer.
08:43Maybe it started right after Labor Day or something like that.
08:45But as the movie goes on, you can see the leaves start to change.
08:51I remember somebody, you know, because I was learning about filmmaking.
08:54I remember someone talking about that, saying, you know, if the leaves are changing, this
08:57is going to be a problem.
08:58And we had scenes in the water, like swimming, like we had a swimming scene, but that was
09:04like at the end of the schedule.
09:06So I remember just thinking to myself, how are we going to jump in the water on this October
09:13day?
09:13But, uh, I guess we didn't.
09:16Let's see what we've got here.
09:18Ah, this is the Bondsman.
09:20This is Snowy, Georgia.
09:21This is a great place to shoot.
09:24Male enforcement, come out with your hands up.
09:26You know, the challenge is to not be on location.
09:33You know, the challenge is to, you know, try to absorb the character and the tone of a place
09:45if you're not in that place.
09:46But if you can get to a place that's close to the place that you're trying to shoot, it
09:54becomes like an actor's playground in a lot of ways.
09:56Even just tonally, you know, drivers that, you know, drive us to and from work, they tend
10:03to be of that place.
10:06You know, whether it's, you know, dialect or point of view or whatever, they are the people
10:12that live there and work there.
10:14They're not the DP who's coming in or the cast that's coming in or even the production
10:18designer that's coming in.
10:19A lot of that cruise, you know, outside, but the drivers are definitely local and just
10:26having that sort of like exchange with them to kick your day off in the morning or on the
10:32way home at night is, is, is valuable.
10:36Totally.
10:37A hundred percent.
10:38Yeah.
10:39A hundred percent.
10:39I mean, I can't think of anything specific.
10:42You know, I don't want to get sued.
10:43No, but no, a hundred percent.
10:44Yeah, I do.
10:45Yeah.
10:45I have many, many, many times, whether that's in Boston or.
10:49Or in Georgia or in Lone Pine or, you know, wherever.
10:54Well, I'm a victim of circumstance.
10:57How do I think I did?
10:59I think I did pretty well, I guess.
11:01I don't know.
11:01I didn't know it was a contest, but there's one more.
11:04We're going to skip it.
11:05We're going to skip it.
11:05Okay.
11:05It was a bad one anyway.
11:07Oh yeah.
11:07That's.
11:10Okay.
11:10You want to know what it is, right?
11:16Space.
11:19You want to know what it is, right?
11:21You want to know what it is, right?
11:21You want to know what it is, right?
11:22You want to know what it is, right?
11:23You want to know what it is, right?
11:24You want to know what it is, right?
11:24You want to know what it is, right?
11:24You want to know what it is, right?
11:25You want to know what it is, right?
11:26You want to know what it is, right?
11:27You want to know what it is, right?
11:28You want to know what it is, right?
11:29You want to know what it is, right?
11:30You want to know what it is, right?
11:31You want to know what it is, right?
11:32You want to know what it is, right?
11:33You want to know what it is, right?
11:34You want to know what it is, right?