Travolta: a career that’s stayed alive for 4 decades
There’s a scene near the beginning of “Saturday Night Fever” in which Tony Manero — hardware store worker by day, disco dancer by night — preens himself in front of a mirror in his bedroom. Plastered on the wall are posters of his heroes: Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky,” Al Pacino.
That was in 1977. In 1978, you could have added one more poster to that room: John Travolta, the fellow who brought Tony Manero to life and launched a nearly four-decade career in the process.
“Actually, that’s a fact,” Travolta laughed over the phone from his home in Florida. “By the time I did ‘Welcome Back, Kotter,’ I was already established as an American TV icon, if you will, really, so I got to the movie end of it.”
Travolta will be the guest of honor at this week’s Napa Val-
ley Film Festival, which runs through Sunday, Nov. 15. Travolta will be among those given awards at a Celebrity Tribute on Friday, Nov. 13, and then on Saturday, Nov. 14, Travolta will present the world premiere of his film “Life on the Line,” in which he plays a lineman working with his crew to fix an electrical grid as a powerful storm approaches.
Now in its fifth year, the growing event is more a film, food and wine festival. There are more than 100 films screening, including short films as well as features, and screenings take place in venues in what the festival calls “walkable villages” in Napa, Yountville, St. Helena and Calistoga. Wine from the 50 or so nearby wineries will be available at nearly every screening, and more than 30 chefs have been enlisted to create a unique culinary experience at special events, including the festival’s Gala Event on Thursday, Nov. 12, which features live music from 10 bands. Others who will receive tribute awards are Bruce Dern (career achievements), Keegan-Michael Key (trailblazer) and Lydia Hearst, Evan Peters, Zoe Kazan and Finn Wittrock (rising stars.)
Travolta said he is appreciative of an award that recognizes his long career, which has famously been through several peaks and valleys.
“As an actor goes, it has been a dream career,” said Travolta, who at 61 might be on the verge of yet another career resurgence. Aside from “Life on the Line,” he’ll be seen in the coming months in “Criminal Activities,” directed by Jackie Earle Haley, and “In a Valley of Violence,” a Western by one of his favorite young directors, Ti West; and he’ll star as Robert Shapiro in an F/X miniseries about the O.J. Simpson murder case, “American Crime Story.”
Weathering the down years careerwise is something that was instilled in him by his mother, Helen, a singer and actress who became a high school drama teacher, and his siblings, especially his older sisters, Ellen and Margaret. Growing up in the New York area, John Travolta began acting in his teens, already mature beyond his years.
Starting out, “there were less of us, I can assure you of that! I was 16 and pursuing theater and film, and there weren’t many 16-year-olds doing that, which I think made it easier. I scored most of the auditions I went on, whether it was TV commercials, radio commercials, or theater — off-Broadway, Broadway. My competition was, like, Treat Williams, Richard Gere, and then a little older set would have been Barry Bostwick or somebody like that.”
Although he became a star with three music-oriented films in quick succession — in addition to “Saturday Night Fever,” there were “Grease” and “Urban Cowboy” — Travolta was also quick to credit director Brian De Palma, who cast him in his first major film role in the Stephen King shocker “Carrie.” They worked together again in “Blow Out,” one of Travolta’s best (and most underrated) performances.
However, “Blow Out” bombed at the box office, part of a career slide in the 1980s. He was floundering when some guy named Quentin Tarantino came courting, armed with a script called “Pulp Fiction.”
Tarantino “was dead set on it only being me, but it took me a while — even though I needed to do a role like that — to get my head around doing things like murdering people and taking heroin,” Travolta said. “I know Daniel Day-Lewis wanted that role, and Bruce Willis, and three or four other big names who were much hotter than I was at the time ... and here I was being picky.”
Travolta got his second Oscar nomination for “Pulp Fiction,” and his career was instantly revived. Now, in his 60s, he still looks forward to being courted by writers and directors.
“My characters and stories are in the imaginations of writers,” Travolta said. “I never would have imagined half the roles I’ve been asked to do. And yet I’ve felt great joy in discovering them.
“I don’t mind being a muse at all. I kind of like it!”