The "Don't Step on the One" Scene -- 2

In a previous article titled The "Don't Step on the One" Scene, I speculated about the intended placement of this (deleted) scene in the movie.

I speculated that the scene showed Johnny and Baby practicing for the talent show.

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I now offer a different explanation, based on the July 1986 script. The intended placement of the above, deleted scene might have been where the "Love Is Strange" takes place in the final movie. The July 1986 script says:

Door is open upstairs. Baby and Johnny are fooling around. She's playing teaching him to do the cha cha.

The scene's soundtrack is not specified, but I assume that a record player would be playing a cha-cha song.

The script describes the scene at the very bottom of page 74 and very top of page 75 (click on an image to enlarge it).

Page 74

Page 75

The deleted scene plays cha-cha music and shows Baby and Johnny dancing a cha-cha. The deleted scene does not, however, show her "teaching him to do the cha cha". I speculate that the people filming the scene could not figure out a transition -- from him teaching her -- to her teaching him.

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Subsequently, the scene with the cha-cha music was discarded, and an alternate scene was filmed with the song "Love Is Strange".

Script writer Eleanor Bergstein has described the "Love Is Strange" innovation.

Love is Strange. The script says "Baby is teaching Johnny to dance." Kenny [Ortega] and I worked out the routine in my motel room the night before. The executives came running onto the set after it was shot -- the song was not listed on the carefully calibrated chart of songs we could afford. There was no budget for it -- and worst of all -- we'd had the actors "lip synch," meaning we couldn't replace it with a cheaper song and might have to scrap the whole scene. Luckily everyone agreed after they saw it the scene was to good to scrap. You do what you have to do.

The only place in the July 1986 script where something like "Baby is teaching Johnny to dance" is written is at the bottom of page 74. There is says, however, that she is "teaching him to do the cha cha".

The replacement of cha-cha music by "Love Is Strange" was unplanned and fortuitous.

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Since the movie's remaining budget could not afford to buy the rights to "Love Is Strange", the producers had to do what they had to do.

I think that part of the solution was to cancel the purchase of the rights to Lesley Gore singing "You Don't Own Me". That song still is in the movie, but it is sung instead by the Blow Monkeys.

I think that another part of the solution was to allow Franke Previte to retain all the rights to his song "Time of My Life".

Perhaps Eleanor Bergstein also relinquished some (or all) of her scriptwriter royalties.

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The July 1986 script does not include any other scenes showing Johnny and Baby practicing for the talent show.