Dirty Dancing

I like to take daily long walks—five miles or more—and one thing that keeps me going is podcasts. I've got a few favorites: Ezra Klein, Strangers on a Bench, Poetry Unbound, Melody or Witchcraft, Desert Island Discs, the Poetry Space, On Being. And lately, I've really been enjoying What Went Wrong: conversations about some of our most iconic, or most popular, or most unlikely movies, and the back stories about how they almost didn't get made, or might have been made very differently.

The other day I scrolled to a movie that I dearly love, Dirty Dancing. I don't remember when I first saw Dirty Dancing, but I do know that when Netflix went out of business and they let people just keep the last two discs they'd ordered, I put a lot of thought into what those two discs should be. 

Well, okay, "a lot of thought": I thought, well, I love Wings of Desire, so there's one. And . . . hmmm . . . I also love Dirty Dancing. Done.

And no regrets. I do enjoy watching both those movies every so often, different though they are. But also not so different: they're both about passion and meaning, what it is to be human. And sure, there are certainly other movies I'd also enjoy watching again and again. But I only got to keep two. Those others, whatever they are, are probably streaming somewhere, right?

Anyway. I very much enjoyed hearing the down-and-dirty on Dirty Dancing in What Went Wrong—the casting issues, the scant $5 million budget, the scramble for music rights (within that budget!), the search for a director, the search for a production studio, and it went on. They also mentioned a series of Netflix documentaries, The Movies That Made Us, the first installment of which is . . . yes, Dirty Dancing! So I watched that this evening. Each treatment gave me a different perspective, both on the movie itself and on the moviemaking industry. I'm beginning to think every movie I see is worth all that money. It's not an easy business.

I'll end with the movie's finale. 

And here's some of the "dirty dancing" itself:

Patrick Swayze especially was a joy to watch. He died too young. But I'm glad he lives on in Dirty Dancing.