Julianne Hough Brings New Feel to 'Footloose'

Rob Lowman - Los Angeles Daily News

For Julianne Hough, Seeing "footloose" -- the 1984 teen dance movie -- was practically mandatory.

"It was shot in Utah; so being from Utah if you hadn't seen the film, there was something wrong with you," says the 23-year old, who first gained nationwide attention on "Dancing With the Stars."

Now, she is playing Ariel, the rebellious daughter of a reverend in the small Southern town of Bomont, in the remake of the movie that made Kevin Bacon a star. With hits like the title song in addition to "Let's Hear It for the Boy" and "Holding Out for a Hero," the film has had remarkable staying power in the cultural ethos.

The new version, which opens Friday, is from Craig Brewer -- known for his more adult fare like "Hustle and Flow" and "Black Snake Moan."

While remaining surprisingly faithful to the original, his "Footloose" manages to update it. Calling himself a "Footloose- ologist," Brewer talks about how the film spoke to him as a teenager.

From the South, the director also grew up in big cities like Chicago and San Francisco. But when he went back home, he felt like a "little bit of a weirdo, listening to Prince on my Walkman, mousse in my hair and wearing a Michael Jackson zippered jacket." Seeing the film, Brewer says, was an emotional release. "I needed a 'Footloose' when I was 13. I know that there are a lot of people who need a 'Footloose' at that age."

The new film, however, almost didn't get made. Originally, "High School Musical" director Kenny Ortega and actor Zac Efron were going to do it, but dropped out. That wasn't the only hiccup. Even Brewer turned it down twice. Before he decided to remake "Footloose," though, he wanted to remind the studio about the story lines in the original. "So you're kind of cool with having kids smoking pot, drinking, having underage sex, boyfriends beating up on girlfriends?" he asked, "and they're like 'What?"'

To integrate the old and the new, he started with the source -- the original screenplay by Dean Pitchford. Brewer added to it by using index cards on corkboards. In this case, white ones for his new material and "true" blue ones for scenes that were from the original. Pitchford receives co-credit, although he never read the script until it was completed. Oddly enough, the director says, it was language from the original film, which is rated PG, that got him an R rating when he first submitted the film to the MPAA, and he had to change it to get a PG-13 rating.

Obviously, other adjustments had to be made. Those were the days of boom boxes -- no iPods or cellphones. While the original was filmed outside Salt Lake City, standing in for anywhere in the Midwest, Brewer moved the action to Georgia.

The film is based on the idea that a car crash that killed a group of local teens brought about a ban on dancing in Bomont. The accident was only referred to in the original; it's now part of the film, giving more immediacy to the emotional impact.

And Brewer thought it would be a "bit arrogant" to think that a 13-year-old today should only see Kevin Bacon in the role of Ren, a big-city kid with a portable cassette player, a punk haircut, a white tank top and dancing feet.

In fact, Brewer turned to a world-class dancer, Kenny Wormald from MTV's "Dancelife," to play Ren. That meant Wormald could do the famed "angry dance" number -- where Ren takes out his frustrations around an old mill -- himself. (While Bacon had some moves, he wasn't a dancer and notes on the DVD that it took "many guys dressed up like me" to create that scene for the original film.)

"Kenny is that surprised because like me everybody's thinking, how can you replace Kevin Bacon," says Brewer.

Both Hough -- who had been attached to the project through many of the changes -- and Wormald had to dumb down their dancing for the film.

"Everybody today is exposed to so much good dancing, you couldn't be bad," says Wormald, 27. "You had to find the right balance."

Hough says it was hard for her not to dance all-out. "That's in my nature, but I tried to think like a 17-year old who had never taken a dance class and just wants to dance," she says.

"Luckily Ariel uses her sexuality to get what she wants. Being sexy is what I think young girls see on TV and mimic. Regardless of being an actual dancer, I was just moving my hips."

Hough and Wormald will show off their dancing talents when they make a guest appearance on "Dancing With the Stars" on Tuesday (9 p.m. on ABC), performing their "Footloose" number.

"Footloose" gave Hough a chance to step it up dramatically. Before that, her only movie role was in "Burlesque," playing a dancer, naturally.

The actress says she feels fortunate to have Brewer at the helm, whom she calls an actor's director. "I just felt that Ariel is a little bit more likable in this version -- not because of the character choices but because of the depth to the script."

One scene in the film required her character to get beaten up. Hough says that was difficult because "I'm such a tough girl ... I wanted to fight back." Another scene was an emotional confrontation with her father, played by Dennis Quaid.

"There was something about that scene that was very real for me. I've had those conversations before where you just want to explode, where you have so much bottled up in you and you're trying to say something but nobody's listening," Hough says. "It was like free therapy."

Hough began dancing at a young age. Her mom signed her up for different classes and singing and dancing stuck, she says. When her parents divorced when she was 10, she and her brother, Derek, had this "crazy opportunity" to go to London to train as dancers. (Coincidentally, Derek Hough played Ren in the London stage version of "Footloose.")

She stayed in England until the middle of her sophomore year, when she returned to Utah and completed high school. Right after that she headed for Los Angeles and within a year she was on "Dancing With the Stars," where she won twice -- with gold medal-winning speed skater Apolo Ohno and Indianapolis 500 champion Helio Castroneves as her partners. She credits the show with giving her a platform to "explore my creativeness."

Recently Hough, who has been seen lately with Ryan Seacrest, finished shooting the jukebox musical "Rock of Ages" with Tom Cruise and Catherine Zeta-Jones. She plays Sherrie Christian, a Midwestern girl trying to make it in the rock scene of the 1980s. "It's pretty crazy," she says. "I got that Farrah Fawcett hair from the '80s."

Next up, Hough will work with Oscar-winning writer Diablo Cody ("Juno") in Cody's untitled directorial debut. There's no dancing. Hough describes it as a dramedy about a Christian girl who, after a plane crash, loses her faith in the church and goes to Las Vegas. "It's basically a story of separation and finding out who you are," she says.

But she has a few months before it starts filming. Hough, who has released one album as a singer and has another ready, would like to take guitar lessons ("I write melodies, but I don't play an instrument") and even take dance lessons ("I miss that feeling of learning and growing").

In the meantime, she hears people asking why "Footloose" was remade.

"We're really proud of it," Hough says. "We didn't mess it up. I can only imagine if we had."

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