Why should you check out The Novelizers podcast about Dirty Dancing, the steamy 1987 Patrick Swayze-Jennifer Grey movie, on the Cincinnati Public Radio website?
Because it’s funny.
Dayton native Stephen J. Levinson, a former writer for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, has rounded up his comedy pals to write or narrate a snarky, crazy audiobook-style retelling of the Houseman’s family annual summer stay in the Catskills.
Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch set the tone narrating the opening episode by describing Grey’s character, 17-year-old Frances “Baby” Houseman, on the trip to Max Kellerman’s resort in 1963:
“Her youthful anticipation is palpable. Her nose job imminent,” Dratch says. “That was the summer everybody called me ‘Baby.’ And it didn’t occur to me to mind. Come to think of it, I was always late to realize when I was being disrespected via a mildly insulting nickname.”
Dratch’s chapter of Dirty Dancing, from writer Rich Talarico (SNL, Key & Peele, The Tonight Show) also references the movie cast members’ TV roles. Jerry Orbach played Baby’s father in the film before he “moved to New York to become a detective (on Law & Order), and long before he ever dreamed of becoming a singing candlestick” (in Beauty and the Beast). Wayne Knight played the camp activities director “before Newman moved to Manhattan to become a mailman” (on Seinfeld).
Levinson, creative director for the Real Art agency in downtown Dayton, brought The Novelizers podcast to Cincinnati Public Radio after using the station to record comedian/voice actor H. Jon Benjamin (Bob’s Burgers, Archer) when Benjamin was at the Cindependent Film Festival last September.
Levinson already had produced three seasons — Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Independence Day and The Matrix — with Samantha Bee, J.K. Simmons, Patton Oswalt, Rachel Bloom, Ira Glass, Dick Cavett, Will Forte, Wayne Brady, Andy Richter and others as an independent podcast. He asked if WVXU-FM could provide a home for The Novelizers.
“They seemed to get what we were doing,” Levinson says about Cincinnati Public Radio.
Richard Eiswerth, Cincinnati Public Radio CEO and president, said he was “excited to help bring The Novelizers to a new and expanded audience. The Novelizers is not only ‘novel,’ but highly amusing, original, and entertaining in a way that breaks barriers. It features a surprisingly wide range of writers and actors from all corners of the entertainment world. There’s simply nothing else like it in the podcast world.”
Dirty Dancing as a film ran one hour and 40 minutes, or 100 minutes. Each of the 20 “novelized” episodes averages about 35 minutes, for a total of 700 minutes. The second half of each episode is an improvised comedy interview conducted by Kevin Carter, owner of Dayton's Black Box Improv Theater, or Christine Bullen, national artistic director for the Upright Citizen Brigade improve sketch comedy theaters. (The Dirty Dancing improve bits ranged from a fake interview with Liza Minnelli about her choreographing the movie (she didn’t), and a cosmetician who popped pimples on Swayze’s acne-covered chest and “toned down” his hairy armpits. You may choose to skip them.)
WVXU’s website notes that The Novelizers podcast “includes a mature content advisory due to language and themes intended for adult audiences.” Listeners will hear lots of references to sex, plus various body parts, flatulence, feces, pornography and cannibalism.
The Novelizers was born during the pandemic as a way for Levinson to keep in touch with his comedy writing colleagues. He had moved back to Dayton in 2021, during COVID-19, after working as a comedy writer for Fallon and an agency copywriter.
“It was a way to collaborate during the pandemic where everyone could participate,” he says.
First, movies were chopped up in groups of scenes for chapters, and listed on a Google document.
“Then I reached out to writers, and they could jump in and pick which one they wanted to do,” says Levinson, 52, who lives in the Dayton suburb of Oakwood. “I know people. A lot of the writers can reach out to people they know and ask them to do it. Then it kind of snowballs.”
Richter, best known as Conan O’Brien’s announcer and writer, hosted the first two seasons. Levinson did the third. Comedian Dave Hill hosts the fourth season.
The pandemic-era production system has not changed. Writers have great freedom to take liberties creating their chapters. Most actors record episodes on their own, without a director, and send in their audio file.
“Writers do not get notes. Actors do not get notes. They can interpret the script the way they want to,” he says. An editor in Los Angeles assembles the introduction and narration. Levinson edits the improve section in Dayton.
The compensation — or lack of it — also has not changed either since the first Wrath of Khan episode dropped in 2022.
“No one is getting paid. In fact, I lose money every time someone wants to record in a studio,” he says. Levinson would like to compensate the cast and writers for their contribution. “It would be great to get to a place where we get paid and we have sponsors,” he told a Dayton interviewer.
Dirty Dancing represents a departure from the science-fiction films which got The Novelizers treatment. But the next two serials will return to action-adventure sci-fi films with Batman: The Dark Knight and Terminator 2. And Levinson wants to give the comedy treatment to an episode of The Twilight Zone during the Yellow Springs Film Festival this fall. Comedies, however, are out of the picture. He doesn’t want try to do “a joke on a joke,” he says.
Mark McKinney (Superstore, The Kids in the Hall) narrates this week’s episode No. 17 called “The Last Dance.”
Some happy accidents have occurred along the way. Nathan Fillion (The Rookie, Castle) narrated episode No. 16 last week as Superman opened in theaters with Fillion as the Green Lantern/Guy Gardner.
Fillion’s flippant narration, written by Stefan Sirucek, began when Baby said goodbye to dance instructor Johnny Castle (Swayze) before he drove off in his 1957 Chevy.
“They stood looking at their shoes. And they both had the same sad thought: I need new shoes,” Fillion says.
After returning to the lodge, Fillion says that Baby “wanted to run to Johnny. To Mambo into his arms and soar. She wanted to stand in front of these crusty upper-crusters, with their three-piece suits and two-piece hair . . .
“More than anything, Baby wished she could heal all of America’s deep socio-economic divides with one eye-catching dance number. Or, better yet, a show-stopping acrobatic stunt.”
All the Dirty Dancing episodes — and links to the first three seasons — are available at cinradio.org. You can also subscribe at Amazon Music, Apple, Audible, iHeartMedia, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and support The Novelizers at Patreon.
John Kiesewetter's reporting is independent. Cincinnati Public Radio only edits his articles for style and grammar.
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