Directed by Thomas Carter, Save the Last Dance was released on Jan. 12, 2001. The film followed dancer Sara, portrayed by Julia Stiles, who after the death of her mother moves from a small Midwestern town to the south side of Chicago. She then falls for Derek, an African American teenager (Sean Patrick Thomas) at her new high school, who also shares a love for dance. Washington portrayed Derek's sister Chenille.
Determined to nail every step of her dance scenes, the then-19-year-old would beg off to remain fresh at rehearsal, but 20 years later, the FOMO is still strong, a feeling her costar did little to squash.
Save the Last Dance
"We had a good time," Thomas admitted. "Julia and I would shoot 'til probably something like 7, 8 o'clock at night. I'd get back to my place and I'd be starving and exhausted and then I'd get the phone call from [dancer] Richmond [Talauega] or Fatima and they're like, 'Be downstairs in 20 minutes, we're going out.' It was like, 'Oh god, you've got to be kidding me.' But then once we got out there, it was just incredible."
Though none of them revolve signing on for the 2001 project, one she unwittingly auditioned for while filming 10 Things I Hate About You, her 40-second table dance at Bogey Lowenstein's party providing director Thomas Carter with enough material to convince him she could nail the role of aspiring Juilliard ballerina Sara. "I didn't know it was my audition," she joked, "but apparently it was."
"I was really kind of happy that we were able to sneak in bigger issues into what was otherwise a teen dance movie," Stiles explained. "This subject matter makes it edgier or different from your average dance movie. You still get the entertainment, but there's something bigger going on. And it opened my eyes to a lot of perspective that I had never really considered before, which I think is pretty cool."
"It was fun," Thomas acknowledged. "I mean, I don't know what was going on with you, Julia, but a bunch of those dancers were hanging out in my trailer with liquor and it was on and crackin' in my trailer."
"I remember one night in particularly where I was just like, 'Okay, fine. I'll take a drink,'" he recalled. "And then I went in and had to film and I was paranoid that I would, you know, be exposed as an unprofessional drunk. But it worked out. And I realized, I think that's what dancers do to loosen themselves up. So, looking back, I feel like I wasn't being unprofessional, I was just kind of trying to roll with the energy of the people that were trying to teach me."
"I'm not a dancer at all," he admitted. "And so I was anxious for the opportunity to not screw it up when it came to filming. So if they were going to come and teach me stuff, I was very eager for it because I was so afraid of looking like a complete dork."
Despite years of training, Stiles was equally hard on herself, fretting that ballet had never been a particular strong suit for her. "There's a thing with dancers, you'll never be good enough, you'll never get it right," she explained. "You're always constantly refining, which is why I could never watch the movie now, because I would be way too critical of my port de bras or whatever."
"I'm envisioning, like, me doing the Debbie Allen character in Fame, where now she's a dance teacher and she's smacking her cane against the ballet bar," Stiles joked. "And then, I don't know."
Each of the actors have a full slate. Stiles, having wrapped filming on season three of her dreamy Sundance Now drama Riviera mere days before the world shut down due to COVID, is currently based in camera assistant husband Preston J. Cook's native Canada, working on Esther. The "psychologically terrorizing" prequel to 2009's Orphan proved riveting enough for her to leave her cozy quarantine bubble with Cook and their 3-year-old son Strummer.
When tragedy strikes, Sara stops dancing and gives up her dreams of attending Juilliard. After meeting a love interest and learning some new dance moves from him, however, Sara regains her desire to study ballet at the famous school.
It is a heavily windy morning, where it can be heard from everywhere around town. Max, Billy and Nora are trying to convince Hank and Barb to let them skip school so they won't have to walk in the extreme wind. However, Hank and Barb refuse to let them skip. Phoebe then arrives and says she's willing to go to school despite the wind, because she has dressed for it. After Max, Billy and Nora realize they can't skip school, they try to get Chloe to teleport them there, but they still haven't given her the candy they promised her for the last time she did, so that doesn't work. Then the parents decide to tell them the story of Heinrich Hiddenville III. He would go to school every day, even on November 4th, 1955, when he fought off a bear using just a pencil. He even won a dance contest on that same day. The kids don't believe the story one bit.
When they arrive back in 1955, they see that Heinrich has a cast on his foot, and they decide that in order to help him, they should help him win the dance contest. After Heinrich says that his partner ditched him, Phoebe volunteers to become his new partner. Phoebe showcases her moves, and Heinrich quickly agrees. They go to splatburger, where the contest is being held. There they see Grandma Wong, who's Mrs. Wong's grandmother, and Colonel Chad Bradford, Principal Bradford's grandfather. The two are shown to be in love with each other, which grosses out the kids.
The dance contest starts, and Max decides to help Heinrich dance by using telekinesis to keep him up. As the contest goes by, they progressively dance better and better. However, when Colonel Bradford spots Max's hair and tries to change it, Max runs away and is unable to help Hiddenville dance. Phoebe then forces Max to take the gel with his hair and continue to help Hiddenville dance with her. The two do their "boogie bus" dance and they start to win over the crowd. Grandma Wong stops the contest and looks like she's about to give the win to Phoebe and Heinrich, but she doesn't and lets their competitors win. Max, Billy and Nora are all disappointed that their efforts amounted to nothing, and Phoebe believes that Heinrich will be devastated by the loss. However, Heinrich is actually really happy despite not winning, as everyone was doing his and Phoebe's "boogie bus." The kids want to go, but they decide to take a picture with Heinrich so that he can remember them. After seeing Colonel Bradford and Grandma Wong slow dancing they finally decide to go home.
After arriving home, they all greet Barb who asks them about their old timey costumes. The kids lie and say that they created an old-fashioned family band and that they just broke up. Then Hank, Chloe, and Blobbin arrive. Blobbin is surprised that the kids went to school in this terrible weather, and Hank begins to tell Max, Phoebe, Billy and Nora about the revised story of Heinrich Hiddenville on the day of November 4th, 1955. Hiddenville would go to school every day except the day when he fought off a bear and tripped on a rock. He would go on to compete in a dance contest that day, in which he won over the whole town, but lost because of his partner, which history has "forgotten." Phoebe then whispers to Max that she "heard that she was the bees knees" (what Hiddenville called her). However, Chloe notices the picture that the four took with Hiddenville remarking that the people in the picture look exactly like them. Hank, Barb and Blobbin look at the picture and notice the same thing, and Max, Phoebe, Billy and Nora are exposed. When Blobbin asks if they messed around with his timeshare, the kids try to joke their way out of it by saying that they have no idea what he's talking about. However, they're exposed again when Colosso gets mad at them for leaving him in the past, showing himself to be old and bearded and with a cane. And Max knew they forgotten something.
Once she moved in with her father in the city, she started attending a mostly-black high school, and fit in fairly quickly, meeting friends who were willing to show her how to dance hip-hop style. Derek and Sarah grow fond of each other throughout the course of the movie, and begin a relationship together.
The offensiveness in the movie was from the sensual dancing and dance club lifestyle that makes up much of our young society together. Profanity was heavy, though not extreme. As in all movies, there are many things to point out that we need to avoid, such as integrity (they get fake ID cards to enter the dance club), honesty (Sarah struggles to be open with Derek), and love (she and her father struggle to learn to live with each other).
The biggest challenge facing Sara is being one of the few whites at Wheatley High School in the ghetto. Luckily, she is taken under the wings of Chenille (Kerry Washington), an African American whose brother Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) is one of the smartest students in the school. Learning that Sara loves to dance, they all head off to Stepps, the local club. Sensing her unfamiliarity with hip hop, Derek teaches this newcomer the basics.
Their mutual love of dance soon draws these two into a relationship. Under the smooth direction of Thomas Carter (Swing Kids), Save the Last Danceexplores the tensions their interracial romance creates in the African-American community. Derek's old flame Nikki (Bianca Lawson) is jealous of this outsider and even Derek's sister wonders about the justice of a white girl taking the community's prize student — Derek plans to go to college and medical school. Equally upset is Derek's buddy Malakai (Fredro Starr) who is just back from juvenile prison and rightly sees Sara as a threat to their friendship.
SEX/NUDITY 4 - Some sexual innuendo (including a mild reference to masturbation) and a kiss; also, in one scene, a boy and girl jokingly embrace and kiss each other to annoy a woman who's staring at them in disapproval. A girl tells a boy that her father will be gone all night and then they kiss passionately as they take off each other's jackets; before the scene ends, we see their bare shoulders as they stand and kiss passionately (both are obviously shirtless). During a ballet performance, a female dancer briefly lies on top of a shirtless male dancer. In a few scenes that take place in a dance club/bar, we see many girls wearing skimpy shirts and also see some boys and girls dancing suggestively with each other; in one scene, a girl bends over while dancing in front of a boy (it appears that either he or she slaps her buttocks) and briefly runs her hands up her clothed torso. A boy and girl dance somewhat suggestively together a few times; in one scene, she jokingly asks him how her buttocks look. A boy grabs a girl's clothed buttocks, then she squeezes his clothed crotch (see Violence/Gore). We see many girls wearing midriff-revealing tops. 2ff7e9595c
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