On the surface ”Shag” may seem like yet another movie celebrating bronzed teenagers frolicking in the sand and sun. Yet it has a few decidedly unusual things going for it:
The choreography of its grand musical numbers is by Kenny Ortega, who brought a sexy edge to the musical numbers in the current hit film ”Dirty Dancing.”
The cast features such emerging young talents as Page Hannah, Daryl`s younger sister; Bridget Fonda, Peter`s daughter; Tyrone Power Jr., the late actor`s son; Carrie Hamilton, Carol Burnett`s daughter; and Phoebe Cates
(”Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) and Annabeth Gish (”Desert Bloom”).
The director is Britain`s acclaimed maker of rock videos, Zelda Barron, who directed ”Secret Places” (1984), about the growing pains of English schoolgirls during World War II.
The film takes its name from a splendid Southern rock-and-roll dance, a sensual variant of the jitterbug, done, particularly in the late `50s and early `60s, by white collegiates in North and South Carolina to the sounds of intense black music.
Woven around the elaborate dance numbers is a story of four young women weekending in wild Myrtle Beach, S.C., in 1963, a narrative closer to the gentle humor of ”Where the Boys Are” (1960) than to the ruffian antics of
”Porky`s” and its lascivious follow-ups.
Still, the ”Shag” generates its share of heat.
”It`s all below the waist,” Ortega demonstrated enthusiastically, dancing up a shag storm on the lawn of the Prince George plantation where
”Shag” is being shot. The shag must be done just right.
”The guy`s thighs are together, his shoulders parallel, and his right hand holding the girl`s hand is relaxed, like holding a beer can.” Ortega turned his partner on a dime.
”The shag`s not on 4, it`s on 6,” Ortega explained. ”Doing the shag you lose your technique, you lose the Latino in you, which makes it so interesting. Also you wait until the last second to turn, to pull free. It`s what you might call `ugly` dancing.”
”Ugly” is Ortega`s ultimate compliment.
Ortega paid his dues in South Carolina, meeting with local shagmasters such as Charlie Womble.
”You can learn the shag very quickly-Charlie only danced it three years before winning the national shag championship,” Ortega said. ”It`s all style, but Charlie probably had style all his life.”
His ”Shag” chorines were unimpressed the first few days he choreographed, Ortega said.
”The girls were especially down, wondering, `Is that all we have to do?` ” But shag subtleties crept up on them. Suddenly there was laughter, spontaneity, eye contact, improvisation.”
But not too much improvisation. Even when his dancers donned roller skates, shag basics remained inviolate.
It`s not the shag without bona fide shag music. Only oldies will do for the sound track, recorded for the film by Atlanta`s 11-person Voltage Brothers. The chestnuts include ”Up on the Roof” by the Drifters, ”Sixty Minute Man” by the Dominoes, ”Since I Don`t Have You” by the Skyliners and ”It Will Stand” by the Showmen.
Making the music in his head, Ortega counted off ”1-2-3-4-5-6” and demonstrated, with his partner, a progression of shag steps, starting with a simple pivot and ending with a steamy belly roll. Each 6-step became more intimate and more overtly sensual. At first, the couple stood apart, ”like brother and sister,” Ortega said. Finally, Ortega`s daring and naughty
”dirty dancing, shag style,” concluded with his hand resting on his partner`s inner thigh.
The plantation house is one of the main locations. Here the girls spend part of their madcap weekend of dancing and lovemaking.
Production designer Buddy Cone offered a quick tour of the house, stripped and refurnished to give a conservative 1963 look.
Cone`s biggest challenge?
”It took us a couple of weeks to locate Ladybug portable hairdressers,” he said. ”But once we found one, we found lots of them.”
Upstairs, Hannah and Fonda were shooting a scene on a sun porch. Hannah wore green sunglasses, a pearl necklace, striped Bermuda shorts. Fonda, who plays a preacher`s uninhibited daughter, stood about in white heels and a polka-dot bikini.
The camera rolled, and Fonda delivered a heartfelt speech about class barriers: ”Look, I`m not going to college like other people, and I`m not going to marry a Ralston.”
After the scene, director Barron, middle-aged and in command, said to Fonda: ”That was great! Beautiful!”
Hannah piped in: ”That was incredible. The best you ever did.”
Fonda seemed unbelieving. But it didn`t matter. This is a low-budget film. Two takes and it was time to break for lunch.
Fonda hates questions about the family: ”It`s a big house I have to carry around on my back.” On Jane Fonda: ”My aunt! I hope I`ll have done as much as she at her age, not that she`s old. I just think she has packed in a lot of stuff.”
On Henry Fonda: ”Out of everyone in the world, my grandfather is the one I would most like to emulate-his acting style, his talent. He was a very, very professional and giving actor.”
On Peter Fonda: ”I`m very different than my father. I just know what I want and don`t stop and think about it. I remember seeing `Easy Rider` a couple of years ago in Malibu with a bunch of friends. It`s like a 1960s time capsule, advanced for its time and full of a lot of things still worthwhile.
”As a child, I saw my dad in `The Hired Hand.` They kept saying, `He`s going to die now.` I`d run out of the theater and come back, and he hadn`t died. Finally, I opened the back door and saw him blown off his horse.
”Was I scared? No. By that time, I was so prepared for it.”
Fonda`s growing up around movies gives her a unique preparation to play Melaina Buller, the bleached-blond preacher`s daughter who dreams of Hollywood stardom.
In addition to ”Shag,” Fonda acted in the opera anthology film ”Aria” (”I died on screen in seven minutes”). Lately, her acting career has slowed a bit.
She is taking courses to get her undergraduate degree from New York University: ”I have a science requirement left, and expository writing. I cringe at the thought of taking them.”
– – –
”Change my name?” Tyrone Power Jr. balked at the question.
”No, I`m proud of it. Anyway, if I changed it, there would be peals of thunder from heaven.”
The heavens would go wild with generations of enraged Tyrone Powerses. To be genealogically correct, this is the fourth Tyrone Power resting in a lawn chair between ”Shag” setups.
”There was Tyrone Power the Elder, a comic stage actor lost as sea on the way to America,” the young actor recounted.
”His grandson was my grandfather, the first famous Tyrone Power, a great character actor, the type who played clowns and wore putty noses. He would embarrass the hell out of my father, yelling for the bellhop in a booming voice. My father would hide behind potted plants.”
Much of what he knows about his father, the movie matinee idol, comes from watching him in classic movies such as ”Blood and Sand” (1941), ”The Eddy Duchin Story” (1956) and ”Witness for the Prosecution” (1957) and from conversations with his mother, Deborah.
In 1958 the Powers had been married seven months, and Tyrone Power Jr. was to be born, when his father died of a heart attack at 43.
”He was doing a dueling scene with George Sanders on location outside Madrid. By the time they got him to a hospital, he was gone.”
Being the son of a screen star wasn`t always easy, he said.
”It was more bothersome when I was a kid of 13, 14, 15. There were times I`d resent that I was supposed to be a clone of a movie star. It wasn`t because of kids my age-most of them didn`t know my father. But their parents expected me to act just like him. It was because they loved my father so much, but you can`t expect a teenage kid to care.”
At 28, he has his father`s extraordinary dark eyes. The family resemblance cannot be denied.
”Do I mind having his eyes? No. It definitely does not hurt to look like my father.”
