Herald Sun - Hit TV
8 Aug 2018
As far as enduring screen relationships go, few can hold a candle to Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson.
Forty years after their summer love was ripped at the seams, then rekindled to the tune of You’re the One That I Want, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s Grease remains as loved as it ever was.
And boy, was it loved. Grease outgrossed the other big film of 1978, Christopher Reeve’s Superman, in the US and Australia and remained the highest-grossing movie musical of all time until finally dethroned by ABBA jukebox musical Mamma Mia! 30 years later. Now, as it hand jives its way back into cinemas to mark its 40th anniversary, it’s nice to know Grease still means as much to its stars as it does to fans.
Travolta, who was presented the Cinema Icon award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, doesn’t have to think hard when asked if the honour had prompted him to reflect on which films had meant the most to him across his career. “My biggest joy would be Grease,” he says. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving. People turn on the television and they will watch the whole thing.” He laughs, shaking his head. “What 40-year-old movie do people watch? It was a true phenomenon.”
Meanwhile, the Grease hits — Hopelessly Devoted to You; Summer Nights; We Go Together; Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee — remain a staple whenever Newton-John performs.
The two stars also catch up whenever possible. “It should be known that
I had a crush on Olivia before I ever met her,” Travolta, now 64, laughs. Years before the movie, Travolta already had a connection to Grease: as a kid growing up in New Jersey, he’d hiked across the river to see the stage musical. “I have to admit, I was kind of a sad teenager and I’d seen the off Broadway production of Grease. It cheered me up,” he recalls. A year later, he got a gig in that production, playing T-Bird Doody. “But my secret dream was to play Danny in the movie,” he says. “Then … boom, I got the movie.”
While he was dreaming of playing Danny, Travolta says: “In my mind, if ever there was a movie of Grease, the only one that could ever play Sandy would be Olivia Newton John.
“It was selfish of me because I liked her. So I went to her house to encourage her to do a screen test. I said, ‘Really Olivia, you just have to be yourself. You’d have a lot of fun being somebody wild and sexy, so let’s try it’. She screen-tested and … boom, she was in.”
But not so fast. Paramount wanted a “name” to play Sandy, which Newton-John was far from being in the US in 1977. The Australian was also nervous about risking her burgeoning music career on doing another movie after her first had flopped.
Travolta took it upon himself to be ONJ’s cheer squad. “I just couldn’t get her out of my mind for that role,” he says. “And I proved to be quite correct.”
Cannes wasn’t just a chance to reminisce for Travolta; he was also there to launch his passion project, Gotti, a biopic about the notorious mob boss.
Directed by Entourage star Kevin Connolly, the film will be released on DVD and digital in Australia on October 31.
Gotti was criticised upon release in the US for painting too likeable a portrait of the crime boss. But through his research into playing the crime figure, Travolta had come to see “an integrity” to how Gotti behaved.
“I asked many people, ‘He took from your businesses — why did you love him?’ They said, ‘Because he protected us if we went into the red’. He would never let them close their business, which is why the people were rooting for him. I’d never heard of a gangster like that.”
Travolta kept the movie in the family, recruiting his wife Kelly Preston, 55, to play Gotti’s wife Victoria.
“She’s incredibly talented,” he smiles. “I never worry about her holding her own because she does it better than most. I knew that she would nail this, because as I am Gotti, she is Victoria. We have fun being other people.”
But being the Gottis cut close to the bone. In 1980, the mobsters’ son Frank was killed when he was struck by a car. Travolta and Preston lost their son Jett, then 16, when he died of a seizure during a family holiday.
“That was the hardest to do together,” Preston agrees. “But we are a very playful family. We do plays, we dance, we are very silly, so this was an extension of that.”
Travolta and Preston’s daughter Ella Bleu is 18, while son Benjamin is 8 this year. The couple still appear to genuinely enjoy each other.
“It’s so much fun being around John, we make each other laugh really hard,” Preston says. “And although we’ve been together 27 years now, he can still surprise me.”
“IT SHOULD BE KNOWN THAT I HAD A CRUSH ON OLIVIA BEFORE I EVER MET HER” ... on le ait ! ;-)
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