40 Fun Facts About The Cutting Edge

In The Cutting Edge, which risky, illegal throw wins Kate and Doug their Olympic gold medal?

The Pamchenko is named for the coach who invents it, and no pair could do it in one go: the film stitched the move together from three separate stunts.

The Cutting Edge made a catchphrase of which jagged part of a figure skate that hockey skates lack?

Toe pick is the name for the jagged teeth at the front of a figure-skate blade, used for jumps and spins. In the film Kate turns the term into a taunt whenever Doug falls.

In The Cutting Edge, Kate and Doug win gold at the 1992 Winter Olympics, held in which French town?

Albertville hosted the 1992 Games, the last Winter Olympics staged in the same year as a Summer Games. The film opened in US cinemas about a month after they closed.

In The Cutting Edge, which lasting injury ends Olympic hockey player Doug Dorsey's NHL dream?

Damaged peripheral vision leaves Doug medically unfit to play after a blow to the head at the 1988 Games. Two years later he is playing amateur hockey back home.

The Cutting Edge director Paul Michael Glaser played a detective in which 1970s buddy-cop TV series?

Starsky & Hutch made Glaser famous as Detective Dave Starsky, and he also wrote and directed episodes of it. That work behind the camera led to features such as this skating romance.

Moira Kelly, Kate Moseley in The Cutting Edge, voiced which character in The Lion King?

Nala, Simba's friend and later love interest, got her adult voice from Kelly two years after the skating film. Kelly came back for both direct-to-video sequels.

Terry O'Quinn, Kate's father in The Cutting Edge, later won an Emmy as John Locke on which series?

Lost earned O'Quinn a Primetime Emmy as the castaway John Locke, more than a decade after he played skating father Jack Moseley. A year before the film he was Howard Hughes in The Rocketeer.

A Baltimore Sun critic summed up The Cutting Edge as which Shakespeare comedy played out on ice?

The Taming of the Shrew fits a story in which a blunt outsider matches wits with a sharp-tongued heiress, who even shares the name Kate with Shakespeare's heroine.

The Cutting Edge began when its producer watched a skating pair on TV and wondered what?

If they hated each other was the question Robert W. Cort asked himself during a figure skating championship broadcast in 1990. The finished film reached cinemas in March 1992.

The mid-air spin in The Cutting Edge's climactic throw was filmed with a double bouncing on what?

A trampoline anchored to the ice let double Sharon Carz, out of her skates, spin fast enough for the camera after a champion trampolinist proved too slow.

In The Cutting Edge, Kate and Doug first collide at the 1988 Winter Olympics, held in which city?

Calgary is where both careers stall at the same Games: Doug is hurt in a hockey match and Kate's pairs program ends in a fall. They share one snippy exchange in an arena hallway and part as strangers.

In The Cutting Edge, coach Anton finds former hockey star Doug Dorsey back home in which US state?

Minnesota is where Doug has spent the two years since his injury, living with his brother. He agrees to a tryout even though he is disappointed that the visitor is not a hockey coach.

In The Cutting Edge, which Charles Dickens novel does Kate give Doug as a Christmas present?

Great Expectations is Kate's answer to Doug's own gift, a treasured hockey sweater he has owned for fifteen years. The swap is the first sign of a thaw between them.

In The Cutting Edge, Doug demands modern pop music for their routine instead of which composer?

Mozart is dropped once Doug rebels against the classical routine, and he refuses the frilly costumes designed for the pair as well. Their short program ends up set to a track by the band Yello.

In The Cutting Edge, Doug's brother runs a bar named after which part of a hockey rink?

The penalty box gives the bar its full name, Dorsey's Penalty Box. Doug heads there after work in the scene where he learns that no professional team wants him.

In The Cutting Edge, what lifts third-placed Kate and Doug onto the US Olympic team?

A rival pair falls during the national finals, moving Kate and Doug up to second place and onto the plane to France. Moments earlier they believed their Olympic hopes were over.

In The Cutting Edge, Kate and Doug qualify for the Olympics at a US championship held in which city?

Chicago hosts the national finals, and Kate's father books a hotel suite there for Doug's family before Doug has even told them that he has taken up figure skating.

In The Cutting Edge, a rejection letter from which NHL team leaves Doug with no pro offers?

Detroit Red Wings is the name on the letter Doug's brother brings him, and Doug has no need to open it: they were the last professional team that had not already said no.

In The Cutting Edge, where does Doug's brother think Doug is while he learns to figure skate?

In the Merchant Marine is the story Doug lets his family believe until he owns up in front of a crowded bar. He then tells his brother that figure skating is tougher than hockey.

In The Cutting Edge, Kate trains on a private rink at her father's estate in which US state?

Connecticut is home to the Moseley estate in Greenwich, where Kate's father has built her a practice rink and keeps a trophy room with one case left empty for Olympic gold.

Canadian pair Christine Hough and Doug Ladret play The Cutting Edge's rivals from which country?

Soviet Union is the home of the film's Smilkov and Brushkin, although at the real 1992 Games ex-Soviet athletes skated as the Unified Team. Hough and Ladret placed ninth there, weeks before the film opened.

The Cutting Edge is set in the US and France, but which city was its main filming location?

Toronto hosted the production, and the skating doubles' six-week job there stretched to four months after Moira Kelly broke a bone on the ice and the schedule had to be rewritten.

Which British Olympic skating champion choreographed the routines in The Cutting Edge?

Robin Cousins, the 1980 Olympic champion, also recruited the film's skating doubles himself, paging one and phoning the other with a plane ticket for the next day.

The Cutting Edge was the first film script by which writer, later the creator of Andor?

Tony Gilroy wrote the skating romance years before his Oscar nominations for Michael Clayton. Asked during the shoot how he knew so much about skating, he said he knew nothing about it.

The Cutting Edge's screenwriter later wrote the first three films about which big-screen spy?

Jason Bourne reached cinemas through three scripts by the same writer, beginning with The Bourne Identity ten years after his figure skating debut. He directed the fourth film in the series himself.

Before The Cutting Edge, Paul Michael Glaser directed Arnold Schwarzenegger in which action film?

The Running Man arrived in 1987, five years before the skating romance. Glaser also directed for television, including episodes of Miami Vice.

Which singer performed Feels Like Forever, The Cutting Edge's theme co-written by Bryan Adams?

Joe Cocker took the ballad into the UK Top 40 in 1992. Adams wrote it with the hit songwriter Diane Warren.

The Cutting Edge was an early release under Alan Ladd Jr.'s new management of which studio?

MGM opened the film on 27 March 1992, weeks after the real Winter Games ended, and it went on to gross roughly $25 million in the United States.

Dwier Brown, Kate's fiancé in The Cutting Edge, played Kevin Costner's father in which film?

Field of Dreams cast Brown as John Kinsella three years before he played the financier Kate leaves behind. In 2014 he published a memoir built around that part.

Roy Dotrice, coach Anton in The Cutting Edge, set a record voicing audiobooks of which fantasy saga?

A Song of Ice and Fire earned Dotrice the Guinness World Record for the most character voices by one person in an audiobook. The British actor was born on the island of Guernsey.

An injury Moira Kelly suffered filming The Cutting Edge cost her a part in which other 1992 hit?

A League of Their Own, Penny Marshall's baseball comedy, went ahead without Kelly after she broke a bone on the ice. She still made Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr. that year.

The year The Cutting Edge opened, Moira Kelly played Donna Hayward in a film of which TV series?

Twin Peaks came back as the prequel film Fire Walk with Me, with Kelly replacing Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna. A devout Catholic, she asked her priest's permission before taking the part.

D. B. Sweeney, Doug in The Cutting Edge, voiced the character Sitka in which Disney animated film?

Brother Bear cast Sweeney as Sitka, Kenai's older brother, after he voiced Aladar the iguanodon in Disney's Dinosaur. He was later heard as the adult Avatar Aang in The Legend of Korra.

Christy Carlson Romano, the daughter in two sequels to The Cutting Edge, voiced which Disney hero?

Kim Possible brought Romano a Daytime Emmy nomination. She was 21 when she first played Jackie Dorsey, a skater chasing the Olympic gold her parents had won.

The three sequels to The Cutting Edge premiered as TV movies on which US cable channel?

ABC Family premiered Going for the Gold in 2006, Chasing the Dream in 2008 and Fire and Ice in 2010. Only the 1992 original ever played in cinemas.

The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold sends its heroine to a Winter Olympics in which Italian city?

Turin, called Torino in Italian, is where Jackie Dorsey and her partner Alex sit fourth after a passionless short program, an echo of her parents' own Olympic crisis.

In The Cutting Edge: Fire and Ice, new partner James McKinsey is a bad boy banned from which sport?

Speed skating has thrown James out, so he pursues Alex Delgado as a pairs partner. Every film in the series teams a figure skater with a newcomer from another sport.

The Cutting Edge: Fire and Ice director Stephen Herek earlier made which Disney sports comedy?

The Mighty Ducks, Herek's hockey comedy, reached cinemas in 1992, the same year as the original skating film. He also directed Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

On which CBS sitcom does stockbroker Trevor Lefkowitz call The Cutting Edge a favorite film?

Ghosts returns to the film several times through Trevor, a hard-partying Lehman Brothers employee who died in 2000 and is still stuck in a country house.

While making The Cutting Edge, what did D. B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly agree about sequels?

To appear only together was the deal, and both then declined the studio's repeated offers. The three TV sequels carry on with mostly new casts.