1987 Dirty Dancing

Let's get this out of the way first, I am not the demographic audience for this movie. But let's get something else out of the way, this film is a phenomenon. Yet it's inception was itself an interesting story.

Originally the story had a different title and the money-men were worried it would be classed with all the mid-80's soft porn movies that were popular. This was most definitely not that. The story is based on the life of Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the screenplay. It was greenlit until a change of management pushed the movie into development hell, only to be resurrected again when the producers approached a video distributor, Vestron. They agreed to finance, albeit themselves not financially sound.

Patrick Swayze was perfect for the role of dance instructor Johnny, but he turned it down, stating that he didn't want to do any dancing movies as he had suffered a knee injury and didn't want to aggravate it. Yet he auditioned and a chemistry was evident between him and Jennifer Grey.

During the shooting his many leaps he did indeed aggravate his knees, yet he carried on, refusing to use a stand-in.

As with nearly every 80's film there was a soundtrack album and this again was done on a budget, using music that had little royalties if any. The album, along with the film, proved an enormous hit. The risk paid off and the rest, as they say, is history.

The movie made $214m on a $5m budget. The theme song, 'The Time of My Life' won an Oscar and made the top ten. Patrick Swayze went on to be a huge star and the choreographer, Kenny Ortega, went on to direct High School Musical.

There is a wonderful documentary on Netflix about the making of this movie, and others. It is called The Movies That Made Us and if you love this movie, or the process of movie making, I would urge you to take a look.