Trailer
Plot summary
Lewis Medlock, an avid outdoorsman and survivalist, takes three friends from Atlanta down the Cahulawassee River by canoe, a whitewater trip through remote northern Georgia that they want to make before a dam floods the valley. Ed Gentry has been on such trips before but has less self-assurance than Lewis, and Bobby Trippe and Drew Ballinger are beginners. On the drive to the launch point, the men, Bobby most of all, are rude to the local people, who turn hostile toward the city outsiders. At a gas station, Drew trades music with a young banjo player, and the boy will not shake the hand Drew offers him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Deliverance (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During filming of the canoe scene, author James Dickey turned up inebriated and argued bitterly with producer-director John Boorman, who had rewritten his script. In the brief fistfight that allegedly followed, Boorman, a much smaller man, suffered a broken nose and four shattered teeth. The two later reconciled, and Boorman gave Dickey the cameo role of the sheriff.
- Before Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds were cast, Dickey wanted Sam Peckinpah to direct and Gene Hackman to play Ed Gentry, Boorman wanted Lee Marvin for that role and Marlon Brando for Lewis Medlock, Jack Nicholson was considered for Ed, and Donald Sutherland and Charlton Heston both turned down Lewis.
- The studio cut the budget and the actors did their own stunts: Jon Voight climbed the cliff himself, and Burt Reynolds asked to ride a canoe over a real waterfall instead of a dummy, floating downstream with his clothes torn off and cracking his tailbone.
- Songwriter Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, who wrote "Feudin' Banjos" in 1955 and recorded it with banjo player Don Reno, sued over "Dueling Banjos" and won songwriting credit and royalties in a landmark copyright case. He reportedly asked to be left off the film's credits because he found the film offensive.
- After the film came out, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter set up a state film commission, and tourism to Rabun County grew by the tens of thousands until it was the county's largest source of revenue. Two of the stunt doubles, Claude Terry and Payson Kennedy, founded whitewater rafting companies on the Chattooga and Nantahala rivers.
- Boorman was given a gold record for the hit single "Dueling Banjos", and it was later stolen from his house by the Dublin gangster Martin Cahill. Boorman recreated that burglary in The General (1998), his biographical film about Cahill.
SPOILER
Several people have been credited with the film's most quoted line, "squeal like a pig". Ned Beatty said he thought of it while improvising the scene with Bill McKinney, while James Dickey's son wrote that a crewman suggested it because Boorman had rewritten so much of the scripted dialogue.
