January’s installment of Second Friday Cinema features End of the Line, a 1987 movie directed by Arkansan Jay Russell and featuring Arkansans Mary Steenburgen and Levon Helm. The film is about two rail workers from Little Rock who hop aboard a train to Chicago in a last ditch effort to save their jobs and way of life.

Joining in the cast are Wilford Brimley, Barbara Barrie, Bob Balaban, Henderson Forsythe, Holly Hunter and Bruce McGill.  Perhaps, most importantly, Kevin Bacon is one of the stars making this a key component of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” games everywhere.

The movie was filmed in Central Arkansas.  The Culture Vulture very clearly remembers working overnight to construct balloon arches for a scene to be filmed at the Missouri Pacific rail yards the next day. The Culture Vulture later donned his 1970s era band uniform (with fake satin tunic, dark pants, dark shoes and fuzzy black cowboy hat) and stood in the August heat for several hours while a “simple” scene was shot and re-shot countless times.

Ben Fry, general manager of KLRE/KUAR and coordinator of the film minor at UALR, will introduce the film and lead a discussion after the screening.

The screening starts tonight at 5pm at the Old State House Museum, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.