To minimize costs, the production wasn't insured, and the actors did their own stunts. Jon Voight climbed the cliff. Burt Reynolds broke his coccyx (tailbone) while going down the rapids when the canoe capsized. Originally, a cloth dummy was used, but it looked too fake, like a dummy going over a waterfall.
Did Burt Reynolds do his own stunts in Deliverance?
Burt Reynolds
However, Reynolds performed several stunts himself through his career, including one scene in Deliverance where his character rides a canoe over a waterfall. Reynolds had to go to the emergency room after hitting his head and cracking his tailbone in this shot.
After Drew suddenly pitches forward into the water, Lewis exclaims that Drew has been shot, but they can find no evidence of a bullet wound when they later find his body (although they don't do a very thorough search). Some viewers have suggested that he suffered a stroke or heart attack because of stress.
In the director's commentary, it is revealed that Drew refused to continue anymore, which is the reason why he shakes his head and falls out of the canoe, he refusing to go on after witnessing and being a part of what has just happened.
Ed, Bobby, and the severely injured Lewis then continue the journey in the remaining canoe. Below the gorge, they find Drew's body. Lewis confirms that he was shot by a rifle bullet. Ed and Bobby sink Drew's body in the river to hide the evidence of any crime.
Burt Reynolds did his own stunts and had the injuries to prove it | Autopsy | REELZ
Did anyone get hurt filming Deliverance?
While filming the white water canoeing scene, Ned Beatty was thrown overboard and was sucked under by a whirlpool. A production assistant dove in to save him, but he didn't surface for thirty seconds.
Ed manages to kill the hillbilly, whose dead body is tied down with weights and tossed into the river by Ed, Lewis, and Bobby to ensure it will never be found.
The film is remembered for two sequences especially: one of "duelling banjos" in which Drew and a local boy (Billy Redden) conjure up an impromptu duet between banjo and guitar, and an infamous scene where Bobby is sexually assaulted and ordered to "squeal like a pig".
To minimize costs, the production wasn't insured, and the actors did their own stunts. Jon Voight climbed the cliff. Burt Reynolds broke his coccyx (tailbone) while going down the rapids when the canoe capsized. Originally, a cloth dummy was used, but it looked too fake, like a dummy going over a waterfall.
What is the meaning of the banjo scene in Deliverance?
The banjo boy scene in Deliverance establishes the narrative's resonating themes of ability, adaptability, and manhood. The hyperwhite banjo player functions as a kind of future primitive, whose savant skill on an ancient instrument signals danger.
What was wrong with the banjo playing kid in Deliverance?
The fact is that Redden was not in any way mentally challenged, he was simply hired by the director because he had the backwoods look they were after. They coached him, and used makeup techniques, to make him appear to be a witless boy in the film. Billy was 15 at the time the scene was shot.
“Deliverance,” which the writer hinted was based on real events (although few believe him; Boorman says “nothing in that book actually happened to him”) was his first and only experience in the film industry (although after his death, the Coen Brothers tried to make a silent version of his final book, “To The White Sea ...
The film never tells the audience the origin or significance of the title Deliverance, but James Dickey's novel explains that its four city-dwelling protagonists, Ed, Lewis, Bobby, and Drew, take their backwoods canoeing trip seeking “deliverance” from the stresses of their modern, day-to-day lives.
Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Ed, while both Donald Sutherland and Charlton Heston turned down the role of Lewis. Other actors who were considered for the film included Robert Redford, Henry Fonda, George C. Scott and Warren Beatty.
What happens in the squeal like a pig scene in Deliverance?
This is, of course, the legendary “squeal like a pig” sequence in John Boorman's Deliverance (1972), in which Beatty's Bobby Trippe is forced to strip, humiliated and sodomised at gunpoint by a pair of leering rednecks, while his friends look on, powerless and appalled.
As mentioned above, many of the best scenes in Deliverance were filmed on the Chattooga River, which makes up part of the border between Georgia and South Carolina.
After a while, Bobby and Ed pull off to the side to wait, and encounter a pair of unkempt hillbillies emerging from the woods; one toothless (Herbert 'Cowboy Coward), and one wielding a shotgun (Bill McKinney). The hillbillies are mildly hostile at first.
The banjo kid, real name Lonnie in the film, was played by Billy Redden who was 15 years old at the time of filming. Now Billy is 66 years old and he left the world of Hollywood behind.
The violence, though disturbing, also acts as an integral piece of the film. The scenery is spectacular and Deliverance makes some of the best use of foreshadowing and silence I've ever seen in a movie. Few movies leave such an impression on the viewer.
Herbert “Cowboy” Coward, who as the sadistic toothless man in John Boorman's Deliverance terrorized canoeists and audiences alike with the chilling line, “He got a real pretty mouth, ain't he?,” has been killed in a car accident.
Who played the inbred banjo player in Deliverance?
Billy Redden is from the small town of Clayton, Georgia, and was picked to play the role due to his image giving off the impression of being inbred, which fit the casting for the film.
Boorman felt that Redden's skinny frame, large head, and almond-shaped eyes made him the natural choice to play the part of an "inbred from the back woods." Because Redden could not play the banjo, he wore a special shirt that allowed a real banjo player to hide behind him.
