Unfortunately, Freedman did not always distinguish clearly between 1) what Bergstein herself said in the interview and 2) Freedman's own interpretation into his own words. For the sake of argument here, I will assume that the following passage from the article reflects Bergstein's own words.
... [the movie] aspires to be a summer divertissement - one part Flashdance, one part Baby, It's You. To Ms. Bergstein, the two poles of the movie are consonant. ...* Did Bergstein say the word divertissement? I'm not sure.
* Did Bergstein say that Flashdance is one pole of the move? I'm not sure.
* Did Bergstein say that Baby, It's You is the other pole of the move? I'm not sure.
Anyway, just in case Bergstein indeed did associate her movie Dirty Dancing with another movie called Baby, It's You, I have researched it and summarizing it as follows.
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The Wikipedia article about the movie Baby, It's You includes the following passages:
Baby It's You is a 1983 American film ... [that] stars Rosanna Arquette and Vincent Spano.=====
The film, set in 1966 New Jersey, is about a romance between an upper-middle-class Jewish girl named Jill Rosen (Arquette), who is bound for Sarah Lawrence College, and a blue-collar Italian boy nicknamed the "Sheik" Capadilupo (Spano), who aspires to follow in Frank Sinatra's footsteps.
The movie follows their high school experiences during their romance: Jill's success in high school acting productions, Jill's rebuffing of Sheik's sexual advances, Sheik's one-night stand with a sexually active friend of Jill's and a subsequent suicide attempt by that friend.
Eventually, Sheik is expelled from school, and after an attempted robbery and subsequent pursuit by local police, Sheik goes to Miami, Florida, while Jill subsequently leaves for her first year at Sarah Lawrence in the fall of 1967.
At one point in her first year, Jill visits Sheik in Florida, and although she sees clearly how little he has going for him (he has found work in a nightclub washing dishes and, on weekends, lipsynching to Frank Sinatra recordings), she has sex with him. In the moments before they undress, their conversation turns to his odd nickname, which he had not explained to Jill when they dated in high school. "Sheik" is a brand of condoms, he explains--"like Trojans."
Some time after Jill returns to college, Sheik arrives at work to find that he has been unceremoniously replaced by a real singer, albeit one with no great talent. This humiliation makes Sheik self-aware of his almost non-existent opportunities for career success in any endeavor, and in response, he steals a car and makes the long drive from Miami to New York, propelled by the romantic notion of reuniting with Jill.
Jill's college experience has not been easy or happy: she has not met with the acting or social success she had in high school. Yet, the act of consummating her desire for Sheik has led her to realize that she does not love him, for having had sex with him has moved her past the point of romantic and sexual wonder, and left her seeing that they inhabit different social worlds.
When Sheik arrives at Sarah Lawrence and does not find Jill, he violently trashes her room and waits for her return. When she does and he declares his love for her, she tells him that she does not love him. Sheik briefly resists her response and then, in a moment of quiet dignity, accepts it.
Jill then reaches out to Sheik, and asks him as a favor--for them both, in a sense--if he will take her to a college dance, for which she has otherwise been unable to find a date. The movie ends with this dance .... In the midst of the dance, either Jill or Sheik (the film does not identify which one) requests that the band, incongruously, perform "Strangers in the Night", the Sinatra hit that had been a key part of their high school romance. The film ends with them looking into each other's eyes and slow-dancing. ....
The score consists of rock songs that more or less correspond to the time. ...
Some YouTube video clips from the movie follow.
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I did not know anything -- even the existence -- of this movie until now. Judging from the above clips, the movie seems to be rather good.
I think it's quite likely that Bergstein watched Baby, It's You in 1983, when she was thinking about developing her own dance movie. I think she mentioned the movie in her interview with Freedman in 1987, but I think that he has exaggerated grossly her attribution of the prior movie's influence -- one part and one pole -- on her Dirty Dancing.
I do not think that Bergstein's idea of the relationship between Baby Houseman and Johnny Castle was influenced by the school-classmate relationship between Jill Rosen and Sheik Capadilupo. Bergstein always imagined Baby as a young dance student of Johnny her dance teacher. Baby admired Johnny as her superior.
On the other hand, Patrick Swayze might have been influenced by the troubled Sheik character when Swayze re-wrote the Johnny character.
I do think that Bergstein (and the director Emile Ardolino) might have been influenced by the following aspects of Baby, It's You.
* The period music: Bergstein was thinking about developing a dance music that takes place at a Catskills resort. Such a story could have taken place in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s or even 1970s. I think she liked the music in Baby, It's You, and perhaps that movie's music influenced her to place her proposed story in the 1960s.
* The Combination of Period and New Music: Both movies play mostly period songs but also include a few new songs.
* The Diegetic Music: The movie Baby, It's You features a lot of music, and most of it seems (judging from the above clips) to be diegetic. The music is heard by the movie audience because the music is being played on record players or on car radios that the characters are using. Both movies even show characters lip-syncing to songs being played on record players.
* The Car Scenes: The car scenes in Baby, It's You remind me of the car scenes in Dirty Dancing.
* The Happy Ending on a Dance Floor: Both movies have happy endings where the couple is dancing among other couples on a dance floor.
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