"Took the Method way too far"

Date: Mon, Mar 4, 2002 10:19 AM

From: "Col. Sphinx Drummond" <sphinx@subgenius.com>

I always liked the movie Deliverance, it works on many
levels. I'm not reading Burt Reynolds' "My Life" but I
came across some excerpts and found this to be pretty
crazy regarding the rape scene in Deliverance.

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Burt Reynolds on Bill McKinney, with whom he worked in
the drama Deliverance (1972):

"I thought the other guy, Bill McKinney, was a little
bent. I used to get up at five in the morning and see
him running nude through the golf course while the
sprinklers watered the grass. A strange dude, he moved
to L.A. after Deliverance and worked in a lot of
pictures of Clint Eastwood. He always played sickos,
but he played them well. With my dark sense of humor, I
was kind of amused by him. But as we got closer to the
rape scene, I caught him staring at Ned Beatty in an
odd, unnerving way. Ned would see it, and look away."

"The day before we shot the scene I noticed McKinney
hovering beside Ned and sat down between them. I wanted
him to see I was Ned's friend. No different than in the
script. Then I asked him how he planned to handle the
rape scene. McKinney turned out to be a pretty good guy
who just took the method way too far. Staring straight
at Ned, he whispered, 'I've always wanted to try that.
Always have.' Ned shouted , 'John!Oh, John!'. In his
brilliance, Boorman reassured Ned but also brought in
several additional cameras, knowing Ned wasn't going to
give him a second, third or fourth take. Ned was only
going to do the brutal scene once. When it came down to
shooting it, Cowboy and McKinney were hands-down
brilliant. Scared the shit out of everybody who saw the
movie. People crawled out of the theater. None of that
creepy 'Squeal, piggy, piggy' stuff was in the script.
But McKinney, I swear to God, really wanted to hump
Ned. And I think he was going to. He had it up and he
was going to bang him. It's the first and only time I
have ever seen camera operators turn their heads away.
Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I ran into the
scene, dove on McKinney, and pulled him off. Boorman,
hot on my tracks, helped hold him down. Ned, who was
crying from both rage and fear, found a big stick and
started beating him on the head. Half a dozen guys
grabbed Ned and pulled him away. We separated the two
of them and let things cool off."

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-Col. Sphinx Drummond TWSR

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Original file name: Took the Method way too far.txt - converted on Friday, 20 September 2002, 16:09