During his appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Kevin Bacon revealed that he got high on marijuana with co-star Daniel Stern before filming a scene for the beloved 80s film Diner.
Diner was, now renowned and award-winning, Barry Levinson's screen-directing debut. Having also written this wonderfully melancholy film about a group of old friends who reunite at a Baltimore diner, the movie became the first of his "Baltimore films" tetralogy (followed by Tin Man (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights (1999)). Diner stars Bacon and Stern, along with Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Timothy Daly, and Ellen Barkin.
After asking the host of Late Night with Seth Meyers whether he had smoked weed, Bacon proceeded to tell the story of when he got stoned on his day off, which quickly turned into a "nightmarish" experience, as Meyers describes. Bacon sets off the story by explaining his relationship with the drug, emphasizing that he gets paranoid while high and prefers to be in a comfortable setting. His troubles began with a fateful question from Daniel Stern: "Do you wanna go to the movies and get high?" Bacon expresses his enthusiasm for this idea while clarifying that this was definitely marked as a day off for the two actors on the shooting schedule. Bacon proceeds:
"Now keep in mind, there's no cell phones right? So nobody knows where we are and we’re in Baltimore in the middle of the afternoon watching whatever movie would be the popular movie back then … and all of a sudden it’s dark and we’re watching the movie and I hear someone go, ‘Is Kevin Bacon here in the theater? Is there a Kevin Bacon in the theater?'... I was like, what is happening? And sure enough, the production, they needed me."
Since there was no way of contacting the pair, Bacon explains how people searched for them in every movie theater in Baltimore to track them down. He elaborates on Stern's hilarity as he was not called back himself. Luckily enough for the actor, the scene required minimal effort or attention. He explains, "I was fine, it turns out the scene was just me walking in the background or something like that. Plus, the adrenaline just straightened me right up."
Meyers concludes by appreciating how this somewhat jolting experience didn't affect Bacon's performance in Diner, to which Bacon jokingly replies: "Affect the work? You saw that performance!" This certainly isn't the first instance of an actor nailing a scene whilst under the influence. Other stoned performances include Kirsten Dunst in Woodstock, Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, and Seth Rogan in, well, everything! He revealed while on The Late Show with Seth Colbert that in most movies you see him in, he is, in fact, high.
Source: The Late Night