“Deliverance” Trivia!

Rob Hunter at Film School Rejects posted 31 Things We Learned from John Boorman’s ‘Deliverance’ Commentary.  Before you click over, here are three of my favorites…

9. Dickey took Boorman aside, made him promise not to repeat this, and said, “I’m going to tell you something I never told a living soul, everything in that book happened to me.” The director later learned that he did the same with other members of the cast and crew. “When I got into a canoe with James Dickey and he capsized it, I realized that nothing in this book had happened to him.”

(Dickey was not well liked on the set — there’s another quote in the piece that talked about Dickey’s drinking and interfering with the movie and Burt Reynolds has a funny response. – Craig)

15. “I had no doubles, no stuntmen,” says Boorman. “I don’t like the idea of stuntmen because if a shot is dangerous enough that you need a stunt man then you shouldn’t be doing it.” He acknowledges that there are exceptions including one instance where Voight was doubled (while Reynolds insisted on doing his part himself), but in general he prefers doing the scenes with the actual actors.

(Reynolds, as most folks know always wanted to do his own stunts and respected the stunt crew.  But stunts were not the only differences between Voight and Reynolds are you’ll see in the next quote. – Craig)

26. While Reynolds preferred to move quickly through every scene, Voight challenged almost every decision in need of explanation and reason which dragged things out. Voight would also require three minutes before shooting scenes where he’s meant to seem exhausted because he would run around the area to tire himself out. Reynolds, by contrast, would spritz his face to simulate sweat and then breath hard. Boorman found the two to be good influences on each other.

(They have two different schools of thoughts in preparing for a scene.  Some like to prepare, research and stay in character and others are able to just do it.  I can’t remember the actor and I’m paraphrasing but when asked how he was able to just jump into a scene and take on whatever emotion without first preparing, his response was, “I act.” – Craig)