Dirty Dancing – the film that nearly got burnt

This is the story of a movie that nearly didn’t get shown because the sponsors pulled out and the producer ordered the team to burn the negatives. The film was meant to be shown at the movies for just one weekend and then be sold on video. However, it was a huge success, in USA and all round the world, even though the stars were completely unknown.

In 1986 the director of Dirty Dancing, Emile Ardolino had a small budget and was looking for affordable actors, He chose two unknown people for the lead roles: Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. They both had an accomplished resume, and had been in a few movies previously. Patrick Swayze also had TV and Broadway experience. The movie was to feature dancing scenes and also consist of a love story between two young people.

Patrick was chosen for the role of a dance instructor and lover. His rugged good looks plus his experience as a ballet dancer and the fact that his mother was a dance instructor gave him the capabilities to be able to convincingly portray the role.

The story line is a seemingly impossible romance set in the early sixties between a summer dance instructor from South Philadelphia and the teenage daughter of a well-to-do doctor from New York Baby is the typical silver-spoon girl that has never had to go without. She learns a lot about herself and the tougher side of life on her journey to womanhood while she is on vacation with her family at a Catskills Mountain Resort. The story details the moment of time when she crosses over from being a teenaged girl to a woman, both physically and emotionally.

During the rehearsal for Dirty Dancing Swayze took dancing lessons from John Travolta, and they are still friends even twenty years later.

Swayze loved the dancing scenes and insisted on doing his own stunts as well. While Swayze was doing the scene where he balances on a log, he repeated fell off the log and injured his knee which was already sore from the long hours of dancing during the rehearsal and shooting of the film. This exacerbated his existing knee injury that he had received during his football days at high school. He ended up in hospital so that the swelling on the knee could be drained.

His knee injury never completely healed after the filming and so for a long time he didn’t accept any roles which required intense dancing. However, he will always be famous for his dirty dancing and for the immortal phrase “Nobody puts Baby in the corner”.

The film had only 2 weeks rehearsal and was shot in only 44 days. It was designed to be a movie for teenagers on a low budget of only $5 million. The temperature on set varied from a boiling 129F degrees (49C) which caused some cast member to faint, to a low of 41F degrees (4C) which occurred during an outdoor scene where Swayze and Grey have to dive into the water.

The film is famous for its dance scenes. In fact about one third of the film is made up of dancing, and the wonderful choreography was created by Kenny Ortega (who later on became the choreographer from “High School Musical”). The most famous scene is the very last one which has been described as “the most goose-bump inducing dance scene in movie history”.

By the end of October 1986 the film was completed on time and on budget and then a rough cut was put together. However none of the executives at the film production company, Vestron, liked it and believed that it would never be successful. They continued with post-production and in May 1987 they showed it to the producer Aaron Russon who famously said “Burn the negative and collect the insurance”.

The executives at Vestron needed to recoup their money, so they decided to find a promoter and release it to the theatres for one weekend, and then copy it to video and sell to the video shops. Clearasil, the company that manufactures acne products for teenager with acne, agreed to promote the film. But later, when they found out that there was an abortion scene in the film they pulled out immediately. Vestron had no alternative but to foot the bill for promoting it themselves and it was sent to theatres to premier on 16th August 1987.

However, the audience drew more adult audiences than teenage audiences, and many people went straight back to see it a second or a third time. It got rave reviews by word of mouth, and by the third week it had broken the $10m mark. Within seven months of release it had brought in $63m, and has now earned $170m worldwide.

Swayze received a Golden Globe Award nomination for the role, and also sang one of the songs on the soundtrack, "She's Like the Wind", which he had originally co-written with Stacy Widelitz for the film “Grandview, U.S.A.” The song became a number 3 hit on the charts, and has been covered by other artists such as David Hasselhoff, and in 2006 was converted into a hip-hop version by Lumidee, who brought it to the top of the charts in Germany.

The song “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” won an Oscar for the Best Original Song. The soundtrack of the film is an all time favourite which includes this Oscar winning song, plus “She’s Like the Wind” and also “Hungry Eyes” by Eric Carmen.

In 1988 it was the number one video rental and was the first film to sell a million copies on video (and as of 2007 has earned over $300 million worldwide and spawned several alternate versions ranging from a television series to stage productions to a computer game).

So, the film that nearly didn’t get shown has become an all-time favourite amongst young and old people all round the world.

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