), Jane Brucker.
How is it that Aug. 21 has not yet been declaredDirty Dancingday?
The “Hula Hana” remains a fan-favorite moment to this day, but it almost didn’t happen.
Jane Brucker and Jennifer Grey in ‘Dirty Dancing’.Lionsgate
How would you describe your approach to the character?
JANE BRUCKER:I wasn’t like her at all.
I didn’t know how to put on mascara until my 20s.
Lisa (Jane Brucker) belts out ‘Hula Hana’ in ‘Dirty Dancing’.Lionsgate
My mom was an artist, and she didn’t promote all the values that Lisa Houseman has.
Movies are really fun!"
They wanted “Some Enchanted Evening,” and it was too expensive.
They were going to cut it.
[Laughs] So I’m like, “Yeah.
I write stuff doing improv all the time.
I’ll write something.”
So, you just went ahead and wrote “Hula Hana”?
I wrote the story of the spoiled brat living in the island.
I can’t remember whose idea it was [to make the song] a hula probably Kenny’s.
It was all the rage to do tropical [themes] at that time, you know?
AfterSouth Pacific, everything was tropical.
[At some point] Kenny said, “Put ‘wacka wacka’ in it.”
I thought he was nuts.
“it’s possible for you to wacka if you wanna?”
But then I thought, “Wait a minute, the movie’s calledDirty Dancing.
Maybe I’m just square.”
[Laughs]
And you also wrote the music?
It’s a simple little tune.
Simple, yes but it’s also an earworm.
Once you hear it, you’ve got the option to’t stop yourself from humming it all day.
yo do not sell your songwriting skills short.
[Laughs]
That’s true Lisa’s voice is sort of hypnotically off-key.
How did you settle on her singing style?
So, I wanted to hit it and then fall off justmiss it.
Like, she’salmostelegant but she is not quite there.
Four, five…").
Did you ad-lib that?
Yes, I sure did.
I felt like it was a foreign language.
So, I threw in the extra numbers there on purpose.
[Laughs]
The dance is perfectly ridiculous.
It was really, really quick.
It was basically improvised because I was given no time.
I wasn’t even sure that [Emile] was going to get a single shot of it.
Kenny and I [huddled] in a corner and [came up with it].
It just wasn’t very complicated.
It was pretty improvised with Kenny.
But now I do, because that’s how the men on the islands dance.
And the bow at the end?
That was probably me.
I don’t take sole credit for any of it, but I think the bow was me.
What did you think when you first saw Lisa’s “Hula Hana” moment on the big screen?
The real charge was later I think it was like the 10th anniversary of the movie.
There was some film festival anniversary screening, and we were all getting together.
I walked into a movie theater in L.A., and nobody recognized me.
I totally felt anonymous.
In the screening when the scene started, the audience started cracking up and applauding.
I went, “Whoa!”
They knew what was coming and they laughed and showed appreciation.
But when that piano started and everybody started laughing, I was like, “They noticed!”
It wasn’t until many years later that you got credit for co-writing the song.
How did that happen?
They turned it into a musical.
So, I let it go.
I was able to collect.
We’ll split it 50-50.
Let’s do it."
But then he goes, “I’ll do itifyou sing that last note at the end.”
I was like, “Kenny, I can’t.
I’m in a parking lot at the farmers market.”
So, I bent into my car and sang, “Away, away,awaaaaaaaay.”
He said, “Thank you very much.”
And that was that.
