Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey
Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13 and Part 14
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Chapter 13, titled "The Time of My Life" tells about events in 1986, when the movie Dirty Dancing was produced and filmed. This is the fifth in a series of my blog articles about that chapter.
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Grey acts in almost every scene in the movie, so she always was very busy, focused and stressed during the filming. Her book's Chapter 13 gave me the impression that she engaged herself significantly with only three people: Patrick Swayze, Emile Ardolino (the director) and Kenny Ortega (the choreographer).
In contrast, her relationships with practically everyone else seems to be just professional. She acted her scenes with them, but did not develop personal relationships with them during the filming.
In her book, she mentions and praises several fellow actors, but does not say much about them:
No one could ask for a better human to play the good father than Jerry Orbach [Jake Houseman]. He was the ultimate pro — haimish, hilarious, generous, and present.
We hit the jackpot with Kelly Bishop [Marjorie Houseman]. I'd been a fan ever since I'd seen her in her Tony Award-winning role of Sheila in A Chorus Line.
Honi Coles [Tito Suarez], whom I knew and adored from The Cotton Club, a bona fide legend, played the musical director at Kellerman's.
Jack Weston was [Max] Kellerman, [and] Lonny Price [was] Kellerman's son [Neil].
Cynthia Rhodes ... had been in Flashdance and Staying Alive and was not only an exquisite dancer but also an angel.
That is all that she writes says about any fellow actors, beyond Swayze. She does not even mention Jane Brucker (Lisa Houseman), Max Canton (Robbie Gould) or Neal Jones (Billy Kostecki). She acted her scenes with them, but perhaps did not get to know them personally.
She writes a lot more about the women who did her hair and makeup than about her follow actors, beyond Swayze.
I am not criticizing Grey for being unfriendly. As I said, she was busy, focused and stressed. She was there to act the star role, not to make friends with the other actors.
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With Swayze, she felt a lot of tension. Her book complains that he showed up late every day and that he kept bugging her to practice the lift. I got the impression that she was annoyed also by other elements of his behavior. She writes that they were "like oil and water". She writes that sometimes they talked with each other like this:
Swayze: Seriously? You're going to dance like that?
Grey: Seriously? You're going to act like a total dick?
Whereas Grey usually felt stressed, Swayze seemed to be rather relaxed. He had much more experience in the movie business, and his own future career would not depend so much on this one movie. He tried to make Grey laugh.
Swayze did something unexpected to make Grey laugh in the scene where they are driving out into the country. In this blog article, I will not tell what he did. You will have to read the book to find out.
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The actual tension between the actors Grey and Swayze helped them portray the tension between the movie's characters Baby and Johnny.
... I think one of the things that possibly helped this movie override the implausible bits was that tension between us. ...
Johnny is annoyed by being saddled with a girl who has no clue what she's doing, and he's accustomed to dancing with his very excellent partner. It would stand to reason that Baby could be feeling Johnny's annoyance, just as I felt Patrick's. The stakes were high for Patrick and me, and that raised the expression of the stakes for Johnny and Baby. This worked for the film.
If the movie had featured two equally great dancers and it was all easy, with a big budget and longer shooting schedule, it would've been a different movie. The tension between us fed a certain real-life struggle and energy into the movie, which fed a desire in both of our characters to overcome something. Drama is conflict, and our real-life struggles infused the movie with real life. We were mismatched, and that served us. There was something under all the ego and fear that was somehow hot.
Well put.
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Grey writes a lot about how she felt doing the movie's sex scenes. She was made to get stark naked under the sheets, but she does not mention whether Swayze too got stark naked.
After one bed scene, Swayze laughed to her: "Will you marry me?" She laughed back: "Definitely!"
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Grey should write another book just about filming the movie Dirty Dancing. In this book, she does not write anything about the following scenes:
She should write a book where she writes something about every scene of the movie and writes more about the movie as a whole.
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Here is some of what she wrote about Ardolino and Ortega:
Emile Ardolino, the director, was a deep human being with a big heart. He was gentle, grounded, and kind. .... Emile had a way of controlling the set that was never bombastic. He didn't raise his voice. And beyond all of this, he was my ally. I trusted that he wouldn't let me be bad in this movie. I trusted his ear, his sensibility, and his barometer for truthfulness. It was a huge comfort knowing that he and I saw eye to eye on the task at hand. I knew he had my back and that we were a team. He heard every note I had, and with grace could subtly elevate the script without alienating anyone.
Emile and Kenny Ortega together were a powerful duo. Each brought to the project an unshakable belief in the transformative power of dance, in dance as a language that could layer levels of emotional storytelling — about intimacy, eroticism, and identity — that a scripted narrative alone couldn't have provided. Baby, for example, transformed from being one sort of person into a very different one, not solely because of what was indicated in the script but also through the more visceral, physical intelligence the movie revealed through dance. Emile and Kenny instilled in the production a purity of heart and truth, in the way they organically wove dance into the fabric of the movie.
The two weeks of dance rehearsals before the start of principal photography were, for me, the high point of the entire shoot. Kenny, one of the most generous of spirits, lovingly taught me the basics of mambo. .....
Kenny's confidence in my ability as a dancer had a powerful influence over how I felt about myself. His appreciation for what I was intuitively bringing to the table, by just showing up as I was, turned down the volume of a long-standing, brutal self-appraisal. All those years in dance class, an inner voice had said that I wasn't a real dancer because of how much I struggled to learn choreography — and that I shouldn't even try because I would just embarrass myself. But dancing with Kenny, I learned that my job was to follow his lead. ...
I had a crazy crush on Kenny. There was probably nobody on the set — not a man, not a woman — who didn't have a crazy crush on Kenny. But I was the one who got to dance with him, up close, with him grabbing me and grinding with me. .... Kenny was a really gifted teacher. He made me dance better.
Indeed, Ardolino and Ortega deserve much of the praise for the movie's success.
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Grey writes a lot about the filming of the lift scene. She never did practice the lift with Swayze (except in the lake scene.) The lift that the movie audience sees at the end of the movie is the one and only time she did the lift.
In this blog article, I will not quote any of her interesting writing about the lift scene. Read the book.
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Looking back now, Grey regrets that she could not relax more with Swayze during the filming.
I wish Patrick were alive. I wish we could get together. I wish we could reminisce about how, even though neither of us were kids, we were still very young ... and dumb.
In the chaos of it all, I couldn't see what we had in each other. I wish I could tell him I'm sorry for the times I was judgmental, or ball-busting, for not treating him with more empathy and compassion, for not trusting that a man would actually show up for me. I wish I could tell him what I know now. That I was so scared and in over my head.
I wish I could tell him how lucky I feel to have had him as my Baby's one and only Johnny.
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Continued in Part 16.
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