Tag Archives: John Travolta

Retro Television Reviews: Welcome Back, Kotter 1.3 “Welcome Back” and 1.4 “Whodunit?”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Well, let’s check in with Brooklyn….

Episode 1.3 “Welcome Back”

(Dir by James Komack, originally aired on September 23rd, 1975)

“I remember my first  day….” Gabe Kotter narrates as the viewer watches him and Mr. Woodman walk down the distressingly dirty hallways of James Buchanan High.

It’s a flashback episode!  Well, kind of.  The third episode of Welcome Back, Kotter was actually the show’s pilot.  As Kotter’s voice-over only makes one appearance at the start of the episode, it’s pretty obvious that it was a last minute addition to explain why the third episode featured Kotter meeting the Sweathogs for the first time.  Apparently, the folks at ABC felt that The Great Debate episode worked better as an introduction to the show than the pilot.  I’m not sure why, as the pilot does a perfectly serviceable job of introducing everyone.

Kotter is not particularly enthused about returning to the high school from which he graduated ten years prior.  Mr. Woodman isn’t happy to see Kotter again, either.  As they walk down the hallway, Mr. Woodman is still accusing Kotter of having started a food fight in the cafeteria.  (Woodman insists that it was a riot.)  Woodman says that since he doesn’t have any choice about Kotter being assigned to his school, he’s going to assign Kotter to teach the worst kids in school, the Sweathogs!

Entering his classroom, Kotter asks the students to introduce themselves.  Not surprisingly, only four of them actually do so.  Vinnie Barbarino stands up and shows off the smile that made John Travolta a superstar.  Epstein is introduced as being the student who is “most likely to off someone.”  Epstein explains how his ancestors were the first Epsteins to land in Puerto Rico.  Freddie says, “Hi there.”  And Horseshack laughs in that grating way of his.  Kotter attempts to teach his class by allowing them to sit wherever they want and then engaging in a game of the Dozens with Barbarino.

“Up your nose with a rubber hose,” Barbarino says and the audience goes crazy.

Kotter insults Barbarino’s family.

“Off my case, Toilet Face,” Barbarino replies and the audience goes crazy, again.

Kotter starts to mention Barbarino’s mother.

“My mother is a saint!” Barbarino explodes.

Woodman suddenly shows up in the classroom.  When he demands to know what Kotter is doing,  Kotter looks to his class to back him up.  When none of them do, Kotter decides to quit his teaching job.

Oh hey, I guess the show is over, right?

No, it’s not.  Later, back at the apartment that he shares with Julie, Kotter is shocked when Barbarino and Freddie crawl through the window.  He’s even more surprised when Epstein, Horseshack, and Rosalie Totsie (Debralee Scott) show up at the front door.  Epstein explains that they stole a cab so they could visit Kotter’s apartment.  They want to see how “the original Sweathog” turned out.  Though Kotter pretends like he isn’t happy to see them, it soon becomes apparent that he knows he’s right where he belongs.  Plus, Julie likes them because …. well, I’m not sure why.  To be honest with you, if I was in her situation, I wouldn’t like for my husband’s students to come climbing in through the apartment window.  That would be a deal-breaker for me.  Freddie and Barbarino do attempt to steal Kotter’s TV but Horseshack returns it.  Awwww!

And Kotter returns to the classroom.  Yay!

As far as pilots go, it’s easy to see why this one was a success.  John Travolta’s smile could light up a room.  Actually, all of the actors playing the Sweathogs do a good job in this episode.  Travolta dominates because he’s Travolta but the entire cast has a nice comedic chemistry.  At the end of the episode, Kotter says, “Welcome back,” to himself and he sincerely seems happy to be there.  He’s made peace with being a Sweathog forever.

Episode 1.4 “Whodunit?”

(Dir by Robert LaHendro, originally aired on September 30th, 1975)

In their tiny apartment, Gabe tells Julie a joke about his aunt’s parrot and a dead butcher.

Meanwhile, at the school, Gabe sees Rosalie Totsy (nicknamed “Hotsy” by the Sweathogs) crying in the hallway.  After a game of charades, Gabe figures out that Rosalie is pregnant!  Who could the father be!?  Sebastian Leone, perhaps?

No, according to Rosalie, the father was a Sweathog.  Or, as Gabe calls them, the Marx Brothers….

This leads to a rather sweet scene in which Horseshack goes down on one knee and offers to marry Rosalie, even though he knows he’s not the father.  He says that he wants to give her baby a good name and that Horseshack means “The cattle are dying.”  Though touched by his sincerity, Rosalie turns him down.  Gabe then invites Rosalie to come to his apartment so that she can talk to Julie.  I’m not really sure if it’s a good idea for any teacher to invite a student to come to their apartment but whatever.

The important thing is that it leads to Rosalie demanding that the father of her baby marry her.  All the Sweathogs are forced to admit that, despite all of their boasting, none of them have actually had sex with Rosalie.  Rosalie then announces that she was lying about being pregnant.  She just wanted to get all of the Sweathogs to go on record that she wasn’t a slut.  “I ain’t easy!” Rosalie explains.

And …. yes, that’s one way to do that, I guess.  I mean, I could understand where Rosalie was coming from because I went through the same thing when I was in high school.  But I would have been happier if the episode had ended with a message that it really wasn’t anyone’s business whether Rosalie was having sex or not.  Instead, the audience specifically applauded Rosalie for not being a slut, which felt just as judgmental as the audience previously laughing at the idea that she was.  I kept waiting for someone to point out just how ridiculous it was that Rosalie had to pretend to be pregnant to get the Sweathogs to stop talking about her behind her back but apparently, that didn’t occur to anyone in the writer’s room.

After everything’s been resolved and Gabe is back home, Julie interrupts Gabe’s comic book time to tell him that maybe they should start a family.  Gabe’s like, “Hell no!”  He then says that Julie is all the family he needs at this point in his life.  “I love you, honey,” Julie swoons.  “Good,” Gabe says, “Tomorrow, call my mother and explain to her why you’re not pregnant.”  The audiences applauds and Julie beats up on Gabe.

I wasn’t a huge fan of this episode but I’ll give credit to Ron Pallilo.  That proposal scene was really sweet and nicely performed.

Next week: Barbarino enters politics!  Sebastian Leone better watch out!

Retro Television Reviews: Welcome Back, Kotter 1.1 “The Great Debate” and 1.2 “Basket Case”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Well, I don’t have anyone but myself to blame.

Ever since I started doing these retro television reviews, people have been suggesting that I should review an old 70s sitcom called Welcome Back, Kotter.  I only knew a few things about Welcome Back, Kotter.  I knew that it was the show that made John Travolta a star.  I knew that it was Marcia’s favorite show on The Brady Bunch Hour.  I knew that Gabe Kaplan played Gabe Kotter, a teacher who returned to his old Brooklyn neighborhood to teach a bunch of students known as the “Sweathogs.”  (Bleh!  What an unappealing nickname.)  It didn’t sound like something I wanted to watch but, being the polite person that I am, I always said, “If it’s ever streaming somewhere, I will.”  The unspoken assumption, of course, was that the show would never be streaming anywhere.

Then, one day, I looked at Tubi and….

Again, I have no one to blame but myself.

As for the show, it was based on the stand-up routines of its star, Gabe Kaplan.  It followed former Sweathog Gabe Kotter (played, of course, by Kaplan) as he tried to teach a new generation of Sweathogs at James Buchanan High in Brooklyn.  Gabe was married to Julie (Marica Strassman).  They lived in a small Brooklyn apartment and Gabe was constantly forcing his wife to listen to corny jokes about his family.  At the school, Gabe’s principal was Mr. Woodman (John Sylvester White), a former history teacher who disliked the Sweathogs.

As for the Sweathogs themselves, there were several but only four were really important.

Vinnie Barbarino (John Travolta) was the handsome but dumb one.

Freddie Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) was the cool basketball player who would often say, “Hi, there” in a very deep voice.

Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes) was the one most likely to kill someone.

Arnold Horseshack (Ron Pallilo) was the nerdy one with the high-pitched voice.  In Kaplan’s original stand-up routine, his nickname was Arnold Horseshit but I doubt that was ever mentioned on the show.

And, of course, there was the theme song.  Welcome Back, Kotter was written and performed by John Sebastian, whose previous claim to fame was appearing on the stage at Woodstock while stoned out of his mind.

Okay, let’s do this thing.

Episode 1.1 “The Great Debate”

(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on September 9th, 1975)

The very first episode of Welcome Back, Kotter opens with teacher Gabe Kotter (Gabe Kaplan) making out with his wife, Julie (Marcia Strassman), on the couch in their little Brooklyn apartment.  Kotter suddenly stops kissing his wife so that he can tell her a joke about the time his uncle slept in the same bed as his secretary and told her that if she wanted to be “Mrs. Kotter for the night,” then she should get out of bed and close the bedroom window herself.  Julie laughs.  Personally, if my romantic partner stopped kissing me specifically so he could tell an adultery joke, I don’t know if I would laugh.  I’d probably be more like, “What are you trying to tell me with that?”

Fortunately, the theme song starts up and rescues the audience from that awkward moment.

The next day, Gabe goes to work at James Buchanan High School.  He teaches the remedial class, which is populated by underachieving students who have been nicknamed “the Sweathogs.”  Gabe discovers that the Sweathogs have painted a rather garish mural on the wall of the classroom.

Vinne Barbarino (John Travolta) gets up and explains what the mural’s about.

Gabe is impressed by the fact that young John Travolta is a hundred times better looking and charismatic than anyone else in the school.  But Gabe still insists that the Sweathogs wash off the mural.  The Sweathogs agree, before revealing that they also painted the top of Gabe’s desk.

In the teacher’s lounge, Alex (James Woods) makes fun of Gabe’s stupid students.  Gabe make fun of Alex for writing plays with names like “Fiddler On My Sister.”  Alex says that his debate class can defeat Gabe’s class.  Gabe accepts the challenge and….

Wait a minute!  JAMES WOODS!?

Yes, that is indeed a youngish James Woods playing Alex, the school’s pretentious drama teacher.  Woods is okay in the role.  There’s not a whole lot to be done with the character as he’s pretty much just an uptight strawman who is there to be humiliated by Kotter and his class.

As for the debate itself, the resolution is that “Humans are naturally aggressive.”  Alex’s class argues in the negative while Kotter’s class argues in the positive.  Alex’s class is uptight and wears sweaters.  The Sweathogs show up in garish costumes.  With the help of Epstein (Robert Hegyes), Barbarino argues that Jack the Ripper and Atilla the Hun prove that people are naturally aggressive.  When Mr, Woodman (John Sylvester White), who is moderating the debate, says that they need a timekeeper, Sweathog Arnold Horschack (Ron Pallilo) enthusiastically volunteers.

“Can he tell time, Mr. Kotter?” a flustered Woodman asks and I’ll admit that I did laugh.  John Sylvester White delivered the line perfectly.

Sweathog Freddie Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) then makes his case but, because his only experience with public speaking is in church, he gives a sermon.  “He isn’t following the rules!” one of Alex’s students shouts.

While Alex’s star debater makes his case, the Sweathogs heckle him so aggressively that the student has a nervous breakdown and starts screaming, “SHUT UP!” at them.  As Kotter points out, this proves that humans are naturally aggressive.  Woodman announces that “This debate is called on account of dumbness.”

Back at the apartment, Gabe tells Julie a joke about Larry and his pet toad.

I have to admit that I enjoyed this episode quite a bit more than I was expecting to.  Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, John Travolta, Ron Pallilo, and Robert Hegyes had a lot of comedic chemistry as the main Sweathogs and Gabe Kaplan did a good job of projecting a much needed sincerity in the role of Mr. Kotter.  He seemed to truly care about his students.  This was definitely a good episode to start the series off with.

Episode 1.2 “Basket Case”

(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on September 16th, 1975)

At the apartment, Gabe tells Julie a joke about how his childhood bully beat up his father.

At school, it’s time for the Sweathogs to take a history exam.  Barbarino has all the answers written on his arm but, fortunately, Gabe shows up with water and a paper towel.  Horseshack tries to distribute the tests in another classroom but Gabe stops him.  Epstein shows up with a note excusing him from the exam because of his bursitis but Gabe tosses the note away as soon as he notices that it is signed “Epstein’s Mother.”  Freddie, meanwhile, doesn’t think that grades matter because he’s made the basketball team.  In fact, he draws a picture of himself as “Stilt Man” on his test paper.

When Gabe fails Freddy, the basketball coach and Mr. Woodman ask him to reconsider.  The Sweathogs ask him to reconsider.  And Freddie tells Kotter that he’s not going to take a makeup exam.  Kotter challenges Freddie to a basketball game.  If Freddie win, he passes.  If Kotter, who was basketball star in high school, wins, Freddie retakes the test.  Freddie agrees and….

Well, it turns out that a game between a middle-aged, out-of-shape teacher and a high school star athlete goes about as well as you might expect.  We don’t see the game but we do see Mr. Woodman and the basketball coach carrying a delirious Kotter into the teacher’s lounge.  Freddie apparently destroyed Kotter on the court but he’s so impressed by Kotter’s determination that he agrees to retake the test anyway.

Back at the apartment, Kotter tells Julie a joke about why he never wears hats.  Apparently, he felt his head was too big.  Poor guy.

Again, this was not a bad episode.  I was worried that Kotter would somehow beat Freddie at basketball while the audience went wild but, instead, the episode got laughs by being honest.  There was no way Gabe was going to win that game.  Interestingly enough, this episode was as much about Gabe dealing with the fact that he was getting older than it was about getting Freddie to take his grades seriously.  Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs was particularly strong in this episode.  It may have been a comedy but Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs played it like a drama and, as a result, the stakes felt real.

So, the first two episodes of Welcome Back Kotter took me by surprise.  Will the rest of the show be this good?  We’ll find out over the weeks to come!

Film Review: Paradise City (dir by Chuck Russell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ian Swan (Bruce Willis) is a famed bounty hunter who has spent the last ten years of his life pursuing an escaped fugitive who is wanted for the cold-blooded murder of four FBI men.  Swan has tracked his prey to Hawaii but, when he’s shot and falls into the ocean, Swan is presumed dead.  Swan’s long-estranged son, Ryan (Blake Jenner), comes to Hawaii to try to track down the man who killed his father.  He meets up with Ian’s former partner, Robbie Cole (Stephen Dorff), and also the only cop on the island who cares about justice, Savannah (Praya Lundberg).  Reluctantly, Cole works with Ryan and discovers that Ian’s shooting is somehow connected to a shady businessman named Arlene Buckley (John Travolta).  A real estate developer, Buckley is working hard to elect a man named Kane (Branscombe Richmond) to the U.S. Senate.  Buckley’s plan also involves taking control of a part of the Island that the natives call Paradise City.  Got all that?

2022’s Paradise City has been advertised as being a John Travolta/Bruce Willis film but make no mistake.  Neither Travolta nor Willis get much screen time, though they both make an impression in the limited time that they do have.  Stephen Dorff manages to steal every scene in which he appears, playing Robbie as a well-meaning guy who can’t help but be kind of a screw-up.  That said, Dorff really isn’t in that much of the film either.  Instead, the main star of the film is Blake Jenner.  Jenner has the blandly affable screen presence of a low-key frat boy.  That worked for him when he was in films like Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! but it’s not exactly ideal for an action star.  Whereas the best action stars feel as if they’re always ready for a fight, Jenner comes across as the guy who would be trusted to order the keg for the next party.

Instead of taking charge of the screen, Jenner finds himself overshadowed by the gorgeous Hawaiian scenery.  Hawaii is the true star of Paradise City and, even when the film itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Hawaii itself is always amazing to look at.  In many ways, Paradise City feels like an extra-violent episode of Baywatch Hawaii.  (The film’s Baywatch aesthetic is confirmed when Savannah wears a bikini to a crime scene.)  Just as with that show, the beaches and the jungles and the waterfalls and the oceans are all so stunning that it’s tempting to give the film a pass on the fact that the plot never makes much sense and any genuine emotional stakes are pretty much non-existent.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to ignore the plot because, for a low-budget B-movie, Paradise City takes itself way too seriously.  It’s one thing for Ryan to be estranged from his father.  It’s another thing for the film to feature flashbacks to Ryan’s childhood, in which we discover firsthand that Ian never understood Ryan.  It’s also one thing to make Buckley a family man.  It’s another thing try to create a clumsy parallel between the way that Buckley is raising his son and the way that Ian raised Ryan.  As opposed to films like Gasoline Alley or the Detective Knight films, Paradise City seems to be trying too hard to be something that it isn’t.  Instead of just embracing its pulpy style and trying to entertain, the film is determined to tug at the audience’s heartstrings and make a statement about evil land developers.  The film forgets that, sometimes, just being entertaining is the best thing that a film can be.

This was one of the last films that Bruce Willis made before it was announced that he would be retiring from acting.  Watching the film, it’s easy to tell that a stand-in was used for most of Willis’s action scenes.  When Willis delivers the majority of his lines, it’s hard not to miss the wiseguy energy that used to be his trademark.  That said, when Willis is acting opposite Travolta and Dorff, he shows a bit of his old spark.  The two scenes in which he confronts John Travolta are the best in the film.  For a few minutes, he seems like the Bruce Willis who we all remember and it’s hard not to get a bit emotional watching two talented (if often underappreciated) actors acting opposite each other for what will probably be the last time.

Paradise City is not a particularly memorable film and the overly complicated plot is next to impossible to follow but I am happy that the cast and the crew got to hang out in Hawaii for a bit.  It’s a lovely place to visit.

Scenes That I Love: The Airport Chase and Shootout From John Woo’s Face/Off

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 77th birthday to director John Woo, the man who did the most to popularize the idea of the slo mo of doom!

Today’s scene that I love comes from Woo’s 1997 film, Face/Off.  In this scene, John Travolta pursues Nicolas Cage by both car and helicopter.  While Cage’s criminal has the time of his life, Travolta’s no-nonsense federal agent reveals just how obsessed he is with capturing his prey.  No one has switched faces yet but the action is already wonderfully over-the-top.  Cage and Travolta both do what they do best in this scene and so does John Woo.

Music Video of the Day: Let Her In, performed by John Travolta (1976, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did you know that John Travolta was singer, even before he starred in Grease?

I didn’t, until I came across the video below on YouTube.  Apparently, Travolta released two albums before he played Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever.  (After Saturday Night Fever was a hit, a third compilation album was released.  It was called — I kid you not — Travolta Fever.)  As a singer, Travolta’s biggest, non-Grease hit was a 1976 cover of a song called Let Her In.  The song spent five months on the U.S. charts and it peaked at number ten.  It was an even bigger hit in Canada, where Travolta’s sensitive song stylings were appreciated by the most polite people to ever knock out each other’s teeth at a hockey game.

From 1976, here is John Travolta performing Let Her In.

Enjoy!

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Saturday Night Fever!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting the final #FridayNightFlix of 2022!  The movie? 1977’s Saturday Night Fever!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Saturday Night Fever is available on Prime and Paramount!  See you there!

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Heatseeker and Face/Off!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1995’s Heatseeker!  Selected and hosted by @BunnyHero, Heatseeker was directed by the later Albert Pyun and yes, it does feature a cyborg! The movie starts at 8 pm et and it is available on YouTube.

 

Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet.  Tonight’s movie, starting at 10 pm et, will be 1997’s Face/Off, the John Woo classic starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage as rivals who switch faces!  Face/Off can be found on Prime!

 

It should make for a night of intense viewing and I invite all of you to join in.  If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto twitter, start Heatseeker at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!  Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to prime, start Face/Off and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag!  The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.  And reviews of these films will probably end up on this site at some point over the next few weeks. 

Enjoy!

October Positivity: Senior Year (dir by Bruce Lood)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1978 and undoubtedly played at dozens of church youth group retreats for years afterwards, Senior Year tells the story of Steve and Angie.

Steve and Angie are both high school seniors.  (Hence, the name….) They’re also both Christians.  Steve used to be a jock who enjoyed drinking and having a good time.  However, over the summer, he decided to give all that up and dedicate his life to Christ.  The rest of his classmates aren’t sure how to deal with this.  They all wonder what happened to the Steve that they used to know.  They’re all worried that this new Steve is going to constantly try to preach to them.  Steve confirms their suspicions by constantly trying to preach at them.  As he quickly discovers, it can be awkward forcing your beliefs on people, especially when they’re just trying to make it from class to class.  Still, the local young minister encourages Steve to keep trying.

Joe has no interest in what Steve is saying.  Joe is a jock who doesn’t get all of that Christian stuff and kind of takes it personally the Steve is now religious.  Joe decides that he’s going to date a Christian girl, just to upset Steve!  Joe’s a real jerk.  However, Joe starts to develop real feelings for her.  He even trades in his van for a sports car, all in an effort to seem more respectable.  Anyway, as things often go in these type of movies, it all leads to a tragedy that leaves one person in wheelchair but which also inspires everyone in the high school to start reading their bible.  Steve finally manages to successfully witness to one of his coworkers.  At no point does it seem to occur to anyone that maybe there was another way that message could have been spread that didn’t involve paralyzing someone for life.

Senior Year is a pretty typical faith-based high school film.  One thing that I’ve noticed about these films is that they always take place in these upper middle class suburban high schools where nearly the entire student body is vehemently anti-Christian.  I went to an upper middle class suburban high school and my experience was markedly different.  That could just be because I’m from Texas but still, there was an element of paranoia to this film that felt more than a bit forced.  It wasn’t enough for Joe to just not be interested in reading the Bible or going to church.  No, Joe had to be a full-on sociopath who specifically tried to ruin a girl’s reputation just because she was a Christian.  It’s all a bit melodramatic.  It also doesn’t help that Steve comes across as everything that Joe claims he is.  Despite the film’s intentions, Steve does come across as being preachy and a bit self-righteous.  The actor playing him is believably awkward but also kind of creepy.  Anyone who has ever had the experience of having a complete stranger start grilling you about your religious beliefs will empathize with those who don’t want to get trapped in a conversation with Steve.

After watching this film, I checked out its imdb page.  I found two pieces of trivia.  I have no idea if either of these are correct but, for the record, imdb claims that John Travolta was offered the role of the youth minister.  That’s possible, I suppose.  Though the film was released in 1978, it features a theater marquee advertising Marathon Man and Two-Minute Warning, which both came out in 1976.  If the film was shot in 1976 than it was probably in pre-production in 1975.  If the film was in pre-production in 1975, it’s totally possible that a relatively unknown John Travolta may have been offered the part.  The other piece of trivia is that Kevin Costner appears as an extra during a high school basketball game.  Costner was 21 in 1976 and was studying acting in college so, again, its possible.  I certainly didn’t see him but, then again, I wasn’t looking.

Anyway, regardless of whether Costner is lurking in the background or not, Senior Year is forgettable.  Today, it’s best viewed as being a time capsule of the era in which it was made.  I mean, selling a van is a major plot point!  This film couldn’t be more 70s if it tried.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Urban Cowboy (dir by James Bridges)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched the 1980 film, Urban Cowboy.  This was a film that had been sitting on my DVR for over a year.  For some reason, I had never actually gotten around to watching it.  There were many times when I started to watch it but I always ended up stopping after a few minutes.  I was never quite sure why as everything that I had heard about the film was positive.  Having finally watched it last night, I think I hesitated because I instinctively knew that John Travolta would look silly wearing a cowboy hat.

And let’s just be honest.  He does.  I mean, Travolta actually gives a fairly good performance in Urban Cowboy.  He plays Bud, a kid from West Texas who moves to Houston so that he can work on an oil rig with his uncle, Bob (Barry Corbin).  At first, he only wants to stay in Houston long enough to raise the money to buy some land back home.  But, he soon falls in love with the Houston nightlife and the local country-western bar.  (He’s Travolta so, of course, he can dance.)  He also falls in love with and eventually marries Sissy (Debra Winger).

Travolta is believable as an impulsive young adult who might not be particularly smart but who makes up for it with a lot of determination.  And he even does an okay job when it comes to capturing the country accent of West Texas.  But that said, whenever he puts on that cowboy hat, the viewer is immediately reminded that Travolta is actually from New Jersey and probably never even attended a rodeo until he was cast in Urban Cowboy.  The hat feels like an affectation, an attempt by a city boy to be more country as opposed to a country boy trying to hold onto his identity in the city.  Ironically, the term “urban cowboy” has come to mean someone who, despite having never left the city, dresses like they’re heading out to herd the cattle and rope some steers.  However, in the film itself, the hat is meant to be a natural part of Bud’s persona but it never quite feels that way.

Far more credible as a cowboy is a youngish Scott Glenn, who plays Wes Hightower.  After Bud’s chauvinistic and abusive behavior drives Sissy away, she ends up with Wes.  Wes teaches Sissy how to ride a mechanical bull, which is something Bud tried to forbid her from doing.  Wes is confident and dangerously sexy and he can even make the fact that he lives in a run-down trailer work for him.  Unfortunately, Wes also turns out to be even more controlling and abusive than Bud.  Even though Bud still loves Sissy and Sissy still loves him, Bud soon hooks up with Pam (Madolyn Smith), the daughter of a wealthy oilman.

Many more complications follow and, of course, there’s one big tragedy that causes Bud to reexamine his life.  Not surprisingly, the film’s conclusion all comes down to who can stay on that mechanical bull for the longest….

The best thing that Urban Cowboy has going for it is not Travolta or Glenn but instead, it’s Debra Winger, who gives a believable and relatable performance as Sissy, playing her as someone who may not have much but who refuses to surrender her pride.  She knows that she deserves better than both Bud and Wes, even if she is hopelessly in love with one of them.  Winger has chemistry with both Travolta and Scott Glenn, which makes the film’s love triangle feel like something more than just a typical story about a girl who can’t resist a bad boy.  She grounds the film in reality and, as such, there are real stakes to the film’s story.  Thanks to Winger, Urban Cowboy becomes about something more than just a fight over a mechanical bull.

The second best thing that Urban Cowboy has going for it is that it does manage to capture the atmosphere of a good country-and-western bar.  It’s place where people go to relax after a hard day’s work.  Unlike the discotheques  that Travolta frequented in Saturday Night Fever, the bars in Urban Cowboy eschew glamour and artifice.  Instead, they’re all about proving yourself not on the dance floor but on the back of a mechanical bull.  For Sissy, the bull symbolizes freedom.  For men like Bud and Wes, it symbolizes survival.  Myself, I’m not a drinker so my bar experience is limited.  And, though I may be from Texas and I spent a lot of time in the country while I was growing up, I’ve never been a fan of country music.  That said, I’ve danced to a few country songs and I’ve certainly stopped by a few bars, even if I was usually the one who annoyed my family and friends by just asking for a glass of water.  I’ve been to the rodeo and I’ve seen people get trampled.  I’ve also seen a few people get tossed off a mechanical bull.  I’ve never been on a mechanical bull myself but I did buy one for my Sims.  (They loved it but, sadly, I had to get rid of it because they spent so much time riding it, they kept missing work and getting fired.)  From my limited experience, I can say that Urban Cowboy got most of the details right.  Even though it was made 42 years ago, it still feels authentic.

That said, Travolta still looks odd wearing a cowboy hat.

Scenes That I Love: Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta Perform You’re The One That I Want From Grease

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I just read that Olivia Newton-John passed away earlier today.  She was 73 years old.

Here she is, performing You’re The One That I Want with John Travolta at the climax of 1978’s Grease.  No matter what else you may think about this film (and, to be honest, it’s not one of my favorite musicals, just because of the way that director Randal Kleiser framed most of the dance numbers), you can’t deny that both Olivia and Travolta poured their hearts into this climax.