Ask Professor Popcorn: Footloose

By Brian @ Hard Ticket to Home Video

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Dear Professor Popcorn,

I was watching Footloose this weekend, drunk of course. It occurred to me that in the scene where the kids are all hanging out front of the restaurant and are literally dancing in the street like the song suggests, they pan to a cook in the kitchen who twirls around and dances in time with the music. How can he even hear the music from the crappy little car stereo when he is all the way back in the kitchen. And how does he even know that it’s dance party time when he can’t even see the kids in the parking lot and when dancing is outlawed in that town?

Furthermore, how did Kevin Bacon even know about the isolated factory/warehouse place where he goes to dance his rage away. He’s new in town! How can he know about that place, and how can he know that it’s going to be empty when he shows up?

Smash
Canada

footloose-break-dancing-o

Dear Smash,

That slow-witted cook was not dancing, just rhythmically thrashing around because he spilled molten-hot french fry grease through the open crotch of his pants. The fact that it was timed perfectly with Dancing in the Sheets is due to the fact that he shares a psychic link with Lori Singer’s hermaphroditic character after they became blood brothers in the fourth grade and he poured a vial of Singer’s blood in the deep fryer to ward off the evil spirits with which the town is plagued.

To answer your other question, Ren knew where the warehouse was because of a deleted subplot in which the ghost of a murdered girl haunted him until he solved the mystery of her death, and it ended up that she was buried in the foundation of the warehouse, and he had to dance his heart out to set her spirit free. The subplot was cut as it was deemed a little too grim for this teen movie about dancing, but years later the footage was seized during a panty raid on Kevin Bacon’s house, then spliced together to make the film Stir of Echoes.

Your picture pal,
Professor Popcorn

Have a burning film question for Professor Popcorn? Ask away in the comments section below!

19 thoughts on “Ask Professor Popcorn: Footloose”

  1. Dear Professor Popcorn: In “The Muppet Movie”, Kermit poses the question about why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side. Up until that movie was released, how many songs with that criteria were there? The only one that comes to mind is “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. One does not equal “so many”, am I right? Is there a faulty connection in the rainbow? Sincerely, Thomas from Video as Life.

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  3. Dear Professor Popcorn,

    I was recently tied up and forced at gunpoint to watch The Breakfast Club. In it, Emilio Estevez’ character smokes some of Judd Nelson’s weed and then goes running around the school like a maniac. Having ONLY EVER WITNESSED people smoke grass before, I’ve observed that people tend to just SIT there for hours like fresh cadavers and NOT run around the facility or home they are in like maniacs. In fact, my coordination is bad anyway but when I haven’t ever smoked weed, it’s usually worse, I would think because I’ve never, ever smoked. What gives?

    ei

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  5. Dear Professor Popcorn:

    Even if the game of Tractor Chicken went awry and they happened to collide into each other, what would the extent of the total damage be? It seemed to me that the tractors were going at a top speed of maybe 35 MPH. I don’t think heavy steel tractors would sustain too much damage from that kind of collision. Also what were these dopey kids thinking playing such a game by a river gorge? And who’s paying for the tractor that actually fell in the river?!

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  7. Thank you Professor Popcorn! It all makes so much sense to me now. I still think this is a terrible movie, but I have a new appreciation for its ironclad plot.

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