In 1980, screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein was working on the script for It’s My Turn starring Michael Douglas and Jill Clayburgh. When the producers had an erotic dancing sequence cut, this prompted Bergstein to write a new story off of that. She decided to draw on her childhood memories of participating in dance competitions and traveling to the Catskills with family. Initially pitching it to MGM, the project was in limbo when Vestron Pictures picked it up for a reduced budget. Emile Ardolino, who won an Oscar for 1983’s He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’, was chosen to direct. Kenny Ortega, who was trained by Gene Kelly, was hired to choreograph the film’s many elaborate dance scenes. For the leads, they hired Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, who previously worked together on 1984’s Red Dawn. After an exhaustive 43 day shoot, Dirty Dancing was released to theaters in 1987.
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Synopsis
In 1963, Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is spending the summer on vacation with her family at Kellerman’s. While there, she sees the owner Max (Jack Weston) talking down to the staff, saying they romance the guests’ daughters. She soon makes her way to the staff quarters and meets Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), the head dance instructor. Despite not being welcome, she decides to help when she learns that Johnny’s dance partner Penny (Cynthia Rhodes) is pregnant. Because of this, however, Penny and Johnny can’t perform at a nearby resort, so Baby volunteers to help. While Johnny is initially reluctant and frustrated trying to teach her, he starts warming up to her despite her background. Unfortunately, their blossoming romance is interrupted by Baby’s father Jake (Jerry Orbach), and Johnny being threatened by his boss. But soon, their love endures and they have the time of their lives.
Review
Admittedly, Dirty Dancing is not my kind of movie, but I can see why it captivated so many people. It has a love story we’ve seen plenty of times before involving class warfare and two opposites coming together. It’s a format that’s timeless and has been used for centuries, dating back to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Then again, much of the film was based on the real-life experiences of its writer, so it has that going. This gives the film a more personal quality given that some of the material stems from real life. Not only that, but it tackles issues that were considered taboo back in 1963 and even in 1987, namely abortion. Not many films in the 1980s covered this topic, so it’s certainly interesting seeing it tackled here. Then again, it is more a subplot to get the main plot going that’s quickly glossed over.
Of course, what makes the film work as well as it does is its stars, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. They both give very strong performances and have phenomenal chemistry with each other, even if they had problems early on. It helps that they did much of the dancing themselves and had to go through weeks of training. That’s not to say the rest of the acting is bad, but everyone else gets overshadowed by Swayze and Grey. There are a few standouts, such as Cynthia Rhodes, Jerry Orbach, Jack Weston, and a pre-Jurassic Park Wayne Knight. The late Emile Ardolino does a great job filming the dance numbers, and Kenny Ortega’s choreography is on-point. Like I said before, I don’t normally cover this genre, but I can still tell this is a good one. Overall, Dirty Dancing deserves its status as a classic and timeless romance film.
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