News

'Dirty Dancing' impact goes beyond spending

By Bill Moss, Published: July 8, 2016

Main Street shops and restaurants and hotels were among the recipients of nearly $1 million in direct spending from the remake of Dirty Dancing, which brought a large production crew and about a dozen stars to Hendersonville.

“I think it had a huge economic benefit for the county,” said Beth Carden, director of the Tourism Development Authority.
Early on, the TDA worked with Main Street merchants to promote downtown shops and restaurants and other local retailers.
“We made up the Crew Rewards card to try to get them on Main Street and not just Asheville,” she said. “Everybody’s heard of Asheville and that’s fine but we wanted to keep them here. They worked all day, so we thought they would want to stay here.”
Renzo Maietto poses at his restaurant with Nicole Scherzinger, who plays Penny Johnson in the 'Dirty Dancing' remake.Carden said the actors and crewmembers seemed to have been spread out in hotels throughout Hendersonville. Some of the film-making workers pooled their resources and rented cabins. The Mountain Inn and Suites sold quite a few rooms, she said.
The 1987 smash hit was filmed in Lake Lure. Lionsgate, the producer of the original big-screen movie, returned to the North Carolina mountains for the remake but not to Lake Lure. It chose Kanuga Conference Center for most of the shooting.
“They thanked us for being the hero” of the settings, said Leslie Hartley, director of marketing at Kanuga Conferences, an Episcopal Church-affiliated summer camp and retreat. Filmmakers told Kanuga officials that 75 percent of the movie was filmed at the camp.
Crews loved the historic cabins and the wooded setting. Built from 1909 to 1911, the cabins were designed by Richard Sharp Smith, the supervising architect of the Biltmore House and also the designer of Henderson County’s 1905 Historic Courthouse.
Crews filmed the watermelon scene and “the romantic conga line scene” at the youth camp. The production company converted a gym into a giant catering operation serving three meals a day.
“We were really excited to be part of the project,” Hartley said. “Our setting helped provide the perfect backdrop” for the 1950s time frame of the story. The filmmakers made frequent use of the lake and the lakeside pavilion.
“Some of our staff did get to watch” the filming, she said. “It was obvious there was something special going on around here. It worked out really well. They were very respectful of the fact that we had other business going on.”

Star sightings

Although sightings were relatively rare, there were a few. WLOS posted a photo on its website of Jennifer Lopez at Kilwin’s downtown. Her boyfriend, Casper Smart, stars as the cousin of Johnny Castle, the dance instructor that Baby falls for.
“We had some people tell us they saw Jennifer Lopez sitting in the lobby of the Mountain Inn and Suites waiting for her boyfriend,” Carden said.
Renzo Maietto, the owner of Renzo’s Ristorante at 502 N. Main St., said he fed Lopez and her boyfriend three times and hosted other stars, too, including Sarah Hyland (Baby’s mother Lisa Houseman), Bruce Greenwood (Dr. Jake Houseman) and Nicole Scherzinger (Penny Johnson).
Andrew Tate, the president of the Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development, worked with the state film office in recruiting the movie shoot and finding a production headquarters, which ended up on Locust Street off Seventh Avenue. The state Commerce Department provided a $4 million incentive grant. Tate said the overall benefit for Hendersonville goes beyond the spending on site over a two-month period.
“I think we’re used to measuring things like that in numbers,” he said. “We like economic impact but in this particular situation what the numbers I think don’t capture is the value of having a production that’s going to be seen all over the world filmed in your community and the pride that comes with that.”
At Kanuga Conference Center, staffers are eager to see their workplace as the scenic star of what ABC will promote as a big television event.
“We look forward to seeing the beauty of Kanuga and all of Western North Carolina when it airs,” Hartley said.