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| The cover of Sue Tabashnik's book The Fans' Love Story: Encore |
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The book's Chapter Nine is Sue Tabashnik's interview of Tom and Patt Rocks, a married couple who worked as dancing extras in the movie. They did not act as hotel employees in the "dirty dancing" scenes. Rather, they acted as hotel guests dancing in the ballroom.
I will summarize this interview.
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The Rocks were avid dancers who lived in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Reading advertisements in their local newspaper and listening to advertisements on their local radio, they learned that dancing extras would be hired for a movie that would be filmed at Lake Lure, North Carolina. The Rocks traveled to Herndersonville, North Carolina, where the auditions took place.
The auditions were conducted by a young woman who seemed to be in her mid-twenties. The movie's choreographer Kenny Ortega did not participate in these auditions for dancing extras.
The Rocks were were offered the jobs, but they turned the offers down when they learned that they would have to commit themselves to work at Lake Lure for at least one week. They both were employed in Spartanburg and did not think they could get off from their regular jobs there for an entire week.
Because the Rocks had danced so well at their audition, however, the young woman offered an exceptional agreement in which they would have to commit themselves to only three days (not an entire week). The Rocks accepted the three-day commitment.
At that audition, the Rocks were not told anything about the movie -- not even its name. The Rocks were told that the movie might be called We Had the Time of Our Life.
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By the time the Rocks arrived at Lake Lure for filming, they had learned that the movie would star Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey and Cynthia Rhodes. The Rocks were familiar with Swayze because of his roles in North and South and Red Dawn.
Each such dancing extra was paid $30 and a brown-bag lunch for every day. However, because the producers were suffering money troubles, the extras were not paid promptly every day. The producer Linda Gottlieb "was going to New York every day trying to get money". Despite the late payments, the Rocks decided to extend their stay for the entire week. Patt Rock said:
The money was not important. It was just making a memory, having fun. ...They were able to use their vacation time from their regular employers to continue for the entire week.
We were in an open tent. It was cold. It was raining. There was nothing glamorous about it.
And then if you stayed over, that was your expense -- your responsibility. So meals and $30 a day, but it was worth every minute that we gave to it.
At some point ... they came to us and said, "We have this scene and we would like for you to be in it, but if you are [in the scene], you'll have to commit to the rest of the shooting time." At that point, we were hooked, and ... so we committed to the full shooting time.
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In the movie's early ballroom scene, the Rocks are seen dancing next to Baby Houseman and Neil Kellerman.
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| Patt and Tom Rocks, dancing extras in Dirty Dancing |
We were placed next to Jennifer because we dance comfortably. We weren't trying to compete with anybody. .... Our dancing was the kind of just informal dancing that they wanted to have as hotel guests. That's the way we dance normally.The Rocks estimated that "a couple hundred" extras were employed in the filming. About nine (couples of?) teenagers were employed as the "dirty dancing kids".
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| Patt Rocks, an extra, sitting next to Vivian Pressman |
The Rocks observed that Max Cantor, the actor who played the character Robbie Gould, was troublesome. In particular, he clashed with the choreographer Kenny Ortega.
Robbie was Robbie, on and off screen. ... It wasn't stretching for Robbie to do his part.The movie's name still was supposed to be a secret, but Cantor revealed to Patt Rock that the movie was called Dirty Dancing.
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The Rocks tell in the interview about their conversations with various actors at the location. I will not recount all such conversations.
Filming ended very late one day, so the Rocks stayed over at a local motel instead of driving back home. They went into the motel's bar and had a nice conversation with Honi Coles, who played the bandleader Tito Suarez. Tom went to bed, and his wife Patt remained chatting in the bar with Coles.
Then Swayze came into the bar and joined the conversation. He recognized her as an extra, mentioning a dress she had worn in one scene. She felt flattered by his recognition.
He and she talked a lot about the city of Charleston, South Carolina, where she had lived and where he had filmed North and South.
Then Swayze remarked that this movie they were doing now would "make me a star". Patt was surprised by Swayze's optimism, because she expected the movie to fail. She was aware of the producers' financial problems, and she thought that the movie might not even reach the movie theaters. She did not know the movie's story, and the scenes she had seen did not make coherent sense to her.
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Patt tells about a moment with Jennifer Grey.
Jennifer was a little bit inexperienced [as a dancer], and she kept practicing and practicing.-----
One day she was walking away and her head was down, and we [Patt and Tom] were right behind her. We said, "Jennifer, you are really doing a great job."
And she said, "Do you really think so? Am I doing okay?"
It was such a small environment. We weren't on a big studio lot. There was probably more proximity to the stars than you would normally have. She seemed to appreciate our encouragement and telling her she was doing a good job. She had to work so hard at it.
Patt Rock worked for a local cable-television station. After the movie was released, she had an opportunity to interview the screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein for about an hour in preparation for a TV show about the movie. In that interview, Bergstein said that the scene where Baby dances on the stairs and bridge was an afterthought. Patt retold Bergstein's story to Tabashnik:
Those quick scenes when Jennifer would come down and she was practicing by herself on the little bridge, and then she put her lipstick on -- that was an afterthought.
They had finished. They had wrapped.
I guess Eleanor or somebody got the idea. ... It was a Saturday morning. ... Jennifer didn't feel good at all. She was really sick.
Eleanor said, "I will give you anything you want if you can pull yourself together and do these fast scenes."
And she [Eleanor] said they had the clothes and everything right there, and they would change into the costumes quickly.
That is such a memorable part of the movie .... That was an afterthought done after they had supposedly wrapped the movie.
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The Rocks estimated that Swayze jumped off the stage about a half-dozen times while rehearsing the final dance scene. Patt remembers:
When he would jump off, I couldn't even catch my breath ... He landed on his knee and did a twirl. When the camera stopped, he would just almost collapse in pain. ... It would hurt him and he would drop down on his knees. But I guess he did it maybe a half a dozen times.=======
The scene I was sorry they did not choose to use was when she [Baby] runs and he [Johnny] catches her. The camera was right on her face, but they never use that in the film. All the extras were sitting there and got to see that. I wish that had been in the film, because it was really, really neat.
I will continue my review of this book in Part 6.
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