Deliverance to play Lewis Medlock. Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Ed, while both Donald Sutherland and Charlton Heston turned down the role of Lewis. Other actors who were attached to the project included Robert Redford, Henry Fonda, George C. Scott and Warren Beatty. The film is infamous for cutting costs by not insuring the production and having the actors perform their own stunts (most notably, Jon Voight climbed the cliff himself). In one scene, the stunt coordinator decided that a scene showing a canoe with a dummy of Burt Reynolds in it looked phony; he said it looked
Jon Voight poet James Dickey had helped to adapt from his own novel of the same name, it tells the story of a canoe trip in a feral, backwoods America. Both the film and the performances of Voight and co-star Burt Reynolds received great critical acclaim, and were popular with audiences. Voight also appeared at the Studio Arena Theater, in Buffalo, New York in the Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" from 1973-74 as Stanley Kowalski. Voight played a directionless young boxer in 1973's "The All American Boy", then appeared in the 1974 film, "Conrack", directed by Martin Ritt. Based on