Deliverance to the - Charles Bethea

In the summer of
1971, Hollywood came
to North Georgia to
bring James Dickey’s
Deliverance to the
silver screen. Over three
months, the cast and
crew battled relentless
chiggers, stifling heat, a
raging river, the author’s
drunken outbursts,
and suspicious locals
to film one of the most
disturbing and powerful
movies of the decade.
In an oral history that
includes Dickey’s neverbefore-published
correspondence, star
Burt Reynolds and
director John Boorman
join more than a dozen
others (including the
creepy banjo player) in
recalling the making
of a movie that would
forever change how the
world sees Georgia.
by charles bethea
“I don’t believe I have ever seen
anything like some of the scenes
that John Boorman has shot,”
James Dickey wrote in the summer
of 1971, when Deliverance was
filmed in North Georgia. “I was
pretty astounded and horrified
at what I saw. But the damn thing
is relentless, and I don’t think
anyone will leave the theater in
a mood to forget what he has
seen.” The cast and crew posed
for this picture on location. Jon
Voight, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty,
and Burt Reynolds are pictured in
the front. Director John Boorman,
in the Georgia Tech shirt, is over
Beatty’s right shoulder.
atlanta
page 100

It’s near
impossible
to float down
a river in Georgia
without
someone
referencing
Deliverance,
usually exclaiming, in an exaggerated drawl, “Squeal like a pig!”
That many of these giddy rivergoers—almost always from the Big
City—have never seen the film or read James Dickey’s 1970 novel,
much less considered the horrific act that line conjures, is the
point: Movie lines live a life of their own. Just visit squeallikeapig.
com, the personal website of actor Bill McKinney, who uttered it.
Or spend a few minutes on a summer Sunday watching the rafts
plunge down Bull Sluice, the Chattooga River’s main event, and
listen for the jokes straining over the roar of the rapids. Is it the
river that made the film, or the film that made the river? James
Dickey wrote a dark, muscular novel, which became an even
darker, more unsettling film. It’s about a canoe trip gone wrong on
a remote river in North Georgia, but it’s also about “the measures
that decent people may—or must—take against the amoral human
monsters that are constantly amongst us, whether in the woods
of North Georgia or on the streets of New York,” as Dickey wrote
to William F. Buckley in September of 1972. When I first read the
book, at seventeen, it felt like a portal to manhood. Deliverance is
a product of the male ego: the egos of the alcoholic-poet-turnednovelist
(when the film was being made, Dickey wrote in a journal,
“It seems to me that I am the bearer of some kind of immortal
message to humankind”), a fearless English director, and, not
least of all, a B-movie actor who grew up in Waycross, Georgia,
whose name was Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. And then, still, the
fictional egos of the four men in the two canoes who, led by the
possessed Lewis, go down the fictional Cahulawassee “because
it’s there.” There for now, that is. It’s a disappearing river, about to
be dammed to generate power for the civilized folks from Atlanta.
Instead of Roman Polanski or Sam
Peckinpah, who were both discussed,
Warner Brothers chose the lesser-known
John Boorman to direct. He was a director
on the rise, having done Point Blank and
Hell in the Pacific—both starring Lee Marvin—in
the previous four years. Warren
Beatty, Robert Redford, Charlton Heston,
Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Marlon
Brando, Gene Hackman, and George C.
Scott were all considered for parts that
went to newcomers Jon Voight and Burt
Reynolds. Nearly half the cast were local
mountain people. It is something of a miracle,
you begin to realize, that this bunch
made a Hollywood film on a wild river that
almost no one had canoed, in a state where
movies weren’t made, and that it became
one of the most lasting depictions—to say
nothing of its accuracy—of the rural South,
and North Georgia in particular.
It also set in motion four decades of
film production in Georgia. Reynolds ultimately
appeared in eight films made in the
state (see page 87). For fiscal year 2011, the
impact of the film industry in Georgia was
$2.4 billion. How did this start? To compile
this oral history of Georgia’s cinematic big
bang, Atlanta magazine interviewed more
than twenty people who helped bring
Deliverance to the big screen, and quoted
from some of the memoirs and letters associated
with the production.
///////////////////////////
james dickey was born at Crawford
Long hospital on February 2, 1923. Though
he wanted to be a fighter pilot—and later
said he was—Dickey was a flight navigator
and weapons officer in World War II.
He became an advertising executive and
celebrated poet before publishing his first
novel, Deliverance, in 1970. In Summer of
Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son,
Dickey’s oldest son, Christopher, described
his father as “the advertising man by day,
the poet by night, the archer and canoer
and tennis player on the weekends. He was
the father in the armchair on Westminster
Excerpts from James Dickey’s letters and photographs
reprinted with permission from the Estate
of James Dickey and the Manuscript, Archives,
and Rare Book Library, Emory University.
Above, left: James Dickey, who played the sheriff, and his son Christopher. Above, right:
Burt Reynolds. Below: Billy Redden was just a teenager when he was cast as the banjo player,
even though he didn’t play the instrument. He still doesn’t. Photographed in Clayton on July 30.
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r e d d e n : p h o t o g r a p h b y j a s o n m a r i s

Above, Jon Voight’s climactic climb up the gorge had the cast and crew on
edge. Below, James Dickey and John Boorman. Right, the harrowing rape scene
required makeup to show an attacker impaled with an arrow.
Jon [Voight]
was in a very
depressed state.
He wanted to
give up acting.
He says that
I saved his life
and then spent
the whole
film trying to
kill him.
—John Boorman
[Circle], the half-rebellious son at Sunday
dinners on West Wesley. He was lifting
weights, still, in the carport, and cruising
the Buckhead strip malls in the MGA
sports car his mother bought him . . . He
wanted to try everything.”
lewis king, eighty-three, was a friend
of James Dickey’s and a technical adviser for
the film. He lives in Sautee-Nacoochee. Dickey
dedicated the book to me because I took
him canoeing. He enjoyed it, but he wasn’t
much of a paddler.
doug woodward, seventy-four, was a
cofounder of Southeastern Expeditions guiding
service and a technical adviser for the film.
He lives in Franklin, North Carolina. From his
memoir, Wherever Waters Flow: Dickey
was an imposing figure of a man, and his
presence filled the room. But it was much
more than physical. There was a mystique
about him—of things hidden, perhaps ominous—that
he enjoyed perpetuating. There
were references to the canoe trip which he
and King had taken years before . . . Dickey
would not describe details of that canoe
trip. With a knowing smile, he would
simply say, “There’s a lot more truth in the
story [Deliverance] than you might think.”
king I had to go farther down the river
to wait. I met a young guy and his father.
The father said, “Stay with him, boy.” I
think he probably had a still down there.
We waited. The man thought I shouldn’t
have been snooping around with a bunch
of maps. I think Jim used that.
burt reynolds, seventy-five, played
Lewis Medlock in the film. He now lives in
Jupiter, Florida. Dickey and I didn’t see
eye to eye on a lot of things, but I did love
the book. He said, “You know, it really
happened. We didn’t get there in time to
kill the guy.” I didn’t ask him further. Do
I think it’s true? I don’t know. Dickey was
one of the great storytellers ever. And I
don’t mean liars.
chris dickey, sixty, was a stand-in.
He lives in Paris, where he is the Paris bureau
chief and Middle East regional editor for
Newsweek. From Summer of Deliverance:
Deliverance was just one of his projects,
something to talk through on our long
drives across two continents. And as I read
it that night after my marriage, in a motel
on the New Jersey Turnpike, I had to admit
it was very damn good. Much as I wanted
to, I couldn’t put it down.
Dickey wrote a screenplay, which was heavily
revised by director John Boorman. The revisions
would be the subject of much acrimony.
james dickey Letter to Eric Wallace,
April 27, 1971: I first did a long “treatment”
very heavily influenced by James
Agee, and I thought it was very good, but it
turned out to run about seven hours.
woodward From Wherever Waters
Flow: In King’s living room, [Dickey]
held a copy in his hand. He turned to me,
motioning with the script, and asked, “It’s
a good book, don’t you think? Do you really
like it?” . . . As he tossed down more alcohol
and the evening wore on, the question was
repeated, until it became embarrassing.
james dickey Letter to Edwin Peeples,
January 1, 1971: I have a good director,
though an Englishman, John Boorman. I
took him over into North Georgia about six
weeks ago, looking for locations, and damn
near got him bit by a big copperhead. Now
that would have been a touch of “authenticity.”
Imagine having an Englishman filming
a novel about North Georgia in North
Georgia, his veins full of North Georgia
copperhead poison.
We have a good script, which I did,
which John redid, and which I redid his
redoing of. Anyway, we feel that we can
legitimately claim equal credit, and that we
have something which satisfies us both,
which I guess is the point anyway.
john boorman, seventy-eight, lives
near Dublin, Ireland. He had a great sense
of fantasy. When I first talked to him about
the film, he said, “I’m going to tell you
something that I’ve never told a living soul:
Everything in that book happened to me.”
He told everyone else the same thing. Of
course, nothing in that book actually happened
to him. Continued on page 118
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Mountain Men
Continued from page 105
sarah rickman, eighty-five, was married
to Frank Rickman, now deceased, who built
sets and found filming locations in North Georgia.
She lives in Clayton. John Boorman had
pink knitting thread holding his glasses. He
was English and his wife was German.
boorman I was pretty hot at the time. I
read the manuscript and knew exactly how
to do it. Burt and Jon were both not very hot
at the time. Burt had done three TV series,
which had all failed. Living in Ireland, I
didn’t realize that.
Voight had been in Midnight Cowboy, but
little else of note. Reynolds had been in movies
that, by his own account, “made you run out of
the theater screaming if you saw them twice.”
These included Caine and Skullduggery.
Voight and Reynolds were joined by two Shakespearean
actors who’d never done movies: Ned
Beatty and Ronny Cox. The film’s budget was
$1.8 million.
chris dickey Burt wanted respect. He
wasn’t coming from the stage, or from an
Academy Award–winning film. He was a
former stuntman, and he wanted to be a star.
reynolds I was crazy and young and
thought I was totally indomitable. Deliverance
saved me in terms of being thought of
as a serious actor.
ed spivia, seventy, was the state’s first
film commissioner and is now chairman of the
Georgia Film, Video, and Music Advisory Commission.
He lives on Lake Lanier. Dickey kept
slapping Burt on the back and calling him
Lewis. I think Burt punched him out.
reynolds He was about six foot seven,
240. He didn’t want to get physical with me.
He was big, but I was crazy. After fighting
the river, Dickey would have been a cinch.
The Chattooga was a dangerous, largely
unknown river forty years ago. And the men
expected to paddle down it were novices in
canoes.
boorman It was a location film, and
I chose the river. It was the most suitable
place to shoot, so we did it there. I’ve filmed
in more remote places, like the Amazon.
reynolds I hadn’t paddled a river until
we did the movie. None of us had. At that
time, no one had done the Chattooga in a
canoe. Just rafts that crashed and burned.
buzz williams, sixty-one, was an early
paddler of the Chattooga. Now the executive
director of the Chattooga Conservancy, he lives
in Long Creek, South Carolina. In 1968 I was
a high school senior in Pendleton, South
Carolina. A couple fellas were transferred
to a mill down here, and they had kayaks.
Nobody here knew what a kayak was. They
found this great river and asked me to go
with them. It was the Chattooga.
reynolds The first day the four of us
went out, I had Ned Beatty in the front of
my boat—which was not a good idea—and
Jon had Ronny in the front of his boat and
we were in this little pond and the boats
tipped over. I remember two old paddlers
sitting on the beach saying, “This is going
to be a long summer.”
claude terry, seventy-four, was a
technical adviser and body double for Jon
Voight. He cofounded American Rivers and
Southeastern Expeditions guiding service. He
lives in Atlanta. They had me up for a day
to teach canoeing, and Burt wouldn’t come.
They had Fred Bear teach archery, and Burt
wouldn’t do that either.
williams You could get seriously lost,
or killed. It was one of the few remaining
wild places in the southern Appalachians.
james dickey Letter to Larry DuBois,
April 8, 1971: This is going to be some thing,
and some movie. If we just don’t get everybody’s
brains knocked out on those rocks!
They are pure murder, I can tell you.
woodward From Wherever Waters
Flow: We might be called on for technical
advice, such as, “Where can we find a rock
face with a swift current running past,
that Jon Voight can be clawing at for a
finger hold—and where we don’t lose him
down river!” Thus the naming of “Deliverance
Rock.”
kyle weisbrod, thirty-two, guided
Southeastern Expeditions raft trips in 2000 and
2001. He lives in Seattle. Most of the Chattooga
shots were from Deliverance Rock
and Screaming Left Hand Turn. They use
Screaming Left Hand Turn three or four
times. They didn’t touch Bull Sluice.
The set was a diverse place, as many of the
smaller roles were filled by mountain people in
North Georgia.
betsy fowler, seventy-six, was married
to John Fowler, now deceased; in the film,
he played a doctor who tends to the injured
canoers. She has lived in Rabun County for the
past forty-eight years. Boorman told Frank
Rickman to go out and find all the people in
Rabun County who were challenged in any
way—physically and mentally.
boorman Frank was a bulldozer man.
spivia Frank knew those mountains and
rivers better than anybody. His father was
sheriff of Rabun County and used him as a
catch dog for moonshiners. Frank found the
buck dancer at the gas station. And he’s the
one that put the pig-squealing in it. Governor
Carter ended up appointing him to the
film commission.
rickman They wanted a snake to swim
through the river and hold its head up.
Frank knew exactly which snake to get.
Frank didn’t go to the movies, but he liked
making them.
spivia He was a red-clay Michelangelo.
Billy Redden, fifteen years old at the time,
played Lonnie, the creepy boy in the dueling
banjos scene.
billy redden, fifty-six, lives in Dillard,
Georgia, and works at Walmart. A couple
casting directors came into our school and
they picked me out. They just said, “Sit
there and be natural.” There was another
local boy behind me, Mike Atlas, playing the
banjo. I just had two scenes: sitting on the
porch, then the bridge. The rest of the movie
I don’t know nothing about. I left.
boorman [Redden] didn’t play the
banjo, you know. That was another boy,
reaching through his sleeve. We didn’t put
him in the credits.
The set attracted a lot of attention; much of it
came from Reynolds’s harem of women, but
there were also tourism officials interested in
promoting the state.
spivia I was editor of a little state publication
called Georgia Progress. I went up to
Clayton to see what they were doing with
Deliverance. I nosed around and found out
they were buying property along the river,
and hotels, and food. Helping the community.
It was an eye-opening experience.
Georgia was having a downtime, and I
thought more films would be a good way to
get more money spent on Georgia.
woodward From Wherever Waters
Flow: Nightlife in Rabun County revolved
around the Clayton Dairy Queen and the
Tiger Drive-in Theatre. The Tiger showed
grade-B films that were so bad they were
actually good entertainment.
reynolds I went to Atlanta a lot. I was
dating a lovely lady and driving back at four
in the morning to work on the weekends.
Jon, he probably was out being a horticulturalist.
I think he was testing plants. He’s
always trying to further his brain.
rickman I was stacking wood out on the
carport and Burt drove up. I said, “Hold on,
Burt, don’t come and don’t try to kiss me,
I’m all sweaty.” He said, “I don’t care.”
terry We went into his house and I
looked over and there’s a big stack of photographs
of Burt in a wet suit top. He said,
“Those are for autographs.”
The director and principal actors stayed at Kingwood
Country Club & Resort during the production,
while the crew lodged at the Heart of Rabun
Motel. Dickey and Boorman began to butt heads.
chris dickey From Summer of
Deliverance: My father had been handed
the shooting script that he thought he’d
approved. But this one started with a terse
note: “Scenes 1–19 omit.” This was going to
be an action movie that began and ended on
the river. Real clean. Real simple.
boorman Film is different from a novel.
terry We were at Kingwood, having
drinks. I was talking to Boorman and Jim
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Dickey comes in drunk. He flops down
and says, “God, they’re ruining my fucking
movie, ain’t they? They’re not doing my
book.” I said, “I don’t know, Jim.” I look at
Boorman, and Jim repeats, “They’re ruining
my book, ain’t they?” Jim grabs me by the
shoulders and says, “You look at me when I
talk to you.”
boorman He was drunk a lot, and he
had become very overbearing with the
actors. Eventually I had to ask him to leave.
We carried on.
reynolds From his autobiography: I just
couldn’t handle his act—his Jim Bowie knife
on his belt, cowboy hat, and fringed jacket.
rickman Boorman and his wife, Christel,
rented a house down at Kingwood, and
boy, she threw the best parties. She’d go to
Atlanta and get a complete hoop of blue
cheese. She also bought all the lemons in
town and made bowls of fresh lemonade
that she took to the set. She rode around
Clayton in a yellow convertible.
Conflict with locals began to brew. It became
clear that the film wasn’t going to be a pretty
postcard from North Georgia.
fowler Every character, with the exception
of my husband [who played the doctor]
and the four men going down the river, was
portrayed as very limited. And that didn’t
make us feel good.
or something. It was a very happy shoot in
my recollection. Everybody was very collegial.
The locals were extremely helpful.
woodward From Wherever Waters
Flow: Warner Brothers had found their
“perfect” backwoods cabin and gas pump
location for shooting the “That river don’t
go to Aintree” scene. When they returned a
week later, they were met by the owner who
quickly sent them packing with, “I just read
the book and you’re not shooting that filthy
story on my place!”
king The two things that really made
Deliverance last are the concept of the modern
man with the primitive weapon against
the primitive man with the modern weapon.
It was also an unprovoked attack by a rural
element against an urban element.
chris dickey The book and the movie
played with the tension between the new
South and the old South. The new South
was Atlanta. The old South up in the mountains
was a whole different world. You
didn’t have to drive far to hit it.
williams The whole history of the
southern Appalachians is of impoverished
people in a land that was just abused and
worn out and overrun. That’s why they’re
suspicious. Then, on top of all that suffering,
to have someone come in and make fun
of you? They deeply resented it.
boorman Most of the people who lived
up there were like that.
chris dickey From Summer of Deliverance:
Hollywood paid these people and
treated them as gently as it knew how to do,
but it was hard to get over the feeling as the
lights went on and the cameras rolled that
souls were being stolen here.
As the production wore on, the risk-taking and
off-set drama intensified. Voight climbed hundreds
of feet above Tallulah Gorge, and Reynolds
voluntarily slid down a waterfall.
boorman Jon was in a very depressed
state when I found him; he wanted to give
up acting. He says that I saved his life and
then spent the whole film trying to kill him.
james dickey Letter to Jacques de Spoelberch,
who edited Deliverance the novel, June
26, 1971: Yesterday we were filming the
part where Ed climbs the rock-face, and if
there was ever a harrowing piece of filmmaking,
this was it. Jon Voight did as much
of the actual climbing as he was able to, and
wanted to do more, but Boorman was as
frightened for his life as I was.
I am deathly afraid that somebody will
get hurt on this film, because there is no
doubt that it is the most dangerous one ever
made. If we can just get out of the gorge.
king The woods represented a sort of
mystery to Jim. He wasn’t very comfortable.
They told me if I got caught in the hydro
flow, swim to the bottom and it’ll shoot you
out. They didn’t tell me that it would shoot
me like a submarine torpedo! They couldn’t
find me for five minutes. A mile down the
river, they saw this nude man stumbling,
crawling towards them. I’d had on these
high boots and they were gone, the pants
were gone, the underwear was gone, the
jacket was gone. I said to Boorman, “How’s
it look, John?” He said, “Like a dummy
going over the waterfall.”
rickman Frank had built a walkway
and put strong poles and a large rope along
the sides of the gorge for you to hold on to.
So there were some precautions.
chris dickey From Summer of Deliverance:
To shoot that scene, a little deer was
brought in from an animal park, and heavily
tranquilized so it could be controlled.
There was never any question of hurting
it in any way. But it died. It had been given
an overdose. Boorman and his assistants
were in a quiet panic. “This is all we need,”
I remember one of them saying.
reynolds You think that right in the
middle of the fact that you may be drowning,
somebody’s going to say “cut” and
you’re going to be all right. I don’t know if
you could find four actors quite that crazy
to do it now. And Boorman was right there
with us most of the time.
terry There were hours of hanging
on the branch above a big rapid “waiting
for cloud.” The cinematographer wanted
everything overcast and then put a brownish
wash on the film to make it even darker.
It seemed dark enough.
Filming the scene in which Ned Beatty’s character
is raped took more than a day. The set was closed.
chris dickey From Summer of Deliverance:
It was a rain forest, right here in the
mountains of Georgia. Its floor was so shadowed
that small plants found it impossible to
grow in the thick loam of the rotting leaves.
The mountain laurel was not shrubbery but
a collection of trees twisted like gnarled fingers
reaching for the light. The whole effect
was beautiful and threatening. This was
where the rape scene was going to be filmed.
The script called it “Resting Place.”
woodward From Wherever Waters
Flow: [Chris] was to “stand-in” for Beatty
at all the critical marks—climbing the leafy
bank, bending over the log.
chris dickey Nobody was sure how
far it would go, or how convincing it would
be. I wasn’t in my underwear. I was fully
clothed. But it was a very unpleasant sensation,
lying over a log with your ass up in
the air in a scene that’s eventually going to
be a rape.
rickman Frank [the local location scout]
did say that was the thing to do. And they did
it. Oh gosh. He was proud of it. He thought
saying “squeal like a pig” was real funny.
chris dickey Herbert “Cowboy” Coward
[who plays the “Toothless Man” in the
rape scene] was not an actor at all. He’d try
to get into the role and he would say the
most ridiculous things. He ends up saying,
“He’s got a real pretty mouth, don’t he?”
williams There was already conflict
between the people that traditionally used
the river and people coming in from the
outside. Deliverance was like dropping an
atomic bomb on the whole thing.
boorman When I was looking for locations
up there, before we shot the film, I ran
into the odd guy aiming a shotgun at me.
But on the whole, they were very helpful.
chris dickey Life magazine asked my
father to write something about the making
of the movie, and he said, “Have my son
write it.” I was nineteen and thought it was
a great chance. So I took tons of notes and
sat down and wrote a few thousand words.
They didn’t publish it, but I kept the notes.
boorman Chris was fourteen years old
I couldn’t get
through to my
father. All of a
sudden everybody’s
encouraging
you to
be crazy, harddrinking,
eccentric
. . . you do
that. And he did.
—Chris Dickey
reynolds I was Southern, and the
rest of the crew weren’t. I had a real touch
with those people. And not because I was
trying to talk like Erskine Caldwell. There
was no way we could have made that movie
without their permission. They let us shoot.
They weren’t above blowing up canoes.
james dickey Letter to Jacques de Spoelberch,
June 26, 1971: Burt Reynolds, who
plays Lewis, cascades down about ninety
feet of hurricane-rushing water. Burt did
this, and the shots of him doing it are hairraising
indeed.
reynolds They sent a dummy over
the waterfall and it looked like shit, like a
dummy. So I went over the waterfall and
hit a rock about a quarter of the way down
and cracked my hip bone and my coccyx.
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But the first time they were blocking the
scene, it was, “I’m gonna lay a big, long
d--- right in your mouth.” Voight laughed.
He looks around and says, “God? Burt?
Somebody?”
reynolds There must be some phallic
thing here: The guy who did the raping was
a tree-trimmer.
rickman I didn’t much care for that
scene.
chris dickey From Summer of Deliverance:
It was becoming what the movie
was about, it was the thing everybody was
going to remember. Not Lewis’s survivalism,
not the climb up the cliff, not Ed’s conquest
of his own fear.
terry Chris was put through abuse to
the point where when he left for France he
said he’d never come back except to see his
stepsister.
chris dickey It was a miserable time
in my life. And my father didn’t understand.
james dickey Interview with Playboy,
1973: John turned to me and said, “Jim, we
all want you to play the sheriff.” I said I’d
never acted in my life. “You can do it,” he
said. So I just played myself dressed up in a
sheriff’s uniform. After we made that scene,
I wore the uniform back to where we were
staying and had dinner. Somebody said to
me, “Does your sheriff’s outfit fit you OK?”
I said, “Yeah, I haven’t had it off all day. In
fact, ever since I’ve had it on, I’ve been going
around collecting graft from every whorehouse
in Rabun County. And that isn’t all I
got, either.”
boorman When I told him to leave, I
said he could come back to play the sheriff.
He said, “Get yourself another boy.” But he
came back, of course. And did very well.
reynolds No, we didn’t take any precautions.
It was crazy. Absolutely crazy. But
we did it and I’m glad we did it. Would I do
it again? Not for three million dollars.
Deliverance opened the Atlanta International
Film Festival on August 11, 1972, taking the top
award, the Golden Phoenix. It went on to be
nominated for numerous other awards, includ-
ing an Oscar for Best Picture, Best Film Editing,
and Best Director.
williams The book was big. But nobody
had a clue whether the movie would flop. It
just came like a bombshell out of the sky.
rickman We went to Atlanta for the
premiere. Frank was into it so deeply, it was
strange for him watching the movie. I liked
the scenery. But the story . . .
fowler I still can’t watch it all the way
through.
williams The first thing that struck me
was the night sounds. What it sounded like
on film was just like walking outside our
house at night.
rickman People said it put a bad picture
of Rabun County to the world. Like that
rape in the woods. I don’t think mountain
people do that.
chris dickey My father’s sympathy
with them was much greater than it comes
across in the movie.
stan darnell, sixty-two, is the head of
the Rabun County Board of Commissioners.
He lives in Rabun County. Everybody up here
was kind of up in arms. They didn’t expect
that one scene to be in there. But we got the
rafting industry, and quite a few other movies
came here and helped real estate, and
other businesses around.
spivia At the premiere, I sat behind Mr.
and Mrs. Carter and Miss Lillian. When
the actor lets out, “Yahoo, that’s the wildest
fucking river in the world,” I went under
my seat. Jimmy thought it was fine, though.
He always said not to inject our feelings
about anybody’s movie. We were there to
help them.
john dillard, sixty-six, worked for
the Dillard Motor Lodge in Clayton, which
catered for the film set. His family now runs the
Dillard House restaurant in Dillard, Georgia.
Some people that didn’t go to the trouble of
understanding what Dickey was trying to
portray may have been offended. He was
showing how people’s character, true character,
comes out when placed in a different
environment, a dangerous environment. It
made for a great story.
james dickey Letter to William F. Buckley
Jr., September 18, 1972: Have you seen our
movie yet? Has it been reviewed in National
Review? If it hasn’t, I have a suggestion or
two. Most of the other reviewers have taken
it as a critique of “machismo.” But this
needn’t be the case. It can equally be taken
as a political fable: law and order, or un-law
and order (of a sort).
reynolds I’ve always been amazed that
he never wrote another book as good. My
theory is that he didn’t have another story
in him that really happened that dramatic.
james dickey Letter to John Boorman,
September 22, 1972: When you see Burt in
London, please have him tone down some
of the public remarks he is making about
me. I may be mythical to Burt in some way
that has to do with his own psychological
condition . . . I don’t think Burt is doing
any of us any good by his creation of this
mythical character he refers to under the
unlikely name of James Dickey. But tell the
guy that I’m very high on him, for his guts
and talent.
reynolds It totally changed my career.
It changed my life. It changed everything.
james dickey Letter to John Foster West,
October 20, 1972: You could say either that
the four main characters are more or less
based on people I knew—and still know.
But it would probably be even more true to
say that they are all aspects of myself.
chris dickey From Summer of Deliverance:
The smell of alcohol would ooze
from his pores. And he would stand in the
long lines—even walk up and down the
lines—as people waited for tickets. “You see
that?” he’d say. “That’s my movie.”
boorman I was very proud to have
made it.
fowler My husband worked one day,
and I still get residuals of $6.14, two or three
times a year.
According to U.S. Forest Service statistics,
seventeen people were killed on the Chattooga
in the four years after Deliverance came out.
Raft companies also began sending people down
the river.
williams It was referred to as “Deliverance
Syndrome.” Everybody saw the movie
and wanted to go do what Lewis did. They
came up here ill-prepared and got on a very
dangerous river in a very remote place, and
they got killed in droves; they didn’t have
on life jackets or had no skill whatsoever.
Some died of hypothermia. I love the river,
and I love that people have the opportunity
to enjoy it. But those brochures call it “The
Deliverance River.” Every time I see that,
and all the trash, I get nauseated.
dillard Billy Redden, it sort of made a
permanent celebrity out of him.
redden People recognize me in the
store. I’ve had people from all over send me
mail. After me and my wife divorced, I had
my address changed, and I ain’t got a check
from Warner Brothers since. That was
six years ago. They were giving me about
twenty bucks a month. I just want to find
their main office and get my address fixed.
Twenty dollars is a lot, but it’s not worth
fighting my ex-wife for it.
reynolds I wanted to hurry up and
get the shot before my arms went down
one day. I was pumping iron like crazy, and
Billy came up and said, “Stud, my neighbor
died.” And I said, “Well, I’m sorry, Billy.”
And he said, “She ain’t dead, ’cause I love
her.” And I thought, that’s as good as it gets.
I hope he liked us. We cherished him.
redden He wasn’t that nice. I tried to
get along with him, but he was kind of a
smart-ass.
chris dickey I couldn’t get through
to my father anymore, and wouldn’t until
more than twenty years later. If you’re a
writer, your ego is a big part of what you do.
And if all of a sudden everybody’s encouraging
you to be crazy, hard-drinking, eccentric
. . . you do that. And he did.
boorman He was appreciative of my
help, and he professed to be very happy
with the film. He used to say to people it was
better than the book. Later on, he felt that
I, in some ways, had betrayed the book. In
the late eighties, he tried to get Hollywood to
remake the film with his screenplay.
williams He would often say that he
had tremendous regrets about the impact of
that book on the river that we all loved. The
last thing he said to me was, “Say goodbye
to the river for me.” And I said, “Why?”
And he never answered.
james dickey Interview with Playboy,
1973: I want to be buried on the west bank
of the Chattooga River—if the state will
allow it. Just dumped into a hole with no
coffin. On a plain tombstone, there’ll be this:
JAMES DICKEY, 1923 TO 19 WHATEVER,
AMERICAN POET AND NOVELIST,
HERE SEEKS HIS DELIVERANCE.
James Dickey died on January 19, 1997, of complications
of lung disease. He was seventy-three.
He is buried on Pawleys Island, South Carolina.
His tombstone includes the final line from his
poem “In the Tree House at Night.” It reads, “I
move at the heart of the world.” n
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