Jennifer Grey, ten years older than her character at the time of shooting, was then offered her first lead role. After several hesitations ( Val Kilmer and Billy Zane were notably considered for the role of Johnny, and Sarah Jessica Parker for the role of Baby), it was finally the obvious chemistry between the two actors on screen, despite their differences, that convinced the film's team to give them the lead roles. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey had already collaborated in 1984 on John Milius's Red Dawn, and became one of the most emblematic couples in the history of cinema. Memories of her youth were at the origin of the plot, which for financial reasons was moved to a resort in North Carolina, which has since remained a place of pilgrimage for fans of the film. Like the characters in the film, she would compete in mambo competitions while her parents took golf lessons. ![]() To write the backdrop for Dirty Dancing, writer and co-producer Eleanor Bergstein was inspired by her own adolescence and the summers she spent at a resort in the Catskills, near New York City. Here's what you need to know about the story of Johnny and Baby. Maybe from the title.More than thirty years after its release, Dirty Dancing still reigns supreme in the pantheon of cult films, carried by a duo of actors who have become iconic, by an Oscar-winning soundtrack and by unforgettable choreography. But the movie plays like one long, sad, compromise it places packaging ahead of ambition. ![]() It could have made the obnoxious owner's son less of a one-dimensional s.o.b. It could have found a big scene a little more original than the heroine stepping in for the injured star. This movie could have been about the subjects it pussyfoots around so coyly. The resort is proud of its connection to the film and hosts Dirty Dancing-themed weekends throughout the year that offer guests dance lessons and other Kellerman’s-inspired activities. But the filmmakers rely so heavily on cliches, on stock characters in old situations, that it's as if they never really had any confidence in their performers. In reality, the resort where the movie was filmed is called Mountain Lake Lodge and it’s located in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Swayze is a great dancer, and Grey, who is appealing, also is a great dancer. ![]() This might have been a decent movie if it had allowed itself to be about anything. I guess people who care about such things are supposed to be able to read between the lines, and the great unwashed masses of American moviegoers are condemned to think the old man doesn't like Swayze's dirty dancing. It doesn't much matter, since the movie itself never, ever uses the word "Jewish" or says out loud what obviously is the main point of the plot: the family's opposition to a Gentile boyfriend of low social status. The movie makes some kind of a half-hearted attempt to rip off " West Side Story" by making the girl Jewish and the boy Italian - or Irish, I forget. And after some doubt, Swayze becomes her dance coach.Ĭan you figure out the rest of the plot? What's your best guess? Does Grey turn out to be a great dancer? Does Swayze fall in love with her? Do they dance together in front of everybody, while her father fumes and her mother keeps a cool head, and then does Orbach finally realize his mistake and accept the kid as his daughter's boyfriend? Are there stars in the sky? Meanwhile, the sick girl cannot dance in a big show at a nearby hotel, so Grey volunteers to take her place. ![]() There is no reason for Orbach to think so, except for the requirements of the movie's Idiot Plot, which obligates everyone to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time in order to protect the idiocy of his mistake. Her father ( Jerry Orbach) assumes that Swayze was the father of the child, and so he is violently opposed to any romance between his Baby and this greasy jerk. Meanwhile, a waiter impregnates Swayze's partner, and when there's an emergency, Baby asks her father to help out. At first, he doesn't pay her much attention, but then he kinda starts to like the kid, like in millions of other movies. It's pretty clear they're in a movie.īaby falls in love with the best-looking dancer, a handsome jock named Johnny Castle ( Patrick Swayze), who dances professionally in the hotel's show. The actors playing the staff in this movie are such good dancers, and their dancing is so overchoreographed, that there's no question these are just ordinary kids who can dance pretty well. But from the dormitory out back she hears the insistent beat of rock 'n' roll, and when she sneaks a peek inside she finds the hotel staff engaged in an orgiastic dance sequence. Baby doesn't like the brat, and she finds herself bored by the old people at the hotel.
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