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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

The Song "Hula Hana" by Jane Brucker

Lisa Houseman singing "Hula Hana" in Dirty Dancing.


The YouTube page of Jonathan Huffman provides a video showing all the lyrics.


The actress Jane Brucker, who played Lisa Houseman, co-wrote the song with the movie's choreographer Kenny Ortega but she did not receive official credit until the year 2002. A People magazine article written in 2002 by Susan Horsburgh contains the following passages:
.... The daughter of classical pianist and composer Howard and painter Claire, Brucker and her brother Paul ... began acting in community center plays near her Falls Church, Virginia, home when she was just eight. “Acting was the only thing I was ever encouraged to do,” she says.

She studied theater at the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1976 but dropped out after a year when her dad became ill. She headed to New York City and found stage work with the First Amendment, an improv group featuring Bruce Willis. ...

[In 1986], Brucker won her first major film role, in Dirty Dancing, after improvising as a spoiled teenager in the audition. While Grey and Swayze spent much of the shoot rehearsing their dance scenes, Brucker bonded with movie parents Jerry Orbach and Kelly Bishop. ...

Between scenes she busied herself co-writing the nonsense hula song she performed in the film. “She is great fun,” says co-author and choreographer Kenny Ortega. “We had each other in stitches.”
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Lots of dopey girls upload videos of themselves singing "Hula Hana" onto YouTube. Here are some examples.

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See also my article titled A Freudian Interpretation of the "Hula Hana" Lyrics.

4 comments:

  1. Being from Hawaii, this song made me want to gouge my eyes out. It's not even cleverly written. My cousins when asked to perform a fake hula with made up lyrics was much more eloquent.

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    Replies
    1. I’m pretty sure that was the goal.

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    2. it's not really supposed to be a hawaiian song. it's making fun of people who badly appropriate that kind of thing. i love it.

      btw, it's barely 'written'. it was pretty much improvised. it's an incredible peice of comedy.

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