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cRAzY wrote:

p.s. John Travolta kicks ass. and so what if he made his career with pulp fiction.

Wow.. just wow.. are you kidding me?
John Travolta made his career in 1976 with his first notable role.. in Carrie. He then went on to star in a number of decade defining roles in Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Urban Cowboy, and Staying Alive. He killed his career by doing the "Look Who's Talking" trilogy, and was reduced to TV Movies. Pulp Fiction revived his several years dead and rotten career, but in no way did it make his career, and it is hardly something he is even remembered for, much less.

I agree and disagree with you there, becs.

Obviously John Travolta was a star, even a household name before Pulp Fiction. But I don't think his career would be quite the same without it. Before Pulp Fiction he was, as you said remembered for Grease, Staying Alive, Saturday Night Fever, and Urban Cowboy. I think John Travolta needed to do a movie like pulp fiction, because without it he would be remembered as the singing pansy from the seventies. But nowadays I'd say he's more remembered as a badass thanks to Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, and Face/Off. So now he appeals to women and badasses. So yeah, I think he's probably most remembered for Pulp Fiction.

Travolta's a frustrating guy for me, full of contradictions, kind of like Bill Clinton in a way (which made him, really, the perfect actor to PLAY Slick Willie, in Primary Colors, but we'll get there): He's a guy you like pretty much immediately, and keep on liking no matter how bizarre and cultish his beliefs become, no matter how much monket sh!t he flings at you, no matter how deep or often he sinks the rusty shiv of disappointment into your soft, inviting, ever-trusting underbelly. He kills your soul and smiles, and you not only forgive him for it, you love him all the more and beg him to open just a few more of your veins, to torment you just a little longer with his relentless mediocrity. He's like that fucked-up cousin you can't help but forgive; every Thanksgiving, he keeps showing up, drunk and abusive, to eat your food and spill red wine on your tablecloth and piss off your guests and steal money right out of your wallet and tell you what a jerk you are and how your mom always liked him better. Then, after kicking him into the street and warning him not to show his dirty face around your home again, you immediately start to feel bad about it, and by next November you're leaving him messages begging him to come by, the kids love hm so much and he's family, after all. He makes the world around him into a cast of admirers and enablers, just by flashing that vaguely manic grin and saying, Aw, shucks, fellas with that delightfully inbred backwoods folksy charm.

He's got that guys-want-to-have-a-beer-with-him, girls-want-to-take-him-home-to-mama-and-coo-over-him mystique that would have translated perfectly into politics. But, especially since he went through his valley-of-the-shadow-of-career-death years with films like, as becs so correctly pointed out, Look Who's Talking One, Too and Poo, he's had this inaccessibility, this tightness, this mask about him, as if he'd had one too many botox treatments or had been switched out with Jon Voight or was wearing someone else's face, a la a certain John Woo film. I don't think he's ever been, exactly, a GREAT actor -- he actually reminds me a lot of one of his contemporaries, Richard Gere, in many respects -- but he's had something, especially early on when he could actually allow himself to show some vulnerability, instead of just swaggering through cinema with that bouncer's stride and his Cheshire Cat grin and incongruously pimpadelic threads. The most emotion he's been able to show in the last twelve, thirteen years is infinite annoyance laced with gleeful contempt; he's got about as much range and subtlety as Alec Guiness' death mask. However, I digress.

Travolta, for me, hit his peak early on, and in just one film: Urban Cowboy, which helped define an entire generation of pretty, pouting man-boys playing at being macho while primping like a future deb (again, I'm reminded of Richard Gere, early Marlon Brando and, once again, a younger Jon Voight. Is it the fate of all flitting fancy-boys to wind up looking like Emperor Palpatine? However, I digress.). I never liked his musical stuff, though I have to admit, he always seemed, like Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Gary Oldman, to approach his roles as if they were on-stage, and not on-set. He did alright in his obligatory disease-of-the-week teleplay The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, though (which, btw, is NOT about George W. Bush).

Other than that, I'd have to grade his roles on a 1-10 scale of how much they disappointed; yeah, he surged back into public consciousness (after half a decade in a Look Who's Yarking sugar coma) with his portrayl of Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, and he deserves credit for that, but allow me to point out a few things: First, that film was chock-full of career-resurrecting performances, from Bruce Willis to Eric Stoltz, and Travolta's was by no means the most impressive (I have to give it up to Bruce, there, actually, or Tim Roth). Suave is no more an emotional gear than cocky; it's indicative of acting upholstery, not the engine. Second, Travolta was playing straight man to Samuel L. Jackson; Jules was the guy worth remembering, quoting and imitating, not Vega, and if it weren't for action Jackson no one would have given a damn about Travolta, and no one would have remembered his one-note schtick. Lastly, Travolta's basically been playing that same role for the last going-on fifteen years, with only a couple exceptions (and I'll get to those in a moment): Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Swordfish, The Punisher. That's fine, you can get fed very well perfecting a single character and repeating it ad infinitum: Hoffman, Oldman, Pacino, Woody Allen and Jack Nicholson have all become very, very rich and very, very well-respected doing pretty much exactly the same thing. But he hasn't mastered his craft, only eighty-seven different ways of looking damned cool walking, turning, cocking his head, smoking a cigarette, staring, glaring, grinding his teeth and tossing out clench-jawed one-liners. This is the Method for cop and prison shows, and Travolta's got it down pat, which is why I frequently confuse him with David Caruso and not, you know, an actual actor.

But, he's thrown me enough bones over the years to keep me hopeful, keep me interested and, most of all, keep me coming back for more. I think White Man's Burden -- though its Crash-like self-importance grates a bit -- is one of the most underrated films ever, and it, not Pulp Fiction, easily qualifies as the riskiest role Travolta ever took, because it took his newfound, hard-won hipness, confidence and success and threw it off a cliff. A Love Song for Bobby Long deserved to be up for more than just a Golden Globe, and a lot of that was due to Travolta's earnest, toned-down portrayal. And Travolta delivered the performance of his post-Urban Cowboy career in Primary Colors, perhaps because, I suspect, he was actually playing himself.

Now, I know I've been ragging on John-Boy's roles in bread-and-butter films like Get Shorty, Broken Arrow and Face/Off, and haven't even mentioned other well-known, oft-loved titles like Phenomenon or Michael, much less quality films like A Civil Action, The Thin Red Line or Basic. Why? Well, here it is: Much as I like some of those releases -- in the case of Get Shorty, Face/Off, Phenomenon, A Civil Action and The Thin Red Line, "love" comes closer to the truth -- what Travolta did for them can't really be called acting. At best, as in Phenomenon and A Civil Action, his performance only merely approximated actual acting... At worst, he was the cinematic equivalent of a runway model, as in Face/Off, Broken Arrow and both Chili Palmer films.

But, I have no illusions about the popularity of the opinions I've expressed, here. All Travolta has to do is turn around, cock his head, squint, purse his collagened lips and murmur, "Ain't it cool?" -- all in slow-motion, mind you -- and three generations of women sigh and get all Jell-O-ey, and two generations of men sit upright and start paying attention to all the upcoming coolness that's sure to follow, and men of a certain advanced age and greater experience shake their heads and wish that Steve McQueen was still alive, or that John Wayne was still alive, or that Clint Eastwood was still in his fifties. I get it. But, for all John Travolta's memorable roles and fame and influence, no one, I repeat, no one will ever be able to convince me that his career stood for anything more than well-practiced style over anything even remotely resembling substance.

...And that ain't cool.

I remain, as always...

Nico.

Wow. That's a pretty in-depth analysis of John Travolta's career, Nico. How long have you been holding that in?

That's a pretty in-depth analysis of John Travolta's career, Nico. How long have you been holding that in?

Well, hm, let's see... You know, I've been indulging in quite a lot of cheeses and chocolate lately, and haven't been eating my seven "on a mission" Kashi grains like I ought, so, yeah, it's been, like, four or five days, maybe a week, even.

Ohhhhhhhh... You meant, about TRAVOLTA. Erm, longer. And that was infinitely more uncomfortable and annoying, btw. But I feel much better now!

I remain, as always...

Nico. (I feel lighter already!)

Nicodemus wrote:

Well, hm, let's see... You know, I've been indulging in quite a lot of cheeses and chocolate lately, and haven't been eating my seven "on a mission" Kashi grains like I ought, so, yeah, it's been, like, four or five days, maybe a week, even.

Someone's been watching the new episodes of South Park...

Or if you haven't, then I guess I just connect things too easily.

I haven't seen any of the new ones since the Tourette's episode, actually, but they're all TiVo'ed. (Along with all the new Robot Chickens, and Boondockses.) Thanks for reminding me!

I remain, as always...

Nico. (Howdy ho!)

John Travolta has to be one of my least favourite actors, which is ironic, as he's in one of my favourite films (Pulp Fiction). I hate pretty much everything else he's in, often because of him.

White Man's Burden? Is that the film where black people are the majority and white people the minority? Nico, that film was treated with what it deserved- general apathy. I found it rather heavy-handed and a one-note two-hour preach. Give me Spike Lee any day over that crap.

I just decided I like bullet pointing and numbering my thoughts. I think it keeps them more concise and clear (and less redundant too!), and I can feel like I spreading great truths to an unwashed public (maybe I can I a Nobel Peace Prize in the process- who knows!). And I think it makes me look important, which is always important (smirk).

1. The 500 mil quote on Spidey 3 was a rumor I heard/ read, just to clarify. I had also heard numbers closer to 300 mil, but the money can be thrown around in Hollywood, I don't put anything past them. Maybe the number was including promo costs too, which holds some weight as a thought.

2. The 100 mil defence you gave (I forgot who described and took the time to look at how many films have crossed that line) was very solid, and as for the initial box office numbers I would have to agree with you. But as an additional thought, and not to complicaticate the moguls game in any way, shape, or form, don't you think they should film earns differently than they do now? It used to be that if you failed in the theatre on your initial run didn't become cult (Rocky Horror Picture Show) or get rereleased many times (Fantasia was rereleased five times into theatres before it even started approaching a profit, I'm pretty sure), your film was a financial failure.

Since the creation of reliable and affordable home film viewing equipment, a la VHS, now DVD, Box office earning s are important but not completely vital to most films. Leathal Weapon was one of the first films to show this fact. It was a box office failure. It revitalized and sequeled to hell because of video rental and purchase success. Around 2000 another shift hit the industry when the DVD sales of 8 mile and The matrix belittled its box office earnings, both of which were considered solid box office surprises.

3. John Travolta has been around for a longtime in the entertainment industry, so I will diverge into a couple of directions on this one.

First, I always thought that Travolta was a good, not great, actor with a couple really bright shining moments. He probably compares closer to a Keanu Reeves, Charles Bronson, Slyvester Stalone, or Kurt Russell than to an A-list star as far as skill and star status goes. His two biggest moments are very easily Saturday Night Fever And Pulp Fiction, two movie that defined generations.

Second, I would like to defend Look Who's Talking. LWT is a fun light romantic/ family comedy with a distinct and well played twist. I think the fact they repeated themselves twice and the studios bombarded the audiences with lame 'me toos' almost immediately take away from its simple uniqueness and charm (see Home Alone for a similar take).

Third, a factoid for the for the young ones and a sharp witted take on his career. He actully got started on television on a show called Welcome Back, Cotter. He was one of the lead character students in the class. I don't think the show aged well, kinda like the burnt orange carpeting of the era.

Finally, I find it interesting that Travolta vault to stardom was playing a '50s bad boy in a movie that was as believable as Fonzie on Happy Days. Fonzie was the so supposed to be the bad boy every guy wanted to be and every girl swooned over, but no one ever really knew why. It was simply because he was 'the Fonz'. At some piont the 'the Fonz' run, he was so cool that he water skiied over a shark, destroying any credibilty he had to begin with, and looking twice the fool, and damning the series (a la 'Jump the Shark').

Travolta's career has bounced between playing the bad boy all the boys want to be (Pulp Fiction) and the man that every woman clammered to be with (Saturday Night Fever). He was all pomp and style, and substance and reality was difficult for him to attain. At one point, he bought into his own PR's firm about the coolness that is Travolta, and began choosing preposterous roles and films, thinking he is bigger than he was. His own coolness became the shark he 'must' jump. And when it was all said and done, he looks silly in the process and we feel silly for buying into it in the first place.

Life is tragic for an aged bad boy. "Hey!" (thumbs pointed up).

jameydunne
-good thing I kept this short. Otherwise it might have gotten long and nicoesquian.

"Nicoesquian." I like it, but it's a little long. How 'bout Nicosian?

I remain, as always...

Nico. (Nico-ey?)

P.S. It was Welcome Back, Kotter, starring Travolta, Gabe Kaplan and an steroid-popping illegal alien Tribble named McT as Kaplan's hair.

Nico, I just figured a person of your stature deserved a dignified and important sounding adjective, not some simple, mundane one. But ultimately the adjective has to run through the person it applies to, if possible, your ratness.

jameydunne
-pete and repeat are sitting on a fence. pete fell off. Who's left on the fence?

HAHAHA thats a great one jamey, i love it, use it all the time!

...I just figured a person of your stature deserved a dignified and important sounding adjective, not some simple, mundane one. But ultimately the adjective has to run through the person it applies to, if possible, your ratness.

[Bowing] Then I of course gratefully defer to your linguistic intrepidity and good sense, despite the fact that so many compliments makes me wonder if I'm being rolled. [Grin]

Nicoesquianlike it is.

I remain, as always...

Nico. Ey.

Though I am of the "younger" generation of this forum (or somewhere in the middle anyway)... I watched Welcome Back Kotter reruns on Canadian TV as a Tween (and these days they watch Bratz and hannah montanta.. what is this world coming to) and I would have to say Vinnie Barbarino is the ONLY even remotely enjoyable role I've ever seen John Travolta in. I have yet to see (I really need to see a LOT more movies don't I) Hairspray, which I hear he is stunning in... but I just have never understood his appeal. As manure filled as his performance in Phenomenon was, NO big screen performance of his was ever any better or worse.

I presume youall know that Travolta is a closet homosexual which the Scientologists picked up on and used against him to brainwash him into joining them. Some say Cruise is the same.

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