NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Deliverance

Deliverance is a 1972 Warner Bros. motion picture drama directed by John Boorman. Principal cast members include Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, Jon Voight, and, in his film debut, Ned Beatty. The film is based on a 1970 novel of the same name by American author James Dickey, who has a small role in the film as a Sheriff. Deliverance is a 1970 novel by James Dickey, his first. ... Deliverance can refer to: Deliverance, the 1970 book and subsequent 1972 movie. ... Image File history File links Deliverance. ... John Boorman (born January 18, 1933 in Shepperton, Surrey, United Kingdom), is a British filmmaker, currently based in Ireland, best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The General. ... James Dickey (February 2, 1923 â€“ January 19, 1997) was a popular United States poet and novelist. ... John Vincent Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an Academy Award-winning American actor. ... Burt Reynolds (born Burton Reynolds Jr. ... Ned Thomas Beatty (born July 6, 1937) is an Academy Award-nominated American character actor. ... Daniel Ronald Ronny Cox (born July 23, 1938) is an American character actor, singer/songwriter, and guitarist. ... James Dickey (February 2, 1923 â€“ January 19, 1997) was a popular United States poet and novelist. ... Vilmos Zsigmond (born June 16, 1930) is a Hungarian-American cinematographer. ... Tom Priestley is a film and sound editor whose career spans 1961 to 1990. ... â€œWBâ€ redirects here. ... is the 211th day of the year (212th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... // Top grossing films The Godfather Fiddler on the Roof Diamonds Are Forever Whats Up, Doc?, starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan ONeal Dirty Harry The Last Picture Show A Clockwork Orange Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli The Hospital Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Academy Awards Best Picture... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... // Top grossing films The Godfather Fiddler on the Roof Diamonds Are Forever Whats Up, Doc?, starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan ONeal Dirty Harry The Last Picture Show A Clockwork Orange Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli The Hospital Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Academy Awards Best Picture... The WB Shield, used from 2001 to late 2003. ... John Boorman (born January 18, 1933 in Shepperton, Surrey, United Kingdom), is a British filmmaker, currently based in Ireland, best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The General. ... Burt Reynolds (born Burton Reynolds Jr. ... Daniel Ronald Ronny Cox (born July 23, 1938) is an American character actor, singer/songwriter, and guitarist. ... John Vincent Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an Academy Award-winning American actor. ... Ned Thomas Beatty (born July 6, 1937) is an Academy Award-nominated American character actor. ... See also: 1969 in literature, other events of 1970, 1971 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Deliverance is a 1970 novel by James Dickey, his first. ... James Dickey (February 2, 1923 â€“ January 19, 1997) was a popular United States poet and novelist. ... A bit part is a supporting acting role with at least one line of dialogue. ...

Widely acclaimed as a landmark film,^{[citation needed]} Deliverance is the story of four suburban professional men from Georgia on a weekend canoe and camping trip. The film is noted for the memorable music scene near the beginning that sets the tone for what lies ahead: a trip into unknown and potentially dangerous territory. In the scene, set at a rural gas station, character Drew Ballinger plays the instrumental "Dueling Banjos" on his guitar with a mentally-challenged hillbilly youth named Lonnie (implied as being an inbred albino in the novel, portrayed by Billy Redden in the film). The boy eventually outplays Drew with his banjo. The song won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance. â€œSuburbiaâ€ redirects here. ... Canoe camping in the Adirondacks. ... Modern gas station A filling station, gas station or petrol station is a facility that sells fuel for road motor vehicles – usually petrol (US: gas/gasoline), diesel fuel and LPG. The term gas station is mostly particular to the United States of America and Canada, where petrol is known... Billy Redden as Lonny- the banjo kid. ... Hillbilly is a term, often considered pejorative but sometimes endearing, referring to people who dwell in remote, rural, mountainous areas. ... Inbreeding is breeding between close relatives, whether plant or animal. ... Albinism is a genetic condition resulting in a lack of pigmentation in the eyes, skin and hair. ... Billy Redden as Lonny Billy Redden (born 1956 in Rabun County, Georgia) is an American actor best know for his role as Lonny the banjo kid in the 1972 movie Deliverance. ... The Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance was first awarded in 1970. ...

The film was selected by the New York Times as one of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made," whilst the viewers of Channel 4 in the United Kingdom voted it 45 in a list of The 100 Greatest Films.^{[citation needed]} The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... This article is about the British television station. ...

Plot

Four Atlanta men — Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew — (played by Reynolds, Voight, Beatty and Cox, respectively) decide to canoe down the fictional Cahulawassee River in the remote Georgia wilderness, before it is flooded over by the upcoming construction of a dam and lake. The trip turns into a fight for survival when local hillbillies attack two of the men. The men are forced to kill two hillbillies while losing one of their own as well. This article is about the boat. ... This article is about structures for water impoundment. ... This article needs cleanup. ...

Plot summary

The film begins with a montage of river and dam building images of the Cahulawassee River, with a conversation between the four men acting as a voice-over. The conversation reveals the impending damming of the river by a power company and the efforts of Lewis (Reynolds) to convince the other three to take a weekend canoe trip before the damming is complete. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Note: There is also a Chattooga River in Chattooga County, Georgia and Cherokee County, Alabama. ... A voice-over is a narration that is played on top of a video segment, usually with the audio for that segment muted or lowered. ...

On the first day of the trip, the four men pull into a rural village that seems deserted. While filling up their vehicles with gasoline, one of the men (Drew, played by Cox), engages in a guitar-banjo "duel" with Lonnie, a young local boy. http://www. ... http://www. ... Billy Redden as Lonny Billy Redden (born 1956 in Rabun County, Georgia) is an American actor best know for his role as Lonny the banjo kid in the 1972 movie Deliverance. ... Petrol redirects here. ...

At this village, Lewis arranges to pay three men to drive their cars down to the fictional town of Aintry, located downriver, so they can drive home after reaching Aintry by canoe. More of the characters is revealed by Bobby's arrogant remarks about the 'genetic deficiencies' of the locals, and Lewis' reckless driving through the forest at high speed. After finding an appropriate place, the four men begin canoeing down the river. As they set off, the men pass under a bridge with Lonnie standing looking at them, refusing to acknowledge Drew's enthusiastic waves.

The first day of their journey passes uneventfully, with the men learning to ride their canoes down rapids. Throughout the day it becomes clear that Lewis is an experienced outdoorsman. Bobby (Beatty), despite being overweight, manages to perform well and becomes enthusiastic about the experience. Later, Lewis successfully shoots a fish with an arrow to serve for dinner, using a compound bow. A rapid is a section of a river where it loses elevation over a relatively short distance (that is, the stream gradient is locally steepened), causing an increase in water flow and (usually) turbulence. ... A Browning Compound Bow A compound bow is a modern bow that uses a levering system of cables and usually cams and pulleys to draw the limbs back. ...

The men camp on the shoreline of the river on the first night, despite Lewis wondering whether someone could be watching them. The following day, Ed (Voight) wakes up early and goes hunting. He encounters a deer, but is so nervous that his arrow misses despite the short range. Hiding his loss of nerve, he complains to the others on his return that he couldn't find anything to hunt. Lewis then mentions that some archers have trouble shooting an animal because they cannot push themselves to actually fire upon a live target - what he calls "Buck Ague". Ed acknowledges that such a condition is "psychological". This article is about the ruminent animal. ... Archers in Competition Archery is the practice of using a bow to shoot arrows. ...

The second day of the trip begins with Ed and Bobby starting off together before Drew and Lewis had finished packing. Bobby has become less enthusiastic about the experience due to his insect bites. The two continue for some time without sighting Drew and Lewis behind them.

After stopping on the shore, Ed and Bobby then encounter a pair of hillbillies (the Toothless Man played by Herbert 'Cowboy' Coward and the Mountain Man played by Bill McKinney), one of whom is armed with a shotgun. Their attempt to engage in friendly conversation with the two men backfires immediately, when Ed presumes that the two hillbillies might be concealing an illegal whisky still. At gunpoint, the hillbillies force Ed and Bobby further into the woods. In a famous scene, Ed is tied to a tree with his own belt and cut on the chest by his own knife, with Bobby forced to strip. Bobby strips to his underwear, and Mountain Man attacks him. The overweight salesman tries to run, the hillbilly grabs him and shoves him to the ground. A fight ensues, as Bobby makes repeated attempts to run away and the hillbilly knocks him to the ground. In the end, Bobby is defeated and raped by his attacker. Attention is then turned to Ed, the other hillbilly stating that Ed has "got a real purty mouth". This article needs cleanup. ... Herbert Cowboy Coward is an actor who starred in the seminal 1972 thriller Deliverance. ... Bill McKinney (born September 12, 1931 in Chattanooga, Tennessee) is an American character actor whose most famous role was Don Job, the mountain man who abused and then sodomized Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty) in the movie Deliverance. ... Revenue men at the site of moonshine stills, Kentucky, 1911 or earlier For other uses, see Moonshine (disambiguation). ...

Before anything can happen to Ed, Drew and Lewis show up. Armed with his bow, Lewis shoots Bobby's rapist, causing the other hillbilly to drop his shotgun and flee. The rapist dies from Lewis' arrow after about a minute of agony.

At this point, a heated argument develops between Drew and Lewis about whether to take the body with them to Aintry and tell the authorities what happened, or bury the dead hillbilly and hope the incident goes undiscovered. Drew argues fiercely for telling the authorities, but Lewis argues for a burial. Lewis' argument is that they will be tried for murder and that any local jurors might well be related to the dead man. He also points out they might be followed by the surviving hillbilly and others, and carrying the corpse will slow them down. He insists that no one will find the grave of the dead hillbilly since it will shortly be covered by the water of the dammed lake. The matter is put to a vote. Bobby, who is restrained after rushing towards the corpse, sides with Lewis, not wanting anyone to find out about what happened to him. The vote ultimately falls upon Ed, who agrees that they should bury the corpse. The four men then find an appropriate place to bury the body. The strain shows as they struggle to keep the body buried. They hurry back to their canoes to continue their trip.

Drew, still distraught about what has happened, suddenly clutches his head and falls out of the canoe during a dangerous stretch of rapids. Although left ambiguous why he fell, Lewis repeatedly yells out that Drew has been shot. Before they can begin searching for him, both canoes enter an even more dangerous and very steep series of rapids. The canoes collide and one of them splits apart, with the remaining three men washed down the rapids together. - Emo Philips A word, phrase, sentence, or other communication is called ambiguous if it can be reasonably interpreted in more than one way. ...

The three then make their way to a rock ledge on the side of a canyon. Lewis has a compound fracture of his right leg. He continues to assert that Drew had been shot by the remaining Hillbilly, and that it is now up to Ed to kill the man before he shoots them all. Armed with his bow, Ed climbs the side of the canyon and reaches the top in the middle of the night. Internal and external views of an arm with a compound fracture, both before and after surgery A bone fracture is a medical condition in which a bone breaks. ... The femur or thigh bone is the longest, most voluminous, and strongest bone of the mammalian bodies. ...

After a fitful night's sleep, Ed wakes to see a man armed with a rifle walking nearby and peering into the canyon where Lewis and Bobby are. Ed picks up his bow and draws an arrow, but, as with the deer the day before, finds he cannot keep the bow steady. The man then turns his rifle onto Ed and the two fire at one another simultaneously. The man misses, but the bullet's ricochet forces Ed to fall backwards onto one of his arrows which then pierces his side. The hillbilly approaches Ed to finish him off, but then collapses. Ed sees that his arrow struck the hillbilly in the neck and killed him. Information in this article or section has not been verified against sources and may not be reliable. ...

When he inspects the body, Ed is horrified to discover that, unlike the surviving hillbilly, the dead man does not have missing front teeth, only to discover that the man wore false front teeth.

Ed lowers the hillbilly's body down the canyon by rope. He then tries to climb down with the rope, but it snaps, throwing both Ed and the body into the water below. Ed survives and takes the body over to Bobby and Lewis. Despite the false teeth, they remain unsure as to if the body is that of the surviving hillbilly. They tie a heavy rock to the man's body and throw him into the water. Lewis, unconscious with pain and with his leg braced by a paddle, lays inside the remaining canoe while Bobby and Ed continue paddling it downriver.

Shortly afterward, they discover Drew's twisted body (another famous image from the movie). A cursory study of his body shows no sign of what caused his death, but they reason that forensic experts would certainly be able to tell if he had been shot. Opting to continue covering up what happened, they weigh down Drew's body as well and sink him into the river.

When the three surviving men arrive in Aintry, Ed finds that their cars have been delivered as arranged. Before approaching the authorities, both Bobby and Ed agree to cover up most of their experiences and say that Drew's disappearance and Lewis' injury were caused in the final set of rapids before Aintry (the plan being to deter the authorities from searching further up the river). The authorities (one of which, the Sheriff, was played by author James Dickey) become suspicious when parts of the canoe are found further upriver from where they said the incident occurred. Lacking any evidence, the three are not charged with anything, but warned never to return to the area. Ed and Bobby drive the cars back to Atlanta, leaving Lewis recovering in a local hospital. Bobby sternly tells Ed 'I don't think I'll see you for a while'. James Dickey (February 2, 1923 â€“ January 19, 1997) was a popular United States poet and novelist. ...

Ed returns home to his wife and family, but then dreams of a man's hand rising from a lake, forcing him awake - an indication that he will face a long struggle to find 'deliverance' from the nightmare journey.

Background and production

Deliverance was shot in the Tallulah Gorge in Tallulah Falls, Georgia and on the Chattooga River, dividing the states of Georgia and South Carolina. Additional scenes were shot as well in Clemson, South Carolina and Sylva, North Carolina. Some town shots incorporate Mill Street, Sylva; a town which is mostly unchanged since release of the movie, even today. Since the film's release, more than thirty people have drowned attempting to recreate the canoe trip along the section of the river where the film was shot.^{[citation needed]} The rapids within both book and film become a major symbol and plot device to reflect the natural dangers of the untamed wilderness in the face of inexperienced urban outsiders. Tallulah Falls today. ... Tallulah Falls is a town in Habersham and Rabun Counties in the U.S. state of Georgia near the Tallulah River. ... Note: There is also a Chattooga River in Chattooga County, Georgia and Cherokee County, Alabama. ... Official language(s) English Capital Columbia Largest city Columbia Largest metro area Columbia Area Ranked 40th - Total 34,726 sq mi (82,965 kmÂ²) - Width 200 miles (320 km) - Length 260 miles (420 km) - % water 6 - Latitude 32Â° 2â€² N to 35Â° 13â€² N - Longitude 78Â° 32â€² W to 83... Clemson is a city located in South Carolina, a state of the United States of America. ... Sylva is an incorporated town located in central Jackson County, in the Great Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina, United States of America. ... For other uses, see Wilderness (disambiguation). ... Look up outsider in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Stunts

The film is famous for cutting costs by not insuring the production and having the actors do their own stunts (most notably, Jon Voight climbed the cliff himself.) In one scene, the stunt coordinator decided that a scene showing a canoe with a dummy of Burt Reynolds in it looked phony; he said it looked "like a canoe with a dummy in it." Reynolds begged to have the scene re-shot with himself actually in the canoe rather than the dummy. After shooting the scene, Reynolds, coughing up river water and nursing a broken coccyx, asked how the scene looked. The director responded, "like a canoe with a dummy in it." The coccyx is formed of up to five vertebrae. ...

Regarding the courage of the four main actors in the movie doing their own stunts without insurance protection, Dickey was quoted as saying all of them "had more guts than a burglar". In a nod to their stunt-performing audacity, early in the movie Lewis says, "Insurance? I've never been insured in my life. I don't believe in insurance. There's no risk."

Crew

John Boorman (born January 18, 1933 in Shepperton, Surrey, United Kingdom), is a British filmmaker, currently based in Ireland, best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The General. ... James Dickey (February 2, 1923 â€“ January 19, 1997) was a popular United States poet and novelist. ... Vilmos Zsigmond (born June 16, 1930) is a Hungarian-American cinematographer. ... Eric Weissberg (born 18 August 1939) is an American banjo player, best known for the theme from Deliverance. ... Arthur Smith (born April 1, 1921 in Clinton, South Carolina) is an American musician and songwriter. ...

Cast

Director John Boorman cast Reynolds as Lewis without having seen any of his previous acting work. Instead he was cast based on an appearance on the Tonight Show. Boorman admired how Reynolds remained cool and stayed in control of the situation, the qualities he was looking for in the part of Lewis.^{[citation needed]} The First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush and current host Jay Leno. ...

Billy Redden, who played the banjo playing boy, could not really play the banjo. Another young banjo player knelt behind him and reached around Redden's chest to reach the banjo, with Redden wearing a specially made shirt that made the man's arms appear to be Redden's. Additionally, the shot was filmed from angles that made it impossible to see the musician behind Redden on the porch. Billy Redden as Lonny Billy Redden (born 1956 in Rabun County, Georgia) is an American actor best know for his role as Lonny the banjo kid in the 1972 movie Deliverance. ...

One local was played by Randall Leece Deal, a real convicted moonshiner. In 2006, he obtained a pardon for a conspiracy conviction from President George W. Bush.^[1] Revenue men at the site of moonshine stills, Kentucky, 1911 or earlier For other uses, see Moonshine (disambiguation). ... In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between natural persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement. ... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the forty-third and current President of the United States of America, originally inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ...

Ed's son and wife (seen near the end of the movie) were played respectively by John Boorman's son Charley Boorman and Ned Beatty's wife (at the time). Charley Boorman (born on August 23, 1966 in Wimbledon, London, UK), is an English actor and the son of movie director John Boorman and his wife, the former Christel Kruse. ...

John Vincent Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an Academy Award-winning American actor. ... Burt Reynolds (born Burton Reynolds Jr. ... Ned Thomas Beatty (born July 6, 1937) is an Academy Award-nominated American character actor. ... Daniel Ronald Ronny Cox (born July 23, 1938) is an American character actor, singer/songwriter, and guitarist. ... James Dickey (February 2, 1923 â€“ January 19, 1997) was a popular United States poet and novelist. ... Billy Redden as Lonny Billy Redden (born 1956 in Rabun County, Georgia) is an American actor best know for his role as Lonny the banjo kid in the 1972 movie Deliverance. ... Bill McKinney (born September 12, 1931 in Chattanooga, Tennessee) is an American character actor whose most famous role was Don Job, the mountain man who abused and then sodomized Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty) in the movie Deliverance. ... Herbert Cowboy Coward is an actor who starred in the seminal 1972 thriller Deliverance. ...

Differences from the novel

Although the film closely follows the novel, some sections are different. Examples include the character description of Ed (in the novel, Ed was bald and in his late 40s), the missing introduction (explaining why they decided to go on a canoe trip instead of playing golf), and an epilogue after the events. Baldness (formally alopecia) is the state of lacking hair where it usually would grow, especially on the head. ... This article is about the sport. ... An epilogue, or epilog, is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work. ...

In the film, only Bobby's line of work is mentioned (he is an insurance salesman). The novel additionally reveals that Ed is a graphic designer or art director for an advertising agency, Drew works as a sales representative for a large Atlanta-based soft drink manufacturer, and Lewis is simply an unspecified white-collar worker. The first section of the book describes a day at the office for Ed, which (except for the opening voiceover) is omitted from the movie.

Ned Beatty states that he created the infamous "squeal piggy" line while he and actor Bill McKinney were improvising the scene.^[2] James Dickey's son, Christopher Dickey, in his book, Summer of Deliverance, told that it was one of the crewmen who suggested that Ned Beatty's character, "Bobby", "squeal like a pig" to add some backwoods horror to the scene and make it more shocking.

Music

John Boorman's gold record for the "Dueling Banjos" hit single was later stolen from his house by the Dublin gangster Martin Cahill, a scene Boorman recreated in The General (1998), his biographical film about Cahill. Billy Redden as Lonny- the banjo kid. ... Martin Cahill (May 23, 1949 â€“ August 18, 1994) was a prominent Irish criminal from Dublin. ... Dunbar and Gleason as Noel Curley and Martin Cahill The General is a 1998 crime film about Dublin criminal Martin Cahill, who pulled off several daring heists in the early 1980s, and attracted attention from the Garda, IRA, and UVF. The film was directed by John Boorman, filmed in 1997...

Award nominations

// The Academy Award for Best Motion Picture is one of the Academy Awards, awards given to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which are voted on by others within the industry. ... The Academy Award for Directing is one of the awards given to directors working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ... John Boorman (born January 18, 1933 in Shepperton, Surrey, United Kingdom), is a British filmmaker, currently based in Ireland, best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The General. ... The Academy Award for Film Editing was first given for films issued in 1934. ... Tom Priestley is a film and sound editor whose career spans 1961 to 1990. ... New York Film Critics Circle Awards are given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide by an organization of film reviewers from New York City-based publications. ... Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama has been awarded annually since 1944 by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. ... Golden Globe Award for Best Director - Motion Picture has been awarded annually since 1944 by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. ... The Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture - Drama was first awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as a separate category in 1951. ... John Vincent Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an Academy Award-winning American actor. ... Arthur Smith (born April 1, 1921 in Clinton, South Carolina) is an American musician and songwriter. ... Eric Weissberg (born 18 August 1939) is an American banjo player, best known for the theme from Deliverance. ... James Dickey (February 2, 1923 â€“ January 19, 1997) was a popular United States poet and novelist. ...

Notes

External links

Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since August 2007 | Wikipedia articles with plot summary needing attention from November 2007 | Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | 1970 novels | 1972 films | American films | Drama films | English-language films | Existentialist works | Films based on fiction books | Films directed by John Boorman | Films set in Georgia (U.S. state) | Films shot anamorphically | Southern United States in fiction | Warner Bros. films Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Wikiquote is one of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, running on MediaWiki software. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... . ... . ... . ... . ... . ... . ... This article is under construction. ... . ... . ... . ...

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