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, Part 14 and Part 15
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Chapter 14, titled "Back at the Ranch, a Triptych", and Chapter 15, titled "Rough Cut", tell about events between October 27, 1986, (when the filming ended) and August 21, 1987 (when the movie appeared in the theaters).
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Grey had been sharing a Manhattan apartment with another young woman, Meg Burnie, since about 1982. Matthew Broderick had moved into that apartment as a third renter in about December 1985.
In early 1987, Broderick was in California for the filming of the movie Project X, which would star him and the actress Helen Hunt. In about February, Grey flew to California to watch some of the filming. It seems that Grey soon began to suspect that Broderick and Hunt were involved in an affair.
A little later in 1987, Broderick was in Arkansas for the filming of the movie Biloxi Blues, which was to star him and the actress Penelope Ann Miller. Grey flew to Arkansas to watch some of the filming. It seems she soon began to suspect that Broderick and Miller were involved in an affair.
In her book, Grey's insinuations about Hunt and Miller are not clear. In general, her book's Chapter 14 is a meandering, confusing mess.
When Grey was watching the filming at the two locations, Hunt and Miller avoided Grey -- or at least Grey felt they avoided her. The book's readers apparently are supposed to view this avoidance as evidence of their affairs with Broderick. However, I myself wondered whether Hunt and Miller perceived immediately that Grey was suspicious, hostile and paranoid toward them. In any case, Broderick denied to Grey that he was involved in any affairs.
I wonder if Grey was consuming a lot of alcohol and cocaine. During her airplane trip from Arkansas back to New York, her flight was delayed and so she happened to spend a long time with the actor Chris Walken (he acted in Biloxi Blues) in the airport's bar.
He turned me on to Wild Turkey [whiskey] and we spent what seemed like hours there. I'd never been happier to be delayed, stuck in an airport bar, hearing Chris talk about his early days as a dancer and laughing our asses off.
Getting drunk with this mysterious and complex actor I had been so in awe of, finding such an instant and easy connection with him definitely took the edge off the fraught trip to visit my boyfriend.
It almost made me forget how much pain I was in.
Grey feared not only that Broderick was having affairs with other women. She feared also that her own movie Dirty Dancing would flop in the movie theaters -- while Broderick's movie career was soaring.
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Shortly before her birthday, shortly before March 26, Jennifer Grey was informed by her father Joel Grey that he was homosexual. She indicates in her book that this happened shortly before her 26th birthday -- which would be shortly before March 26, 1986 -- but this seems to be a year too early. This revelation about her father's homosexuality is placed in her book shortly before her 27th birthday -- before March 26, 1987 -- after she returned from Arkansas and before she watched a rough cut of her movie in the spring of 1987 (see below).
Until that revelation, Jennifer had thought that her father was a straight heterosexual. She occasionally had heard remarks that she seemed to be gay, but she always objected to them.
In the late 1980s, Jennifer's father was living in New York, and her mother Jo was living in California. They had separated and divorced in 1982. Jo initiated the divorce, but did not indicate to Jennifer that there was a sexual reason. Rather, Jo seemed to be frustrated by her own mediocre acting career and by Joel's frequent absences from the home. (That is my own interpretation of the book.)
The revelation to Jennifer that her father Joel Grey was homosexual was prompted by Matthew Broderick's mother Patsy Broderick. When Patsy and her husband James Broderick (he died in 1982) had been a young married couple, they socialized somewhat with Jo and Joel Grey. All four were young actors. Based on that socializing, Patsy knew beyond any doubt that Joel was homosexual. (The book does not explain Patsy's certainty.)
Anyway, now in early 1987, Patsy was deathly sick. Jennifer went to visit Patsy, who was heavily medicated. During that conversation, Patsy remarked, "Well, your dad's a fag .... he's gay." Patsy went on to say that everyone knew that fact except for Jennifer and her mother Jo Grey. Jennifer walked home "shaking and crying".
When Jennifer arrived home, she phoned her mother in California, who then phoned Joel, who then phoned Jennifer and her brother Jimmy (who was attending a school in New York). Jennifer and Jimmy traveled to their father's apartment, where their father confirmed to them that he was homosexual.
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If this revelation indeed happened in about March 1987 (not 1986), then it happened about when Broderick was filming the move Biloxi Blues, where he played a character who suspected that another character was homosexual.
Furthermore, Broderick already must have been preparing to star in the 1988 movie Torch Song Trilogy, where he would play a homosexual character who intended to raise a child as a foster parent.
Jennifer must have been disturbed that the revelation of her father's homosexuality coincided with her boyfriend's acting two movie characters with homosexual aspects. However, she does not write anything about possible such feelings in her autobiography.
(See my previous blog article Homosexual Aspects of "Dirty Dancing".)
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In the spring of 1987, Grey was allowed to watch privately a rough cut of her movie, in order to obtain her written approval of some nudity that still was in the movie at that time. Grey invited her agent Susan Smith to watch too. Smith -- who apparently was drunk -- hated it.
We sat in the pitch black as the unfinished cut of the movie began. I could barely breathe as I tried to acclimate to the surreal experience of seeing my face on the screen, as big as a brownstone. I had no idea if what I was looking at was good or bad — the movie, my performance, any of it. All I could tell was there was an awful lot of me. Much more than I was used to seeing or comfortable with.
Throughout this disorienting experience, I became aware of a mysterious intermittent ticking sound, like a metronome. A drunk metronome. Eventually, I discovered the source. It was my agent, punctuating each moment I was on camera, which was pretty much from the beginning of the movie to the end, with a weary "tsk" of distaste. If an exhalation could convey disgust, that was the sound.
When the film ended, we sat for a moment in silence. We thanked the projectionist, and as we walked out, the mood was grim. "Nobody is ever going to see this movie. So you don't have to worry," Susan said. “You're just going to have to get something else in the can as soon as possible."
She straightened her wig. "And the nudity? Let 'em have it. It's the only scene in the movie that works.” [All the nudity ultimately was removed from the movie in order to get a PG-13 rating.]
I somehow found my way back home, and once inside my apartment I grabbed the frosty vodka bottle out of the freezer, made a beeline for my bed, and crawled under the covers with all my clothes on, even though it was only late afternoon.
The emphasis in the above passage was added by me. I think Grey was consuming too much alcohol and cocaine during these months.
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Grey continued to feel pessimistic and depressed about her movie until just a short time before it opened in the theaters on August 21, 1987.
For months after that screening, I had lower-than-low expectations for my first starring vehicle, as did [the production company] Vestron, which had originally planned a very limited theatrical release (I think it was one weekend), the bare minimum necessary to support their home video sales. ....
As the date for the movie's opening drew closer, there began to be rumblings suggesting that Dirty Dancing might not be a total disaster. Whether it was through the work of the film's editor, Peter Frank, or just the way this particular story intersected with the zeitgeist of that particular year, 1987, the fate of this little movie seemed maybe to be turning around.
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Continued in Part 17
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