Kevin Bacon Interview: You Should Have Left

In the new film You Should Have Left, Kevin Bacon plays Theo Conroy, a father who fights desperately to save his family from a beautiful vacation home that refuses to let them leave. Co-starring Amanda Seyfried as his wife Susanna and Avery Essex as his daughter Ella. Based on the book of the same name by Daniel Kehlmann, You Should Have Left is Bacon’s second collaboration with writer/director David Koepp (Bacon is also a producer on the film) after the two worked together on the 1999 Cult Classic Stir of Echoes. Screen Rant got to talk to Kevin Bacon about working with David Koepp again, his feelings on going back to scary films and we go a bit on the sadly now canceled Tremors project he was working on.

Hello Kevin! How are you? I just wanted to say that I am a huge fan of you and David Koepp's first collaboration, Stir of Echoes, so I was very excited to see you two reunite for this film. What was it about working with David on that first film that made you want to make sure you worked with him again?

Kevin Bacon: Well for one thing we made a great movie! (Laughs) I like him personally. We’ve been actual friends, not like “Hollywood” Friends, but actual friends for twenty years after we made that movie together. We didn’t know each other before having made the movie. I don’t know that either one of us would be too excited about working together again except for the fact that we both love the movie and we loved the process. So I’ve been asking him, trying to talk him into doing something else with me for over twenty years. It just took him a very long time to wear him down.

And this won’t be your last time working with him as I just saw the announcement of Audible project Yard Work...

Kevin Bacon Yeah! Yard Work is a book, a short story I guess I would say...a novella that David wrote that I read for Audible and it’s great! It’s scary, it’s also got a sort of funny tone to it and I love it. It was really fun to read.

Now, I read that you and Koepp were kicking around film ideas that ended up being very close to the ideas that were in Daniel Kehlmann’s book (You Should Have Left). How much of you and David's ideas ended up in this adaptation?

Kevin Bacon: I would say that...what happened was...we were kicking the ideas around...and it was getting pretty close to the point when he would go off and write the script...I think he was already into the outline stage. Then I happened to read the New York Times review for Daniels book, and read it...and was stunned with how many similarities...there’s a lot of differences between the book, the script, and the movie. But there were enough similarities that I thought it might be good for us to explore getting the option on the book and that was what happen. And it’s a fantastic book...but there are quite a few differences.

I got one more question with you man and I have to ask it before I leave. This is not your first scary film, obviously going back to Friday the 13th...but I’m a big fan of one particular film. Can you give me any hope about your future with Tremors?

Kevin Bacon: Listen...it was a huge disappointment for me. I’m not gonna lie...we made what I thought was a really cool, smart, fun pilot. (Kevin Bacon was a producer on a new Tremors pilot that was directed by Vincenzo Natali that SyFy passed on.) I wish I had a good reason for why it didn’t go forward as a series. But I don’t...but it was cool.

Well, you did amazing work in this film, I wanted to tell you that for sure.