There are a great number of Hollywood creations who can withstand intense amounts of punishment and keep coming back for more. Yet when they are compared to the real-life career of John Travolta, characters such as Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers are left in the dust in terms of staying power.
The fact that John Travolta is still a movie star is an amazing thing. As actors go, he's fairly ordinary. He isn't the kind of actor who can carry a movie on his own. Yet Travolta ended up one of the biggest movie stars of the late 1970s due to \Grease"" and ""Saturday Night Fever."" Though both these movies were focused on music rather than acting, Travolta still delivered what the scripts called for, and everyone was happy with him. Then came the '80s.
Travolta's career in the 1980s is one of the most memorable examples of an actor's fall from grace. ""Urban Cowboy"" saw a painfully awkward Travolta trying to find true love in a redneck bar. ""Staying Alive"" saw him try and cash in on ""Saturday Night Fever"" in one of the lamest sequel ideas of all time. As the '80s closed, Travolta starred in ""Look Who's Talking."" Though not a horrible movie in itself, the fact that it was Travolta's best in quite some time showed how harsh the 1980s can be. Enter Quentin Tarantino.
So after a few more awful movies (two of which were sequels to ""Look Who's Talking""), Travolta's career was resuscitated by Tarantino's ""Pulp Fiction,"" in which Travolta regained both critical and commercial success. After this, Travolta made a few movies that were enjoyable, but soon plunged back into his old ways. The 21st century saw a new level of bad Travolta fare, as ""Battlefield Earth,"" ""Swordfish"" and ""Ladder 49"" lumbered into theatres.
Yet in spite of all of this, Travolta retains the status of being a genuine movie star. More than that, he was still commanding salaries of $20 million as of 2003. For an actor who hasn't had a bonafide hit in almost ten years, Travolta enjoys a celebrity status that most only dream of. So what's the secret? Probably something to do with Scientology-a religion just as baffling as Travolta's improbable career revivals.
In all fairness, I have not seen ""Be Cool."" Maybe ""Be Cool"" will actually be a quality film, though its commercial or critical success has yet to be determined. The fact is that Travolta is badly in need of a successful movie. The scariest thing about him is that when you think he's hit rock bottom, he drums up something worse. If ""Be Cool"" isn't a winner, it's all too easy to see John Travolta calling up Kirstie Alley and filming another ""Look Who's Talking"" sequel.
Dan Marfield is a senior majoring in communication arts and history. He can be reached at ddmarfield@wisc.edu.
