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Such a dramatic scene. Wow, that is psycho.
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Hey, what's going on everybody?
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For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today we're joined by Kevin Bacon.
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He's a Golden Globe Award-winning actor with countless timeless titles over the course of his 40-plus-year-long Hollywood career, including Apollo 13, A Few Good Men, Footloose, Mystic River, and many more.
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These days though, you can catch him starring in the acclaimed crime drama City on a Hill, which begins its third season on Showtime Sunday, July 10th.
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Kevin Bacon, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
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How are you around hot sauce?
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I know that you like to hit your morning mango with a little bit of chili powder. Yeah, I like hot sauce. I don't know.
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There's this thing with they say if you if you use it too much then your taste buds get burned out and then you need to use more and it's it's a it's a gateway drug or something. I don't know. I I But I like it. I'm living proof. You know what?
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The taste buds, they don't burn away.
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I can still taste as good as I could 29 years ago.
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So we can just dive in here. Good. I'm glad to hear it. At the handle. Mhm. Good.
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You have a little bit of a little lime in there maybe? Yeah. I like it.
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So in the gritty Boston-based crime drama City on a Hill, you play the often seedy, always swaggering FBI agent Jackie Rohr.
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And I've heard you describe the show as being like Shakespeare with a lot of [ __ ] Can you unpackage that? I love it as a tagline.
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Well, you know, when I first read the script, um what I really found interesting about the character was he was obviously a man of the street.
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At the same time, he's like incredibly well-read and incredibly verbose.
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You know, sometimes I get parts where uh I I like to um kind of lean in to saying a lot with a very little.
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And then every once in a while something come comes along where the guy can't just can't shut the [ __ ] up and and it's just really fun to just kind of lean into that.
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And they always write me good stuff to say. Mhm. Yep. Delicious.
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And your wings are very good, too, I might add. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you.
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Dom, quick shoutout over there. Nice. Way to go.
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So, I want to stay on the topic of television because it marks a distinct shift for you.
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Saying in a 2017 interview with The Guardian, "Before my managers knew never to mention a TV series because they knew how furious that would make me."
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What do you see as the forces at play that have driven so many actors away from film and towards television over the last decade or so?
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Um well, I think what happened was writers on films, a lot of people don't aren't really aware of this, are strangely kind of the low men on the totem pole, or low people on the totem pole.
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Um on a on a film set, on a movie set, once the writer has delivered the script, the director and the actors and the producers just kind of traditionally have pushed them aside and say, "Well, now this is our movie and we're going to um make it ours."
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You know, what in the even in the editing process, scenes that were incredibly important to a writer get lifted and taken out.
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And at one point, I think they all went, "You know what? [ __ ] that.
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You know, I'm going to go where I can be the showrunner.
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So, when the great writers started to see that that was an opportunity, they went to television and then that sort of golden age of Sopranos and Six Feet Under and The Wire and all these TV shows that I was sitting home and watching and just looking at it going, "Shit, I want to do that."
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And then it's interesting to me that in the beginning of your career, you know, box office was everything and then that gives way to blockbuster and rentals, which gives way to DVDs, which gives way to streaming and then now coming out of this pandemic, it's kind of these like dual theatrical releases along with on demand.
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What do you see as like the biggest existential threat to the movie making industry having lived through so many tectonic shifts in your career?
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Well, you know, you you make a good point.
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The I lived through so many shifts and I never really thought they were shifts.
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People would say, "Hey, you know, the movie business has changed."
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Well, you know, when I first started out we didn't even have cameras. Everything was live.
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Um, you know, we live in a world of increasingly haves and have-nots and that seems to have reflected its way into the movie business where you can you put $200 million movies in in the theaters, but the movies that I'm going to be in, you know, are going to have a harder time finding uh a theatrical kind of release.
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But, I'm going to hold on to the dream that people will never stop wanting to, you know, buy some shitty popcorn and and and sit there and and uh and experience that with strangers. Okay.
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McCauley Mhm, that's getting spicy.
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That's only the third one? [ __ ] Okay.
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Yeah, that's getting there.
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Hey, so do you put this this you put it on before the chicken wings are cooked or afterwards? This is too technical. No, no, no.
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I I I love I love getting into the mechanics of it all. So, um it's after.
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So, the wings come in bare, Okay.
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naked, however you want to put it, and then uh little double bowl toss action Okay. with the sauces.
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So, you get that full coverage.
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So, you can't escape, Kevin. You can't escape. It's good. Wow. Hot.
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Is it true that while preparing for your role in Footloose that you actually attended a real-life actual high school as a transfer student under the assumed identity Ren McCormack?
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Yeah, this is the world's dumbest ride-along.
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You know, I mean, I wanted to see what the experience would be of an urban kid, as the kid was in Footloose, moving into a rural environment.
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Very, very different culturally.
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It was so much like the movie, I can't tell you.
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It was like some of the bad some of the bad-ass kids were like, "Hey, who you Who are you, punk?"
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You know, I'm you know, they're like, "Whatever."
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And you know, fronting with me in the bathroom and stuff.
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And then there was like this big kind of dude, corn-fed dude, who was you know, took me under his wing.
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He was like, "Hey, you Y'all back off. I got it. I got it. I He's okay."
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Um and the girls, when I walked down the hall, were giggling and like I had thought if the character walked into the school on the first day that he would be, you know, come on, bring it.
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And it was the complete opposite.
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When I walked into that school, I was like, "Oh, shit."
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So, it actually did inform the performance in a in in in a in a in a way that was pretty specific, you know.
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Um And then when the crew showed up, I was like, "Oh, thank god you guys are here." Uh Let's go to the bar. Airlift me out of here. Airlift me out of here. Yeah. Mhm.
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Got good hot sauces here, man. So far, I guess, right? Yeah.
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Has anyone ever tried to switch them?
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I don't know why you'd want to do that.
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So, there's a couple times where it's almost like accidentally happened.
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You know, like Tom Holland comes in like, "Hi, nice to meet you."
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and then goes and reaches for like number 10 right away.
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I've heard that about him, yeah.
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You know, Dom has to fly in here and fall on the grenade.
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And then we had one guest, Eddie Wong, way, way back in the day that actually did it in reverse, seemingly on purpose.
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Would not recommend after seeing the way that that played out in real time.
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So, now that you left home at age 17 with Broadway dreams, starting out at the legendary Circle in the Square Theatre where the likes of Pacino, Hoffman, and Streep have gone through.
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Can you recall an instance, ever a time in which your formal acting training brushed up awkwardly with the realities of being on a Hollywood set?
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Well, that's a really interesting question.
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Um when I did the movie Diner, I learned a great lesson from Barry Levinson.
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Being young and also really coming from the stage, I tended to be kind of bigger, you know, and tended to want to put it out into the back row, whatever it was that I I was feeling.
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And he was like, you know, don't don't play it so much.
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You know, you know, you can just you know, you know, you know, less than the same.
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It's, you know, it and and so I did less and I did less and he would have me do less again.
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And that was a great sort of lesson to me.
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Also, you can't necessarily judge a part based on the amount of lines that you have.
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If you listen to people and you have a good sense of who your guy is, you can make an impact.
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You can make your your presence known without just a bunch of this. Mhm. Seven favorite yeah. Yeah. Um yeah. Yeah. I see why.
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That's a little guy on a horse looking like he's about to smack you in the head. Okay.
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What to you was the most interesting or fascinating thing about working on the simulators at the US Space and Rocket Center in the lead-up to Apollo 13?
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That was an incredible experience.
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I mean, we were doing touch-and-goes in airplanes.
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I mean, all this kind of thing.
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This is one of the great things about this gig that I have.
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I mean, the experiences that I have and the things that I get to be able to do are just I I I I never take them for granted. I really don't.
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In that case, there was a plane called the KC-135.
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They fly out over the Gulf of Mexico.
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You climb straight up and then you dive.
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These are called parabolas.
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For 24 seconds, I think it is, you float. I did it. I got through it. I was like, "Great."
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We all jumped off the plane. We kissed the tarmac. It was terrifying.
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Um but kind of cool to have that experience.
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So, Ron has a combination conversation with Steven Spielberg.
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And Spielberg says, "You know, why don't you shoot some of the movie up in that plane?"
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And you have to keep in mind that at this point, making people float was a really hard thing to accomplish in terms of special effects.
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And you know, Ron comes back and goes, "Guys, guys, guys, got a great idea. Just talked to Steven. What we're going to do?"
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I was like, "Are you [ __ ] kidding me?
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We're going to be up in this thing for like weeks now."
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Myself, Tom, and Bill, and Ron, we did this like 600 times. Wow.
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But what was really cool was that not all three of us would be on in the scene at once.
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Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was just Tom, or Bill, or whatever.
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And then the whole rest of the plane was like a big padded cell.
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And so, we would just have fun.
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Just play football, fly around, fly like literally you could you could start at this wall and push off.
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Picture just flying all the way to this wall. I mean just like this.
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And I know you can see that there's goofy footage of it.
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So, again, what an experience. Going in. Mhm. Mhm. So interesting.
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I always forget how it kind of raises your your heart rate, right? Yeah, yeah.
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It's a little trippy, too.
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Like sometimes you can actually get like kind of like a head high off of it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, man. I love you, man.
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I love you I love you right back. I love you right back.
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So, besides movies, I know that music is a major passion of yours.
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Starting a band with your brother Michael 25 years ago, The Bacon Brothers, releasing close to a dozen studio albums in the time since.
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As someone with a with a foot in both worlds, is there a movie or project of yours that you think has the best or most underrated original soundtrack? Uh of mine? Mhm.
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Probably I It's been a while since I've gone back and listened to it, but probably Telling Lies in America.
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And of course I I think of that because I wrote a couple songs for it, but that's not not it's not really the reason I wrote I wrote a song called Medium Rare that they actually sang in the movie.
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And it was cool to try to write in a specific kind of style of an era and stuff like that.
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You know what else has probably a I'm guessing, although I do I don't honestly go back and look at the movies, but I'm guessing that has a good soundtrack would be She's Having a Baby because John Hughes was a huge huge People forget he was a huge music fan and was also really super super influential in things that were going to you know be on the radio and you know really I'm I'm sure there's a lot of cool music in that. Tissue time. Tissue time. Tissue time.
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Are you ready to move on to the next one?
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my nose started to run, yeah. This is the Halo G here. Okay. In the seven spot. No no no. Woah. Yeah.
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That doesn't even What's amazing is that they haven't even they haven't highlighted all of those peppers.
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They've only highlighted four out of five.
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I think that's false advertising. Cuz that shit's hot. Very hot. Yeah.
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Very hot here in the seven spot. Awesome.
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I'm really enjoying this.
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You're having a good time? I am. I am.
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Did you have a biggest customer pet peeve when you were going by Vooner and waiting tables at the the Aussie Cafe?
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My biggest customer pet peeve, man, your research is deep, bro. Vooner.
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That is I got some friends that are going to [ __ ] when they hear that you that you figured that out.
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Um my biggest pet peeve would be um splitting dishes.
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It was an interesting restaurant that I worked at.
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It's on 72nd Street up here because service was not really the deal.
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I mean, I was I was by far the most uh agreeable person that worked there.
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The bartenders, the waitresses, it was not none of this what can I get you, sir.
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No, it was nothing like that.
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Uh so you know, it was a it was not you know, uh Wasserk. The bomb. Sorry about that. Okay. Oh my god.
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I'm embarrassed to say how small a bite I took of this move it.
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Well, all you need is small bite of this. Ooh. Wow, that's hot. Wow. It's insane. It's beyond insane. Beyond insanity. Mhm.
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You'd have to put it on with like a pin. Wow. Oh my gosh, that's hot. Very hot. Very hot. Wow. Awesome. Good though. Delicious. Love it. Mhm.
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Besides the time that you did your screen test with a 104° fever for Diner, what immediately comes to mind when you think of harrowing audition experiences?
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Um so when I wasn't at the Top Kid I would sometimes go to Studio 54.
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I would go alone cuz I love to dance.
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I learned pretty quickly that it wasn't a place to pick up girls because I didn't have enough money or enough coke.
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And there's a guy named Mark with blond hair. It was Mark and Steve.
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Rubel and and he was in tur- uh in charge of picking who was going to be able to come through the red rope.
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Oh, he was like, yeah, in charge of the velvet over there. Right. He was the guy.
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And everyone's screaming, "Mark! Mark, two! Mark, two! Mark, three! Mark!"
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And and it was complete insanity.
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And I noticed him going like this and looking over and then going And I thought to myself he's looking at their shoes.
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And so I started to look at the shoes that people would wear.
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And then I went out and got a pair of those shoes. And I got it.
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So then the the 70s end and they decide to do a show called Got to Go Disco, which is a Broadway show.
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There was a song called I Love the Nightlife. I love the nightlife.
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I like to boogie on the disco round, yeah.
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So I come in uh with the sheet music and I handed the piano player and he starts to play it.
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It never occurred to me that the sheet music might not be in the key of the record. It was a disaster.
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It was way out of my range.
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And the weirdest thing was I'd never had I don't think I've ever had a a musical audition before.
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But it's a room full of probably I don't know, 20 people, 30 people, all investors and and sitting right in the middle was this guy Mark.
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And all I could think was Mark one. Mark one.
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Uh he was one of the producers.
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And uh to say that I didn't get that part would be the understatement.
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I just completely [ __ ] the bed.
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Well, it sounded good when you just sang it just now and then you did it under the pressure of eight hot sauces so far.
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these hot sauces are really great for the old vocal cords, are they?
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So impressive under the circumstances.
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Are you ready to move on here to number nine?
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Interesting title for number nine. The Psycho Sauce. Yeah, mhm.
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Starting to see why you might put that at the end there. Oh man. Wow. Okay.
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What does that mean, 15 out of 10?
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Right, it doesn't make any sense. make any sense. make any sense at all.
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You know, like they're But I mean kind of does make sense right now.
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Cuz like my my mouth is going, "You're right, [ __ ] That's 15 out of 10." Oh my god. Wow. That is psycho.
19:26
How would you describe your ideal day at Macedonia State Park?
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Hot Ones creator Chris Schonberger, he takes his dog Ruggles running there every single day.
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Well, my favorite time to go to Macedonia State Park is after a big snow.
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There's a 2-mi uh gradual uphill uh trail for cross-country skiing.
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And it's it's perfect because you're you're going uphill on the way and then you get nice and warm and then you just kind of it's a little easier on the It's very hard to answer these questions. You're kidding.
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You want me to put the Oh, man.
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You don't have to if you don't want to. Listen, you're too nice.
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Look at you need to have more rules. I mean you need to Ah! Oh, [ __ ] Be careful. Be careful. All right.
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Do you find that men and women react different Of course they react differently, but it isn't is Is there a sort of a an element that comes up with guys are like It's like a We've never had a woman tap out on the show ever. It's amazing. Yeah. I know. It's funny how I know. Oh, [ __ ] me.
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It's funny how it just kind of builds, you know?
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Yeah, there's a cumulative I effect I think of like putting all these 10 and layering them on top, but the good news is you're all done with the wings.
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We've taken a journey through your acting career, and it's clear that you're someone who loves movies ever since you snuck into that dollar theater when you were 12 years old to see Midnight Cowboy.
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On the topic of the movies that shaped you, what makes Spinal Tap a perfect film?
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Oh, it's got rock and roll.
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It's got transformational performances from people who don't look or act anything like the characters that they played.
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It's got humor, and then a unexpected uh touch of pathos. And it goes up to 11.
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Some would say it maybe even goes up to 15. Some would say.
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And look at you, Kevin Bacon, taking on the wings of death, living to tell the tale, and now there's nothing left to do but roll out the red carpet for you.
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This camera, this camera, this camera, let the people know what you have going on in your life.
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I'm going to I'm going to try to get out of this and walk downstairs and go home.
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I don't know, maybe take a nap.
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Got City on a Hill coming out.
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I got some new Bacon Brothers music coming out.
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Wow, it's hard to do under these circumstances.
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The walls are closing in. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, EVERYBODY. GOOD JOB. GOOD JOB.
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That's the Hot Ones experience. That was amazing.
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I honestly I I don't know where you get these questions from, but they are Well, I know because I've seen the show that they are very surprising and incredibly well researched. Oh, thank you so much.
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Yeah, I mean, it's it's nice to It's not just the wings, it's also nice to have a you know, have some [ __ ] to talk about that's not you know, the usual. Oh my god.
23:01
Hey, what's going on, Hot Ones fans?
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This is Sean Evans checking in with a very exciting announcement. We've read the comments. We've seen the emails.
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And after 6 years, more than 250 episodes, we can now bring you the full Hot Ones experience in one convenient package.
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I'm proud to introduce you to Hot Ones boneless chicken bites available exclusively at Walmart and walmart. com.
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Each bag of Hot Ones boneless chicken bites is packed with approximately 35 breaded seasoned white meat chicken bites as well as individual packets of the classic Los Calientes and The Last Dab Apollo for all your saucing and dabbing needs.
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The full Hot Ones experience ready to heat and eat whenever you get the craving to spice things up at home.
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Hot Ones boneless chicken bites.
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It's a party in a bag and everyone's invited.