ANNIVERSARY
Five Decades of Deliverance
NORTH GEORGIA
In 1972, when Warner Brothers filmed Deliverance, based on James Dickey’s harrowing novel about four Atlanta businessmen who take to the wilderness of North Georgia, the production team hired local stuntmen to make the river-rafting scenes terrifyingly realistic. “We knew the Chattooga River well, and they asked us things like ‘Where can we get a sequence with Jon Voight in a current clawing for a handhold, but not actually lose him to the river?’” says stuntman Doug Woodward, who is now eighty-four. When filming concluded and the starring cast—Burt Reynolds, Voight, Ronny Cox, and Ned Beatty—and most of the crew left the mountains of Rabun County to head back to Hollywood, the local guides stayed home and recognized a business opportunity. Stuntman Payson Kennedy launched Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City, North Carolina, and soon added an outpost on the Chattooga. His colleagues Woodward and Claude Terry purchased some of the rafts used in the movie and also opened their guiding outfitter Southeastern Expeditions to safely steer tourists through the rapids. Fifty years later, “we still get rafters who heard about this place from the movie,” says Brent Rogers, Southeastern Expeditions’ current co-owner. “On the Chattooga, we still point out some places where it was filmed,” including Bull Sluice and Sock-em-Dog rapids, and a spot north of Tugalo Lake where the filmmakers shot so many scenes that it’s now dubbed Deliverance Rock. southeasternexpeditions.com
SPORTS
Alabama
A REAL WINNER
That’s what the sumo wrestler, the pool shark, the korfball player, and with a friend of mine,” she says about what drew her to the sport. “He told me about a sumo wrestling group that I should check out.” Within a year, she’d claimed the national women’s heavyweight sumo wrestling title. Even if their sports aren’t as familiar as figure skating or swimming, the break-dancers, ultimate Frisbee players, and trampoline jumpers who compete at the World Games are all vying to be the best of the best in front of crowds at arenas, gymnasiums, fields, and stadiums all around Birmingham. Says Armstrong: “I look forward to seeing if all my training and hard work end up putting an American on the podium.”
