Deliverance
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50 free Deliverance trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
John Boorman's Deliverance turned a weekend canoe trip into one of the most unsettling films of the 1970s. Four city friends head into the mountains of north Georgia to run a wild stretch of water before a dam drowns it, and what happens to them there has been argued over ever since. This quiz covers the whole story: the plot and its four leads, the casting of Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, the dangerous location shoot, the tale behind Dueling Banjos, and the graveyard scene filmed in a valley that no longer exists. There are questions on James Dickey's novel, the awards race and the film's long afterlife too. It is written for film fans who have seen the movie at least once, with easier questions up front and deeper cuts for anyone who knows the production history.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How did Deliverance fake the banjo picking of Billy Redden, the local boy who could not play?
A player hidden behind him
A player hidden behind him did the playing. Careful camera angles kept the local musician out of frame, and the music itself was dubbed in from a studio recording.
Q 02In the Deliverance scene set to Dueling Banjos, Drew answers the banjo boy on which instrument?
Guitar
Guitar is what Drew plays, so the famous duel has only one banjo in it. Ronny Cox really could play, which is why he was hired for the part.
Q 03Burt Reynolds cracked which bone when he rode a canoe over a real waterfall for Deliverance?
His tailbone
His tailbone took the damage after Reynolds asked to replace the dummy first used for the shot. He recalled John Boorman telling him the new footage still looked like a dummy going over a waterfall.
Q 04Novelist James Dickey appears near the end of Deliverance playing which small-town character?
The sheriff
The sheriff who doubts the survivors' story is Dickey himself. John Boorman offered him the cameo after the two men, who had clashed bitterly during the shoot, made up.
Q 05Which Georgia governor set up a state film commission after Deliverance was shot there?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter created the commission to lure more productions, years before he reached the White House. By 2012 Georgia had become one of the top five production destinations in the US.
Q 06Deliverance earned a Best Picture nomination but lost the Oscar to which fellow 1972 release?
The Godfather
The Godfather took Best Picture, even though Cabaret won eight Oscars that night. That set a record for the most wins by a film that missed the top prize.
Q 07The four businessmen who take the doomed canoe trip in Deliverance come from which Southern city?
Atlanta
Atlanta is home for all four men. James Dickey's novel never names the city, and readers simply assumed it was the author's own hometown.
Q 08In Deliverance, Lewis rescues Ed from the two mountain men by killing one with which weapon?
A bow and arrow
A bow and arrow, fired from cover, drops the attacker before he can turn on Ed. The second man escapes into the woods, which leaves the friends fearing an ambush downriver.
Q 09Shortly before Deliverance opened, Burt Reynolds posed nude for a centerfold in which magazine?
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan ran the photo in its April 1972 issue, a few months before the film made him a major star. Reynolds later said he regretted posing.
Q 10The graveyard filmed for Deliverance now lies about 130 feet underwater in which lake?
Jocassee
Lake Jocassee filled in 1973, the year after the film came out, and drowned the valley where the cemetery scene was shot. The unfinished dam glimpsed on screen is the real one that created it.
Q 11Before his first novel, Deliverance, made him famous, James Dickey was acclaimed for writing what?
Poetry
Poetry was his calling: Dickey won a National Book Award for the collection Buckdancer's Choice and was named US Poet Laureate in 1966, four years before the novel appeared.
Q 12Before Deliverance, Jon Voight earned his first Oscar nomination as hustler Joe Buck in which film?
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy made Voight's career in 1969 and is the only X-rated film to win Best Picture. He and co-star Dustin Hoffman both lost Best Actor to John Wayne.
Q 13Ned Beatty, who played Bobby in Deliverance, later voiced Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear in which Pixar film?
Toy Story 3
Q 21The survivors of the canoe trip in Deliverance finally come ashore at which small town?
Aintry
Aintry is as fictional as the river that leads to it. Bill McKinney, who played one of the mountain men, later recorded an album titled Love Songs from Antri, a nod to how the name is said on screen.
Q 22John Boorman wanted which screen legend to play Lewis in Deliverance before Burt Reynolds was cast?
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando was the director's pick for Lewis, with Lee Marvin as Ed. Charlton Heston and Donald Sutherland both turned the part down before it made a star of Reynolds.
Q 23Which Hollywood studio bought the film rights to Deliverance before the novel was even published?
Warner Bros.
Toy Story 3 cast Beatty as the bear opposite Tom Hanks's Woody. The two actors had already shared the screen in Charlie Wilson's War.
Q 14When the canoes capsize in the rapids of Deliverance, Lewis suffers which serious injury?
A broken leg
A broken leg turns Lewis, the group's survivalist leader, into the one who must be carried. It leaves mild-mannered Ed to take charge and climb the cliff alone.
Q 15For Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, playing Bobby and Drew in Deliverance marked which career milestone?
Their feature film debuts
Their feature film debuts came side by side in the same canoe trip. Cox went on to RoboCop and Total Recall, while Beatty earned an Oscar nomination for Network.
Q 16The river where Deliverance was filmed forms part of the border between Georgia and which state?
South Carolina
South Carolina sits on the far bank, so the cast spent the shoot paddling along a state line. Some scenes were also filmed in the town of Salem on that side.
Q 17Which outdoor business had become a $20 million industry in the Georgia mountains by 2012, decades after Deliverance?
Whitewater rafting
Whitewater rafting took off as visitors arrived by the tens of thousands. Jon Voight's stunt double, Claude Terry, bought equipment used in the film and started an outfitter of his own.
Q 18Dueling Banjos, the hit single from Deliverance, was held at No. 2 by a song from which singer?
Roberta Flack
Roberta Flack kept it from the top for four weeks with Killing Me Softly with His Song. The banjo instrumental did reach No. 1 on the adult contemporary chart.
Q 19The canoe scenes in Deliverance were filmed on which real river, known for its Five Falls rapids?
Chattooga
The Chattooga River was the location, and it runs free: with no dam upstream to control the flow, its level rises and falls quickly with the rain.
Q 20In Deliverance, the four friends set out to canoe which river before a new dam floods its valley?
Cahulawassee
Cahulawassee is a name James Dickey invented. He conceived the story after a traumatic canoe accident of his own on Georgia's Coosawattee River in the early 1960s.
Warner Bros. moved early and began production in the summer of 1971, little more than a year after the book reached shops in March 1970.
Q 24In Deliverance, what do the four friends vote to do with the body of the mountain man Lewis kills?
Bury it in the woods
Bury it in the woods is Lewis's plan, and Ed and Bobby back him. Drew argues for going to the law but is outvoted, and the friends paddle on as if nothing had happened.
Q 25The shotgun-carrying mountain man played by Herbert Coward in Deliverance is missing what?
Two front teeth
Two front teeth were really gone: Coward lost them to a prop pistol accident while playing a gunfighter at a Wild West amusement park, where he had befriended Burt Reynolds.
Q 26In James Dickey's novel Deliverance, Bobby Trippe makes his living selling what?
Insurance
Insurance is Bobby's trade, while Drew is a soft drink executive, Lewis a landlord and narrator Ed a graphic artist. All four are comfortable city men far out of their depth.
Q 27Which Chicago critic gave Deliverance a lukewarm two and a half stars, faulting its sensationalism?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert found it effective as simple adventure but exploitative. Across town, Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the same film a full four stars.
Q 28In 2008, Deliverance joined the National Film Registry, which is kept by which American institution?
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress adds films it judges culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. Deliverance was chosen 36 years after it first reached cinemas.
Q 29John Boorman, who directed the very American thriller Deliverance, was born in which country?
England
England is where Boorman was born, in Shepperton, the son of a pub landlord. He was knighted in the 2022 New Year Honours.
Q 30Which musician sued over the use of Dueling Banjos in Deliverance and won a songwriting credit?
Arthur Smith
Arthur Smith had recorded the tune back in 1955 as Feudin' Banjos, and the film used it without his permission. He won both the credit and a share of the royalties.