Thirty years ago, the title song from "Footloose" urged everyone to "kick off your Sunday shoes" and start dancin'. On last Friday night's "Tonight Show," that film's star, Kevin Bacon, proved the message is just as powerful today as then.
Host Jimmy Fallon started the whole thing. "I should quickly mention that dancing has been outlawed here at 'The Tonight Show,'" he told his audience, echoing one of the film's key plot points. "It's a bummer, but rules are rules."
But Bacon, who now stars in Fox's "The Following," wasn't having any of that. "This is 'The Tonight Show,'" he said, sitting in his dressing room. "There has to be dancing." He pulled out a cassette tape of one of the film's other tunes, "Never," took a puff from a cigarette, drank a swig of beer and hurled the bottle at the wall.
Then, echoing a big dance scene from the film, he tripped down the 30 Rock hallways, pulled some gymnastic moves (perhaps a stunt double was involved) and changed out of his gray sweats into a maroon tux. As the "Footloose" theme kicked off, Bacon shouted to a crowd of admirers, "Let's dance!"
Then the party really got started, as the group grooved all the way onto the "Tonight" set, finishing up in a rain of confetti. The video of the routine already has over 7 million hits on YouTube.
Naturally, Fallon tweeted out a link to the video and at least one celebrity agreed: Justin Timberlake, who retweeted the link and called it the "BEST THING EVER."
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