At some point in every Mount Holyoke student’s career, they will see the classic 80s movie, Dirty Dancing. The movie follows Francis “Baby” Houseman as she travels to the Catskills with her family. While there, she meets Johnny Castle, one of the hotel’s dance teachers who teaches her how to dance but also teaches her about love and class differences. Recently, I watched the Netflix docuseries “The Movies That Made Us” and learned some interesting facts about this amazing film. In this article, I will be talking about some fun facts about the movie Dirty Dancing.
1. Some parts of the storyline are taken from the life of the movie’s writer Eleanor Bergstein.
Like the main character, Bergstein was called Baby, her father was a doctor, she would take trips up to the Catskills with her family during the summer, and she would dirty dance.
2. Because of their low budget and only 14 days to shoot, the movie is filmed in two locations.
All the scenes with the main lodge and baby’s cabin are filmed at the Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia and all the scenes with staff quarters and dancing pavilions are filmed at a boys camp in North Carolina. All shot in early September. They used the same light posts to make it seem like it wasn’t in two different states. Bonus fun fact: Mountain Lake Lodge has Dirty Dancing memorabilia and placards to commemorate the shooting of the film.
3. Jennifer Grey (Baby) and Patrick Swayze (Johnny) had a rocky relationship.
They had done another movie together before Dirty Dancing and didn’t have a great working relationship. At one point, Grey wasn’t going to do the movie but Swayze had a long conversation with her and they resolved their differences.
4. The scene where Baby is laughing as Johnny is trying to touch her was totally unscripted.
While they were filming, Jennifer had low blood pressure and was losing focus. So the director Emile Ardolino just rolled the camera to show that Grey and Swayze’s anger and frustration could look like passion and chemistry.
5. While filming, they danced to the sound of a metronome.
With the low budget they had, music was really expensive. Bergstein wanted all the songs she wanted like “Do you Love Me” by the Contours and “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The person who was in charge of getting the music was taking so long that when they were choreographing the dances, they had to work with the sound of metronome.
6. In the final dance number, Patrick Swayze had to jump off the stage 14 times to get the landing right.
Prior to the movie, Swayze had busted his knee playing football and thought he would never dance again. In the final dance number, Swayze had to jump off the stage multiple times to get the perfect move even though the staff could tell he was in pain.
Without moments like these, Dirty Dancing wouldn’t be the iconic sensation that it is today.
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