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.
The film is infamous for the cost cutting by the studio in an effort to kill it and having the actors perform their own stunts, such as Jon Voight notably climbing the cliff himself.
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.
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.
Burt Reynolds did his own stunts and had the injuries to prove it | Autopsy | REELZ
What was the controversial scene in Deliverance?
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".
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.
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 ...
Ed is gored by one of his own arrows as he lands. He tracks the rifleman and finds him dead nearby, shot by Ed's arrow. Ed returns the body to the top of the cliff. As he does, he sees the canoe with Lewis and Bobby moving out into the river in the full light.
How much of his own stunt driving did Burt Reynolds do in Smokey & The Bandit? Some. Some of it was done by Hal Needham-Burt's longtime stunt double, who also directed “Bandit”.
Billy Redden was a typical local teen living in Georgia, handpicked by director John Boorman for the role of an odd banjo player in the Oscar-nominated classic Deliverance (1972).
Billy Redden (born 1956) is an American actor, best known for his role as a backwoods mountain boy in the 1972 film Deliverance. He played Lonnie, a banjo-playing teenager in north Georgia, who played the noted "Dueling Banjos" with Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox).
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.
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.
Co-star Burt Reynolds and Beatty struck up a friendship, and Ned was then cast by Burt in several other films together, including White Lightning (1973), W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), and the abysmal Stroker Ace (1983).
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.
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.
What happened to the toothless guy in Deliverance?
Herbert Coward, known for his “Toothless Man” role in the movie “Deliverance,” died Wednesday in a crash on a western North Carolina highway, according to authorities. He was 85. The crash happened Wednesday afternoon as Coward and Bertha Brooks, 78, left a doctor's appointment, North Carolina Highway Patrol Sgt.
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.
Who actually played Dueling Banjos in Deliverance?
Two young musicians, Ron Brentano and Mike Russo, had originally been signed to play their adaptation for the film, but instead it was performed by Weissberg and Mandell. "Dueling Banjos" was arranged and performed for the film by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell and was included on its soundtrack.
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.
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.
At first, Boorman had courted Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson to play Lewis and Ed, but they had proved too expensive. Others considered were Robert Redford, Charlton Heston and Donald Sutherland (who rejected the script as too violent). Boorman later made a virtue of using relative unknowns.
