The Dirt on 'Dirty Dancing'

I love the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. And all these years later, it's just as fresh as it was back then. 

There's the great music, acting (yes, the acting is really good) and dancing, and there's none of the fake boobs, facelifts, capped and whitened teeth, pumped-up lips and nose jobs so prevalent in movies these days. Beyond all of that, my reasons for loving the movie are twofold: 

1) It reminds me so much of when I was dating my first husband in the summer of 1960. We would go in his Chevy to the Cavalier Club on old Highway 40 at the intersection of Highway 54, a few miles east of Columbia, Missouri. Black bands came there to play and most of the people dancing to their songs were black. Why we went there, I don't know. I'm sure it was his idea. We never felt uncomfortable there. In fact, we loved it there, dancing to the tunes of the day. It's certainly possible that some of the bands playing there became big, but I don't know the names of any of them. Fats Domino, Bo Diddley and others played in Columbia and we saw them there. The movie Dirty Dancing brought back so many memories of those times although I don't remember doing any real dirty dancing at the time. And no one I knew had a basement where they were dancing in such sexy ways either.

2) Watching it over and over and over in the spring and summer of 1988 helped me recover from losing some of my beloved family, who passed away within days of each other. I got involved in the Johnny and Baby characters of Dirty Dancing and let some of the grief dissipate with every look they gave each other. 

Eventually, I bought a VHS tape of the movie and played it occasionally, then I sort of forgot about it. Recently, I saw Dirty Dancing was playing on one of the cable channels so I hit Record on my DVR. I watched it the next day and remembered how I had enjoyed it those many years ago. Only now, because of commercials, the movie was shortened and key scenes were omitted. A check on Amazon and now I have a DVD to play over and over and over. Plus, I bought the Limited Keepsake Edition, which is basically a boxed set with everything from a book to deleted scenes, interviews, and much more. I love it!!

For those of you who have only seen Dirty Dancing on television, with the commercials, I strongly urge you to watch the DVD. There's so much missing from what they show on TV. For example, when Johnny is telling Baby goodbye at his car, he mentions she'll have more time to be sawed in 7 pieces. The problem is that the scene where she's sawed in half for a show at Kellerman's has been deleted on the TV version, so Johnny's comment makes no sense. Also cut in the TV version is the scene where she's dressing in the car after they've danced at the Shelldrake. That's where he first realizes he likes her, a very important scene. In my view, what's showing on TV, almost on a continual loop these days, is worthless and should be avoided.

You won't believe some of the scenes that were deleted from the movie itself. One is perhaps the dirtiest dirty dancing you can imagine, although I find it to be very artistic and insanely good acting. Johnny and Baby are in his cabin, where she asks him to dance, just like what we see in the movie itself. Only thing is the deleted scene shows them dancing as if they're having sex. I can see why it was cut because they never could have received the PG-13 rating with that scene in it, but it's one that all fans of the movie should see. There are many alternate scenes included too. One is the end, where Johnny is lip synching to the song, The Time of My Life. In that scene, which wasn't shown in the final version, he's telling her that they must fight hard to stay together. She talks about going in the Peace Corps, but that they've got to remain together. I would love for that to have been the final version that was included in the movie because I always wondered what might have happened to them afterwards.

And then there's the commentary, one from the writer/producer Eleanor Bergstein, and one from the choreographers and others. You learn so much about the settings for the movie, what the actors thought about each other, and what they did and didn't do -- one example is where Patrick Swayze brought his dog Derek to the set every day and Eleanor had to get down on the floor with Derek to keep him from whining during the love scenes (so hilarious). 

Anyway, I can't say enough about how much I believe all real fans of Dirty Dancing must have a copy of this boxed set. It's not expensive and it's really, really wonderful. 

By the way, I Googled for anything new I could find about the movie and its stars. On one site, the choreographer Kenny Ortega is quoted as saying he's getting prepared to do a remake of the movie. While I would loved to have seen a sequel a few years after the movie came out, Patrick Swayze said no back then, probably because his knees were shot. There simply are no actors or actresses who could do a respectable new version of Dirty Dancing. It's not possible and I hope they don't attempt it. Let us have Johnny and Baby as they were then, never looking any different and always dancing dirty.