Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, and their children Sosie Bacon and Travis Bacon may have made a “family movie,” but “it’s not a reality show.”
“What was cool from the first time I read the book was that it wasn’t us. We didn’t want to play ourselves. There’s enough of a dynamic between us and our family, but we’re not making a documentary about our lives,” says Kevin Bacon.
This may be for the best, as Karlovy Vary’s “Family Movie” follows the Smiths, a loving family who make a much-derided low-budget horror film. They were in the middle of shooting another murder when the actual murder occurred.
“We were very interested in a family making a horror movie together. After the pandemic ended and the strike ended, we met with some screenwriters and gave them the proposal,” says Sedgwick.
They saw value in working together, despite the ongoing “Nepobaby” debate.
“Kevin is a really good actor. It never ceases to amaze me,” Sedgwick explains, jokingly. “We didn’t encourage our kids to be artists. We never said no, and we were happy to give them music lessons and be in school plays and things like that. But we also knew that being an artist and a creative person meant a lot of rejection. No one wants that for their kids.”
“They never watched our movies growing up and only went on sets when they were very young. That being said, back in the day, if your dad was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith too. We’re creative people, but if one of them was a doctor and the other was a lawyer or a plumber, we’d still love them just as much.”
It was screenwriter Dan Bierce who suggested making the slasher, recalls Kevin Bacon, who also directed the film.
“There were zombies, alien invasions, and ghosts, but his pitch was the funniest. Maybe we’re really weird. We’re really twisted.”
Sedgwick agrees: “We’re definitely twisted people, but seeing someone get stabbed creates a kind of catharsis, and that catharsis can quickly turn into laughter.”
After all, Travis Bacon’s favorite movie of all time is “Halloween.”
“I don’t really like ‘Friday the 13th’…except for the first one,” he laughs. Kevin Bacon is famous for playing in the 1980s Classic.
“The beauty of slasher movies is that they feel so real, right? You might actually have a masked person break into your house and come after you with a knife. That’s very scary. And the violence can be hysterical. I was watching Terrifire 2 recently and I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically at the completely ridiculous nature of what was going on.”
The film, sold by the Gersh Agency, is full of inside jokes.
“We have a dog called Valentine, which is the character Kevin played in Tremors, and Phil the goat is named after Black Phillip from[Robert Eggers’ folk horror]The Witches,” Sedgwick says. Horror fans will definitely appreciate this one. And they still buy movie tickets.
“I think horror fans are generally just movie fans, and movie fans like to see movies the way they’re supposed to be seen: in a theater,” says Travis Bacon.
“There’s a kind of communal experience when people get scared together, and you’d think that would translate to comedy, but that’s not the case right now. We horror fans will be there on opening night to get the special popcorn bucket.”
“Experiencing fear in community is the best experience,” agrees the father.
“When the big scare happens and everyone screams, the next thing they do is laugh. You can only get that in the theater. Hopefully everyone’s ready tonight – and drunk.”
