Dirty Dancing Turns 20!
Twenty years since Dirty Dancing's release Time In gets the lowdown from the real "Baby": writer/producer Eleanor Bergstein
By Karen Heinrich
"Nobody puts Baby in the corner"
How similar to Baby are you? Everyone called me Baby until I was 22, my dad was a doctor, and I was a dirty-dancing champ back in working-class Brooklyn (New York) where I grew up. I have trophies that would turn you green! I also worked as a dance teacher so there’s a lot of Johnny in me, too.
Did you ever have a romance with someone like Johnny? We all have those moments when we have a sensual experience that we know will be a guidepost on the other side of which everything is different.
Your family used to holiday at resorts like Kellermans. Did the staff really dirty-dance as they did in the movie? Yes, below ground they were doing the kind of dancing we did in the basements back home, as Johnny’s cousin Billy says (in the first dirty dancing scene).
What’s your favourite scene? The one where Baby goes to Johnny’s room and tells him ‘Most of all I’m afraid of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you’. That, to me, is the centre of the film. There’s always a moment in life when you have the courage to walk into a room and refuse to leave it – or you don’t, and you wonder about it for the rest of your life.”
Your screenplay was rejected countless times. What made you hang in there? The script didn’t make sense without the music so I sent it around with a pre-prepared audio-cassette soundtrack. People turned down the script on the basis that the kids wouldn’t like the music – and then the studio execs would call me asking for another copy of the soundtrack because they’d worn it out playing it in their car. It didn’t occur to them that if they liked it so much, other people would too.
Patrick Swayze’s fans around the world were distraught to hear of his terminal illness. Have you been in touch with him lately? That’s a private matter. I was enormously privileged to be able to work with Patrick and my prayers are with him.
Win!
Time Out has 10 copies of the Dirty Dancing 20th Anniversary edition out on DVD and Blu-ray through Sony Pictures on April 2. Enter here.
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