My Speculations about Script Changes Made by the Swayzes and by Rhodes

This article follows up two previous articles.

1) The Re-Writing of Eleanor Bergstein's Script

2) My Speculations About Eleanor Bergstein's Original Script

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In order to convince Patrick Swayze to play the role of Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing, the producers granted Swayze great authority in changing the script. By 1986, when the movie was filmed, he had played major roles in about a dozen movies. (His first major role was in Skatetown USA in 1979). He also had taken acting lessons for many years and had seriously thought about all of his movies and roles.

Although Patrick's wife Lisa never became a star, she too studied acting, and she helped Patrick analyze all his roles. Patrick and Lisa Swayze deserve much more credit than they have received for improving the script of Dirty Dancing.

In my previous article, I speculated that Bergstein's original script portrayed Castle as a naturally confident, capable and charming man -- similar to the character Ben Lewin in her first movie It's My Turn. The Lewin character was a professional baseball player -- a "jock" -- who aggressively and easily seduced the movie's main female, intellectual character, Kate Gunzinger.

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Swayze himself basically had a "jock" personality in high school, but his knee injury ended his athletic career after his first year of college. The same injury ended his professional dancing career a few years later. By his early twenties, he had lost most of the self-confidence he had enjoyed as a high-school athlete.

Because Swayze had devoted himself fully to athletics and dance in high school and had dropped out of college after only one year, he had not read or studied much. Swayze often had felt ashamed of his ignorance of current events, history, literature, philosophy and so forth.

During his early twenties, he was struggling to make a living as an actor in Manhattan. He was not intellectually prepared well for such a struggle. He felt unsophisticated, uneducated and ignorant in comparison to the worldly, witty people who worked successfully in the theater business.

Lisa, who had dropped out of high school, shared with Patrick those early years of struggling in the theater business and of feeling intellectually inadequate.

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When Patrick and Lisa Swayze brought their personal experience and feelings into their opportunity to change the Dirty Dancing script. They understood the shame of feeling inferior to intellectuals.

Although Bergstein herself had taught in a dance studio for a while as a young woman, she herself basically was an intellectual. She did not consider herself to be essentially a dancer. Rather, she considered herself to be essentially a literary writer. She had a good idea of the mentality of professional dancers -- like the characters Johnny Castle and Penny Johnson -- but the Swayzes themselves embodied that mentality.

Patrick Swayze's own personal experience of intellectual inferiority and occupational struggle must be the source of dialogue such as the following:

Johnny Castle
No. Your father was great. He was great -- the way he took care of Penny.

Baby Houseman
.... Johnny, I came here because my father--

Johnny Castle
[interrupting] No. The way he saved her. I could never do anything like that. That was something. People treat me like I'm nothing because I am nothing.

Baby Houseman
That's not true! You're everything!

Johnny Castle
You don't understand the way it is for somebody like me. Last month I'm eating candy to stay alive. This month, women are stuffing diamonds in my pockets. I'm balancing on shit, and I can be down there again.

Baby Houseman
No, it's not the way it is! It doesn't have to be that way!

Johnny Castle
I've never known anyone like you. You think you can make the world better. Somebody's lost, you find them. Somebody's bleeding--

Baby Houseman
I go get my daddy.

Johnny Castle
That's really brave, like you said. That took a lot of guts to go to him! You are not scared of anything.

In the above dialogue, Johnny portrays himself as incompetent compared to not only to Doctor Houseman but also to young but smart Baby Houseman.

I do not believe that Bergstein -- herself the prototype for the Baby character -- would have written into her own original script such self-flattering observations as ...

* You think you can make the world better. 

* Somebody's lost, you find them. 

* That's really brave. 

* That took a lot of guts. 

* You are not scared of anything.

Even though the character Baby contradicts this flattery, the flattery's impression remains. Swayze, not Bergstein, was the scriptwriter who put those flattering statements about Baby into Johnny's mouth.

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In his autobiography Time of My Life (page 136).

Some of what Lisa and I suggested made it into the film ... We inserted the fight scene between Johnny and the cad waiter, Robbie, to give Johnny the rougher edge his character needed. We wrote it so Johnny would stop before knocking the guy out, though, since he’d be wary of getting fired — something that had no doubt happened to him before.

So, Swayze rewrote the script to make Johnny not only intellectually insecure but also "rougher". Sometime when Johnny feels intellectually disparaged, he attacks violently.

The context of the fight scene is that Johnny and Baby had argued about Baby's not telling her father about her romantic relationship with Johnny. Baby had promised to tell her father but would have to wait for the right moment, because "it's complicated". Then a considerable time -- perhaps several days -- had passed while Baby still did not tell her father. During this time, Johnny had showed Baby the cold shoulder, and so they had not talked with each other. The Labor Day weekend has begun, and the Houseman family soon will depart without Baby telling her father.

Now comes "the fight scene". Exactly what is "the fight scene" that Patrick and Lisa Swayze inserted into the script? What was the original script's scene before "the fight scene" was inserted?

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I speculate that he original script's scene depicted Baby making peace with Johnny even though she still had not told her father about him. Baby goes to Johnny's cabin but does not find him there. Then Baby runs to Penny's cabin and finds him sitting sadly inside. Johnny comes out onto the porch, where Baby sadly touches and kisses his back. Both he and she are too sad to speak to each other, but the affection she expresses will cause a reconciliation very soon.

Thus, I speculate, the scene ended, and it was followed immediately by a scene showing Baby and Johnny practicing their dance for the talent show. Even though Baby still was failing to tell her father, Johnny relented to practice secretly with Baby to perform their dance at the talent show.

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In Bergstein's script, Baby sadly touches and kisses Johnny's back, and then immediately that scene ends.

Patrick and Lisa Swayze extended that scene by adding the bit where Robbie comes around the cabin's corner, sees Johnny and Baby together, and jokes, I went slumming too.

Johnny perceived correctly that he himself was the target of Robbie's joke.

* Robbie "went slumming" when he went steady with Penny, the high-school dropout.

* Likewise Baby "went slumming" with uneducated, low-class Johnny.

Although Penny was not present, she too was a target of Robbie's insult. That comparison had been prepared earlier in the movie, in the wig scene, when Penny had remarked that her mother had kicked her out of her home when she was sixteen years old. Soon after Penny had been kicked out of her home, she had begun working as a Rockette, which means that she dropped out of high school.

Because Johnny already felt intellectually inferior, he was enraged by Robbie's "slumming" insult.

Johnny's physical attack on Robbie confirmed his own low-class upbringing and intellectual inferiority. A cultured man would have ignored the insult or responded with a witty remark.

This fight scene is important for portraying Johnny's character. The scene is  in the movie because Patrick and Lisa Swayze added it.

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Lisa herself had left her own home when she was 16 years old. In Patrick's autobiography The Time of My Life, written jointly by Patrick and Lisa, they write (page 31):

She [Lisa] had been having a lot of trouble sleeping, and her insomnia eventually got so bad she had to drop out of high school. ...

Her parents had a very contentious relationship, and their dynamic affected the entire family. Eventually, Lisa began lying awake at night in fear. Her house didn't feel like a safe place emotionally, and she began to feel an overpowering sense that if she walked out the door of her bedroom in the middle of the night, she'd be eaten by wolves. In wasn't a rational fear, but this was a scary time for a teenage girl who had come to feel that no place was safe for her.

Finally, she decided that she had to get out of her parents' home, at least until things cooled down a bit. So one day in the studio [the dance studio of Patrick Swayze's mother], she [Lisa] asked my mom if she could come stay at our house for a while. ...

Lisa's dedication [as a dance student in the Swayze dance studio] thrilled my mother, who in return was a mentor to her [to Lisa], providing validation and emotional support. So when Lisa asked if she could move into the Swayze house for a couple of weeks, my mom didn't hesitate at all before saying yes. Lisa stayed at our house for a couple of weeks.

Although Lisa herself was not kicked out of her own home and did not become a Rockette, she essentially left her own home and became a full-time dance student in the Swayze dance studio when she was 16 years old. A couple years later she joined Patrick in Manhattan, where both of them struggled to earn their livings as professional dancers.

Surely Lisa added to the script the dialogue where the character Penny says she was kicked out of her home and afterwards became a Rockette.

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The movie portrays a general antagonism between the dancers and the restaurant staff. Although the two groups of hotel employees danced together happily during the "dirty dancing" parties in the bunkhouse, they needled each other in encounters during the work days.

The Swayzes had experienced a broader variety of dancing jobs than Bergstein had experienced. Bergstein had worked as a dance instructor in an Arthur Murray dance studio. The Swayzes had done more jobs where they traveled into a place to do a temporary job and where treated during their brief stay as outsiders by the permanent staff.

The movie depicts an antagonism between Johnny and Robbie that is broader than Robbie's mistreatment of Penny. Much of the antagonism is caused simply by Johnny's working in the dance crew and Robbie working in the restaurant crew.

Bergstein had taught dance in a dance studio, but she had not experienced the Swayzes' much broader variety of dance jobs and associations.

Penny's remark that she had been kicked out of her home by her mother when she was only 16 years old is important for portraying Penny's character. Penny had a very troubled adolescence and surely had trust issues.

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I have read or heard that the actress Cynthia Rhodes (who played Penny) asked Bergstein to add to the dialogue Penny's assurance to Baby that "I just want you to know that I don't sleep around."

Penny tells Baby:
"I just want you to know that I don't sleep around."

(I have not been able to find the source for that information, but I will add the source here later, when I find it. I think it was in a video of an interview of Eleanor Bergstein.)

The Wikipedia article about Cynthia Rhodes includes the following passage:

Raised in a Baptist family, Rhodes tried to maintain a clean-cut image in her acting roles and in the media, turning down scripts that required nudity and refusing offers to pose for pictorials in Playboy magazine.

Sylvester Stallone, the director of Staying Alive, reinforced these facts by stating that Rhodes "would sooner quit the business before doing anything to embarrass her parents."

After Rhodes married, she quit her acting career to stay home as a housewife and mother.

If Rhodes indeed did insist on that sentence to the dialogue, then the sentence was not put into the dialogue by Bergstein (or by the Swayzes).

The addition of the "I don't sleep around" sentence improved the movie in the following ways.

* At least one character in the movie expressed disapproval of sleeping around.

* Robbie's insinuations that Penny had become pregnant by another man were discredited in the movie audience's minds.

* Penny's consented to have sexual intercourse with Robbie only because she thought they were in an exclusive, permanent relationship.

* Although Penny decided to get an illegal abortion, she did have some strong moral principles.

* Penny became a more complex character. The contradictions between her actions and her statements are thought-provoking.

Many women who have watched the movie identify more with Penny than with Baby. They hope that Johnny eventually will marry not Baby, but rather Penny. Whereas Baby is the extraordinarily intelligent daughter of a medical doctor, Penny is a rather ordinary young woman. Penny is a better match for Johnny because of their shared interests, occupations and attitudes.

Because so many women in the movie audience do identify more with Penny, they are more satisfied when their heroine is seen to stand up for a moral principle.

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In general, Dirty Dancing is a movie that is watched predominantly by females. In general, females disapprove of other females "sleeping around", because that is a behavior that males exploit. One girl who sleeps around jeopardizes the exclusivity of all the other girlfriend-boyfriend relationships.

Nevertheless, Dirty Dancing features three major female characters who enthusiastically make sexual advances on men. These sexually aggressive characters are Baby and Lisa Houseman and Vivian Pressman.

In contrast to those three characters, Penny is not considered to be sexually aggressive. Penny expresses her intention to live according to The Girl Code of not trying to seduce men who might belong to other women. Penny has become pregnant only because she was tricked into sex by a man who had falsely promised exclusivity and permanence.

Bergstein's previous movie -- It's My Turn -- was atrocious because the main female character knowingly and eagerly had a sexual affair with a married man -- and at the movie's end wanted to continue her affair. Bergstein's seeming approval for characters sleeping around tends to spoil her own movies.

Rhodes did Bergstein a big favor by insisting that Penny's disapproval of "sleeping around" be added to the script.

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Update on September 13

After I wrote this article, I was reminded that Baby objected to Lisa's intention to "go all the way" with Robbie. Baby said:

It's just wrong this way. It should be with someone -- with someone that you sort of love.

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My next article in this series will speculate that the original script included Baby's and Johnny's planning to participate in the talent show.