Kevin Bacon Recalls Shocking Off-Camera Moment During Filming for ‘Wild Things’
Kevin Bacon opened up about an unexpected twist that took place when he was filming the movie Wild Things in the late 1990s.
In a video interview with Variety, the actor recalled that the crew came upon a dead body in a river while on a late-night shoot in the murky Florida Everglades. “We were out in the swamp one night — a lot of mosquitoes, wow — and we were shooting some scene, I don’t remember what it was, by kind of a river," Bacon said. "They had floated a raft out there so that they could put [up] a light. All of a sudden, I hear across the walkie-talkie: ‘Hey, uh, I think I just saw a floater.’ And it was a body that was floating by.”
The actor noted that the eerie, real-life scene was “kind of indicative of the vibe” of the 1998 erotic thriller.
Bacon played Sergeant Ray Duquette in the cult classic film, which also starred Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, and Denise Richards. The film was popular enough to spawn three direct-to-video sequels with other stars.
Original Wild Things star Campbell previously confirmed that production on one of her scenes with Daphne Rubin-Vega was halted after police were called due to the discovery of the dead body. In the book Neve Campbell: An Unauthorized Biography, Campbell recalled that a member of the lighting crew made the grim discovery.
“All of a sudden, one of the crew says ‘cut’—it was one of the lighting guys—and they said there was a dead body in the water,” the actress said. “And so, the cops came by and were like ‘You makin’ a movie?’ And we were like ‘Yeah.’ So they actually—typical Hollywood—held the body next to the dock so it wouldn’t float through the shot, so we could finish the scene.”
Wild Things was known for its twisty script, but the dead body wasn’t the only thing that didn’t make it into the final cut. Bacon told Esquire’s "For the Record" that a “great twist” between his character and Dillon’s character, high school guidance counselor Sam Lombardo, was cut from the script.
“In the original script, we start making out,” Bacon recalled of a famous shower scene in the movie. “Part of what was crazy about the movie was that there were all these twists … you know, that was like the hook of the movie, so to me, [the kiss] was a great twist. …But I don't know. For some reason, it got cut. We didn’t shoot it.”
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