Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey
Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7
==========
Chapter 12, titled "Reasons to Be Cheerful" tells Grey's life from the beginning of her acting career in 1980 until 1986, when she auditioned for Dirty Dancing. I am summarizing this one chapter in a series of four blog articles. This is the second.
==========
Grey writes: From the late seventies through must of the eighties, I supported myself waitressing. She tells about those jobs.
Grey writes: My first real paying acting gig was national commercial for Dr. Pepper, with the catchy jingle tagline, "Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?" That gig must have happened before 1982, when she must have been paid to act in the Off-Broadway play Album. I searched YouTube for Dr. Pepper commercials during 1980 and 1981, but I could not find Grey. Here are three Dr. Pepper commercials from those two years:
Grey might be somewhere in one of those commercials or in some similar commercial. Grey indicates that she danced in the commercial. She writes about auditioning for that dance role and other dance roles:
The dance audition [for the Dr. Pepper commercial] was for the well-known modern dancer and choreographer Louis Falco. The choreography was, as usual, impossible for me to learn, and at one point I just started going off, dancing like I do (nowadays they'd call it 'freestyling"). .... My sheer unbridled joy, it was expressed through my personal style of movement, was what they hired me for.
It was my first taste of, 'Oh , maybe I could someday, actually support myself doing what I've always dreamed of," and though I only got paid scale, the Screen Actors Guild minimum, it was way more than I ever made as a waitress.
You shoot the commercial for one day and then the money just keeps coming in for years! The checks came in dribs and drabs, always unexpectedly, always just when I was really strapped for cash. Every time I saw one of those envelopes in my mailbox it felt like a miracle — not to mention, got hired as a dancer, even though I couldn't remember the choreography. ...
It seemed that dance was dogging me. Every job I got or got close to getting seemed to involve dance, which was ironic because I couldn't remember the most rudimentary routines in class. But I still couldn't resist imagining that maybe this time would be able to conquer this odd brain glitch and get to join in the fun. Because I loved it.
=======
Grey writes that she almost was selected for the lead role in the 1983 movie Flashdance. However, according to the Wikipedia article about the movie, the only actresses seriously considered for that role were Jennifer Beals (who did play the role), Demi Moore, and Leslie Wing. I figure that the movie was cast in early 1982, when Grey was about 22 years old. Grey describes her disappointing experience of auditioning for that role:
The first time I danced for Adrian Lyne [the director of Flashdance], I wore a leotard, tights, and high heels, as per the casting director's instructions. Flashdance was his first feature, though he was already a very successful commercial director in England. ....
[Lyne told Grey to do her dance audition without wearing tights.] .... Now extremely exposed and insecure, my thighs blotchy and jiggling like Jell-O still loose in the mold, I made my way back to my director [Lyne], feeling particularly naked as I strode through the corporate halls of the Gulf and Western building where Paramount had its offices, passing the raised eyebrows of receptionists at their desks.
Adrian so obviously pleased when I reappeared having fulfilled his request that I almost forgot I hated my legs. Ordinarily the casting assistant runs the video camera, the director watches the audition from behind a desk, set back from the action, but on this occasion, Adrian would be filming me.
He pressed play on the boom box at his feet, blasting Tina Turner's "What's Love Gt to Do With it," and I gyrated for him as be growled in his sexy English accent, "Oh yes. fuuuck me, dahlin'. Oh yes, like that. Oh my god. you're so fuuuucking hot."
Adrian was, in fact, fucking hot. He had that English rocker vibe with a longish blond shag, a dirty mouth, and did not mind one bit having to return to the Paramount offices to read for him again and again and, especially to dance for him, appealing to my darker nature.
With every callback, feeling more and more confident that the part mine, I wanted so much to be invited along to join this rocket-of a ride, I didn't have the self-esteem to even consider that I should be fed up and disgusted by being brought back in and again.
When I learned that I didn't get that job, I was shocked. I'd never been so close to being cast as the lead in any movie, so when they ultimately threw me a bone, some stripper-adjacent "friend" part, I was devastated. .... Flashdance felt like the closest I'd come to getting something I felt born to do.
 |
| Adrian Lyne, Director of the 1983 movie Flashdance |
Grey does not explain what she meant by this: they ultimately threw me a bone, some stripper-adjacent "friend" part. If they offered her a part in the movie, then why was she not in the movie? One sentence indicates that her agent rejected the offer:
My agent at that time, David Guc, was so offended [about Adrian Lyne] on my behalf he told them they "could go fuck themselves."
Grey does not mention who ultimately did play the role of the "stripper-adjacent friend". Was that role played by Cynthia Rhodes, who later played the role of Penny in Dirty Dancing?
If Rhodes did not play the role that Grey's agent rejected, then which actress did play that role?
=======
Continued in Part 9
No comments:
Post a Comment