Payson • Hundreds of students and volunteers gathered on the football field at Payson High School on Saturday, packing bags with the movie star they spent the entire school year campaigning to come visit.
The movie star, Kevin Bacon, told the students that he came to Payson — the school where he filmed the movie “Footloose” 40 years ago — because of them.
“When I first heard about #BacontoPayson, I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy,’” Bacon told the students from a stage set up on the field. “But you were all just tireless, unrelenting in your desire to have me return, and you talked me into it.”
What convinced him, he said, was that the Payson students turned the occasion — to celebrate the movie’s anniversary, ahead of the school building’s imminent demolition — into something bigger.
Bacon’s visit is part of the community kit-building program, BKxKB, with his charity, SixDegrees.org. The nonprofit, created in 2007, “supports impactful initiatives to sustain and enrich local communities,” according to its website. SixDegrees has a goal of creating and distributing 40,000 resource kits nationwide this year, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of “Footloose.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kevin Bacon records a video with the crowd, playing into the "six degrees from Kevin Bacon" game, following a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
The students worked a long assembly line of tables across the field, filling the kits. They worked fast, and soon a pile of colorful bags began to gather at the ends of the tables.
Bacon said the resource kits — which will go to four Utah nonprofits: Encircle, Spy Hop, Food & Care Coalition and Centro de la Familia de Utah — and the students’ work reflect the ideas that “Footloose” represents.
“It amazing the power that this movie has had, to just kind of bring people together and connect on the basic ideas that are behind [it] … standing up to authority sometimes, and to be forgiving of people who are not exactly the same as you, and for standing up for your own freedoms,” the actor said.
Before leaving Payson High, Bacon toured the school building. He returned to the football field and took the stage again, thanking the school and the volunteers.
Bacon talked about the “six degrees from Kevin Bacon” game, and how he believes it only counts if someone is in a film with him. He then took out his phone, recorded himself with the crowd, and declared that they are all now “one degree from Kevin Bacon.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kevin Bacon speaks at a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
Saturday’s visit was the culmination of a yearlong campaign by students to convince Bacon to come to Payson High’s prom — the last one to be held in the building where scenes from “Footloose” were filmed, before it is torn down this summer to make way for a new school building.
Bacon will not be attending the actual prom, set for Saturday night. But the students showed excitement when Bacon arrived to speak and to help with the kit-building.
When Bacon took the stage, where a director’s chair stood with “Mr. Bacon” printed on it, the movie’s famous title song by Kenny Loggins played over the loudspeaker.
Some students lined up in front of the stage were in tears. Sophie Savage, who was involved in the campaign, said she was one of them. She and fellow student Ryland Baker, who was also involved in the campaign, said it felt “surreal” to be there Saturday.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kevin Bacon speaks at a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
Julie Gowans, Payson High’s psychology teacher, was there volunteering with SixDegrees with her children, Ethan and Alyssa. Julie and Ethan described it as a “big reunion.”
Julie Gowans, whose family was raised in Payson, complimented the students, particularly those on the school’s student council, for mounting the campaign. “The student council kids have learned it’s OK to take a long shot,” she said.
Jenny Staheli, the student council advisor who worked with the kids on the campaign, said they expected to get attention from the local community — but didn’t expect it to become big enough to attract national media. (NBC’s “Today,” which broadcast Bacon’s acceptance of the students’ invitation, was at the school Saturday.)
”That is the lesson from this campaign: It’s something the students can point to and say, ‘Look what Payson did,’” Staheli said. “They did something that everybody thought was impossible, and they accomplished it because they worked really hard.”
Stacy Huston, executive director of SixDegrees, said before Saturday’s event that it was the largest activation of kits the nonprofit has done in its 17 years of existence. She also said they have more than 1,000 volunteers involved, some of who flew in from out of town to be here.
SixDegrees announced after the event that the volunteers worked a combined 3,000 hours to assemble some 5,000 resource kits, filled with 121,900 items worth an estimated $865,000. Each of the four Utah nonprofits will receive 1,250 kits.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Payson senior Ryland Baker, left, and Payson junior Sophie Savage laugh during an interview before a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
Huston said seeing the teens’ excitement, through video a member of the SixDegrees team captured the day of the Bacon’s announcement that he would return, was moving. “A lot of people are feeling some type of connection to that, and in a way that we didn’t actually foresee,” she said.
“It seems silly, but it wasn’t really about Kevin, it wasn’t about celebrity, it was more so about these kids dreaming for something that they felt was out of touch, and so in trying to come up with this campaign, it really is almost like civic engagement.”
Huston said Bacon comes to kit packings every so often, but this is the first time he has traveled and pulled away from other obligations to be at one.
“When we came to Utah, we said, ‘OK, we want to find these organizations that align with our mission [those that] are really making impact for young people. They care about justice and equity, supporting people in transition, those sorts of things.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Payson High School students react as Kevin Bacon walks onto the field at a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
Each of the four chosen organizations, she said, all said their constituents have the same basic need: hygiene products. The kits will also include three months of counseling services through the therapy platform BetterHelp — a gift worth nearly half a million dollars, Huston said.
The kits also include journals and writing implements. With Centro de la Familia, Huston said, the organization works with children in the Head Start program (usually 5 and younger), and they partnered with the Hachette Book Group to provide early learning books that are indestructible.
Other brands that donated to the kits are Bombas and NuSkin, the foundation said. The event also received financial support from the Larry H. and Gail Miller Foundation, the Utah Film Commission, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Forvis, Lehi Roller Mills (which famously was a location used in “Footloose”), Adobe and individual donors.
Being invited to the call with Six Degrees was “fun and special” for Centro de la Familia, said Teri Peters, who is in charge of the organization’s community programs. The nonprofit Centro de la Familia has been in operation since 1975, and, according to its website, “advocates for children’s educational success.” In Utah, Peters said, 18% of the their enrolled children have special needs.
“Here we are. This agency in Utah is so far removed from Kevin Bacon, and his organization,” Peters said, adding that “a lot of credit goes to the student body at Payson High School.”
A small portion of the kits will go beyond the state, to support organizations in rural communities in Colorado and Nevada, she said.
“The bigger story here is that when you have companies, nonprofits, everyday citizens, stakeholders coming together, we can accomplish a lot of really, really cool stuff, and we can do a lot of good,” Huston said.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Volunteers pack resource kits for Kevin Bacon's nonprofit SixDegrees at a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
Jordan Sgro, CEO of Encircle, said, “it’s obviously a huge deal to have someone like Kevin Bacon and his charity validate the work you’re doing, [but] more importantly it tells the LGBTQ youth that we’re serving that they matter, are seen and they’re important.”
Kasandra VerBrugghen, executive director of Spy Hop, said the nonprofit creative youth development organization was “honored” that SixDegrees.org selected them to work with.
“While we have a Media Arts Center in downtown Salt Lake City, we work across the state, and we work in partnership with so many different other youth service organizations,” VerBrugghen said.
Brent Crane, executive director of the Food & Care Coalition, a homeless resource center that serves all of Utah County, said his group serves around 2,500 clients a year. Like “Footloose,” the coalition is marking a 40th anniversary, of when the group became a nonprofit.
“What really sticks out to me — and I think is kind of parallel to what the SixDegrees Foundation — is doing is it’s really about that spirit of connection,” Crane said. “The bottom line of all of this is humanity, and it’s coming together across religious, cultural, social, economic divisions that separate us within our own communities.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A director's chair for Kevin Bacon sits on stage at a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Keivn Bacon sits in a director's chair for him on stage at a charity event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie "Footloose" on the football field of Payson High School in Payson on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
