Trivia / Deliverance

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• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Many jokes about this movie involves banjos as a sign of impending hillbilly rape. In the film (and the book, for that matter), the scene with the banjo-playing kid and the rape scene are a long ways apart from each other.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: One of the more unlikely examples. "Dueling Banjos", as recorded by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell, became a huge hit on the pop charts.
• The Cast Show Off: Ronny Cox is a guitar player as well as an actor, and was hired to play Drew because he could play guitar.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Bill McKinney first auditioned for the role of Lewis Medlock before being cast as the Mountain Man.
• Completely Different Title:
  • In Italy, the film was released as Un Tranquillo Weekend Di Paura (A Quiet Weekend Of Fear / A Quiet Scary Weekend). Italian comedian Giorgio Panariello joked that the title makes no sense, "like saying, 'Una Bellissima Giornata Di Merda' (A Beautiful Shitty Day / A Beautiful Day Of Shit)".
  • In Sweden, the film was released as "Den sista färden", meaning "The Final Journey".
  • In Finland, it's titled "Syvä joki", meaning "Deep River".
• Creator Couple: Ed's wife was portrayed by Belinda Beatty, who was married to Ned Beatty.
• Darkhorse Casting: Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty make their film debuts. John Boorman cast them through theatre.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Billy Redden, the boy with the banjo, liked Ronny Cox and hated Ned Beatty. At the end of the duelling banjos scene, the script called for Billy to harden his expression towards Cox's character, but Billy couldn't pretend to hate Cox. To solve the problem, they got Beatty to step towards Billy at the close of the shot. As Beatty approached, Billy hardened his expression and looked away.
  • John Boorman and writer James Dickey argued constantly. Boorman later referred to making the film as "going fifteen rounds with a heavyweight". During the filming of the canoe scene, Dickey showed up inebriated and got into a bitter argument with Boorman, who had re-written Dickey's script. They had a brief fistfight in which Boorman's nose was broken and four of his teeth shattered. Dickey was thrown off the set, but no charges were filed against him. The two reconciled and became good friends, and Boorman gave Dickey a cameo role as the Sheriff at the end of the film. Burt Reynolds later described Dickey as "the kind of guy who when he's had a couple of martinis you want to drop a grenade down his throat".
• I Am Not Spock: Bill McKinney was so strongly associated with the role of the mountain man who sodomizes Ned Beatty that it cost him the role of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. Stanley Kubrick didn't want to meet with him because he was that scared of him. There was even a rumor that Bill got too into his role and tried to sodomize Beatty on set, which is ridiculous since he went on to do over a hundred projects, which included co-starring with Beatty again in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.
  • McKinney himself had enough of a sense of humor about his association with the mountain man role that his personal website used the domain name squeallikeapig.com.
  • Ned Beatty was associated with the role for the rest of his career and the infamous rape scene and often had fans approach him and telling him to "squeal like a pig" which he took in good humor, not minding the association.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • Even though his character was very clumsy and uncoordinated, Ned Beatty was the only one of the four main actors with any experience in a canoe prior to shooting.
  • Billy Redden didn't know how to play banjo. To simulate realistic chord playing during "Duelling Banjos", another boy, a skilled banjo player, played the chords with his arm reaching around Redden's side while Redden picked. Musicians Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell played on the soundtrack.
• No Stunt Double: To minimize costs, the production wasn't insured, and the actors did their own stunts. Jon Voight actually climbed the cliff.
  • Averted for any scene showing Jon Voight paddling from more than 15 feet away. The actor never learned to paddle for the movie, and all such scenes are filmed by a professional rafter named Claude Terry.
• On-Set Injury: Burt Reynolds broke his coccyx while going down the rapids when the canoe capsized. Originally, a cloth dummy was used, but it looked too fake, like a dummy going over a waterfall. While Reynolds recovered, he asked, "How did it look?" John Boorman replied, "Like a dummy going over a waterfall".
• The Red Stapler: Inversion. For some strange reason, the camping industry blamed this film for a significant drop in sales. Coleman in particular nearly went bankrupt.
  • However, as the documentary The Deliverance of Rabun County showed, the film actually created a booming tourism industry. Currently, the main economic driver of Rabun Country, where the film was shot, is tourism; and canoeing and rafting along the Chattooga River (which doubled for the ficticious Cahulawassee River) brings in about $20 million per year.
• Real-Life Relative: John Boorman's son Charley Boorman plays Ed's son.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The Dueling Banjo Arrangement by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith became famous for its appearance in the film and is rarely mentioned without it also being referenced, so much so that the song is often referred to as the song from Deliverence.
• Self-Adaptation: James Dickey adapted his own novel to the big screen.
• Star-Making Role:
  • This is the film that made Burt Reynolds a big star.
  • To a lesser extent Ned Beatty. This was actually his film debut, and he became one of the busiest and best-known character actors in Hollywood practically overnight.
• Throw It In!:
  • The infamous rape scene didn't actually call for any dialogue and Ned Beatty was the one who came up with the "squeal like a pig" line.
  • According to John Boorman, the gas station attendant's jig during "Dueling Banjos" was unscripted and spontaneous.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: Contrary to popular belief, the deputy at the hospital was played by Lewis Crone, not Ed O'Neill.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Donald Sutherland turned down the role of Ed because he objected to the violence in the script. He later said he regretted that decision.
  • Sam Peckinpah wanted to direct the movie. When John Boorman secured the rights, Peckinpah directed Straw Dogs (1971) instead.
  • In his memoirs Charlton Heston said he declined the role of Lewis due to his commitment to Antony and Cleopatra.
  • John Boorman originally wanted to cast Lee Marvin as Ed and Marlon Brando as Lewis. Marvin refused, believing he and Brando were too old for the roles and that Boorman should get younger actors.
    • Jack Nicholson had agreed to play Ed if he were paid $500k and Brando played Lewis. Brando, in turn, demanded to be paid as much as Nicholson^note Keep in mind that in 1971, Nicholson was a rising A-list star while Brando was seen as a primadonna has-been who hadn't had a commercial or critical success in over a decade. Ironically, getting passed over for this movie allowed Brando to star in The Godfather, which restored his Hollywood legend status. This meant the actors' combined fees added up to more than $1 million, half the movie's budget, forcing Boorman to cast cheaper actors.
  • Gene Hackman was offered the role of Ed. He wanted to play Lewis, but was turned down.
  • Warner Bros. wanted Steve McQueen (actor) to play Lewis, but he turned it down.
  • Other actors attached to the film included Warren Beatty, Henry Fonda, Robert Redford and George C. Scott. James Stewart was also considered.
• Word of Saint Paul: James Dickey's son said his father wrote the book as an allegory for the Vietnam War.

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