‘Get Shorty’ and the ’90s Reboot of John Travolta
Pulp Fiction’ may have put him back in the limelight, but Travolta’s performance as hitman Chili Palmer made him an A-list star for the second time.
John Travolta is nothing if not committed.
Committed to his career and to his family: his 25 year marriage to actress Kelly Preston is the remarkable equivalent of multiple Brangelinas, whether you count the entire thing (JT+KP = 2B) or just the years ole Brad and Angie were actually married (JT+KP = 12B, and we’re rounding down.)
Committed to his audience and to the movie industry in general: He’s been doing this since the days of disco (he might have even been there when you first found out about disco — sorry), and he managed to parlay the phrase “up your nose with a rubber hose” into a lifelong Hollywood residency that’s included two Oscar nominations, a couple of Golden Globes and a face swap with Nicolas Cage. Some lingering Scientology stigma aside, he’s even managed to do so largely free from scandal — if not free from a few questionable decisions (cough, Battlefield Earth, cough.)
He may not have taken home the Supporting Actor Emmy for his role as attorney Robert Shapiro in FX juggernaut The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story last week, but he can’t possibly have spent too long mourning that loss. After ceding the Emmy to his costar Sterling K. Brown — finally, Christopher Darden manages to win something — Travolta took home one of his own for producing the aforementioned series. It was the first Emmy of his long, mostly big-screen career, and he was appropriately pleased by the pomp and circumstance: he and Preston ended up being the last major stars to depart the award’s Governors Ball afterparty. Which also fits the profile. Travolta, as a public entity, is always willing to engage in a little old school red carpet/black tie revelry (some — not ScarJo, but some — might say too much so, at times.)
Maybe it’s that secret strength he’s getting from Scientology. Or maybe it’s because he understands and appreciates — hell, adores — the workings of the tinseltown machine, making him here to work in a way that Big Studio Old Hollywood would have appreciated. Need him to slap on a leather jacket, tuck a comb in his back pocket and woo Olivia Newton John in arguably the most popular musical ever made? Done. Maybe temporally convince everyone in America that cowboy hats are a good idea? On it. Spend an ’80s “slump” hamming it up — three times — alongside a money making talking baby, and then somehow convince Quentin Tarantino to revive his career and credibility by casting him in Pulp Fiction, despite protests from none other than Harvey Weinstein? Pass the ponytail — and the heroin — Vincent Vega has arrived (thanks in part to a coincidence of real estate, sure, but the casting ultimately led to a Travolta shrine above Tarantino’s fireplace, so clearly the director does not regret his decision.)
But while Travolta’s turn as a philosophical hitman who can cut a rug was what catapulted him back to the A-list in the early ’90s, it was his next role in Get Shorty, as a cinephile Miami mobster who really wants to be a movie mogul, that solidified his place on it for a second time. Travolta is cuttingly funny, articulately fierce and imminently watchable as Chili Palmer, a loan shark who arrives in Los Angeles looking to collect debts from a sleazy horror producer played by Gene Hackman and ends up falling in love with a scrappy scream queen played by Rene Russo.
Filled with deliciously profane dialogue lifted directly from the bestselling Elmore Leonard novel on which it’s based, Get Shorty ultimately presents and somewhat parodies Hollywood as a place where anyone can reinvent themselves — even a bonafide bad guy like Chili Palmer — if they have good instincts. Which clearly, Travolta has had in spades for decades.
Fittingly, both Get Shorty and Travolta are currently queuing up again for another go around the Hollywood carousel: Get Shorty is getting remade as a television series starring Ray Romano and Chris O’Dowd. Travolta will be rejoining the mob, so to speak, as crime boss John Gotti in an upcoming biopic that also costars his wife. Because you just can’t keep a good Travolta down.
Get down with John Travolta in Get Shorty, Carrie and Pulp Fiction on Tribeca Shortlist.
Originally published at www.tribecashortlist.com on September 26, 2016.
