by Paul Fischer
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John Travolta |
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On a salary of $8 an hour, as a security guard at a museum, Sam Bailey (Travolta) barely manages to support a wife and two kids in a trailer down by the river. When he is let go due to budget cuts, feeling the pressure of mortgage and medical and bill payments, Sam makes the stupid mistake of demanding his job back ... with a gun in his hand. Across the hall is Dustin Hoffman, as a down on his luck television reporter and, before you know it, the media converge on the museum. And Sam's life goes quickly to Hell. |
CrankyCritic: Have you ever played
a guy who unravels to this degree?
Travolta: No. [Pulp Fiction's] Vincent Vega's kind of tragic
but in a knowing kind of way. Sam Bailey is kind of unwittingly tragic.
Poignant.
CrankyCritic: Sam is just not all
that smart. Is there a great satisfaction for you playing the average
guy on screen while you try to maintain an average normal life offscreen?
Travolta: I think in some ways Sam's below average, y'know? He's
childlike, almost. The smartest things he says in the movie are things
like "this isn't a good kind of famous." That's the kind of
street smart that everybody should have. These are things that are great
character food.
CrankyCritic: Did you know Dustin
Hoffman going into this project?
Travolta: I did know him a little bit, but I didn't know him to
work with.
CrankyCritic: What about working with
him surprised you?
Travolta: What surprised me the most was the uncompromising generosity
he had as an artist, to allow you to create whatever you wanted to create.
That floored me. One day he came in from dailies and said "My God!
What you did last night!" He said "Do you know that you're making
me want to come in to work every day? You're challenging me as an actor.
I want to be as good as you are in this movie and it's pissing me off!"
He would get me so excited about my own work. That surprised me. I mean
God, this is this century's greatest film actor, best career ever, and
he's excited, challenged and inspired by me!
CrankyCritic: What a compliment.
Travolta: [big grin] Yeah! Yes, it was.
CrankyCritic: This isn't a role that
people will be expecting from you. Do you think it will bring them into
the theaters?
Travolta: It's not about whether someone will follow you or will
not follow you. It's all about how good the movie is and how good you
do in it. It's always been about that for anybody. You can switch characters
and you can be different people as long as its good. I go for roles that
are intriguing and challenging and something that I know I can be effective
in. I knew I could be effective in this character. But I've also made
other choices, like Face Off and Broken Arrow, where they're
psychotic. I like mixing it up. I like doing different characters each
time. Its the fun of acting, changing it up.
CrankyCritic: How conscious were you
that you were representing real guys. There are a lot of real guys like
this...
Travolta: Yes, there are. How conscious was I of it? I think that
I wanted to capture something that is evident and tragic and possible.
Every man and career woman whose job is very important to them; It getting
taken away from them is a big deal. It has to do with pride. It has to
do with being a provider.
CrankyCritic: Were you able to tap
into your own history, of the years after Staying Alive, say, when
things weren't working, into that "Oh my God I was #1 and now no
one wants me..."
Travolta: So what would I be tapping into?
CrankyCritic: Was there a feeling
of desperation on your end as well?
Travolta: Oh I feel embarrassed to compare the kind of desperateness
a film actor feels to the kind of desperation Sam has. I mean how bad
can it be? "Oh my God 2 million dollars a film..."
CrankyCritic: We're always told that
the better actors are always able to tap in to things that they know.
Travolta: Yeah, but that's not one... my father making 100 dollars
a week and bringing 6 kids up a week and not knowing whether he could
feed us the next week is something to tap in to.
CrankyCritic: There you go.
Travolta: I've never known it but I know that scene. I may have
had the luxury of my parents keeping that from me but at some point I
could see that it was rough on them. They tried to give us whatever they
could. When they retired they didn't know if their pension would cover
their bills. So I'm familiar with it and cognizant of people and their
suffering but for me to compare the downpoints in my life; I'd be embarrassed
to do it. Its a legitimate question, but its apples and oranges to me.
CrankyCritic: Do you think about things
likes Oscar? Is that in your consciousness at all when you're choosing
roles?
Travolta: It's not something I look at, like "Oh, this is
the Oscar role." It's not why you do it. You always do your best
work and that's a by-product. That's something you get if everything falls
politically and artistically in place. They're kind of accidents really.
You do a stellar job and suddenly you're nominated and you go "God
I never would've thought..."
CrankyCritic: Fred Astaire once said,
on Dick Cavett's show, that he voted for you for Saturday Night Fever...
Travolta: I do remember that. Same thing with Pulp Fiction
- Paul Newman and Anthony Hopkins and all these great actors saying they
really wanted me to win. Those moments you remember.
CrankyCritic: How do you feel about
the whole resurgence of popularity of Grease?
Travolta: Grease is one of those films that always entertains.
It feels like it was made yesterday. It holds up. When I was a kid I saw
Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy and I was floored! When he
did "ha ha!" and the fireworks went off and he dances up the
wall, I thought I was gonna die I was so excited! That was 20 years after
he had made it. So I have full understanding of why these kids would get
that musical 20 years later. When it works it works y'know.