Podcast: Dirty Dancing
A look at an enduring classic of the 80s and movie musicals writ large
99 Cent Rental Podcast
Episode 62: Dirty Dancing
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon | Goodpods | Youtube | Podcast Addict
99 Cent Rental is a comedy podcast revisiting the low-budget action, comedy, and science fiction films that clogged video store shelves throughout the 1980s and early 90s.
Every other week, hosts Bryan and Dave White, hosts of the Bring Me The Axe! horror podcast, dive deep into the nearly forgotten world of ninjas, breakdancers, skateboarders, action hero knockoffs, and Cold War paranoia that embodied the excess and over-the-top attitude of the 1980s and celebrate them for everything they were and weren’t.
You’ll have the time of your life when you listen to our latest episode, a look at the 1987 mega-hit Dirty Dancing. Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze were both watching their own careers grow and advance as the 80’s lurched forward but it was this singular moment in the history of film when everything took flight. Swayze, among the sexiest men to ever live set up shop in everyone’s head and heart and this sweet nostalgia bomb set down roots in a way no one was expecting. Dirty Dancing was among the most rejected scripts in 80’s Hollywood, a movie everyone turned down for being too girly in an age where loud guy movies were all the rage. Along came the video distribution giant, Vestron Video, in the middle of a changing market, with designs on producing their own original movies and they gambled on this one for their first feature and boy, did it pay out big. Their first feature became one of the biggest hits of the 1980s and joined a pantheon of classic movie musicals. It’s too bad Vestron couldn’t recapture that magic as every follow-up picture tanked hard enough to take the entire company down with them.
Dirty Dancing takes place at a Catskills mountain resort in the summer of 1963, right before the violent cultural changes of the 1960s. Baby Houseman is on vacation with her family and falls in with the resort staff who dance the night away when the vacationers all go to bed. She falls in love with dance instructor Johnny Castle, learns to dance, learns to love, and finds herself at this magical summer retreat. It’s schmaltzy. It’s naive. It’s just what the movies needed in 1987.
Sample
Support us on Patreon for 5 bonus episodes a month!
Join the Discord to talk movies with us and other listeners!
Get yourself a nice Bring Me The Axe! or 99 Cent Rental shirt or hoodie!