Kevin Bacon was at the Sundance Film Festival once before, in 1989 with the satirical comedy "The Big Picture." Bacon played a film school grad who found his integrity compromised as he mounted his first writing-directing project within the Hollywood system.
So there is irony in his returning to Sundance with his own directing debut, "Losing Chase," a low-budget production filmed in Canada, which was financed by the cable Showtime network. (The film will have its world premiere Tuesday in Park City at 9 p.m. in the Prospector Square Theater, with another screening Wednesday at 1 p.m. in the Egyptian Theater.)"Going back and looking at (`The Big Picture'), I kind of related to it," Bacon said. "One of the differences was that I was not in the situation of having to make (`Losing Chase') within the big studio system. It was what it was, and Showtime was pretty supportive of the film. But (`The Big Picture') was accurate."
Not that he's complaining, mind you. In fact, if "Losing Chase" is well-received, Bacon says he'd like to direct again. "I went through a whole bunch of different feelings about it. It was exhausting.
"I feel like I'm never going to stop acting, and I feel as though the response to the film will be part of my determination as to whether or not I'm cut out to do this. If everybody hates the movie, I'll crawl back into my acting shell."
That acting shell has served Bacon quite well, of course, with a range of compelling characters beginning with his film debut in 1978 in "National Lampoon's Animal House." Since then, he's received praise for his contributions to "Diner," "Footloose," JFK," "A Few Good Men," "The River Wild" and "Murder in the First," to name just a few.
And because he's not unsatisfied with acting, he has not aggressively sought directing projects. But the idea has hovered in the back of his mind for some time. "I had a few years in the '80s when I had a development deal, and I went through the whole (studio) process - and I hated it. So I kind of put the whole idea of directing on the shelf.
"People have offered me rock videos or half-hour TV shows, stuff that's ready to go. But it never interested me. I had to wait for the right piece of material, a screenplay that had a story I wanted to tell."
"Losing Chase" came along when Bacon's wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick (who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance as Julia Roberts' sister in "Something to Talk About"), found it as an acting vehicle for herself. "So, I said, `What about me directing it?'
"You have to read something and say, `I begin to see the film, I begin to see the shots, the casting, the look of the house, the feel, the lenses and all that stuff.' It just started to come to me with this particular script."
Sedgwick co-stars in "Losing Chase" as a "mother's helper," hired to assist a family while the mother (played by Helen Mirren) is recovering from a nervous breakdown. The focus is the relationship between the two women.
"Here's a piece of material that lives or dies on the basis of performance from the actors," Bacon says, "and that's really where I should probably start, because that's where I'm going to be the strongest.
"And it had to do with a relationship between two women, which was fascinating to me, as women are in general - a constant source of fascination to me. So much remains mysterious, including the kind of relationships they can have with each other, which are very different than the kinds of relationships men can have with each other. There's a certain intimacy they can achieve that men can't necessarily have in our friendships."