Bacon might have been new to acting when he scored his first role in “Animal House,” but the director wasn’t going to take it easy on him just because he was green. Chip was an Omega, he was one of the bad guys, and Landis wasn’t going to show him any mercy — especially during his hazing scene. “They showed me the paddle Metcalf was going to use on me, and it was made of balsa wood,” Bacon recounted. “I was like, ‘No problem.’ But Landis had him hit me over and over. In the script, my character said ‘Thank you, sir, may I have another?’ maybe three times. Landis kept yelling, ‘Again! Again! Again!’ and it definitely started to sting.”
Being ruthlessly spanked with a paddle has got to hurt, but the thing that stung Bacon the most was feeling alienated on and off the set. “I was in the a****** group, along with Neidermeyer and all the bad guys,” he explained on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “But the good guys, he wanted them all to be separate from us and have this, like, really cohesive unit […] and it sort of took hold in our private life.”
The young actor’s castmates would throw nightly parties just a few short feet from his bed. “We’re all staying at the same motel, but these guys would have parties with music, and Bruce McGill,” he recalled. “And they were all super cool, and their parties were great, and there were girls around, and I was never invited. I was never part of that thing.”