Footloose’s Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer first kiss details revealed

She’s ready to kick off her Sunday shoes. 

“Footloose” star Lori Singer still remembers her first meeting and famous kiss scene with Kevin Bacon — 40 years after making the 1984 hit film. 

“What happened is they had a long lens. It was probably 12 feet, if there is such a thing as a lens like that. And they were way far away from us, like a football stadium away,” Singer, 66, told The Post. 

“Kevin and I had total privacy [for the kiss]. We just lived the scene the best way that we knew how. And, with all of our emotions and feelings from everything that had happened, that genuinely was the first time we kissed.” 

Directed by Herbert Ross, “Footloose” followed Ren McCormack (Bacon), a Chicago teen who moved to a small town where the local minister (John Lithgow) put a ban on dancing. 

Singer co-starred as Ariel Moore, the minister’s rebellious daughter who was Ren’s love interest. 

“They have tremendous sound stages at Paramount. And I’d climbed way up the catwalk. I don’t know how many feet up that is, but just at that moment, Kevin walked in the big doors of the warehouse,” Singer said of her first glance at Bacon, 65. “I saw him from up there. I just watched him walk, because I did want to see him from a different perspective. I did want to be able to watch him for a moment.”

After she climbed down, she said, “We shook hands and it was just magnetic at that moment. It was like electricity. Very much like in the film when we first see each other. I think it just built from there. There was a lot of daredevil stuff. A lot of things happening and building to the kiss. That’s why it was so real, I think because the time and the true experiences built to that moment. 

“And then Rick Wade, the cinematographer, and Herb had the ability to capture the electricity onscreen, which was amazing. What you feel does not always translate – but it did in this case, because we had the masterful Herb Ross and Rick Wade…they caught it. And then you add the explosive Kenny Loggins [song], and you’ve got something magical.”

Bacon has previously said that the movie nearly didn’t cast him. “The producer of the movie wanted me, and the director wanted me, but the head of the studio at the time literally said to them, ‘I don’t want that kid. He’s not f–able,’” he recalled during a 2013 appearance on Conan O’Brien. “I was 24 at the time, and I was pretty sure I was f–able.”

Singer’s casting journey, meanwhile, was much easier.

“I was actually performing in [1982 show ‘Fame’] on stage in London, because I was in the TV show at that time. And, I got the call for the final audition for Footloose,” she recalled to The Post. 

“And so I went to Debbie Allen in the middle of the night… and she said, ‘Okay, you can go,’ because it was a big deal to release you from a contract. I flew back to Los Angeles and took the final audition in Paramount,” she went on. “It was a gigantic soundstage, an enormously long table with all these executives and people. And Herb Ross was there. I read the scenes and did the whole thing. And then he pulled me aside and was just discussing it artistically, some of the choices. I heard later that no one did it at all like I did. The audition went well. I got back on the plane to finish the tour, and I got the part. It was very dramatic.”

Singer said that Debbie Allen and her “Fame” co-stars gave her “a great sendoff.”

“They paraded me around the stage. Everyone was happy that I was going on to do a film. It was a huge family. And I was stepping into another family, now with John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest, and falling in love with Kevin,” she said. “It was awesome. And it was wild. And, I felt very rebellious at that time. And it expressed a lot of that. So, it was a good energy.”

The movie continues to find new audiences four decades later — and the theme song, Loggins’ “Footloose,” is still just as popular.

So much so, that Bacon admitted in 2013 that he used to bribe wedding DJs to not play the tune when he was in attendance.

“I…hand him $20, and say ‘Please don’t play that song,’” Bacon said on a “Conan” appearance at the time. “A wedding is really not about me. It’s about the bride and groom, and it’s embarrassing. It’s awful.”

Singer wouldn’t go that far, however.

“I’m always honored and thrilled. I’d go to the Lakers game and they play that song. I just feel my face get all red, because I was happy. But at the same time, I couldn’t believe at this basketball game they were playing ‘Footloose!’” she said.

Regarding the movie’s big finale, she said it took the cast and crew about “two days” to complete — a year after production initially wrapped.

“We were in the spirit already… We got the feeling back..It was such a profound feeling,” she noted. “It was sort of — almost like Zen getting back into yourself and stepping back a year. It was only a year later, but I’d shot a number of a couple of films, [such as] the Schlesinger film, ‘The Falcon and The Snowman’ with Sean Penn and Tim Hutton in between. And that was a very different character. So, they had to change a few things, like my hair and, Kevin’s too. They had to get that hairdo back.”

But after that final scene, she said, “I kept the boots.”