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In the 25 years since Dirty Dancing was first released, it’s seen three rounds of rereleases across the world and has received several home-video treatments—but that’s not all. The film’s 2004 sequel, Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights, is still interesting even though it leaves the Catskills far behind and has only made a bit more than one eighth of the original’s profits. For one thing, the cast includes actors like January Jones, John Slattery and Patrick Swayze. Yes, Patrick Swayze, in a cameo as a dance instructor. The movie also has a fascinating backstory: As documented on an episode of This American Life, the radio personality Peter Sagal, best known as the voice of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, unintentionally wrote the original screenplay for Havana Nights. In the early 1990s, Sagal wrote a script about an American woman in Cuba in the 1950s, a script that was an examination of young people during a time of revolution. Over the course of many, many rewrites, by writers other than Sagal, the politics became dancing. And fans who missed the New York State setting will soon be appeased: Another Dirty Dancing currently in the works is not a sequel but a remake, set to be directed by the film’s original choreographer, ’80s-teen-movie dance impresario Kenny Ortega. That film’s release is scheduled for 2014.
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