Bee Gee's! Travolta! Saturday Night Fever (1978)

I liked the last 10 minutes. With Travolta on the train reflecting on his life and him making things up with his lady friend.

A lot of people just dismiss Saturday Night Fever as just a "Dance" movie. But I thought it was a really good coming of age drama.

Tony knows that he can't be the King of the Dance floor forever. Sooner or later, he has to grow up and face the real world.

I think that's really why he's attracted to his new Dance Partner. He understands that in her own small way she's a success in the real world and he would like to emulate some of that.

And it is this realization that leads to the spectacular sequel, STAYING ALIVE.

One of my all time favorites. Travolta was fabulous, I still love watching all the dance scenes. I don't think enough credit is given to Donna Pescow as the extremely needy and screwed up Annette. She was just fantastic and scary as hell the way she just kept spiraling out of control the more she tried to win Tony's love.

It's a pretty dark movie. You can understand why it's remembered the way it is; when this shit happens (esp 4:20 in), it's hard not to just be caught up in it. But there's some dark, dark shit in the movie as well.

Listening to her sob while double J date-rapes her in the back of the car is a bit much. In the original script, she's the one who falls off the bridge immediately after that scene. I think the movie would have had to fight for its "fun disco" rep a little harder had that happened.

Also, Bobby C is totally gay for Tony. Note John Badham's subtle staging, where Bobby is always sitting to Tony's right at 2001 Odyssey, but there's ALWAYS someone between them, such as the ex priest brother, symbolizing family shame and the deep-rooted Catholicism that reminds them their love can never be.

Top 10 all-time favorite movie, for me. When I first moved to NY, I sought out the club where Tony does his infamous dance. And while the club was full of hip hop music, I immediately ran over to the flashing dance floor and did the entire routine. Shockingly, I was not mocked off the floor. I'm sure they got that all the time. Unfortunately the club has been shut down for years now.

Yeesh! That would be brutal. Annette's story is definitely tragic, but Doreen's story seemed equally sad. She kept pretending to be something she wasn't. She was the type of person who was most likely taken advantage of by scums preying on girls dreaming of making it big in the city. For a person who was struggling to find out who he was, Tony actually stayed very true to himself.

Stephanie, right? Doreen is the "wipe your forehead" chick. I liked that the person who challenges Tony's worldview is more or less completely full of shit. "All tha ladies in my office drink TEA; it's VERY refined."

Thanks. i couldn't for the life of me remember her name.

The nitpick I'd have with the movie is that Stepahanie is set up as this impressive dancer, and the actress playing her CAN NOT DANCE. The actress playing her also has brown teeth. Ah, the 70s.

Am I wrong to think of this as Rebel Without A Cause with a better soundtrack?

There's an intentional riff on Rebel Without A Cause - the actors mention it on the DVD. Bobby C is Sal Mineo (also gay and dead).

I remember seeing this in the theater when they edited it down to a PG rating for a limited run. Seeing the R rated version years later was a revelation.

The movie's full of bad ADR anyway, so swapping out the curses couldn't have been too much of a botch job. But how'd they address the car-fucking and bridge death?

As I recall, ALL of the sexual stuff was taken out. I don't even remember seeing the bridge death until video years later.

All that I really remember is that it was a much more upbeat cut with Tony coming off as a much nicer guy. The focus was all on the dancing with all of the darker stuff gone.

As in all thing Hollywood, Simon Cowell may be doing a remake of this with Zac Efron.

Justin Timberlake is handling the Soundtrack.
http://www.popcrunch.com/saturday-ni...ing-zac-efron/

I love this film as well. That final Bee Gees song as Tony sits by a train at the end was real touching.

It's the Bee Gees most popular music, but it was sort of the Death of them artistically as well because prior to the whole Disco era they put out some amazing songs.

As for the film though, it's amazing they could ever produce a PG version of it, and I imagine that's actually the version a lot of people have seen. Interestingly it's also only 6 minutes shorter. I think it would play well enough without the sex and swearing, though certain character motivations probably won't make sense that way.

It also reminds us of the good days when Travolta was a fucking good actor.

I wonder if the fight with the Puerto Rican gang is cut from the PG version, because I had no memory of ever seeing that scene until my last viewing.

Phil: revisiting this, did you get any new appreciation for (early) Travolta?

(If so check out, URBAN COWBOY! Almost a companion piece)

He's fine, but he works because his character is a put-on. He's a character in character for most of the film. He serves the material well. I think Badham's not a particularly subtle director, so who knows who gets credit/blame for what here.

I think Travolta really sells it. It's not the most complicated character, but it's handled well enough. Travolta is good enough to nail Tony's swagger and his clueless-ness to the outside world as well as his eventual change.

Plus he also adlibbed the "Don't touch my hair!" scene. So you need to love him for that.

You're such a hater!

No sense in trying to sell you on the merits of TWO OF A KIND then.

Taxi Driver is actually an apt companion piece.

In an alternate universe (Earth-Dago, maybe), a Scorsese-directed Saturday Night Fever is the best film ever made about 1970s Brooklyn.

Got a hold of the PG version. Out: all swearing - movie's got ADR problems to begin with, but this version feels like a dubbed foreign film in parts, or at least like the Mr. Show "Pallies" sketch. When they can't dub over, or mask a swear with an over the shoulder shot, they just hack it out. All the sex scenes are gone.

Still in: abortion subplot, pill popping, gay bashing, racism, bridge death.

That was Annette, not Stephanie. And in the PG version she becomes a pig, not a cunt. Because she was giggling offscreen in the back of the car. And only with one guy instead of two.

Very interesting, Phil. I honestly don't remember the bridge death scene from when I saw the PG version in the theater, but I'll take your word for it.

Where did you find this? Is it commercially available?

Mother Father Chinese Dentist!

A 1999 VHS release, off Amazon for $2.

When you think of the portrayal of Catholics in 1970s cinema, there are two indelible images: the two priests standing over Regans's bed in The Exorcist; and Tony Manero trying on his brother's priest collar (and pretending to hang himself with it).

Both films feature priests who've lost their faith*, and to be honest until I rewatched Saturday Night Fever the other week, I often wrongly recalled the line "One day you look at a crucifix, and all you see is a man dying on a cross" as being from The Exorcist.

And today, it's pretty much a given that any portryal of Catholicism in film is going to be cynical at best; Exorcist and Saturday Night Fever (and to a degree Mean Streets, but that wasn't a box office hit) were the first mainstream American films I can think of that took a less than reverent view of the Catholic Church.

* Father Karras even looks like Father Frank Jr., after a rough life of drinking, pain, and shook-up faith:

Edited by Phil - 4/4/11 at 1:43am

That's an interesting point, Phil. Nowadays, we kinda take that level of disillusionment for granted (having a ton of real-life sex/pedophilia scandals helps), but I wonder what brought that into the cinemas in the 1970s. Was anything really rocking the Catholic Church in the 70s?

Hundreds of years of Catholicism?

I "rediscovered" this movie around '95. We (the roommates) thought it was going to be a fun trip back to our childhoods.

What an ugly fucking movie. By that, as has been pointed out, not one likable character in this whole god damned movie.

The result of the counterculture movement of the 60's and the disillusionment from Watergate. The traditional values of America were all getting reexamined and Catholicism was a biggie.

I'm reading the original New York magazine article that was optioned by Stigwood to be adapted into the eventual film.

And here's a wild bit I just learned elsewhere: When Avildsen was on board to direct, he cast Ray Sharkey and George Memmoli as two of Tony's gang (Double J and Gus, respectively). I want to see Memmoli disco dancing.

Just found out about a recent Chilean film called Tony Manero, about an obsessed SNF fan during the Pinochet years.





Trailer.

You know, when I was a kid, I assumed it was the same actor since they do look so much alike. I just figured he was such a convincing priest in The Exorcist that they hired him again for Saturday Night Fever.

I was 14 when I managed to sweet talk my mother into letting me see this with my sister, who's nine years older than me. And, honestly, even though it was rated R, I don't think either of them figured that this wouldn't be okay for me to see, since "good old Vinnie Barbarino" was in it. Luckily for them, I really was too young to understand a lot of the really dark stuff in it. For me it was "Okay, there's some swearing, but I'm gonna get to see John Travolta do a lot of dancing. And then after this, I'll get to see him as Danny Zuko! Whee!"

When I watch it now as an adult, it really does go to a whole lot of dark places. God, the part when he's screaming at his mother about how she had two regular kids and a saint, and now she's got three regular piece of shit kids just gives me the chills.

I recorded a show from BIO.HD this past weekend about the making of Saturday Night Fever. A great insight to this great film.

More importantly, CHUD's own Devin is an interviewee and offers some insightful bon mots. A must see if you can catch it.

Congratulations, Devin!

Edited to add:

The only disappointment is NO Travolta. I wish he would have offered his feelings / experiences from making the film.

What?! That's awesome. Devin's from that area of Brooklyn so he's always been a fan.

This is now out on DVD; I'm throwing it on my Netflix DVD queue. I love the blurb: "An indelible portrait of a sociopath with the soul of a zombie."

For those who want to check it out, click here.

I was eight when this came out. I remember my babysitter talking about it. The dancing, she said, was good but everything else was "gross." Then she saw the PG version and liked that a lot better. The lack of "cunts" helped, I guess.

Saw it years later, and, like everyone else, was shocked at how harsh it is. Even the goddamn bouncy theme song has that refrain "Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me."

Interesting to see how perceptions of it have changed over the years. For a long time it was fashionable to dismiss it sight unseen because it was thought of as The Disco Movie. Not a disco movie, The Disco Movie. (The fuck-awful Stallone sequel didn't help.) Then people started to look at it out of curiosity and said "This is actually pretty fucking good and wrestles with some real stuff."

I was talking with my mother and her friend about it during her last visit. They were talking about how cute Travolta was, and I was like 'yeah, but he's a pretty horrible person, not to mention the gang rape scene'. They didn't remember any of that. I don't think most people do.

This made me wonder, have there ever been any other movies that were released with an R, then later put out edited with a softer rating? I know a few X-rated major releases (before porn stigmatized X) were later reclassified as R, but an R movie whittled down after its initial release to a PG? I can't think of any others.

An all time classic movie that I would watch whenever it was on TV when I was a kid. I still love it and I think it's the youth movie of the 1970's. People focus too much on the Disco but at it's heart is a story about a young man taking stock of his station in life and coming to the realization that he wants something better for himself.

 

Two particular moments really make this movie special for me. The first is when Tony comes back to the hardware store and asks for his job back at which point the manager says sure and mentions how some of his staff have been there for years if not decades. Tony looks at a middle aged employee stretching his back and the look on his face says everything he is thinking, the worry that this will be his future.

 

The most significant moment in the movie is where he's sitting on the bench with the girl and there's this look in his eyes as though he's going to cry. I read once that during that scene, Travolta said he was thinking about Diana Hyland, the woman he was in love with (that he met during the making of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble) who died in his arms from cancer in early 1977. Every time I see that moment in the movie, it breaks my heart.

You probably gave the Weinsteins the idea with this post! Dick move, Martin.

 

Yeah, I guess I gotta own that.