The Rewatchables - ‘Saturday Night Fever’ With Bill Simmons and Jimmy Kimmel

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Jimmy Kimmel to blow all of their money at the disco after they revisit the 1977 hit ‘Saturday Night Fever,’ starring John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, if you like the Music Box series on HBO, did you know the first four films are available on HBO Max right now? Yeah, Woodstock 99, Alanis, DMX, Kenny G. You can find them all on HBO Max. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video generation. Build for today's creative process, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast,

because the asks aren't getting smaller. And the timelines? Ooh, yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life. Learn more at Adobe.com slash Firefly. I sold my car on Carvana last night. Well, that's cool.

No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie.

I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. I think. Wow, you need to relax. I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this tablewood? I think it's laminated. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a catch.

Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. We're also brought to you by Fandall Sportsbook, as well as the Ringer podcast network, where I hope you're going there for football, for basketball, for movies, for music, for TV, for culture, whatever you want. I'm on there for the prestige TV pod this week talking about yellow jazz. It's a show that on Showtime that I really like. Coming up on this podcast, our old friend Jimmy Kimmel is joining us. You can see him on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which I think is its 20th year for Jimmy Kimmel Live, ABC, 20th season.

I don't know if we've had the 20th anniversary yet, but I think we're in the 20th year. Yeah, congrats to him. He used to work on that show way, way, way, way back then. He's the guy who convinced me moved to LA. He's coming up in one second. We're going to talk about Saturday Night Fever. And the reason we're going to talk about is because our latest music box documentary. It's called Mr. Saturday Night.

It's directed by John Maggio. It is one of the highest degree of difficulty films I've been involved with because it is archive heavy. I'll just leave it at that. But it is an incredible story about a guy who was way ahead of its time. It premieres on HBO, 8 p.m. Thursday night. You can watch an HBO Max right away as well on Thursday night. Coming up. You know, I woke

On my hair A long time And you hit it You hit my hair Saturday fever Is next You know what time Somebody told me

I was good in my life Two, two twice It's raised today And dance at the disco His name is Tony Manero Every guy wants to dance like him He's very good He's the best

A man, he's great Every girl wants to be with him John Travolta is Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. Catch it. Wait it R. All right, Jimmy Kim Ellis here.

We've known each other for 19 years. Actually, 19 years last month, November. That was when we officially met, even though we'd been talking for a while. One of the things that we bonded over was our love for a bizarre movie that became a smash hit called Saturday Night Fever, which came out in 1977.

It made John Travolta a super-duper star. It turned the BGs into the biggest musical act in the world. It revived the disco movement for two to three years and it has lived on and on and on. And even though parts of this movie have now been canceled, it is still a movie, movie experience unlike any movie I've ever seen in my life. Let's start there. Would you agree? It's a classic. Yeah. I mean, it's a time capsule. It's like, I mean, it really is like that six month period in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Right. And you think,

people think this is like a disco movie. It's they remember like you go on YouTube clip and you watch the Travolta scenes. It's really a movie about these losers who have no path out. Yeah. And the one time their life has any magic at all is when they go to this 2001 Odyssey

and they're the Kings on the Dance For for a couple hours and that's it. And this is the one time that they touch greatness. And then they go back to their shitty lives. Like our lead character, Tony, it's working at a paint store. He's fighting to get a raise. from $250 to $3.

He's got one suit that he wears. He lives with his parents who, his dad hates him. He's got a bunch of moron friends who are just Neanderthals and he kind of knows it. But then he goes to this dance floor and it all comes together for him. That's probably, I think the most realistic part of the movie is what happens at home because that's, you know, I'm from an Italian family. We grew up five miles from that, you know, and it's, typical for the son to stay in the house far longer than he should. And it's also typical for the

mother to dote on the son and then typical for the father to resent it. Right. You know? And, and you see all that right there at the table. I mean, even the grandma who doesn't say anything really at all. I don't think, no, she has no lines. She has no lines at all. She covers her, covers her eyes at one point. Yeah. And the dad is just, at one point, the dad hits. Tony and then the mom hits him, she hits the mom back. They're all hitting each other at the table. He hits his wife in the face at the dinner table. And by the way, that's not, I mean, that's real.

You know, that's not such an unusual thing back then. Maybe still now, I don't know. But that's the sort of thing that goes on in those tiny little houses in Brooklyn. Yeah, and this is the 70s. There's a lot going on. The key quote for me, he gets mad at his dad a little later in the movie. and his dad like shits on the fact that he got a raise, right? He's like, you got to raise.

$4 a week. Yeah, he's like, oh, great, congratulations. And he's like, hey, you know how many times someone told me I was good in my life? Two, two twice, two fucking times. This raised today in dancing, dancing at the disco. And that's kind of the movie in a nutshell. This is a guy who's probably headed nowhere. Even the girl with Stephanie when he has coffee with him.

And she's sizing him up and she thinks she's hot shit. But she's not either. No. And she's just like, yeah, you're. your life, you just, what do you do? You make money, then you blow it on the weekends at the discount. He's like, yeah, that's what I do. He's like happy about it.

That's the most interesting part of the movie to me is that Stephanie is kind of a loser, too. I mean, she's really basically living with a guy who's paying her bills and keeping her afloat. She obviously doesn't love him, but she's also not that bright. And I'm going to add another thing, not a great dancer. That's one of the funniest parts of it. He sees her and he's like, oh, she's. He's got to be my partner. We could win this contest.

And then you see her, like, first in the ballet studio where she's not doing any ballet at all. Right. She's not really physically fit. She is just not a particularly, she's no better than the other girl that, that he rejected. I mean, she, in a way, she had, the other girl had some enthusiasm. She had just nothing, kind of. It's almost as if the producers are like, oh, my God, we got Travolta for this.

Okay, who are we going to get to be as? love interest. It doesn't matter. Whoever. You see that girl over there? She's the love interest. I mean, that's what it feels like. And she's way older than him. I think she was like 32. Her name's Karen Lengorny. She's 10 years older than him. Yeah. Incredible IMDB makes this movie, which is a massive hit, which we'll talk about a second. Does not have another IMDB credit for 14 years. Parlay's this into nothing. She was on all my children, right? Before, yeah, before that. And then I think she tried to go back, but they fired her, which is, it's rough. Imagine that being in one of the biggest movies of all time.

And then you can't get back on all my children, which is like, you know, where actors go to die. Right. Well, we're almost the same age. So you think like 75, 76, 77, 78, we have, 75, we have Jaws, which creates the summer a blockbuster. 76, we have Rocky, which basically modernizes the sports movie. 77, we have Star Wars and Saturday Night Fever, which for different reasons kind of create at least a piece of pop culture.

Like, this is where things are now headed. And Annie Hall, too, I would add. And Annie Hall, yeah, it's a loaded movie year. And then 78 is when we have Greece and just that, like, modern movies are kind of evolving. But we're around the same age. You're like a year older than me. My relationship with this movie is I'd always heard of it. I knew the soundtrack because my parents had it.

It's like probably still the best soundtrack of all time. I don't even think it's an argument. Probably is. Yeah, the best original soundtrack, I think, in all time. It's not even a question. So it comes out, not allowed to see it. I'm sure you weren't allowed to see it either. I wasn't, but I did.

Oh, you did? Yeah, because Cleto. What you did? Yeah, because Clito. I should have known. Clito, my best friend, who's my band leader now, We had that hair. We love John Travolta.

We, you know, we had, he had one of those stereo systems in his bedroom that had colored lights that would, you know, those really primary color lights of light up along with the music. We thought it was really cool. And we would listen to that album a lot, you know, more than a woman. But you didn't see the movie when you were a kid, little kid. Yeah, because I'll tell you something. And this is one of the crazy things about growing up in Las Vegas. Yeah. is because I just moved to Las Vegas.

And Sammy Davis Jr. gave Clito's dad a beta, not just a Betamax, but also a projection television, one of those big ones, you know? Yeah. And so we would get these movies that,

you know, Sammy would come into town and he would leave the movies behind. He'd give them to Clito's dad. And then we'd watch all this stuff. And that was one of them. Jesus. And we love that movie. My experience was my dad went to high school in New Jersey and he has six brothers and sisters

so they were all still in New Jersey and I used to go visit them and they re-released this movie as a PG movie in 1979. Do you remember this? And it was heavily edited. They cut out a bunch of stuff. Yeah, he would say instead of, you want to be a nice girl, you want to be a cunt.

It was, you want to be a nice girl, you want to be a pig. Right, yeah. Heavily dubbed in. Seans just cut out, chop, missing. But they were trying to capitalize on basically the under 15 audience to go see it. So that's how I saw it. And it was, I didn't get it.

I didn't understand what the movie was. And then, you know, this is why we call it the rewatchables. Once the 80s and the cable channel start and this is on. And this is the definition of a rewatchable. It's like, oh, wait, we're about to go to the disco. I'm going to stick around for five more minutes. I want to see one of the disco scenes. And that's it.

I would say, though, that if you're going to rewatch this movie, you can watch the first third of it. And that's good. you're good pretty good i mean unless you want to be amazed by some of the stuff that got into mainstream movies oh my especially the last 20 minutes i mean it's it's shocking like honestly shocking what shocking is that it wasn't shocking what shocking is that like our parents or whoever didn't go like hey uh by the way that what that movies that you know that stuff that happened in there was bad was really really bad well so i was thinking about this because you know this isn't this movie, I think, at least this is what movies tried to accomplish in the 70s and 80s.

They're trying to capture whatever is going on with a city, a town, a group of people. Like, you know, Mean Streets, Scorsese does that. Mean Streets, those guys aren't great either, you know, and he takes us into this world, and it's not like it's the most awesome group of people. And I think one of the things that's so polarizing about this movie as you watch it is, these guys are awful, but you're kind of rooting for them. Like that weird dynamic comes in, right? And it's because the dance scenes and just Travolta's charisma,

you almost like start ignoring all the terrible things he says it does, you know? That's what I wonder about because like I know for the Sopranos, for instance, you know that David Chase knows that these are bad guys and we probably shouldn't be rooting for them. And of course, there's shades of gray and everything. But he knows that they're bad guys. I wonder if the producers of this movie, knew they were bad guys. My guess is no, they did not,

that this character, these characters, like, well, that's just how they are. I mean, I don't want to give away the ending, but no, we can give away, we do spoil us in this. At the ending, at the end, he tries to rape Stephanie, his love interest throughout the movie. He's angry

with her, and he expresses that anger by trying to force himself on her in the car, and she kicks him, and gets away. And it's not like a, like, he wasn't really trying to kick him. He was, like, she was defending herself. Yeah.

And then not, and then he walks around the street all night. And he stops by the house in the morning, the apartment. And she, she says, let's be friends. And she kind of cradles him in her arms.

But even before that, before she lets him in, she's like, I don't know if I want to let in. Yeah. She's like, you know, I don't think I should let you in.

Are you going to? Are you going to? He's like, no. I promise I won't rape you. It's unbelievable. She's like, okay, I'll let you in. But here's the thing.

And this is why I think some of this stuff, you know, I think it's important, like a movie like this. This comes out in 1977. This was not a discussion. Like you read the pieces that Pauline Kale and Roger Ebert and all the critics who wrote about this movie, they're like, this movie captures this underclass in Brooklyn of these Neanderthals who, you know, they kind of look. at it for what it was, I don't think this movie could be made even close the way it's made now

because I think people would right, they go, wait a second. Yeah, it's not one of those like kind of things where like people are going crazy and, you know, like the outrage is earned from this film. Yeah. What goes on. It's also, it's so interesting how the women who are sexually assaulted in the movie just immediately kind of forget it and forgive. It's like, all right, let's move past it.

Three minutes have elapsed. It's time to forget and go on. I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. Travolta. Yeah. So my experience with Travolta. Yeah.

Boy in the plastic bubble. TV movie, which I know you probably saw. Of course. He's in a bubble. For the people listening, he had some rare immune disease. That's right. He's in a bubble and he falls in love with somebody who just, comes to visit him and she comes and they have this like it's almost like an internet

relationship because they can't touch or like a prison relationship yeah yeah he's in a bubble and then at the end he loves this girl so much he decides i'm going to leave the bubble and he leaves and you can watch it on youtube it's really funny it's actually like thatal comedy he leaves and he's like oh and there's trees and he hugs her and you know you think like oh this guy's going to die in two minutes but the movie doesn't do it that way. It kind of leaves it ambiguous. But the movie kind of made him not a star, but it turned him in a little bit of a thing. Then he gets

Welcome Back Cotter, a show that we loved. Also set in Brooklyn, allegedly, even though it's filmed in LA. Yeah, that was really where. I mean, I think I saw the boy in the plastic bubble after Welcome Back Codder. Yeah, I don't remember the sequencing. Yeah, it was the two together. And yeah,

but everybody wanted to be Vinnie Barbarino. Like, in my, you know, we would play the sweat. We'd be the sweat hogs and like, Nobody wanted to be anyone other than Vinnie Barbarino. You certainly didn't want to be Horshack, but there was always a Horshack. Somebody had to be Horshack. It was a show that was watched by 20 to 25 million people every week.

It would be the biggest show now three times, and it wasn't even one of the five biggest shows back then. When's the last time you watched that one? Pretty recently. I watched a couple episodes, and I got to say, he fucking kills Barbarino. Still funny. He's good.

Horshack, a little annoying. Gabe Kaplan still has the comedy. But one of the things we originally bought it on. Yeah, Freddie Boom Boo, Washington. But Chavalta is such a big star. Yeah, you can see it right there. Do you remember when he left and they replaced him with like some guy, some like handsome guy?

Yeah, the blonde guy. Yeah, the blonde guy. It's always a blonde guy in the second incarnation. I'm trying to, I think his name was Bo. You're right. It was. His name was Bo. It was the first time I remember being, even as a little kid, being like, oh, fuck this.

What are you guys doing? Where's Kim West Barberino? What is happening? Who is Bo? But that show was massive. So, you know, one of the things our documentaries about, because we did the thing about Robert Stigwood, which is part of the music box series, he spots Travolta. And back in the day, it was like, if you're a TV star, you're a TV star. It was very hard.

Like our guy Henry Winkler took him years as the number one show Happy Days just to get one-on-one. Yeah. Not one-on-one. What's the rest of the movie you love? Oh, the one-and-only. One-and-only. Yeah, I'm mixing up with Robbie Benson's one-on-one. He was also in the Knights of Lords of Flatbush.

Right, right. But it was kind of you're in TV, you're in TV. And if you try to make movies, it ends up going like how it went for Fair Fawcett. where you make like that Saturn movie and it just doesn't work. Movie stars and movie stars are over here, TV stars. Stigwood's like, that guy's a movie star, signs him to a three-film deal. At the same time, he is buying the rights to this 1976 issue of New York Magazine, this article written by Nick Cohn, who writes a thing called Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night.

And it's about this disco scene, which at the time is kind of dying, but in Brooklyn is still going. And he's like, I'm buying this. I'm going to put Travolta in it and just sees like this whole chessboard and then the final piece is the Bejys and he takes all of these things and puts them all together and single-handly creates this IP machine

that lives on and on. But the Travolta piece, you know, it felt like he was the biggest star in the world after Greece. When it was this movie and Greece, it felt like there was nobody bigger than him, right? And then Urban Cowboy also was a big one too. Yeah, he was.

And they did blowout. Blowout, I loved. He didn't do as well financially, but he was just the guy. He's probably the biggest star of my childhood, I think. Yeah, it's interesting. I was trying to figure out if Bert Reynolds was a bigger star than him because Bert Reynolds also felt huge. But here's the case I would make for Travolta.

Better movies. Well, there's that. But also, he was a television star. He was a movie star and a recording. artist as well. Right. And also, I'm not that there's really a category for it, but as you see in the movie, a pretty great dancer. It is funny, too, in the movie, like, he's, you don't really, his dancing is kind of a lot of memorized moves until that we hit that scene where he's alone on the dance floor, where he, he's dancing with this woman and, and, which I think Fran Dresher maybe was the woman

he was a hundred percent, right. And he casts her aside and he's like, he's going to dance on his own. And then he starts doing crazy stuff that you go like, why didn't he do any of this stuff earlier? And why didn't he do it in the dance competition either? The dance competition is, you know, the arc of the movie, as far as like kind of the dance and winning goes, is like he's a really good dancer.

He's the best dancer in the club. He finds this partner who he thinks is going to be great and really take him to another level. They're going to win that $500, which is apparently a huge amount of money. And then their dancing isn't very good. And there's a Puerto Rican couple and a black couple who are both better than they are. Yeah.

And they win because of racism. And in a totally unbelievable scene, Tony Minero takes his check and hands it to the Puerto Rican couple and the trophy too. And yells at his friends. My own fucking friends can't even be honest with me. He yells his friends for supporting him. And not only that, one thing that bother me about that where he hands the Puerto Rican couple, they came in second place.

They got a check of some undetermined amount. So they got a double dip. Shouldn't he have swapped the checks? Like, okay, I'll take the second place. I mean, this is a guy who was excited about a $4 a week raise. It's a great point. I had that in picking Nets. Yeah, it seems like they would have maybe like he would have taken that second place check.

But no, in that one moment, his ethics are so strong. His backbone is so firm that he has to do the right thing. And then the rest of the movie, he's doing the wrong thing almost all the time. Yeah, he does the right thing there. And a minute later is trying to commit a sexual assault. So you're like, oh, baby, he didn't learn a lesson. A woman he loves. See, that's what makes me wonder if the movie is way more self-aware about this.

Remember you were asking, like, does this movie know if the characters were bad people? Yeah. Like, the contest is rigged. It's totally racist. All the people watching it are racist. Like, they're mean to the Puerto Rican couple. Yeah. They're dismissive of the black couple.

And then the contest is rigged so Tony can win, even though he's the third best dancer. So it's, I do think it was aware of the dynamics. And I think, you know, the key character is Donna Pescoe, who would go on to star in Angie with Robert Hayes, which I know who watched. Yeah. Her character, her name was Annette, where she just loves Tony and she's willing to completely torpedo her life just to get any sort of attention from him. But she's the most sympathetic character in the movie. And I think she does an amazing job as an actress with that part.

Funny, I remember thinking she was annoying, which I guess it was the point of her role when I originally saw the movie. But when I watched it over the weekend, I was like, oh, yeah, she was. She was good. She was well-cared. And it was believable how much she loved him and just kind of how sad she was and how lonely she was. Yeah.

She didn't get nominated. Travolta, he researched the part. He kept going to the disco and wearing disguises because he was famous at that point. Right. Anywhere he went out. He was like a household name. Learned all the dance sequences. Rehears the choreography for three hours a day.

Lost 20 pounds. That's about as thin as Travolta probably ever was. and became a huge superstar nominated for Best Actor. And he should have been. He was really good in that one. I'll give you the categories. You tell me who should have won. Oh, okay.

Woody Allen and Annie Hall. No, well, yeah, okay. Richard Burton in Echis. I think it's... Equus. I saw that. Yes, that was a very... It was a play.

I never think it's fair when you adapt a play to a movie, because that actor has been... has probably done it. Right, he's been doing it for 10 years. 300 times, yeah. Marcella Mastriani for a special day. No recollection of that movie. Trevolta for Saturday Fever.

And then our winner, Richard Dreyfuss and the Goodbye Girl. You know, it's weird. That's a do-over. I'm doing that one over. Give that to Travolta. I was thinking about the Goodbye Girl. And I was thinking like, this is, it's so strange. I think I was thinking about it because I heard the song on Yacht Rock or something.

It was a Stephen Bishop song. Goodbye girl. And I was thinking about the fact that it was a movie for adults. It was a very romantic adult movie starring two pretty unattractive people and how that just would never happen now. You know? Right. You're right. It just wouldn't happen.

And I remember being good, but I also remember being light. And I can't imagine, by the way, Woody Allen should have won that category. I mean, come on, Annie Hall. You look back at all of those movies and which ones. You think Woody Allen should have won best actor, though. I would have gone Travolta over. I don't know. I mean, you love Woody, though.

Listen, I love Travolta also, but I just think, I don't know. I think comedians in general are, for whatever reason, you're at a disadvantage. And I don't think that should be the case because Woody Allen is great in that movie. I mean, the scene with the lobster and the, I mean, show me a better scene than that than him, him being terrorized by a lobster that he's trying to put into a pot. I mean, that's just great physical comedy. I'll give you a bigger snubbing. Here are nominees for Best Original Song in the 1978 Oscars.

The winner was... Bucked up this category, yeah. The winner was You Light Up by Life. By Debbie Boone. Candle on the water from Pete's Dragon. Nobody does it better from The Spy Who Love Me. Carly Simon, yeah. The Slipper and the Rosewaltz from...

the story of Cinderella, and someone's waiting for you from the rescuers. Guess who's not in there? Any of the BG songs that are still being played 45 years later. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. They won four Grammys, so that was a bonus. Their soundtrack album sold over 20 million copies was the top selling album in history for six years until Thriller showed up. It is still the biggest soundtrack of all time until the bodyguard with Whitney Houston popped it out like 16 years later. No Oscars though. Couldn't believe it. Yeah, that's always a weird category, though. The best original song, they always fucked that up. And you light up my life, I think, was the number one song, at least of the year, if not all of the 70s. That was a big song.

Yeah, I can't. But it also is a song you could, like, if you were eight years old, you could play it on the organ. It's true. The budget of this movie, what do you think of us? I don't know, but I want to add one more you to light up my life thing

because I had the single to you light up my life. And on the flip side of the single is a song called Asta Manana till we meet again by Debbie Boone. Oh my God.

They probably would have taken the Oscar away if they'd flip that record over and listen to the other side. What do you think the budget was? I can't even imagine. imagine what it gross because that I'm going to give you that too okay I'm going to guess the budget was six million dollars hmm three and a half oh okay it made 237.5 million dollars

really is that adjusted or is that what it made that's what it made holy shit in the in the run don't you think it's dumb that they do it like that shouldn't they just tell you how many tickets were sold yes in the same way they do like imagine if records were treated like that, where they said, like, oh, yeah, we sold, you know, $80 million worth of records. It's like, it doesn't matter how many records did you sell, because records cost more now. You know who listens to you in that? Ted Sarandos. Oh, well, he's just like, yeah, our 98 million people watched whatever movie that. The soundtrack, which sold 20 million copies, Stigwood, I don't want to step on the documentary, but in the documentary, he's trying to get,

he's trying, they want to put it on more screens and it's Paramount, it's Michael Eisner. And Stigwood's like, that's cool, but I want an even bigger cut of the soundtrack because he knows the soundtrack's going to be big. He makes so much money from the soundtrack that you'll see in the documentary. Like in the end, he's just on his own yacht, just yachting around. I mean, he probably made like half a billion dollars from this movie, which he deserved because he put it all together.

Roger Ebert, three and a half stars. he said the movie's musical and dancing sequences are dazzling. And then he says it reminds him of New York's Little Italy as Martin Scorsese saw and who's that knocking on my door in Mean Streets. The characters are similar. They have few aims or ambitions, little hope of breaking out to the larger world of success. A world symbolized for them by Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge reaching out powerfully toward it. Yeah.

He loved this movie, but you know who loved it more? It was Siskel. Siskel bought the fucking suit. That's right. Cisco own the suit. Cisco own the suit. I wonder if he had to wore that thing. There's no way he was able to fit that suit.

Well, Cisco, he bought it in 1979 at a charity auction for $2,000. Oh, wow. It's his favorite movie of all time. He said he saw Saturday fever more than any movie that's ever come out. And then he sold it in 1995 for $145,000 to an anonymous bidder at Christie's. And that guy still owns it? And that guy still owns it. So there you go.

That's a pretty good piece of memorabilia. All right. Today's most rewatchable scene is presented by gray goose vodka. There are many ways to enjoy a martini, but only one gray goose vodka. Grey goose, truly a product of remarkable imagination made with France's finest wheat and naturally limestone filtered water distilled only once to honor its original flavors and aromas because they're that exquisite. Speaking of the perfect martini, let's get into the perfect scene. The opening credits are amazing.

The opening credits have been parodied a zillion. because it is indelible. It's something that I said to my wife, I said, have you ever seen this movie at the beginning? And she said, yeah, I've seen it. I said, I bet you've seen the first minute of it and that's it. Right. And, you know, it's funny because he's walking around the streets,

carrying that can of paint. He stops for pizza. He looks great. He stops for not one, but two slices of pizza, which he stacks on top of each other. And then eats two slices at once, which is, I mean, that's a busy man. And he hits on somebody who he walks by.

Don't forget that part. He hits on two women. Pete's on his face. One of the women, he actually blocks her from walking. He will not let her get past him. And we see it from his point of view. It's actually a really great shot. And then the music just like, I mean, you could set almost anything to that music and it would be a great scene.

It's such a, it's just so good. I also think with Travolta, this really is a one. of one unicorn performance. Like, you can't put anyone from the last 50 years in this movie. I can't think of one actor who could even pull off the opening credits. Just the way he's kind of like walking on air as he's walking. And it's got, it's almost like he's dancing like he's got an iPod on, like in his ears or something. But he's not.

He's just kind of walking. I'm thinking a young Mario Lopez. But other than that, I can't think of anyone. Yeah, no, he's, I mean, yeah, who I think you. There's nobody. Yeah, there's nobody of that era for sure. You wonder if, like, maybe Al Pacino as a very young man could have, but he's not even that.

Yeah, I don't know. Doesn't have the height. So great looking in this movie. Yeah, he is. It's like, it's crazy. You have to imagine, I was imagining, like, how crazy the women in the theater were going from seeing him. And then, you know what's, I think the closest thing to it from, like, the current era is magic

Mike. Oh, interesting. You know? In that, like, there was a star that nobody really knew who came kind of out of nowhere, Channing Tatum, and then his dancing and his appearance and just the whole thing just, like, pushed a button that made a lot of women very, very crazy, my wife included. Well, you, I mean, Travolta has driven you crazy. You guys know each other forever. He loves you. Yeah. I mean, Troultta has driven you crazy. I mean, Travolta has driven you crazy. You guys known each other forever. He loves you. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I sometimes think about the fact that I've met John Travolta and I've, like, had conversations with him. And it's one of the things that is hard to wrap my head around because he's one of the first guys besides baseball players that I really remember.

As an important person. Idolizing or whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, it was Vinnie Barbarino, Fonzie, you know. Who you also know. Lou Ferigno in the Hulk. And that was kind of other than like Tom Seaver and a few other baseball players,

that was it really. That was like you couldn't even imagine that they were real people. Fred Sanford. Oh, Fred Sanford. Oh, yes. Did you beat, did you have your show when Red Fox was alive or no? I didn't know. He had been long dead, but.

I did speak to him on the phone once when I was on the radio in Seattle, Washington. It was 1989 or 90, and Red was having trouble with the IRS. And we decided we were going to hold a fundraiser, a telethon fundraiser, for Red Fox with an appearance by Red Fox. And we called the hotel where he was doing shows. I forget which hotel it was, but we called every single day at the end of our radio show. So at 940, every day we called this hotel in Vegas and asked for Red Fox. And every day we talked to the same woman, she became almost a character on the show, something like 60 shows in a row.

We called and called and called. And then one day she's like, yeah, hold on. I'm going to put him through. Oh, my God. And he put it through the Red Fox. And we couldn't believe it. We were just losing our minds that we had Red Fox on the phone. And he didn't know what the fuck we were talking about or why we were calling or whatever.

But if there was money involved, he was interested. Yeah. We said, listen, we're going to set this up. We had a theater we were going to do it at. And we were so ready to go. And I went to the program director and general manager who were kind of amazed that we finally got him on the telephone. And we're like, we got to do this Red Fox's fundraiser for himself to pay off his IRS debts. This is going to be great. And they're like, no, no, no, we're not going to, we're not subsidizing that. And I remember distinctly what my imbecile program director said to me. We were working at a classic rock station. And he goes, you know, maybe if it was like the Beatles or something, we'd do it.

Oh, my God. Maybe it's the fucking beat. What the fuck are you talking about? Maybe it was the Beatles. Jesus. So that never happened. I never got to meet Red thanks to Larry Sharp. More rewatchable scenes.

The first dance club sequence were, show up, Disco Inferno's playing. Annette grabs Tony to go on the dance floor. We get a Denny Dylan. Remember her from Saturday Night Live? We get a Denny Dylan cameo. I love to watch you dance. Yeah.

I love it. I love to watch you dance. I just love it. Watching you dance. She was funny in that, yes. We have somebody else kiss him. I just kissed out Pacino. And then they all dance.

dance and it's a night fever group dance scene, which I don't know how everybody knew how to do all the same points and turns. People practiced. That was a thing. I remember going to a dance in the 70s and my cousin Ann had to teach me how to do the hustle before it. You had to know those dances. You had to know those moves.

Of course, I never actually danced. I wound up standing in the corner watching everyone else dance. But I did learn to do the hustle specifically for a dance. Another scene that I think is very rewatch. is when he that's related to that scene is when he is in his underwear and he pops out of his bedroom

and he cares his grandmother Al Pacino Attica Attica It's a funny very real moment Al Pacino Al Pacino

Attica Attica Attica It's also that whole section is the most rooted in 1977 Because all the posters, which we'll cover in a second Yeah He's doing Al Pacino, Attica, Attico, which has like a four-year shelf life of an Appetachian performance

Next rewatchable scene, the first coffee scene with him and Stephanie Would you like to know what I do? It's not necessary I'll tell you what I do I'm working at a paint store And I got raised this week Right, you're working at a pain store, right? You probably live with your family, you hang out with your buddies

And on Saturday night you go, you blow it all off 2001, right? That's right. You're a cliche. You're nowhere on your way to no place. What do you? You got to fucking stairway to the stars or what? Yeah, maybe.

I'm taking a course night's the new school. Next semester, I'm going to take two. It's really well-written and well-acted and kind of perfect, but they have that one part when she's telling about Lawrence Olivier, Sir Lawrence Olivier, the one on television who does all the Polaroid commercials.

and he's like, oh, yeah, him, he's good. He's good. He's like Uncle Frank. He's good. And then she tells him, you're a cliche, you're nowhere, you're on your way to no place. And he's kind of looking at her like, yeah, but still, he doesn't really have a comeback. But that's like a really well-written scene. I think this is the secret to this movie is there's some scenes like that where you're like,

oh, these are real characters. There's some really good stuff. I mean, when they're sitting around the dinner table, stuff that seems very loose and very realistic. Yeah. He hits him in the head and he's like, he hits him and he goes, and he's upset with his father. He's like, you know, my hair, I work a long time on my hair and he hit it. And you hit it.

Yeah, I think there's probably 12, 13, 14 really distinct characters, which are really hard to pull off in a movie that's less than two hours. But, yeah. Next one. Father Frank goes to the disco. Father Frank Jr. It's, it's... You know, my friend Clito and I called our penis's Father Frank Jr. For reasons, still, I can't remember why.

For like 10 years, like, that was how we referred to our penis. Father Frank Jr. Well, this has the Fran Dresher cameo. Are you as good in bed as you're on the dance floor? Then they start dancing and he just starts ragging on her. You know, Connie? Yeah. If you're as good in bed as you're on the dance floor.

I bet you wouldn't allow us to fuck So how can they always Send me clouds the next day, huh? You know, some guys don't know a lousy fuck when they got one, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah? Maybe they thought she was dead. And how great looking is Fran Dresher?

She looks unbelievable. Like, what are you doing with Stephanie? Fran Dresher is a knockout. Oh, my God. She's the best-looking girl in that club. They do the you should be dancing. And Travolta takes one. over the dance for. Oh, forget this.

He just pushes his friend to the side. Give the kids to have a room. He's taking over again. And has a two-minute he checked. So we talk about this in the documentary, but I didn't know this until we were doing the doc, but

Travolto, like, he really trained for this scene. This was like his fight scene. If this was a boxing movie. I would think so. I mean, he's dropping to his knees and popping back up and doing all this crazy stuff. So the director does it, and it has all these close-ups and close-ups of his

feet and you don't get that wide shot. And Travolta threatens to quit. And he calls Stigwood. And he's like, I'm quitting the film unless you go wide and you kind of let me cook. So the way, and at that point, they have the steady cam and they're able to just go wide. And they film it almost like a sports movie where they just kind of let him do his thing for two minutes.

And it's fucking mesmerizing. It could go for 10 minutes. I would have watched it. I mean, what kind of an imbecile shoots dancing and close up? I mean, it's like, even you watch any, I mean, you watch Soul Train. You know, you see the people dance. My favorite is they cut to the hot blonde at one point and she's like, all right. Every 80s movie had that, that edit point girl.

Well, spoiler alert, this is going to win the category for me. But I actually think this is one of the five most iconic scenes of the 70s. Like, I'm sure we could pull the ending in Chinatown. You could pull maybe one or two. two things from Godfather one, Godfather two, whatever. But if you're just starting, going backwards, it's like, what are the most memorable scenes of the 70s? This has to be in the conversation

in the first wave of whatever movies you're talking about. Everybody knows what that scene is. It's lived on for 45 years. Which scenes? This scene. Oh, okay. I think you were leading up to something. No, Travolta Take It Over the Dance For, yeah. I'm with he. Yeah. It's impressive.

He's really... It's really good. It's good when... Cruz will do this too when Cruz really gets in. Like he does it in the color of money when he runs the table and nine ball and he's singing werewolves of London. But he really has trained in billiards so he's actually good at it. And I'm like, oh, this is impressive. Two more scenes.

The first Brooklyn Bridge scene when they all jump off and pretend and then they weren't. But that, you know, when you read about how they film this, like those guys were actually up there. There wasn't a lot of safety precautions. Is that right? In the mid-70s. Yeah. The cameraman's shooting over the side. He's got like the key grip holding his waist as he's like leaning over.

They're 600 feet above the water basically. And then the dance contest, which I enjoy more because it makes me mad. It makes me mad that their final dance scene wasn't better. I love watching Caesar and Maria, the Puerto Ricans killing it. And then how mad he gets at his own friends. Like it's a bizarre scene, but I enjoy it. I didn't enjoy it. I thought it should have been.

I thought it should have been better. I think they should have, their dancing should have been better. Stephanie and Tony, and then the other people should have been better too. You know they could have found somebody better, but it was weird to have, they were just kind of doing those like spins,

and it was just an underwhelming compared to like that scene in the middle of the movie where he takes over the dance floor by himself. It's totally underwhelming. And it also like, you know, sometimes things are too far. formulaic and you go, ah, that's too formulaic. Sometimes you want a little formula in there.

And a little formula would have been, you know, maybe then there's another dance contest after that, that they win or something. But it's just weird. The movie's depressing. He's never going anywhere. Where do you even go when you're a dancer like that anyway? It's, you know, I mean, where do you go from there?

There aren't a ton of venues for some guy from Brooklyn to. Well, you know where you go. you go to the sequel, staying alive. Staying alive, which is one of the worst sequels of all that. You put on a headband. That's your answer. You fuck up the legacy of Saturday, you make a movie that's so bad.

It's renowned as one of the worst sequels ever. All right, so I'm going to disco that you should be dancing scene as most rewatchable. As most rewatchable. Well, I mean, to me, the opening scene of the movie. Oh, opening credits, all right. That's fair. All right.

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Imported by Graygoose importing company, Coral Gables, Florida vodka, 40% alcohol by volume, distilled from French wheat. All right. Next category. What's age the best? So the soundtrack,

even though it's been 45 years and we know all these songs intimately, soundtrack is great I will never turn that off yeah spectacularly when those songs come on the radio I will listen to those songs and it's funny because

I don't know I never really thought the BGs were cool I didn't really even though I knew they did those songs I didn't associate them with the movie as much as I should have but now man I'll listen to any of those songs

in their entirety when they come on any BG song I'm in they will never be killed staying alive, how deep is your love, night fever, more than a woman. And then on the soundtrack, Drive Talkin is on there, which is an awesome song,

but that's not in the movie. You also have more than a woman in which they wrote. Yeah, for the Tavares. They do two versions of it, one with Yvonne, Ivan Ellman. Yeah. Also, if I can't have you, by Yvonne Ellman.

A fifth of Beethoven. The other version of More Than a Woman performed by Tavaris, which is also really good. Yeah. And then you have the you should be dancing. Now, did they do the fifth of Beethoven? What was that, Walter?

Fifth of Beethoven, Walter Murphy, Manhattan Skyline, performed by David Shire. Boogie Shoes by Casey in the Sunshine Bid. Disco Inferno by the Tramps? I mean, it's like an all-time murderous, row. Tramps with like two M's, right? And tramps? Yep. Yeah.

No reason. Another one stage the best. Tony's room, which if you look closely, there's posters of Serpico, Bruce Lee, Wonder Woman Linda Carter, Rocky, and Farrah Fawcett. Yeah, all the classics. All the classics. Didn't miss one. There's also some seriously bad directing when his dad comes into the room to tell him to come down for dinner.

And his dad takes an electricist look at the Farah Fawcett poster. And they just do a sudden insert shot, a close up of the nipple. It's really weird. Like, all right, we get it. He's not. You don't have to see the air. Marilla. Morewood's stage the best.

You know I work on my hair a long time and you hit it. You hit my hair. You mentioned it earlier. Donna Pescal, great performance. The poster for this movie with Travolta in the white suit, chest out, one arm pointing up, one arm pointing down was not the original intention. Apparently they did a long photo shoot and he kind of did that at the end as a joke. And they were like, that's it.

That's the one. And it became one of the great posters. the Annette and Tony dynamic, which gets dark, but the whole, like, her waiting outside, chewing her gum nervously, and he's coming around the corner, and she's just watching him. He's like, why he's standing out here?

And she's like, just like watching you walk down the street. Like, there's little moments like that with that where it's actually a realistic relationship. Like, you can, and he's a piece of shit. And he's a piece of shit. He's, because he's, she's annoying him. Like, she's, like, he's not interested in her,

and she won't stop. And he's like, he likes her, but she's, annoying to him. And so the way he resolves that is by being kind of a dick and then later being horrible, but just being kind of a dick to her. But he takes it because it's worth it. And it is a very interesting relationship. The dynamic between him and his racist meathead buddies, you really believe that those guys have known each other for 12 years or 15 years or whatever. There's like a comfort with all them. Yeah. Those guys are very real. I mean, even like,

You know, all of it, it just feels, it feels very real. It's actually would have been hard to see them. And I think maybe it's one of the reasons none of them really went on to do that much. It would have been hard to see them in other movies because they're so distinct as these meatheads in this movie. Another what's age the best, mid-70s, distressed New York as a movie location. Yeah. Where we had Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Death Wish, the Warriors, Taking Impelm, 1, 2, 3, Dog Day afternoon, Annie Hall in Manhattan. and the good version.

Saturday Night Fever and Cruising. And you're pumping all those out in like six years where it's like New York, it's kind of fucked up. And, you know, it's very segmented with all these different ethnic groups and class and, you know, the downtown's kind of a mess. And they're just filming like all these iconic movies at the same time.

Well, it's funny because the difference, and I think that this was represented well in the movie, the difference between Brooklyn and New York, York City is it's not nowadays they're there one in a way especially that like northern part of Brooklyn but when you get down to the bottom of Brooklyn Bay Ridge yeah I grew up Mill Basin these are people we who rarely go into New York City like this is it's not it's it's it's it's as much much as much of an adventure as it is for people who live in Kansas in a lot of ways. You know,

unless your dad takes the train there, even the train doesn't, you know, go down. Unless you, you just don't, you don't commute to the city from, from that part of Brooklyn in general.

And so it's very different to me from the city of New York. And, you know, everyone calls it the city there. You go into the city. And, and they're really two, entirely different places, I think.

Yeah, and it's, I'd say over the last 20 years, they've merged because so many young people moved to Brooklyn, and now it's not as distinct. The movie does an awesome job of showing that separation, right? They do that in the first minute, even before we see Travolta, see the bridge, see the water, and it just seems like so far away from New York. And it's intentional. I'm sitting on the bench looking at the city. It's something he never really even thought about until she put that thought into his head. Right. Yeah, he's not the brightest guy.

There must be something better, you know. One last, what's age the best for me? So airplane comes out. Travolta himself. Well, we cover Trilota. But yeah, Troultta. Yeah. The airplane parody scene that they do in the airplane three years later where they have

the whole scene when Robert Hayes and Julie Agriady, they fall in love. They basically do that whole Saturday Night Fever. Right. It's so ageable. I don't know if that movie's, if people under. 30 even know what that movie is, but for our generation, one of the, one of the big comedies. Oh, yeah, a great, a great movie. And still pretty funny. If you were to watch it, for me, Mad Magazine's parody of Saturday. Oh, that's a good one too. Yeah. That is

indelibly, uh, is in my, my head. That was, I think maybe, I probably read the parody of the movie before I saw the movie. Yeah. Any other what's age the best for you? Um, we covered all of them. Let's see. going to throw in Denny Terrio's dance fever show, which I watched in the late 70s, which was like that syndicated. That was the 80s. Or early 80s, whatever, syndicated TV's attempt. Yeah, attempt to glom on.

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And that's where he gets one, one, that's where the fighting starts. Yeah, it is. It's confusing. The dad is just confusing in general. He just hates everybody. He's just looking at, very real. And I do remember watching that when I was a kid and thinking like, oh, okay, it's rude to have more than one poor job. What's age the worst? Oh, well, I think the relationship with the various women in the movie has aged poorly.

You know, just the, I mean, the rapes have aged. I had sexual assaults, rapes, racism, homophobia, misogyny. Yeah, this is the really random homophobia that has nothing to do with anything. You know, there's a couple of, like, there's that scene where they're walking under the bridge and a couple of gay guys walking down the street and they just start fucking with them for no reason. It's like, all right, what the fuck was that? That's why I think this movie is more self-aware than maybe we're thinking. I don't know. I think, I don't think that, I don't know.

guess that they saw just no problem with that really. Like, they're like, like, well, this is not going to make our characters less likable. You know, I mean, it just seemed like, and it probably went on all the time there too. It's probably something they'd seen and experienced. Right. They're putting that in the movie because it's realistic and it's something that would happen with groups of guys like these guys. Yeah.

Another one stage the worst, Nick Cohn in the mid-90s acknowledged that he fabricated most of his article that he wrote about this guy who was based on Tony. And the reason he did it was because the real. real life, Tony, decides to sue for the profits. And Nick Cohn's like, actually, I kind of didn't really have a story. So I compiled all these different traits and I turned them into this guy and he didn't actually exist. And that funny how that's perfectly okay if you're writing a movie.

But if you're a journalist, it isn't. Yeah, he didn't get crushed for it. I think the way he handled the article about how he kind of made stuff up was pretty well done, but he made it up. the sequel staying alive we mentioned. The Barracuda fight scene, it could have been better. I wanted more from a fight scene

if you're comparing it to movies like the Warriors and some of the great 70s fight scene movie. These guys go in, they drive a car into somebody's clubhouse, and that should have been like the greatest 90-second fight scene of 1977.

It's fine. It's like a B-minus. I want a little more from it. Yeah, he gets, at the end, Tony's kind of getting beat up by a girl, one of the girlfriends. Yeah.

And another guy comes in and he's like, Tony, it's me. He's like basically got a concussion. He's fine, 10 hours later. Yeah, no problem. 10 hours later, his face looks great for the dance contest a week later. Karen Lindgorney. So she's nine years older than Travolta. Mm-hmm.

I would say below average dancer. Below average, yes. Not a great New York accent either. Not an awesome New York accent. Not a great actor. Nope. And found it difficult, according to the research to keep up with Travolta in the dance scenes because she had some injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident a few years earlier.

I'm so confused why she got cast for this movie that I actually spent like a half hour Googling it because I was like there had to be a story. Like the director was his daughter or she was having an affair with the producer. There had to be some reason. no. They just put her in. And she's way older than Chavolta. That's the other thing. And we're going to, when we do casting what if, so I'm going to give you a couple people they looked at. And I just can't believe this is who they ended up with. I'll do respect to her. I'm sure she's a nice person. She should have been a little older than him. And that's the least of the problems, really.

Yeah, but yeah, that was weird that she was still like a, she was giving him a speech about how he's going nowhere and he's doing nothing. And she's basically a receptionist. 32 is hanging out with him. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. I don't get it. I don't understand it. You made the key point.

He sees her dancing and he's like, who's that? I got to get her for the contest. And she's like doing rude. It's like watching your daughter Jane like in a dance class, like level of, of maybe your daughter's probably better. Imagine break into electric boogaloo with, you know, the girl in there's like, she's just, you really can't do like a head spin or anything. People will be like, no, no, that's, she's not the one.

Let's keep going until we can find one. The movies, and it would be one thing if she was a fantastic actor. You say like, well, you know what they wanted, they really needed a great actor in this spot. They decided to sacrifice. They got Merrill Street. They couldn't turn her down. She's too good. Or if she was like just incredibly good looking.

But I just don't get it. The PG version, you mentioned, nothing was worse than seeing this movie on TV with all that. And it's just like, oh, it's just painful. The kids now, they have no idea how lucky they are that that doesn't really happen anymore, that they don't have to, you know, those weird, dubbed in lines when somebody would say motherfucker and would be like, Marble Sucker or something. Middine runs the worst one, because Binet had like 200 swears in it and they have to get rid of all of them.

Yeah, all right. We don't have to keep going on what stage the best or worst. Casting what ifs. the director got fired a month before they started doing the movie. The director was John Aveltson. We do this. We have this in the documentary, but he was the guy who did Rocky. He just didn't get it.

And Stigwood at one point is just like, got to get this guy out of here, gets him out, replace him in John Baddam, and this becomes the movie that puts John Battam on the map. Here are the actresses considered for the lead part of Stephanie before they cast Karen Lynn Gorney. This is on the internet. I'm not positive. All of these are true. I think the last three are true.

Jessica Lang keeps getting mentioned as she got. Kathleen Quinlan, who's a really good actress, I could have seen her in there. Oh, yeah, Kathleen Quinlan, yeah. Amy Irving, I don't know if I believe that because she was in Carrie with Travolta. I think she's probably too famous. But then the one that is like, wow. Carrie Fisher, apparently auditioned.

and she wasn't Princess Lay yet because that movie hadn't come out. You think about it, like I actually think that would have been amazing if she had done that because I think she's a good actress. She would have figured out the dance stuff. She would have been better than Karen Ling Gorney.

It's all about the accent for me. And so many actors, I think when you are from Brooklyn, it really jumps out of you. But in that Karen Lynn Gorney, I was like, there's no way she's from New York. There's just no way. I mean, it's a fate.

The worst fake accent is the fake New York accent. And, you know, when a woman is trying and, like, hitting the wrong notes as far as, like, my aunt chippy is what a woman from New York

sounds like, a woman from Brooklyn. Do you Aunt Chippy for one second so people could hear. Frank, God damn it, Frank, if you don't shut your goddamn mouth,

I'm going to put my foot in it. That kind of thing. Well, Donna Pescal was from Brooklyn. and became an actress, got rid of the accent, but then had to kind of bring it back because she was in this movie. Couldn't get the role because she was considered too pretty

by Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the two people that were helping Stigwood make this movie, the Paramount Executives. So she put on weight. She put on like 10 pounds. She auditioned six times and finally got the role because she knew it was going to be a big role for her.

There's some weird music stuff with this. So they didn't have any of the BG's music when they made the movie. They got it after. So all the stuff they're dancing to, they're dancing to like Stevie Wonder and all these different songs that weren't BG's songs. And somehow it lines up perfectly when you watch it. Really? In the rehearsal scene in the dance studio,

they were supposed to use Lowdown by Boscags. Yeah. Columbia Records would not grant legal clearance. So they had to shoehorn in something else. I can't imagine. Dancing to that song. I know. But tough one for Boss Gags.

He couldn't end up on the greatest soundtrack of all time. Best That Guy, aka the Joey Pants Award for the person in the movie who seems like the most that guy. This movie came out a million years ago. But the guy Barry Miller, who plays the guy who dies at the end, who gets his girlfriend pregnant, who then was also in fame. He played the comedian in fame. I never really knew what that guy's name was. I think he's the winner because you'd see him.

He's like, oh, that guy from Saturday Night Fever and Fame. I think that guy won a Tony Award. He was a good actor. Yeah. Never knew his name. I guess you could say his two buddies in the movie are those guys, too. I'm going to say the guy from the paint store, the customer at the beginning of the movie, whose name I looked up was Robert Costanzo. Oh, that guy.

He's a great that guy. He's in everything. Yeah, you're right. That's a good one. That wins. That's a better choice. The Vincent Hanna, give me all he got a word for best overacting. Well, that's got to go to Bobby, right?

I mean, you didn't call me, Tony. Why didn't you call me? He dows it up. Really? That's the thing that makes you fall off the bridge. You didn't get that phone call from Tony. By the way, he had your car. He had to have returned it, right?

You see him every day. You see him every day. The Dionne Waiters Award for person who's not, so we call it, this is for the best he checked. This somebody who's not in the movie that much, but when they're in, make a huge impact. Yeah. Our three nominees, Tony's dad.

Yes. Fran Drescher is Connie. That's the first thing that popped into my head. Or Monty, the 2001 Odyssey DJ. Monty, the DJ. I was interested in him too. Yeah. And turns out he was like, he was a DJ.

He was in Sergeant Pepper's movie, I think, as well. Wow. Monty also dials it up in this movie. He's not afraid to really overact. He was quite clearly a guy who was really a DJ, like a known dance club DJ in New York, right? He didn't seem like he was an actor. Yeah, that wasn't like finding Martin Sheen to play the DJ.

No, but I would say, I think I have to say Fran Dresher, maybe. Me too. Like as far as... Me too. Lights out. Like, just... And plus you have, then you have the background of what happens to her, and you're like, wow, why didn't she have a bigger career?

Like, she was fantastic. Yeah. She could have been Princess Leia or any of those big roles in the late 70s. Recasting couch, I mean, anyone. for Karen Lengornie. But I would, Carrie Fisher, I got excited for her,

but you could have also talked me into Fran Dresher, just making her, uh, the lead Carrie. It would have been great. Would have been great. Although,

yeah, I mean, she, she was probably too young if they wanted somebody older. Um, yeah, good point. Yeah. Um,

what about like, uh, I don't know how old she was at this time. What about like, share? Oh, interesting. You know,

I was just trying to think of somebody that's got some, uh, then they would have had, those fake Hollywood stories about how they fell in love during the filming. Yeah, right. It's heated up with John Cherville, the chair. Sunny, furious. Half-Fast internet research filmed entirely on location in Brooklyn.

2001 Odyssey Disco no longer exists was Demosh. During the filming, we have this in the documentary. The production was harassed by local gangs, mafia. There was firebombings. They had to put out fake. call sheets so the people would show up with protesters or gang, just that they could film scenes without people knowing and it was a debacle. That still goes on, by the way. That has not, I've experienced a little bit of that myself. You have to make sure certain unions are paid to work

even if there's nothing for them to do. Right. So when they shot the first bridge scene, the director, John Batten, kept it a secret from Donna Pescoe when the guys fell off the bridge. So her reaction is like, holy shit that he just fell off the bridge. And in that next line of you fuckers, she was actually mad when she found out that day. That was all real. When Tony's dad hits Travolta in the head, one of the times he actually gets mad and he ad-libs, the line that we like was not scripted. When he's like, you know how long it takes to work of my hair? That was that rip.

He was mad at the actor. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, so they left it in. True or false, this was the first mainstream Hollywood movie in which the term blowjob was used. Oh.

Well, I have to assume it's true. It's a weird thing to make up. Yeah, true. It'd never been said in a movie before. Blow job. Never. Never. You're not including pornos, I assume.

Well, that, yeah. Yeah. So Travolta was dating the mom for Maidus in real life, Diana Highland, who died of cancer. Remember that? She was in like the first call. episodes and replaced by Betty Buckley. What a show, by the way.

It is enough. Incredible. Oh, love that show. She was the one who convinced him to make the movie and then she died as they were filming it. So he was like upset during it. This was one of the first films to utilize a steady cam. John Travolta's sister, Anne, is the pizza lady and his mother is the woman who

gets to, he gets to paint for. So he's got two family members. Yeah, and Travolta. Yeah, she was in some things. She was in like Laverne and Shirley or something as well. Oh, yeah. Joni loves Chachi. Joni loves Chachy.

Was that Ellen Chavalta? Yeah. Ellen Travolta. Ellen Chavalta is the jolly loves Chachia. Right. So I don't want to step on the documentary, but Stigwood basically goes to France to convince the BGs to use these songs for the movie and hordes them. Watch the documentary because it's, I'm talking to the listeners.

Quick question. Stigwood puts this jigsaw puzzle together. The movie with these songs, holds the songs, doesn't release them, waits, waits, waits, waits, and figures out how to just maximize everything. Did they write the songs for the movie, or they were pre-existing songs? How did he know about the songs? He said, so they declined an offer to read the script, but he told them about the movie,

and they had several song titles of mine, staying alive, night fever, how deep is your love? And that's how it got going. But as I said, when they were filming the scenes, it was Stevie Wonder and Baz Skaggs was what he was dancing. I don't understand the Boz Skaggs thing. That's like Yacht Rock. it's a little jazzy but yeah it's uh yeah

here's what barry gibb said um he gave them all those demos the guys went nuts and barry gibbs said they flipped out they said these will be great we still had no concept of the movie some kind of rough script they brought you gotta remember we were fairly dead in the water at this point 1975 bg sound was tired we needed something new we had an hit record in three years

we felt like oh geez this is it we had to find something this movie revives their career It's covered in the HBO documentary about them, but them and Chavalta just take off. I was wondering about that. At what point were they in their career arc when this movie came out? They were dead in the water. That's interesting. Yeah.

So a couple Paramount suits weren't comfortable. By the way, Chavolto was so lovingly photographed in the bedroom mirror scene and asked for more fairer-fosset footage, which is why we ended up. up with the close-up of the poster and then the nipple. Oh, wow. So that's your answer. They were like, eh, a little homerotic. Really? So they brought in Farah. Carolyn Gordy's take on why her career never took off after this movie.

Oh, I can't wait to hear this. She was terrible in it? Is that it? Quote, people didn't know what to do with Stephanie Mangano. People thought that I was the person in the movie, and I became that. Instead of someone who was stable and whole, it had some sense of. of herself. She said casting meetings went nowhere. At one point, she nixed and offered a star on a Saturday Night Fever TV series. She headed to England in 1979 and made an album that nobody

bought and returned to New York and back. Did you know she's in the Clifford, the big red dog movie that's out right now? She's had like a, in her 60s and 70s, this rejuvenation is like a character. My kids went to go see that with their cousins and they came home and they loved the Clifford movie. and I said, my son Billy's like, he was so big. I said, did he kill anybody? My wife's like, what's wrong? But the dog of that size would definitely kill a lot of people. Step on one kid.

Or eat them. Yeah. All right, one more break, and then we're going to do Apex Mountain. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help. with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies

like Mattel, Heinz, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. All right, coming back. Do you understand the concept of Apex Mountain?

This is when it's a person, it's a thing, whatever. It is at the peak of its powers. It has never had more juice, career-wise it has never been more popular, famous, it has just never had more...

So Travolta, I would actually say Greece was probably his apex mountain because Greece follows Saturday Fever. He followed this, yeah.

After Greece, it's like, this guy can do anything he wants. He could be like, I have this idea of a movie of I take a shit for 90 minutes

and they would be like, cool, here's money. So I think it's Greece for him, right? I think so. It might be like the day, it might be like,

like, one week after Greece opened, because there's just a combination of those two two movies, especially like for us. I probably have seen Greece, I don't know, 85 times.

Well, that's the thing. Greece and Saturday Fever is like a soundtrack rewatchable. He's in two of them back to back. He filmed them right after each other. The only thing that, only thing that you knock a couple points off

for Greece because it was an existing musical. True. But, yeah, to me, he's Danny Zucco. You know, that was, you know, there is no other Danny Zucco. I know Adrian Samedd tried, but, you know, as well as it did for Bo, played by Stephen Shortridge. I looked that. Imagine that, though.

Imagine if he had someone of the caliber of an Olivia Newton John in Saturday night feet. Exactly. Great point. Because she's, she's like, I mean, she's, he's the equivalent of him, really. I mean, she is... Monster.

She shows up in the leather jacket at the end, and it was like, oh, my God. Just the greatest looking woman in the world, you know, it was like the most desirable person. I remember seeing that movie in my mother. I was like, oh, what a great lesson. If you want to get the guy, be a slut. That's a kind of fun I had growing up.

Stigwood also produced Greece, we should mention. One of the reasons. step in a yacht at the end of our documentary. Karen Lingorni, Apex Mountain. I'm going to say yes, consider you seeing an act for 14 years afterwards. It's more of a hill life. Yeah. Apex Hill.

How about this? Old Brooklyn has a pop culture location. Would you go with this? Would you go with Welcome Back Cotter? Or would you go with the Warriors when they have to fight the orphans in 1979? Which one of the three? Well, I'm going to have to go with Welcome Back Cotter, really, because it was more channel.

The credits. Yeah. Yeah, the credits. I agree with you. How about the Brooklyn Bridge? Has the Brooklyn Bridge ever been used more successfully in a movie than this? Multiple scenes. We have a depth. People staring out at it. Woody Allen, I think, would be the only competitor in that category, right? All right. We'll call it a tie. Well, Woody Allen's making his movies right at the same time as this. So I would say this is Apex Mountain for the Brooklyn Bridge. Yeah. You mean 1977? Yes. Yeah. Disco, definitely. Now, what's funny is disco was kind of dying when this movie came out, and they were actually worried. Yeah. They were worried that they were too late that they missed it. And then it just revived it and then got criticized for basically whitewashing disco because, you know, the story of disco is so much more complicated than just this movie. But yeah, I think disco peaks right in here. John Baddam, definitely. How about dysfunctional Italian family dinners, Apex Mountain? Have they ever been? Captured better. They never go away.

It's a permanent apex. There's always a good one somewhere. I mean, every mafia movie's got one. The scene in... That's true. The goodfell, maybe good fellas? Good fellas where they visit his mother and she's after they chop a guy up. He looks at, he's looking at the painting.

He's like, it reminds me to somebody, you know. A friend, a friend. I would say all the guys in this movie was definitely Apex about. no question. Barry Miller, Paul Pape, and Joseph Kelly. Picking Nits, you had the big one. I wanted more from the dance contest. I still enjoy watching it, but I think I enjoy watching it because it makes me mad because I've seen this movie enough times where you just go, man, this should have been the best scene in the movie and it should, they should have been awesome. And then maybe you have the Puerto Rican couple is even better than them. And it's just like this incredible faceoff. And instead, It just, it doesn't get there. It screwed up the easy part. Yeah. That was the easy part.

And they screwed, you know, Travolta can dance for sure. I mean, we saw that. And there's a lot of dancing in this movie. But, yeah, there's no, like, you know, there's no rocky moment. No. And then, you know, they fight the barracudas. There's no revenge. That just kind of goes away.

Yeah, that just goes away. They attack the wrong, potentially the wrong guys. And then. so their friend falls to his death. They should have lost that fight. That would have been a funnier scene. They crashed through the thing. They got the shit beat out of them.

They had to like, you know, the cops came. The guys had to scurry. They got taken to the hospital too. And then the guy, they find out that maybe it wasn't the right guys. Right. Winning the fight was the mistake there. So their friend falls to his death. The cops show up and they're like, here's what happened.

They tell them the cops like, okay, good. Like nobody has to go back to the station. And then Tony just goes on the subway for six hours. It's like, what? Don't they have more questions? Like, how did this guy follow it? Do you push him? Are you a suspect?

Yeah, there seems like there would have been more questions. And even like Tony's reaction is sometimes you can kill yourself without killing yourself or whatever he said. And the cops like, good, noted. All right, you guys are free to go. And then my last one is just, I don't know if $500. is too much for the dance contest or not enough? It's not enough. Well, what is $500 now?

Is that like $5,000 now? I don't think it's even that much. But think of it this way. And by the way, you split it. It's $250 apiece. So it's really not $500. But the $4 raise was like a joke. It was like, you know, like his father was laughing at him for the $4 raise,

which means he had to be making $100 a week, right? I mean. So you think the. should have been like a $1,500 prize. Yeah, I would have made it more. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Next category.

Maybe a trip to Hawaii, and that's how the movie ends. Like, they're all in Hawaii. Committing crimes. Yeah, the luow. Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? 100%. It could. I hope that it doesn't happen, but you could.

Would you set it in 1977 or would you do the 2021 version? Well, that's the thing is that. But yeah, you couldn't, I don't know that you could set it in 1977 because it would seem like a costume party or something. It wouldn't seem like what, you know, the feeling that and then it was like, this is what's happening now, right? This is the cool stuff. And then if you said it in the past, it would take on a different. I'm going to say no. I think we're good with spending two hours with these people.

I don't know if I'd want to spend 10 to 12. I don't know if I'd want like the Annette episode where we find out, like she doesn't get along with her mom. And the truth is people have remade this movie in different ways with different kind of dancing or different music or even like sometimes with stand-up comics, you know, like you got nowhere, you got nothing, you're going to live this life, this shitty life that your parents lived and you're never going anywhere. But you go on stage for that one hour or whatever night and you get that feeling and then eventually you rise above that. Of course, in this case, he doesn't. Yeah, it's funny. Like, even movies like all the right moves with Tom Cruise, it's basically the same formula, right? You could end up in the coal mines or you might have a chance to get out of here.

Yeah. I think for Tony, it's like, all right, where am I getting out of? I have no life skills. I'm probably never leaving this place, right? So the one good thing he has was at least he finally has a functional relationship with the opposite sex. That's his win. Yeah. Yeah. Best case scenario for him, he's teaching at that dance.

studio with that guy. Right. Or maybe him and the DJ. Maybe they spin off, form their own dance club named after Tony. Tony gets a cut. Probably an answerable questions. Are you glad that the sequel staying alive happened or do you wish it never happened? Because I'm in the camp of as horrible as it is. I'm glad it exists. I think the first five minutes of it are among the five funniest moments minutes of the entire 80s. Franks Stallone. It's so comical. It's so outlandishly silly.

I am glad. And I feel also like it's just so different from Saturday Night Fever that it didn't ruin it in the same way most sequels would. I mean, they're almost not even the same characters. I like when he bumps into Stallone as they're walking in the street because they're redoing the opening credits and he bumps into Stallone who's got this beard. And it's just like this gleaming close-up.

of how handsome Stallone is because he's directing the movie. He couldn't resist putting himself in it. Whatever happened to Donna Pescal as why didn't she become a bigger thing as an actress, she's really good in this movie. And then she does Angie, which they really put real chips behind.

And they had Robert Hayes, who's an airplane, and it felt like it was becoming, it just kind of didn't happen. And she just never had her one movie or TV. show, but eventually landed on the Sopranos in a recurring role as one of the mob lives. Well, she's kind of a character actor.

Yeah, she became a character actress. But I think there was a moment where maybe something else could happen. Any other unanswerable questions for you? No one wears a seatbelt ever in this movie, which is disturbing. It's jarred. I love those cars back then with the three seats in the front,

which just seems so illegal. That guy in the middle is just dying if you had anything going over. We had one of those. 10 miles an hour. And, of course, we didn't wear seatbelts, and my dad hit the break, and I went right through the windshield with my head. Oh, my God. It was us.

We had a, and then, of course, we didn't get it fixed for, God only knows how long. It had a big spider crack, courtesy of my noggin in one of those cars. What would you, what piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? It has to be the suit. So they made three suits. Two disappeared right after the film, and they kept one. Travolta wrote something in it, and that's when Gene's. Cisco bought. That's the one he sold.

And nobody knows where it is now. Somebody has it. It's an underscoles person. Right. But it might pop out at some point. The objects I'm thinking of are his... The car? Yeah, well, the car's cool. Like, the paint can would be a cool thing to have.

The can of paint that he was carrying to that woman. The... His hairbrush might be kind of cool from the... no, hairbrushing scene. I mean, obviously the suit is, that white suit is, is the thing. A disco ball from the 2001, right. The disco ball would be cool, I think. But yeah, the suit is like, you're right.

That's like Superman. That's like having Luke Skywalker's. Maybe some of those rubbers that Annette had in their hand that she tried. A rich movie used rubbers. They took that long, overly long close up of those rubbers. Yeah. It was like, we get it. Like eight seconds.

It's like, yeah, all right, they're rubbers. We all know what the fuck they are. Yeah. Yeah, there's some 1977 kind of primitive movie moments in this where now you would just, they would linger on that for what, a split second? Yeah, right, for sure. Who on the movie is the last question when we do the rewatchables? This is about as easy as it gets.

Travolta. Of course, it's John Travolta. Chavalta wins going away. And the Beegeys. You're right, because you could argue that. The BGs, you could make a BG's won the movie case. You could also make a Robert Stigwood one in the movie case because over the course of like five years,

he makes basically a billion dollars from all these properties. Yeah, he got everything. But I think it's Travolta because. Yeah, because he's got a 747 now. Right. Well, I wonder, because I think he would have been a big star anyway, but I still feel like you need the giant movie. I think it probably would have been Greece.

so I don't necessarily he didn't need this movie for it to happen, but this movie obviously. That movie was as if it was written for him. Yeah. Like, yeah, you can't even imagine anybody else playing that part. Well, I forgot to mention that in the Woods Age the worst because, and this is just the case of just, we know who John Chavolt is now. Going from Barberino to this part, I think was surprising in a good way for a lot of people when they saw this movie where they just knew him as he was.

this goofy TV actor and it's like, wow, this guy's actually a real actor. It was a big advantage for him. I mean, they could just as easily have named him Vinnie Barbarino in this movie because it was like, okay, he was in high school and he's at goofball high school and now here he is. Now he's learned out of dance. Yeah. I mean, the only difference is he hung around with guys from other races in Welcome Back Cotter. I mean, that's really the only difference. Good point. Yeah, Chavalta's the winner. Do you have a John Travolta story for us before you go or now? Anything you could tell us? Yeah, I got a lot of...

Okay, here's one for you. So, you know, that lunchbox you have behind you there? Hold that up for you for a second. I forgot I had this. Mostly audio. Yeah. I have the... Show the other side, too.

I have the original artwork for both... On both sides of that lunchbox. What? How? I bought one and my wife bought me the other. And John Travolta was on our show after the Oscars one night, and I gave him the other piece of artwork. I gifted it to him.

It was his first time on the show. What? That he should have it. How do I not know this story? My wife was very mad at me. Very mad. Where did you find the original artwork? Like eBay?

Online. I found it on like eBay or something. And I paid like $1,200 for it or something. Oh, my God. That was a steal. It's probably worth like $100,000, though. I don't know. If it is, don't tell my wife if it is.

But then she bought the other side for, I don't know, not that much, maybe like a couple grand or something. It was a, and it is the original artwork. It's a painting. And it's pretty great. I actually have it in my office. I wanted to buy, both of us love good times about as much as any show that's ever happened. I tried to buy this too. I looked for the painting for a while.

And it's like, that Ernie Barnes paintings, they don't fuck around. Those are like Picasso's. I've seen it in person. The original one? The original. You know who owns it? Who? Oh, I'm going to make you guess. 20 questions?

Go ahead. Is it an actor? Yes. Is it an actor that's older than us? Yes. Is it a black actor? Yes. Is it Denzel Washington?

No. Is it a comedian actor? Yes. Was it a comedian actor who's been on a show that existed in the 19th 70s. Yes. Oh, man. I should say he was on a show that existed in the 1970s, but he was not on it in the 1970s.

I'm going to just tell us who it is. Now, come on. You have to guess it. You're going to kick yourself. 1970s going into the 1980s. It was a show that existed in the 70s? Yeah. Still on the air.

It's still on the air? Yep. Saturn at Live, you mean? Yep. Oh, Eddie Murphy has it? Yes, he does. What? Yeah, he owns it.

That's unbelievable. I know. I tried to buy it and I tried to find it. And I was told that Eddie Murphy owns it. Unbelievable. I'm speechless. I saw it at his house. So where did he put it in, like in the living room?

It's hanging in like there's like a entertaining room. And there it is. Wow. I mean, that's one of the great paintings. they have like some prints for it. He made like Ernie Barnes sign like 50 prints or 100 prints. It's one of the great TV show paintings of all time. I think it's the best opening credits to a TV show of a comedy, I think, ever.

Oh, what about what's happening where they're all like walking down the street and like really like fucking around? That's good too. But this is like, I don't know, you got the song and how it ends with the painting. I don't know. I'm still partial of good times. Yeah. It's good. Wow, an amazing story.

This is fun. Do you have a good time in the rewatchable? I did. I enjoyed it. Yes. It was weird to watch that movie again. It really was.

Well, you're going to come back because you and me and Sal are going to do a movie together at some point. We'll do something fun. Oh, wait. Plug your show. Oh, since we're talking about good times, you know, last time around, we did good times and all in the family live on ABC.

We revived it. And on Tuesday night. You went an Emmy. You should mention. some Emmys, some Emmys handed out. We won Emmys for each one of these. We did all in the family and the Jeffers and then all in the family and good times. And this time on Tuesday, December 7th, 8 p.m., live on ABC,

we are doing different strokes starring Damon Wayans as Willis and starring Kevin Hart as Arnold and John Lithgow as Mr. Drummond and Dowd as Mrs. Garrett. And then we are doing Facts of Life with Jennifer Aniston as Blair, Catherine Hahn is Joe, Tudy is Gabriel Union, Allison Tolman is playing Natalie. And we have a few pretty excellent surprise appearances as well, in both shows, in fact. I can't wait. December 7. There you go.

All right. Thanks, Jimmy. Good to see you. Thanks, Bill. That's it for the rewatchables. It's produced, as always, by Craig Horleback. Thanks to Jimmy Kimmel. We will see you on this feed next week.

Might be a Tony Scott film. Just might. Might. Bet on Tony Scott for a week from now. See, back.