Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9412210060
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANK BRUNI KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
It had been too many years since his one and only Oscar nomination, for 1977's ``Saturday Night Fever.'' Too many bad movies. Too much embarrassment.
Even his 1989 return to box office success, ``Look Who's Talking,'' didn't bring him any closer to the artistic respect he felt he had commanded once and wanted desperately to command again.
So, in a moment of reckoning that he says came a year and a half ago, he told himself: ``I had a good shot at this. I had a good run. Financially, I'm set. I'll still work. It's just that at the level I wanted to, it's all over.''
Travolta, recalling this as he reclines on a couch in a Manhattan hotel room, seems to drift away for a moment. His eyes mist.
Then, suddenly and triumphantly, he smiles.
``A week later,'' he says, ``Quentin called.''
Quentin is Quentin Tarantino, writer and director of ``Pulp Fiction.'' His call led to a plum part for Travolta in the movie, which opens in some cities this week.
``Pulp Fiction'' turned out to be Travolta's saving grace. He realized that when he met the news media last May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the coveted top prize.
As journalist after journalist raved about his performance as a heroin-addicted hitman, he felt a lump rising in his throat. When one of them remarked that no other actor could have played the role as well, he excused himself from the crowd.
``I went behind this screen, and I lost it,'' he says. ``Somebody was giving me back this credit that I once thought would always be there, but that most people had forgotten. It made me cry.''
Most people do forget that Travolta, in his heyday, was considered more than a phenomenally popular teen heartthrob, the young buck who carried the hit TV series ``Welcome Back, Kotter'' and then the smash movies ``Saturday Night Fever,'' ``Grease'' and ``Urban Cowboy'' on his broad, steady shoulders.
He was also recognized as a significantly talented actor. Important directors solicited his contribution. Important critics praised it.
``Pulp Fiction'' is making all of that happen again.
Although its cast is a true ensemble, with all of the actors playing supporting rather than leading roles, Travolta's part is the biggest and arguably the most memorable. His character, more than any other, links the movie's three separate but related tales.
As Travolta portrays him, Vincent Vega is part cool criminal, part blushing schoolboy, a man hilariously concerned about petty points of honor and even more hilariously nonchalant about grave matters of murder.
It's an impressive characterization that is bringing the 40-year-old actor the kind of offers he hasn't received for nearly a decade.
He was recently signed to play the lead in the movie version of the Elmore Leonard novel ``Get Shorty'' for a reported $5 million.
Two reported provisions of that contract reflect just how much Travolta's handlers think ``Pulp Fiction'' could do for him. Travolta will get a $750,000 bonus if he nabs an Oscar nomination, which would probably be for Best Supporting Actor. He will get yet another $750,000 if he wins.
Travolta says he is keeping a level head about such possibilities, having learned to celebrate moments of triumph without attaching expectations to them.
``That's something only time and 20 years of doing movies and TV can teach you,'' he says, sounding almost impossibly down-to-earth and earnest. He dresses that way as well.
While ``Pulp Fiction'' costar Bruce Willis shows up for a day of news media interviews in a studiously casual outfit, with his shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel, Travolta shows up in a conservative gray suit and navy blue tie. He looks like a man on his way to church in a small town.
While Willis wears an aloof look during group interviews, Travolta wears an eager, easy smile and always turns his astonishingly blue eyes directly toward whomever is speaking. Later, during a private interview, he scoots over on the couch so that he's sitting right beside his questioner, and even reaches out and touches his questioner's hand to emphasize certain points.
One point he emphasizes repeatedly is how grateful he is to Tarantino for coming along when he did.
``It was the point when I thought it might be the beginning of the end,'' Travolta says. ``Everybody thought I had thought it earlier, but I didn't until then. And that's when Quentin came in, as if the universe had suddenly perceived my dilemma.''
Tarantino didn't write ``Pulp Fiction'' with Travolta in mind. In fact, when he invited Travolta to lunch at the Four Seasons about a year and a half ago, his intention was merely to meet a star he had long revered.
``We got together during the last stage of the third draft, but I didn't think I had anything in `Pulp' for him,'' Tarantino says.
At the end of the meal, Tarantino, who collects TV and movie memorabilia, confessed that he had always fantasized about playing his ``Welcome Back, Kotter'' board game with Travolta. He asked if Travolta would indulge him. Travolta agreed, visiting Tarantino's West Hollywood apartment two weeks later.
Travolta won the game. But more importantly, he inadvertently insinuated himself into Tarantino's thoughts.
``We were sitting there talking,'' Tarantino says, ``and I thought, `God, this is a really good idea - casting him as Vincent. What a way to go.' ''
Others didn't agree.
``There were definitely detractors,'' says Lawrence Bender, the movie's producer. ``I'm not going to say who they were. But there were people who felt that Quentin could probably get any actor he wanted for this, so why would he choose John Travolta?''
Tarantino says he chose Travolta because of the actor's mixture of bravado and vulnerability, because of the raw magnetism and unpredictability of his best performances. He stood firm in his decision, which surprised no one more than it did Travolta.
Travolta says that he plans to use his resurrected power to be more aggressive in getting good parts. He blames the long doldrums from which he is emerging in part on his own lack of initiative and discretion in the past.
Most offers he accepted fell in his lap, and many led to dreadful movies: ``Perfect,'' ``Two of a Kind,'' ``The Experts.'' He turned down other projects he probably shouldn't have, including ``An Office and a Gentleman'' and ``Splash.''
He moved far from Hollywood, to a community in Daytona Beach, Fla., where the houses come with hangars, allowing him to park his Lear jet just outside his door. He became more deeply involved with the Church of Scientology, which he credits with getting him through difficult times.
His other source of emotional sustenance, he says, has been his family. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991; the couple now has a 2-year-old son named Jett.
``I'm thrilled with the reception of `Pulp Fiction' and my performance, but I won't ever think it's this way forever,'' he says. ``The next project, people may feel differently. I've been around too long not to know that.''
by CNB