Footloose seems so far-fetched, but this is based on a true story. The town of Elmore City, Okla., made dancing illegal until the town’s high schoolers asked for the ban to be lifted for their prom. Ren McCormick is based on Rex Kennedy, who was the junior class president. The town had a moratorium on public dancing since it was founded in 1861.

Many elements of the true story are worked into the film: the idea of allowing dancing for one night was hotly debated, with elders in the community believing it would lead to a surge in pregnancies. However, the city council ruled in favor (3-2) of the kids. And then, the next problem: how to dance. With none of the kids knowing how to dance, they practiced among each other and with mirrors at home. Like Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Willard (Chris Penn), some of the girls were frustrated by their boyfriends who really didn’t dance (one teen described her boyfriend as just kicking). After raising $2,000, the students went all out decorating their high school cafeteria (not the local mill, sorry). Sure enough, once the prom began, there just was a lot of standing around at first. Eventually, dancing did happen including the limbo contest...as depicted in the film.

 In real life, actor Chris Penn truly didn’t know how to dance just like his character, Willard.

A dancing ban was a real thing in some conservative American towns in the early 1970s. In fact, Baylor University in Waco, Texas, had a dancing ban on campus that extended into the 1990s. The film depicts book burnings and albums and, that, too, had a basis in reality. It wasn’t rampant,  but did happen. On a national front, then-Senator Al Gore’s wife, Tipper Gore, led the charge to get warning labels or ratings on albums as the music lyrics were becoming dirtier in the 1980s (think Prince and Madonna). While all Gore was trying to do was get the record labels to voluntarily advise if lyrics were violent or sexually explicit (which exists today), the musical community saw the move as censorship and created an uproar.

Kevin Bacon had the full big-city-kid-moves-to-small-town experience. The 25-year-old didn't believe he could pass for 17, so he enrolled at the high school in Payson, Utah (the town where the movie was filmed). Only the principal and a guidance counselor knew the truth. Bacon wore the edgy "new wave" clothes for his character. He says the experience was "terrifying." He says his experience was "just like the movie." He was ridiculed, girls whispered about him, and one young man "took pity on him" and said he'd show him around just like Willard does. 

When Ren is teaching Willard to slow dance, they are actually dancing to "Somebody's Eyes" by Karla Bonoff. After feeling the music wasn't a fit for the scene, Pitchford and Tom Snow wrote "Let's Hear it for the Boy."

If you notice the extras standing around the prom (not dancing) are no longer seen once the dance picks up and everyone hits the floor, that's because the final scene was shot later, in Los Angeles, with different extras.

Paramount was all over Dean Pitchford to secure the title song from Kenny Loggins, who'd agreed to write and perform the song. Pitchford saw his last chance when Loggins was going to perform in Lake Tahoe before departing for the Asian leg of his tour. Pitchford had strep throat and a high temperature but didn't want to let on he was sick. Loggins was recovering from a broken rib and had his entire family in tow - his wife and three children including a newborn. Despite the distractions, the two got the song completed!

Kevin Bacon left a note at John Lithgow's hotel before they met, saying it was an honor to work with him.

Lithgow recounted to Bacon in Variety's Actors on Actors series that he and Dianne Weist felt so much like old "fuddy-duddies" compared to the rest of the cast, they rebelled in a sense and were "wild," throwing parties. One night, he and Weist went skinny-dipping in the motel pool. “There was a memo sent out to every member of the production the next morning from Dan Melnick that said, ‘Behave yourselves,'” Lithgow recalled, laughing. “It was directed to Dianne and me.”

Bacon says the most challenging part of his career was the time following Footloose. He says adjusting to the fame took some time. "I became exactly the person -- the actor -- that I didn't want to be because I wanted to be a serious actor," he says. "I wanted to be Meryl Streep or Bill Hurt or Raoul Julia. I didn't want to be Bobby Sherman or David Cassidy...and suddenly, I was."

Bacon says he made poor film choices and faced depression after Footloose, lost between what happened to him after becoming a teen icon and striving to become the actor he wanted to become. He says once he started taking the advice of agents and managers and embraced being a character actor, his career resurged.