Everything about Dirty Dancing totally explained
Dirty Dancing is a
1987 romance film credited as being one of the most watched films of all time.
In the film's climactic scene, Johnny, even though he's been fired, returns to the resort to perform the final dance of the season with Baby. He utters the film's most famous line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," as he pulls her up from her parents' table. Dr. Houseman learns that the true culprit in Penny's pregnancy was Robbie, not Johnny, and he apologizes (Robbie having accidentally confessed to his deed earlier in the scene, while talking to Dr. Houseman). The film ends with a major dance sequence, as Baby overcomes her fears to allow Johnny to lift her high into the air, and the room is transformed into a nightclub where everyone, staff and patrons, dances together.
Plot analysis
Dirty Dancing has been described as a coming-of-age tale showing the passage from adolescence to adulthood, in a classic
hero's journey format similar to
Homer's
Odyssey. The hero, Baby, is an innocent who receives a call to adventure from a gatekeeper – one of the camp staff asking her in to the party – who invites her to cross a bridge (symbolically significant as it links different realms) and Baby passes into an unfamiliar world (the resort's staff and their dancing rituals). Baby then proceeds through tests and trials (dancing lessons, Penny's abortion, the performance at the Sheldrake, standing up for Johnny) to achieve personal growth, "knowledge acquired through personal experience". She is rewarded for her achievements, by sexual union with Johnny. At the end of the film she undergoes the supreme ordeal (the climactic lift), which she conquers, and is rewarded by being raised, both literally into the air and figuratively into divinity, demonstrating that the hero has achieved a new higher state of being, and has been permanently changed by the journey.
For choreographer, Bergstein chose
Kenny Ortega, who had been trained by the legendary dancer
Gene Kelly. For a location for the film, they didn't find anything suitable in the Catskills, so they decided on a combination of two locations:
Lake Lure in
North Carolina, and
Mountain Lake Resort near
Roanoke, Virginia, with careful editing making it look like all of the shooting was done in the same area.
Director Ardolino was adamant that they choose dancers who could also act, as he didn't want to use the "stand-in" method that had been used with the 1983
Flashdance. For the female lead of Frances "Baby" Houseman, Bergstein chose the 26-year-old
Jennifer Grey, daughter of the Oscar-winning actor and dancer
Joel Grey of the 1972 film
Cabaret. They then sought a male lead, initially considering 20-year-old
Billy Zane, who had the visual look desired (originally the Johnny character was to be
Italian and have a dark exotic look) but initial dancing tests when he was partnered with Grey didn't meet expectations. The next choice was 34-year-old
Patrick Swayze, who had been noticed for his roles in
The Outsiders and
Red Dawn, in which he'd co-starred with Grey. Swayze was a seasoned dancer, with experience from the
Joffrey Ballet. The producers liked him, but Swayze's agent was against the idea. However, Swayze read the script, liked the multi-leveled character of Johnny, and took the part anyway and Johnny was changed from being Italian to Irish. Grey wasn't happy about the choice, as she and Swayze had had difficulty getting along on
Red Dawn. However, the two of them met, worked things out, and when they did their dancing screen test, the chemistry between them was obvious. Bergstein described it as "breathtaking".
Other casting choices were
Broadway actor
Jerry Orbach as Dr. Jake Houseman, Baby's father; and
Jane Brucker as Lisa Houseman, Baby's older sister. Bergstein also attempted to cast her friend, sex therapist Dr.
Ruth Westheimer to play Mrs. Schumacher, and Joel Grey as her husband. However, Westheimer backed out when she learned the role involved being a
kleptomaniac. The role went instead to 79-year-old Paula Trueman, and Joel Grey wasn't cast. Another role went to Bergstein's friend, New York radio personality
"Cousin Brucie". Bergstein initially wanted him to play the part of the social director, but then later asked him to play the part of the magician. The part of the social director went to the then unknown
Wayne Knight (of later
Seinfeld and
3rd Rock from the Sun fame). The part of Baby's mother was originally given to Lynn Lipton, but she became ill during the first week of shooting and was replaced by actress
Kelly Bishop, who had already been cast to play Vivian Pressman, the highly sexed resort guest. Bishop moved into the role as Mrs. Houseman, and the film's assistant choreographer
Miranda Garrison took on the role of Vivian.
Filming
The tight schedule allowed only two weeks for rehearsal, and 44 days for filming as it was already the tail end of summer. The cast stayed in the same hotel at Mountain Lake Resort in
Pembroke, Virginia, and rehearsals quickly turned into disco parties involving nearly every cast member, even non-dancers such as
Jack Weston. The dancing and drinking went on almost non-stop and, immersed in the environment, the lead actors, Grey and Swayze, began identifying with their characters. Bergstein built upon this, encouraging the actors to improvise in their scenes. She also built the sexual tension by saying that no matter how intimate or "grinding" the dance steps, that none of the dancers were to have any other kind of physical contact with each other for the next six months. Other reviews were more mixed:
Gene Siskel gave the film a "marginal Thumbs Up" as he liked Jennifer Grey's acting and development of her character, while
Roger Ebert gave it "Thumbs Down" due to its "
idiot plot", calling it a "tired and relentlessly predictable story of love between kids from different backgrounds."
TIME magazine was lukewarm, saying, "If the ending of Eleanor Bergstein's script is too neat and inspirational, the rough energy of the film's song and dance does carry one along, past the whispered doubts of better judgment."
Regardless of reviews, the film drew adult audiences instead of the expected teens, with viewers rating the film highly as "would watch this again."
The film's popularity continued to grow after its initial release. It was the number 1 video rental of 1988, and became the first film to sell a million copies on video. When the film was re-released in 1997, ten years after its original release, Swayze received his own star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, As of 2005, it was selling a million DVDs per year,
A May 2007 survey by
Sky Movies listed
Dirty Dancing as number 1 on "Women's most-watched films", above the
Star Wars trilogy,
Grease,
The Sound of Music, and
Pretty Woman. The film's popularity has also caused it to be called "the
Star Wars for girls." An April 2008 article in the
Daily Mail listed
Dirty Dancing as number 1 on a list of "most romantic movie quotes ever", for Baby's line "I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you." The film's music has also had considerable impact. The closing song, "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" has been listed as the "third most popular song played at funerals" in the UK.
Three installments of the American Film Institute's AFI 100 Years... series:
Music
Rehearsals for the dancing, and some of the filming, used music from Bergstein's personal collection of 45s. When it came time to select actual music for the film, Vestron chose Jimmy Ienner as music supervisor. Ienner, who had previously produced albums and songs for John Lennon and Three Dog Night, opted to stick with much of the music that had already been used during filming, and obtained licenses for the songs from Bergstein's collection. He also enlisted Swayze to sing the new song "She's Like the Wind." Swayze had written the song a few years earlier with Stacy Widelitz, originally intending for it to be used in the 1984 film Grandview, U.S.A.. Kenny Ortega and his assistant Miranda Garrison chose the song for the finale by going through an entire box of tapes listening to each one. According to Ortega, literally the last tape that they listened to had "The Time of My Life", which they saw as the obvious choice.
The film's soundtrack started an oldies music revival, and demand for the album caught RCA by surprise. According to Previte, before a single had even been released, there were a million albums on back-order.
Songs from the album which appeared on the charts included:
"She's Like the Wind", performed by lead actor Patrick Swayze, composed by Swayze and Stacy Widelitz
"Hungry Eyes", performed by Eric Carmen, composed by Franke Previte and John deNicola
Legacy
The movie was adapted for the stage in 2004 as a musical, Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage. Produced by Jacobsen Entertainment for $6.5 million, it was written by Eleanor Bergstein and had the same songs as the film, plus a few extra scenes. Musical direction was by Chong Lim (composer for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney), and the initial production starred Kym Valentine as Baby, and Sydney Dance Company's Josef Brown as Johnny. Although reviews were mixed, followed by Boston, Los Angeles and possibly San Francisco before moving to Broadway.
Other versions
Dirty Dancing has appeared in other forms than the stage version. In 1988, a music tour named Dirty Dancing: Live in Concert featuring Bill Medley and Eric Carmen,
For the 20th anniversary in 2007, the film was re-released in theatres with additional footage, while the original film version was re-released on DVD with deleted scenes and writer commentary. At the same time, Codemasters released Dirty Dancing: the Video Game.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dirty Dancing'.
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