Saturday Night Fever (A Complete History): John Travolta, Nik Cohn, John Badham, & Robert Stigwood

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
One book one day, frank disgusting, sick.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
We just washed the hair.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
No, I work on my hair a long time and
you hit it.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
He hits my hair.

Speaker 4 (00:19):
Thank care of the hair.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
The book one of my favorite scenes.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, and welcome to a very special edition of Book
of Versus Movie.

Speaker 5 (00:30):
Now.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Normally what I say is I'm Margot Pacolumbia book dot com.
And then I introduced my co host, Margo Dee our
brook in Brooklyn Fitchick. But today I have no co hosts.
It's just me interviewing my good friend and guest, Margot
d of Brooklyn Fitchick, author of the upcoming book Fever.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
Well.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
First of all, you can say, yes, Hello, it's Fever,
the Complete history of Saturday Night Fever. By the way,
that's right, so Mark, so you know, normally listen if
you're brand new, welcome. First of all, Oh, there's the book. Wait,
we missed the book. It was blurry. Can you show
it again.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Normally we cover movies that have been adapted from some
kind of a source, like any other source, as long
as it's an adaptation, so it can be a book.
As the name of our podcast suggests, it could be
fiction non fiction. It can be a play even or
a musical, a song, a poem, or, as in the
case of Saturday Night Fever, for a magazine article. Now,

(01:40):
we covered Saturday Night Fever as an episode some years ago,
and we usually begin this show by talking about how
study expectations for the fact that we are not experts
on books or movies. But actually though in this case,

(02:02):
we do have an expert with us today and we are.
One thing that we do have in common is we
are both we are really legit, both historians, and that's
kind of our our angle on things. And my wonderful
friend and most of the time erstwhile co hosts Margot
d has written a couple of books about cinema. And

(02:26):
but before we get to that, if you if you're
just joining us, maybe you have a suggestion for a
book or a movie, you know, adaptation that you would
like for us to cover. Maybe you want to know
what we've done in the past. We've been doing this
podcast for about eleven years now. There are a few
places where you can meet other listeners, make suggestions and

(02:46):
interact with us.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
On the internet. Yes, we do have a basic Facebook page.
I know you're the guest, but I'm going to ask
you to do some work. Okay, yes, that's fine, that's fine.
So we do have a basic Facebook page, it's Book vs.
Movie Podcasts. Be sure to like get all the episodes
a posted there. But Margo and I are much more
interactive in our private Facebook group, and you do have
to ask to join and then me let you in,

(03:08):
and we do just talk about books and movies there.
So it's just book vs. Movie Podcast group. Just ask
to join. We're also on threads, Instagram, and blue Sky
and at all those places you spell out book versus
and Movie and then we have an old timey email
Book versus Movie Podcast. Spell it all out at gmail
dot com.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
And I'll do the Patreon plug. You can also support
us on Patreon. That's patreon dot com. Book versus Movie
that's where you can find you can joined, and you
can help support us here and help keep the lights on.
But you can also find a lot of our backlog,
our back catalog of old episodes. Most of the places
where you are streaming your podcast probably don't have most

(03:50):
of our catalog, so you can find a lot of
our older episodes there. And we really appreciate your support
and joining us today. Now, my good friend, before we
talk about your upcoming book, which is the whole reason
why we're here, would you could you give us a
little bit of background about your first book and kind

(04:11):
of talk to us about like what led you to
want to really like do a deep dive into this
one film.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
So thank you, Margot. So, my first book is called
Filmed in Brooklyn. It's through History Press, and you and
I are both actually published books through History Press. You're
the one that kind of gave me the inn there.
And I was pitching about doing a book about my neighborhood.
I live in Brooklyn, and they said, you know, we
do a lot of neighborhood books, but we've been actually
have a series of books going out where they're about

(04:38):
filming in location. So they're talking about Arizona and la
and Chicago, and they said, we've never done one for Brooklyn.
Would you be interested? And it was just right at
the beginning of COVID, so I said sure, And I
watched two hundred and eighty something movies. I didn't finish
them all. But Baby Talk or whatever that is with
a baby mama, excuse me, with Tina Fay and Amy Poehler.

(05:02):
I have noida how it ends, but anyway, I talked
about books and movies there and that came out a
couple of years ago. And one of my favorite movies
I got to talk about was Saturday Night Fever. And
when I was taking pictures of the for the book,
I went to the Saturday Night Fever House and I
went around the neighborhood and I'm like, I am so
curious about what it was like to film here back

(05:23):
in nineteen seventy seven. It's a different vibe now, but
back then it was very Italian Catholic, very you know,
working class, and it's completely different now. The couple that
live there in the Saturay Night Fever House that I
got to meet, they spent over two million on their home.
I mean, it's a totally different world than the Monaros. Yeah,

(05:43):
so that got my curiosity, and so I approached a
publisher and they said, sure, give it a go. And
so I talked to over seventy people in the cast
and crew, and I talked to some rock historians. And
this is my book, and I'm very excited to talk
about it today.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
I'm very excited too. And when does it officially. What's
the actual release date of the book.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
It's August twenty fifth. My publisher's been sending out galley
copies to people, so it's been you know, they've been
talking about on Sirius XM on seventies on seven and
a couple of other friends. So we're getting the word
out now. You can pre order, yes we are. Yeah,
it is available now for pre order.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
As we're recording this, it's late July, so yeah, it's
already time. It's going to be a great gift for
the people in your life who love Saturday Night Fever.
And you know, another thing I want to I want
to establish before we continued, like into the conversation, can
you talk a little bit about how long where in

(06:47):
Brooklyn you live? Like for people who aren't familiar with
Brooklyn per se, you know, for a lot of people
who aren't familiar with New York, you think Brooklyn's like
just a neighborhood, but Brooklyn's actually like a lot of neighborhoods,
right right, And can you talk a little bit about
kind of the landscape of Brooklyn and how long you've

(07:07):
lived there.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
So I've lived here for thirty years. I moved here
after I graduated college, and I'm in a rent stabilized apartment,
so I'm not going anywhere for a while. And that's
just the way it is in New York. I'm sure
you've all heard about New York being expensive, and real
estate is expensive. So Brooklyn is a combination of many neighborhoods.
There's a couple of dozen of them. There were far

(07:29):
more than I realized. When there's a place called Vindigar
Hill I never even heard of until I wrote my book.
I'm in Park Slope, which is next to a park,
Prospect Park. And then we're connected actually to Long Island,
which is where I'm originally from. Technically we're connected to
Queens and Long Island, but Brooklyn is its own thing.

(07:49):
We have Coney Island, we have Brooklyn Heights. It was
a place where it was a combination of professionals like
that had nice, good money, that lived in the city,
had homes in Brooklyn, you know, for summer for the weekends,
and immigrants that moved here. So we've had we have
Russian neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods, which is what Bay Ridge was
for many years. And so that's that's what it is.

(08:13):
That's and here I am in Park Slope right now,
and you and I are members of gen X, Yes
we are. When I was I was like three or
four when Saturday Night Fever came out, which means that
I basically I have and anybody after us, we've never

(08:36):
lived in a world without disco and a world without
this movie, right right, So it was such a it's
hard to I don't know, you know, I'm not old
enough to know like what it was like before it
was like the only thing on the radio, right saying.

(08:56):
I grew up in an environment where it was just
instantly on the radio, it was constantly on TV. People were.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Ripping it off to make TV show plots all over
the place and quote sitting the movie, and it was
it was just such a huge, huge hit and and
just a real cultural moment that it was kind of

(09:25):
a seemed to be kind of a bright spot in
a kind of a big time, especially in New York City.
You know, I always think of like the garbage strikes
and stuff like that. Son of Sam, can you talk
about yeah, Son of Sam? And can you talk about
the now? A lot of people maybe not know that
Saturday night Fever was adapted from a magazine article Can

(09:48):
you talk us through how that all went?

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, so it's a it's an interesting story. Our author
for the article is Nick Cohene and it's called The If.
It's for New York Magazine. It was released and f
Speak in June nineteen seventy six. And Nick Cohne was
he's a very interesting person. He grew up in Ireland,
in Northern Ireland, and he's half Russian jew and half Irish,

(10:11):
so he's Jewish, but he has big red hair and
sometimes we're Yamaica. And he went to school and kids
were either Catholic or Protestant, so he was neither. So
he grew up being different from other people. And he
was attracted to rock and roll as a young man.
So when he was around nineteen twenty years old, he

(10:32):
moved to England and he worked very hard to become
a critic, a music critic, a rock critic, and so
he wrote about the Who and the Stones and the
Beatles and like, you know, Britain's Britain. Britain is exploding
in the mid sixties with the music worlds, you know,
the Mods and all that, and he was he was
not shy about giving bad reviews to the Rolling Stones

(10:53):
or the Beatles. He was not precious about it, and
so he actually did write an article. Excuse me. He
was friends with Pete Townsend and I had this is
kind of a story, but I kind of want to
tell it. Because he had a girlfriend who was from Montreal, Canada.
They lived together and she had a younger sister come
and visit them. And the younger sister was like maybe seven, sixteen,

(11:14):
seventeen years old and had a Montreal accident a Quebec
quah accent, and he said he used to make fun
of her. Don't speak so much because your accent is
really strong. It's nagging, and it's just what a dude
would do. But he kind of took a shine to her.
Her name was Pamela, and he dressed her up almost
like the show the movie Newsies, Like she was dressed
in like these caps and the suspenders and it's like

(11:37):
this another time. And he would take her out to
play pinball because she was really into pinball, and so
he would sometimes meet rock stars and take and he
called her Arfur. He would take Arfur, his little teen companion,
and they would play pinball with John Lennon, Pete Townsend
you know anybody you can name, and she was really

(11:59):
good at it. So one day, in like sixty eight,
Pete Townsend gets in touch with him and he really
wants a good he's just created Tommy, it's the original
version of Tommy, and he gives him a couple of
tapes and says, I want to play this for you.
It's new, it's different because it's a rock opera. What
do you think? So he listens to it and he
looks at him and says, hmmm, I don't hear any hits.

(12:22):
And Pete looks at him and he's like, well, I
guess if I wrote about a pinball wizard, you'd you'd
write something, And he said, yeah, I might. So Pete
Townsend wrote Pinball Wizard for Nick Cohne to umbress his
girlfriend's younger sister, and Pete Townsend still hates that song
to this day. But so Nick Cohne marries Pamela and

(12:45):
they moved to New York and he becomes a New
York magazine writer and Tommy the movie is being is
they're having a big premiere in New York and he's
invited to the premiere and he goes up to Robert Stigwood.
He goes, you know, that was my idea that he
played pinball like that was all my idea. And stig
would said, well, if you have other ideas, come and
get me. I'll maybe we'll make a movie together. And
Robert Stigwood was this Australian impresario. He brought Jesus Christ

(13:09):
Superstar to the stage in London and New York. He
represented the beegis Eric Clapton Cream. He was on the rise.
So nick Cone started following going to disco clubs in
New York and seventy five into seventy six, and he
found a dancer named Too Sweet, who was a trans woman,

(13:29):
and she was dancing at the black clubs that were
center in Manhattan where they started, and he took her
out to the clubs in Brooklyn and the Bronx to
see what would happen, you know, if she were to
go to these places. And they went to these places,
and sometimes it was they were welcomed and sometimes they
were not welcome. And Too Sweet went to one club

(13:51):
with him and the photographer for New York magazine and
two seat went up to a woman and said a
white woman and said, hey, you want to dance? And
she said sure, and they started dancing and the next thing,
you know, all these Italian guys come in and ready
to throw them out, so they The next day, two
sweet says, I'm not going to discos with you anymore.
So Nick goes by himself to a club that he

(14:12):
heard about in Brooklyn and it's the two thousand and
one Club Odyssey. He shows up and as soon as
he shows up, he gets out of the cab and
he sees there's a fight falling right out the doors
and they're beating up this guy and they get up
to him. They and the guy throws up on his shoes,
and he's so frightened that he gets back in the
cab and goes back to the city. But he talks

(14:34):
to his wife about it, and she says, you know
what you need to write about that, Like something's happened
in that that club you need to know about. And
so that's how he picked the club, and that's how
the story got started.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
I know, it's a journey, and it's a very compelling article.
If you've never read it, it's very easy to find
online for free.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
And he does. I mean, he's a good writer. He
paints in real picture of this scene.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
And it's again, I was so little when it was
you know, bubbling and brewing all over the country. But
can we talk a little bit about like that's that
story kind of encapsulates how disco was started as a

(15:23):
you know, as a form of expression in the gay
clubs in the right, in the LGBT nightclubs, and then
becomes like it couldn't be a more straight scene in
Saturday night fever right, right, at some point, at some
point it kind of gets co opted, right, and oddly

(15:43):
you get these like toxic masculinity, macho guys and they're
like dancing it out right.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Right, and that's what what attracted. So, yes, there are
these discos that are opening in New York City in
the mids nineteen seventies, and it's mainly there's there's black
people in the center of Manhattan, and then lower of
Manhattan you have more of the gay clubs. And then
in the Upper west Side too, in the outer boroughs,

(16:10):
which would be Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx. They
it tended to be much more of you know, cool
people didn't live in Brooklyn. Back then, they didn't live
in the Bronx. They didn't live in Staten Island. You
lived in Manhattan. If you wanted to be out and
about and meet people, if you wanted to just stay
home and be in a neighborhood, you were in the
Bronx or Brooklyn. And so these other clubs started opening

(16:33):
out there for the kids who didn't want to go
into the city they felt intimidated or whatever. And so
there are these clubs. But that these clubs were not
gay friendly, I would say segregated. I mean they were
not open. They couldn't openly refuse service to people of
you know, black people or Puerto Rican people, but they
could make it tough for you when you're in there.

(16:55):
They can certainly not treat you well. And there were
all these disco contests that were happening, in dance contests
that were happening. And I would say it's also it's
an explosion of like full funk music that was very
popular in the mid seventies that became disco. That's a
really good a really good point. And you live on
a coast.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
I live on a coast as our as our logo,
our logo indicates, and so I don't really have I
always feel like I don't really have a real feeling
for like, what was it like if you were living
in Nebraska and watching Saturday Night Fever for the first time,
and this is your first, maybe your first glimpse of disco.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Maybe you've seen a little bit about it on TV.

Speaker 6 (17:35):
Yeah, maybe you've heard it, you've heard it a little
bit on the radio, But perhaps your town does not
have a disco or a nightclub where people can go
and hear this music and dance, And so I always wonder,
like what that must have been like.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Now, let's talk about let's talk about the thing about
this movie. I mean, every single has some iconic moment,
angle line, SoundBite, song. It's a movie that Americans especially
just like we just know this movie backwards and for
it especially our generation, like I said, because we just
we grew up with it. Last week, actually, we were

(18:17):
talking about the James Bond movie Goldfinger, and how that's
kind of a pivotal film in the James Bond franchise.
It's kind of where all of the elements of what
we consider a Bond On film kind of come together
and it really starts to gel and this is a
very similar thing where it just got all of the
elements right, like the right kinds of young actors, the

(18:40):
right location, the right you know, costumes, the right time
and history, the right city, and of course the right
music and the right dancing scenes. So can you talk
let's talk now about like how all of those components
came together, because it starts with the writing, and the
writing is very good.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Right writing.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
In the story is about Vincent and he's Italian American
and he has a group of friends and they're called
the Faces, which is actually a British expression, by the way,
that's what they say in England for a gang. They
don't He uses a lot of British expressions in this story.
Like then for some reason kind of just snuck through.
So this story is about him in the dancing contest
and he works at a page shop and he hates it.

(19:20):
Blah blah blah. People read this article and a lot
of people were attracted to it. So Robert Stigwood signed
on John Travolta just a couple of months before this
comes out to a contract, and it was for three
pictures for one million dollars and John Travolta was in
one of the top sitcoms on TV called Welcome Back Cotter.
He was a sweatthog named Vinnie Barberino. And at that time,

(19:44):
movie stars and TV stars were two different things. You
did not movies didn't certainly didn't hire soapbackers, and they
didn't hire a sitcom actors. Was very rare when they
did that. So it was a big deal for John Travolta, like, Okay,
I got this hit TV show, but I'm ready for
the next thing. And so he wanted to be a
movie star. So they were looking for this material and
Robert Stigwood gets his hands on it, and Robert Stigwood

(20:04):
manages the Beegies, so he knows that he can get
the music. And then he also was friendly with Norman Wexler.
Romen Wexler was a screenwriter who wrote Surpico and was
a gifted screenwriter but also a manic depressive. He was bipolar.
He was on medication, so he occasionally was in trouble
and then he would write It's just that's way he

(20:26):
spent his life. And the two of them created this together.
I mean, what's interesting about Robert Stigwood is he never
came out he was homosexual, but he never was openly gay.
So he when he was hanging and he was very shy.
He didn't have a lot of close friends. But in

(20:46):
his downtime, especially when he was in Paris and London
as he would go to the gay nightclubs and that's
where he picked up disco. So he knew disco was
getting more popular. He knew disco was going to be
the next thing, and so he told that to Norman,
and then Norman came up with this fantastic script and
just really was able to put this cohesive tale together.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
So we were talking about how he kind of had
the foresight to see, like, this is going to be
the next big thing.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Yeah, right. And also at the time, we should know
that there were two shows you could watch on the weekends.
There was an American Bandstand and there was Soul Train,
and those were two very popular dance shows, but they
were also very segregated. It was the black kids watched
Soul Train and the white kids watched American Bandstand. And
if you look at clips and like I did, and YouTube,
and you look at the dancing let's say nineteen seventy
six on one show versus the other, you know, on a

(21:42):
soul train. They were. It was early hip hop dancing
and it was and a lot of what you see
in this movie. The kids who watched American Bandstand I
wouldn't know about a lot of these moves. So that's
also what the movie was able to kind of like
bring out to people because they hired black choreographers to
to do all the dancing, which was I think key too,

(22:04):
and that's what made it new to people. It wasn't
new to people who were in you know who live,
you know, in the clubs in Chicago, La, New York,
like they knew about disco, they knew about this dancing,
but majority of like suburban white people did not, and
people around the world did not outside of America. So
when John Travolta comes out and he's doing his dancing,

(22:24):
it's it's, first of all, it's just a complete one
eighty from who he is as a sweat hog, which
is what most people knew him as. But it was
also just new to people. It wasn't new to everybody,
but it was new to a big chunk of people.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
That's such a good point about, you know, as somebody
who grew up in the seventies a child who watched
you know, I would watch both. I would watch and
you're right, there was like a market difference in the
quality of dancing between the two shows. Like the good
dancing was on Soul Train. Absolutely like that. You definitely
were going to watch SoulTrain for the dancing. Both shows

(22:59):
you would watch for the music as right. But I'm sorry,
but you're not stealing dance moves from the kids on
American Bandstand in the nineteen seventies.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
No, they're just not well. And when they were doing
these these you know, these disco competitions around New York City,
I mean they were often won by in la and
Chicago and all around the country. You know, you go
to the white clubs and if you get like a
five hundred dollars prize in nineteen seventy five, that's like
twenty five hundred three thousand in today's money. It was
good money. But they would yeah, it's not nothing, Yeah,

(23:27):
it's not for nothing. And in New York and John Badham,
the director of the movie, saw people, you know, black people,
Puerto Rican kids show up for a contest being completely
ignored by all the white patrons and go out on
the floor and kill it, you know, get their money
and get out. And then the other kids would be like, Okay,
what were they doing? We should try that.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
And wanting to learn it and wanting to I mean,
you can't watch this movie and not want to try
these moves, right, So let's talk about the person that
your book is dedicated to and how he was brought
into this cultural moment of this film.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
So, Lester Wilson is the choreographer for Saturday Night Fever.
It's not Denny Terrio, it is Lester Wilson. Denny Tario
was John Travolta's dance coach. He was somebody that he
trained with and who would go on to have Dance Fever,
which was a huge show in the eighties, you know
from us. But he claim to fame was I taugh

(24:22):
John travill Dad to dance, which then people thought that
meant that he did all the dancing for the movie,
created all that he did not. So Lester Wilson was
a dancer from Jamaica, Queens and he had traveled. He
worked with Bob Fosse. He had worked that's Lester right there.
He worked with Anne Margaret, Sammy Davis Junior. He was
on Broadway. He was never in the chorus. Lester from

(24:44):
the time he graduated dance school was like a featured
player and then immediately became a choreographer. And he was
working at a club in Manhattan in the late sixties
and Josephine Baker noticed him and said, you should go
to Paris, like you need to be in Europe right
now because that's where it's at. So Lester went to Europe,
became a pop star, and he was on all these

(25:06):
shows in Holland, in France, in Germany, and then he
did that for a few years and then came back
to the States and he was an in demand choreographer.
He was friendly with John Badam, who was going to
direct The Whiz, which was going to be filmed at
this time. But John Badham couldn't figure out a way
to He said, I just couldn't get my head around

(25:26):
Diana Ross playing Dorothy, because Diana Ross was thirty four
at the time, And so he was going to hire
Lester and his assistant Lorraine Wilson to be on that movie.
He gets fired from that film. He gets hired to
do this movie and then so Lester became the choreographer
for Saturday Night Fever. So all of everything you see
in the movie, that's the partner dancing, and then everything

(25:48):
from the competition to just even every kid in that club,
that's Lester.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
And as you said, he I went on to have
a very long career. We've talked about him on book
versus movie, in the work he's done in other films
like Scrooged.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
If you remember Scrooged.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
With I do, if you all remember the live television
American version of a Christmas Carol that the Bill Mry
characters is. Bill Murray's character is directing, and it has
the Solid Gold dancers and the Lester Wilson is playing
himself as the choreographer of the Right.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
And all of his dance. He also he also was
the choreographer Solid Gold in the mid eighties. He was
with Luther Vandrose. He was Luther Vandrose's choreographer. He was
and Margaret's really good friend Goldie Hawn. He worked on
Beat Street, he worked on everything. But the thing was,
when you're a choreographer on a movie, there's no choreographer's union,

(26:42):
so you have there's no way you can know if
you're going to even be credited properly. He is credited
at the very top of the movie. But Paramount, we
should say this is a three million dollar film. Paramount
didn't think this was going to be a big deal.
They were like, they have other movies they were really
interested in. So John Badham and everybody was filming in Brooklyn.
They didn't even want to go out to Brooklyn, like

(27:02):
they barely left Manhattan, so they were left alone to
do their thing. So it was it was truly just
this magical experience where they just all kind of like
were able to create magic without a bunch of studio
notes coming in. That was also a part of it.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
It just has such a somebody who has also lived
in New York. I went to grad school in Brooklyn.
It does have a real Brooklyn feel. I mean, it's
just like steeped in Brooklyn, like I would say even
more than like Moonstruck, and it is just really has
a feel of authenticity. You really feel it's not it's

(27:41):
not a somebody's version of Brooklyn, like you feel they
are like you really get it that they're really really
there and all of the all of the different cultural
influences that are going or you know, that are all
coexisting now in Brooklyn. As you say, you know, for
time it was such a strictly Italian Catholic community, but

(28:06):
now we have you know, black families and immigrants from
other communities who were coming in and they're all working
and living together, and they're creating new kinds of art
that are just uniquely uniquely them. And one of the

(28:26):
things I was excited to see. Of course, I've just
seen your galley, your galley, so I haven't read the
entire book yet. It's fine, I've only seen I've only
gotten some. I'm just kind of like dipping in and
out trying to get good idea. But one of the
things I was really excited to see was a mention
and if you could just talk about why where these
people and where these folks come into play with this production.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
So those are the lockers that we see right now.
So I spoke that Don Campbell is the one in
the middle. He's the person that created the lockers, and
that's in the West Coast, LA about nineteen seventy seventy one,
and it's just a pop in lock style. If you've
ever if you remember What's Happening? Rerun would dance like that.
Rerun was one of the members of the Lockers. It

(29:15):
was a huge dance troop in LA and it's early
early hip hop. He was a pioneer in hip hop dancing.
So they were on Soul Train all the time, and
they did all the other variety shows. ROBERTA. Flack has
a big movie, big song, Big Year, nineteen seventy three,
Killing Me Softly, feel Like Making Love. She had some
TV specials and they hired the Lockers, but they said

(29:38):
to them, we can't have an all black troop. We
have to have at least one white guy in there.
They had Tony Basil, who would go on to make
Mickey and be a huge serpentation, who was still popping
in Locking. She was, Oh, she's a fantastic but they said,
we need a white guy to include in there, just
so it's appealing to the whole audience. So they looked

(29:58):
up Denny Terrio, who was from Boston and Florida and
he came to LA and he used to kill it
at all the dance clubs. He's never taken the lesson
in his life. He's a fantastic dancer, I'm not taking
that away from him. But he learned all these moves
from the lockers, and it said that that, you know,
he took all that they taught him, and then he
started using on the dance floors at white discos, and
that's what he taught John Travolta. And so a lot

(30:21):
of what John Travolta's doing, especially in his Big solo,
it's reminiscent of this style.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, you can depth that. I hadn't thought about it
until I saw it in your book. I was like, oh,
and big, perfect sense to me, Like yes. Of course,
growing up me being a West Coast kid, I was
super aware of the lockers. You would see them on television,
they would be on local news, you would see them
all the time, and kids in school were I mean
even when I was in like kindergarten, there were kids

(30:48):
in my class who were trying to do the moves
that they saw the lockers do on television.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
So is he the one? Is he in this photo?
Is he the one? I believe he's the one in
the blue pants, but I could be wrong. There's Slinky Luke.
I mean, I can't see it all that well. But
he was a little bit it's a little bit blurry.
But he went on and he would do also dance,
and I have a couple of pictures of him in
the book. He would also do dance contest.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
They had a lot.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
He was friendly with Denny, and so the thing was
is that Denny took these moves. And when John Travolta
was hired for the movie, his agent they said, you
should be working with Denny. He needs a dance instructor.
Denny Terrio gets the job. So Denny Terrio teaches you know,
him some moves and then Denny really took him to
clubs in La to try to teach him how to
interact with people. Because John Trull was actually kind of nerdy,

(31:31):
I wrote high book like he was obsessed with music.
I'm surprised he didn't have a big career on the
stage because he was obsespstuate with musicals. That was his
whole thing. When he was a kid, he had memorized
the Gypsy soundtrack. All of his friends were listening to
rock and roll, and he was like he was playing
duty on Broadway when he was sixteen. He dropped out
of high school at sixteen, so he knew how to
dance was like Broadway dancing. This is street dancing that

(31:53):
he was taught. Yeah, it's very different style of dancing.
And that's also why it was new to everybody. It
was not new to a people, but like I said,
large swaths of this country and around the world, this
was new to them. And so John So when the
original director actually for this movie was John Jay Advilson
who directed Rocky. When he was given the script and

(32:15):
they knew Rocky was going to be a big deal,
he wanted to change the character of Tony Manero to
be a guy like Rocky that he's really kind and
he helps old ladies with their groceries and he tells
kids not to use drugs. And he also didn't want
to use disco, he didn't and he also didn't want
to use that kind of dancing. He wanted to use
balanchine dancers to just show up in the frame and

(32:35):
then do stuff. And he would write this script and
said it to Robert Stigwood, and stig would be like,
uh no. So he tried again and they had a
lot of this, you know, locking horns and Rocky becomes
a huge movie by the way at this time. But yeah,
three weeks before they're ready to film the movie, Robert
stigwould called John Advilson into his office and said, hey,

(32:56):
got some good news and bad news for you. One
Rocky was nominated for an Oscar, so congratulations, and two
you're fired. And that was the meeting. And so John
Badham came in and he was already just fired from
working on the Whiz because he said what he was
going to do his big idea, he wanted to get fired.
He said, I'm going to film it from Dorothy's angle,

(33:17):
so like from the perspective of Diana Ross, and we
actually no, he says, occasionally we'll see her shoes and
that's it. And that's how they got fired, right, And
he had hired Lester Wilson and Lorraine Fields to be
his choreographers. He says, I'm sorry, I just got myself fired.
I promise you I'll think of you when I get something.
And within a week he got a script for this
movie and he was signed on. So he comes three

(33:38):
weeks before they're filming. John Badam had to hire the
full cast and secure sixty locations for this movie. Like
this movie was on a wing in a prayer.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
How it was out and to me, like one of
the things that's so remarkable about that knowing that you
would never guess watching the film because these young people,
you know, the young kids, these Brooklyn kids who are
in the cast, and also also the family also, you know,

(34:09):
they have such a report, like you really believe that
they have this shared history. You really believe that those
young people have known each other since preschool. You know,
you really believe that that family has decades of history
and trauma and whatever they're working through, like what is
going on with the brother who's the priest and you

(34:32):
know he doesn't know how he feels about things because
it's the seventies, and you would never guess that they
just like how quickly they brought you know, somebody had
a really good picker.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
Yes, and they had all these actors had auditioned for
John Advilson, you know at different times, but he kept
changing the script so they didn't even know like what
they were supposed to be doing. So what they did
was they he gets fired and they bring back Norman
Wexler's script and and they had to hire the cast,
which they did within a week. They hired everybody that

(35:05):
they needed. And these are like Donna Pescu had auditioned
several times and then she thought it went away, but
then that they hired her to play in it. She's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
I just love her for something that we have lived
with most of our lives, you and I most of
our lives.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
What were people thinking? Like, so nineteen se what years
the year that the movie comes out? Nineteen seventy seven? Seven?

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Okay, So just to give us a little bit of context,
Annie Hall is seventy five, right, So that's Annie Hall,
which is also New York City, but it's a completely
different part of New York City, a completely different culture.

(35:53):
And so you know, you're thinking a lot of people
who don't live in New York City, they think of
New York City, they think of those kind of movies. Right,
And you're sitting in the movie theater and this comes on.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I News almost I'm a mormos man, no time.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
To time news, A man getting you around, okay, time.

Speaker 4 (36:29):
Staying, staying a live, stay, staying alive, staying.

Speaker 5 (36:50):
At Where do you go when the record is all
John Travolto Saturday Night Fever.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
Knots of the poster? Yeah, what what?

Speaker 5 (37:13):
So? What is this? So?

Speaker 3 (37:15):
What is this movie? So I just I love I
think it's the best, one of the best intros to
a movie ever because that's the first few, you know,
minutes of the movie is just John Travolta walking and
the like. And it's the crane shot of like from
the city and I'm going into Brooklyn. Right, You're not
going into Manhattan. You're not going where Woody Allen is.
You're someplace and you're riveted. And the sight of I

(37:36):
should say, and I wish I should have pulled up
a picture for you of John Travolta when he was
in the sweat Hogs, because he was cute, he was adorable,
He had tussled feathered hair, and he was like thirty
pounds heavy as so goofy, right, yeah, and but for
this not this guy. It's not this guy. They had

(37:56):
taken thirty pounds off of him. So he was trained
by Denny Terrio. But when John Advilson, so John Avilson.
His trainer for Rocky was Jimmy Gambina, and he taught
Sevester Stallone how to box, and he set up all
the boxing sequences. So he had John train with him
because he wanted John to slim down. That's what he
thought because John needed to lose like twenty five thirty pounds.

(38:19):
So there's that that's going on. And the pants and
that suit. That's just the clothes that fit in perfectly
in every shot because he's just lean and mean and
the hair that's kind of pompadoor back, Like this is
not what we saw of John Travolta when we would
watch it every week on TV.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
This was a.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
Completely different person and that was all that was part
of the transformation to turn him into Tony Minero. The
glow up, the glow he had a glow up and
that it's and it is a spectacular, an amazing thing
to witness, and it's and it's very much in bay
Ridge and they're very proud of it and br bay Ridge.

(38:56):
I mean, it's it's he's just.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Incredible, I think, you know, although he is the central character,
of course, and he's the one that is that you know,
we see his We see his club life where he's
mister Coole. We see his work life where he's like
not really going anywhere. He's struggling, you know, like who

(39:20):
is this, Like he's not educated, what's his future? We
don't know, and then we see his home life with
his family right where it's a it's he has a
he's a cletely different person to those people than he
is to the people at work. And and so you
see him today what we would call like code switch,
code switching. You see him having to try to fit
in in all these different almost different eras. Right, So

(39:44):
he's then he's in the modern day, and then he's
a little bit in the past at work where his
you know, everybody he works with his older than he is.
And then at home he's the kid. He's the youngest
in the family and therefore he doesn't get as much respect.
But as as you say, Donna Pascal, really though is
it's actually the real heart of the And I was

(40:07):
reading her section of the book and I was very
interested because again trigger warning, if you've never never sad,
I don't know why you're watching this, if you've never
seen Saturn Night Fever. But in case you haven't and
you don't know what happens, trigger warning. Her character is
sexually assaulted by one of the one of the main characters,

(40:28):
two of them and yes, by two of them. Sorry,
And it is a it is a very brutal scene.
And I don't want to spoil it because you tell
the story in the book about how they filmed it,
and it was not the way the actors thought that
they were filming it per se.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
But I really.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
I I really appreciated Donna Pascal's take on it and
her she's very just matter of fact of like, yeah,
this is a thing that actually would go on. This
is what probably would have happened to this character. People
need to know basically, and people need to see it.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
When I was interviewing everyone, that was one of the
questions that I had on my list that I was like,
I'm going to get to know this person as we're
talking and see how I can bring it up to
them because and and today's it would not be in
a movie today it would be it would be like,
I don't absolutely not the way it is. I was surprised,
like a number of actors, and Patrizia von Breidenberg, who

(41:34):
did all the costumes, she created the white suit, she
when I asked her about it, She's like, that's exactly
what would have happened. Hunh, that's the way it was,
you know, And she was from you know, she knew
the city. She lived in Brooklyn. That's the way it was.
She was Donna Pascal was playing someone who her whole
life is. She knows that she's not going to leave
Bay Ridge. That at the time, kids in those neighborhoods

(41:56):
did not go on the subway to go into the
city for any reason. They worked in the neighborhood. But
what's happening in the mid seventies is these union jobs
are starting to go away. So John Travolta's father, Valbisiglio,
who's playing him, and a brilliant actor, and Julie Bavasso.
The family scenes are so heartbreaking. They are so John

(42:17):
j so is Tony Manaia. Like you said, when he's
in the paint shop, he's kind of the sexy young kid,
but you're kind of in my head, it's like, how
much can you possibly make working at a paint shop.
But he lives at home with his parents, who probably
paid maybe forty grand for their huge house back in
the day. It's enormous. It's an enormous house and I've
been there, yeah it's and it's gorgeous and on this
beautiful street and everything, but it's a different time. Julie

(42:40):
Bavasso I love in this movie. She plays the mother.
She was an actor and she was actually an acting
coach and teacher for many of the actors in this movie,
and that's how they found out about the film, was Julie.
But she also at nineteen started her own theater company
in New York and won the first Obie, which is
the Off Broadway Awards. Just brilliant, brilliant people. And then

(43:01):
I just want to mention Lisa Paluso, who plays the
younger sister. She oh, yeah, she was.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
She told me that.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
You know, she was a huge John Travolta fan. She
loved Welcome Back Hotter. So she's like, I booked that gig.
I told him this, this is mine. I'm booking this.
And when she first meets John Travolta and we'll maybe
talk about this, but he had lost his girlfriend in
the middle of shooting, his girlfriend dies from cancer and
he comes back to film and the first thing they
filmed with these family scenes, and she's like nine years

(43:28):
old and she just runs up to him like, Hey,
do the Barberino dance, which was like a thing he
did on the show. It's like the urban dance basically
on family matters, very gimmicky. Cracked me up. It cracked
me up when I was a kid. And he did
it for her right away and then he I know,
And then she said she had his eyelash stuck on
her face, and she said he leaned over and did

(43:49):
that thing where, you know, dab it with your and
she said in my head, she's like, oh my god,
why am I not older? If I were ten years older,
this would be perfect. He was a big star to her. Also,
he was a big star to kids. He wasn't The
adults didn't really connect with Welcome Back Cotterer. My parents
were watch it, they were, but so they didn't know intently.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah, we talked recently about how like when we were
in school and kids would have lunch boxes and you
would have lunchboxes of you. Oh when we talked about
Witch Mountain Escape to which Mountain? Yeah, And I remember
in my kindergarten class there was a girl who had
an escape to Witch Mountain lunchbox, and there was a
girl who had to Welcome Back Cotter lunchbox.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
I was not that cool.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
I had a snoopy lunchbox. But I think I had
drew kids, really kids, really watched that show. It is
very kid friendly, it is.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
And also I mean, and it's like yeah, because it's
a show about teenagers, but it's filmed with twenty somethings.
I mean, that's just how it is. That's grease as well,
which you might talk about too. But John Javolta was hugely, hugely,
hugely famous on this very popular show, except not in
movies and not in adult stuff. I mean, Carrie will
come out, but not for months after they filmed this,
or it was only for a few months before they

(45:00):
started filming it. So they only hired a few off
duty police officers for that first scene. And the first
thing they shot was that scene of him walking down
the street in Bay Ridge, and they had like four
or five police officers with a barrier. And the word
got out that they were filming a John Travolta movie
in the neighborhood, becausey were running on the neighborhoods for
three weeks looking for sixty locations and just telling everybody
because they had no money to give them. They're like, well,

(45:22):
we're gonna have this TV star, Can we have your
paint shop? How did they do? I don't understand that,
And they were like, I think I've heard him, Yes,
did they do this? But and also yeah that was
also my face was frozen for a second. Yeah. They
went to this paint shop and the guy was like, yeah,
I think my kids are into this the hardware store,
because yeah, I think my kids like this show. Okay,
thousands of people showed up. They had to cancel the

(45:44):
filming for the day because they and they did not
have any idea who they had, They had no idea
what time of year. Do you know what time of
year they were filming? Yes, I do. So they started
filming in March of nineteen seventy seven and right and
through the middle of May, and in the middle of
the shoot, Studio fifty four opens. Oh, which so that

(46:07):
whole other Yeah, that's very fortunate for them. Right. So
people will always say to me, there's a lot of
old documentaries that I watch and all the wrap up
people always love to say this thing, disco was on
its way out, and then this movie came and it
brought it back to life. Disco was not on its
way out, y'all. It was there were clubs opening across
the country, and I found all these articles about it.

(46:28):
Was like a four billion dollar a year business in
seventy four seventy five. Okay, that's it was growing, so
they it was just a remarkable thing, like it was
just about to explode anyway.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
And this brings us to the unicorned dust on this
film that brings everything together and makes it what it
is to to world culture.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
And that's bomb for bomb boom boom boom, and uh,
let's play.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Let's play this this clip of just just to people
get some idea about the dancing, and I mean it
just it just feels like a sweaty You know, they've
got their best clothes on, but you know it's all
like polyester club. It's smoky, it's sweating. Everybody's wearing polyester.
You don't smell great in polyester when you've been dancing

(47:27):
for three hours. But but let's just watch this.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
This is so great. Oh all day. I could watch

(48:33):
it all day. It comes in like thirty forty minutes
into the film, like we hadn't really seen him really
dance yet.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
You just I'm so wonderful because you see him. We
see him at the paint store, as we've said, and
he's and you know, you're like, this guy is not
going anywhere, Like he's gonna what's his future?

Speaker 3 (48:52):
He's going to work in this paint dam work.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Maybe he'll get to be manager, you know, maybe he'll
be able to hold on to his job at the
paint because things are not good economically in the US
at this time, especially in New York.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
His dad is out of a job. Yeah he's is
he going to be responsible for taking care of both
of his parents? Now?

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Like, where where is this guy's life going? And he's
not that smart, you know, he's kind of nerdy. His
friends are kind of goofs, you know, they're also like
and and he's he's into this dancing like this this
is his this is his whole life? Is he gets
all like, spends all this time on his hair to

(49:30):
go to this night club, right, and then that happens
and you're like, oh, okay, yeah, I got it.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
I tried to by the way Toothings. So one I
tried to find that blonde woman who says oh yeah,
because I always am obsessed with her. She's like saying,
oh yeah, I finally found her on Facebook, but unfortunately
she passed away. I know before I so like I
was touching, I was in touch with her daughter. She
loved shooting that. A lot of local kids, by the way,
were filmed in there. And secondly, Lorraine Fields, who was

(50:05):
Lester Wilson's assistant for that scene, she was in front
of John Travolta doing mimicking all those movements, oh, without
the music. It's because in your plun you're doing these things,
you can't play the music because if you don't know, no,
you have to do it without music. So he has
to keep the beat. So she's in front of him,

(50:26):
in front of the dolly doing all.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Of that, doing all the moves at the right and
the dead the dead giveaway, And that's true, like there's
just no way to They would have to dub it regardless,
right the dead giveaway.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
If you you can't take your eyes off John Travolta
in that scene, I mean you are.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
You're only human. Right of course you're going to watch
John Travolta. But if you can take your eyes off
of him for just a moment, you will see that
all of these white children in the crowd are not
clapping to the beat at whatsoever. They're not clapping with
each other. They're all like at a sync with each other. Like,

(51:08):
what are they clapping to?

Speaker 3 (51:10):
It doesn't matter, doesn't matter. We're just watching this one guy,
and this scene is important because it's first all, it's
key to the movie, right. You don't know how good
he is really. You just know he's handsome and has
confidence when he's there. But you know who knows They
John Badham. When he first shot it, he did a
lot of close ups of his face because Travolta was

(51:30):
really beautiful, or from the waist up, and he and
John Travolti went to the edit bay, you know did
They filmed this for a couple of days and they
went to the edit bay and he noticed that they
only filmed him basically from the waist up, and he says,
you can't see my legs. You can't see all the
work I did. And Badam's like, oh no, it's gonna
be fine, don't worry about it. He goes, no, I
want to shoot it again, and Badam said, no, we

(51:51):
don't have a budget. So Jimmy Gambina, the boxer I
was telling you about who train did all the stunt work.
They hired him to do stunt work for this movie.
He grabs John Travolta puts him in the car, he
said drive him to work. Every day. He says, I'm
taking him out of here and until you film this.
So he took him to Long Island, Montalk, Long Island
and John Travolta and the woman who plays the bartender

(52:13):
in the movie that that's one of his good friends,
and a woman who was Liza Minelli's backup singer. The
four of them hung out at a hotel in Montalk,
and Jimmy would call the production office like are you
going to film it? Are we going to film it?
And then finally said okay, fine, and then that's what
you see because that's what you need to see.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
It is crucial, critical moment where you the audience go,
he does have something special, right, gosh, he's really special,
Like okay, but now.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
What And a lot of those movies people have seen.
But a lot of the people you know, had not
seen those movies. Like once again, they weren't watching Soul Train,
so they hadn't seen this, so it was all new
to them. So I have friends that are older than
me that did see the movie in the theater. I
was way too young for the theater. And they said
that scene in particular people freak out in the audience say,
we just burst into applause, and it was just and

(53:03):
it must have been.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
It's Jadra because you do because one you have as
a temporary audience. You have in your mind of this
goofy kid from Welcome bout Cotter number one. And so
for the first part of the movie, like you can't
help but think that you can't help but shake have
that in your mind of that because that show also
takes place in Brooklyn.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
It did. It's also it's also a Brooklyn I think
Sheep said bay like right next door, very.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Much the same kind of backdrop. And so you know
when he's at the paint stor he's very much still
kind of that goofy guy. And then you see him
with his family and you're like, oh, man, like this
kind of this kid, this family is pathetic.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
What is going on?

Speaker 2 (53:42):
And like what is this life? He's going to this club?
But it's just so he's absolutely beautiful. But these these
are not moves that just anybody could.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Just go and do. No, they and he had to
get in shape for it, and he had to train
for it, really train, and as I said, like Lester
and Lester Wilson and Lorraine Fields. They got everybody in
the for everything, the cast and the crew. Also, I
want to say that they took this club the two
thousand and one, which was a real disco and they

(54:13):
had been in business since nineteen fifty five. They put
Ralph de Bode was the cinematographer. He had them put
tinfoil on the walls, so that's like tenfold and Christmas lights,
and then they bring the lighted floor. It brings that's
all the atmosphere.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah, and they bring in the light of floor, and
the light of floor becomes that is disco, you know,
like you see a light of flow, you're like, oh,
it's a disco.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
That's right. It was the first one, and it was
the first movie to do that. And at the time
also they had all these people in there. They shot
for like a week and a half all those club scenes.
They could not turn on the air conditioning because it
made too much noise. It was all of those really
old school air conditioners, so it was broiling hot whenever

(55:00):
they were shooting. Also, because John Badham really wanted smoke,
He's just like they have to have smoke around their
feet when they're doing night Fever and that people are like,
nobody does that. Norman Wexler's like, nobody does that. It
just goes. He says, they will from now on. And
so they had like dry ice that and there was
like this this sludge that people were inhaling. So they

(55:21):
would do they would film for like five ten minutes
and then have to open the doors.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
But it looks amazing.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
But everybody, like the two the dancers that are the
competitors and the big competition were all professional dancers. And
I asked them, I've got to speak to them, and
they said they were asked like do you want to
hang around, you know, be in other scenes in the movie.
And they're like, no, thanks, We're gonna go back to Broadway.
I'm not too We enjoy breathing.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, yeah, this was cute. This was cute, but no,
I'm gonna go back to a stage. It's such a
powerful ensemble cast because they don't you know, not all
of these kids are dancing. No, but the scenes that
we have with the kids are are really Again that
like you said, Donnie Pasco and company, like they are

(56:07):
the heart of the piece. And I mean, let's there's
so many standouts among all these young people in the cast.
Let's talk about Danny Dillon though, first of all this
show Denny Dillon's, Let's show her first.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
Can I pull you for? Why not?

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Sugarhead?

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I love to watch you dance, Tony, I love it.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
I'd love to watch you dance, but I just just
love it watching you dance a favor.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Why don't you take it for a dance, son?

Speaker 3 (56:48):
It's a good idea.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
I want to dance.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Would you like to dance and want to advance charity?

Speaker 1 (57:00):
I want to watch then.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
A little bit. Danny Dylon is all of us. She
and I got to speak to her, and she and
her her acting coach said, you're a little Irish Catholic
girl like sneaking into the club and you have a
big crush on him. That's your motivation. Danny Dillon would
go on to be on Saturday Night Live after this

(57:32):
first season, and then she was on dream On and
she's had a big career after that. But I don't
want to go too too long.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Although I could talk about Saturday at Fever all day,
and we need to talk about We started to talk
about the music and how magical like it is, like
sort of like the fairy dustuff that falls over the
whole thing. And I didn't get I didn't see in
the book if you talked about this or not. But

(58:00):
one of the things that I think was really key
to the pervasiveness of this film and its culture and
its music, but especially the music of the Beages, because
the beaches were already they you know, the Beaches had
a long career before Saturday Night Fever, and they already
were in the disco you know, kind of milleu.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
With a ewe.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Night, I'm watching Jimmy fallon only, you know. So they
were already you know, kind of disco disco folks. But
through this connection they become part of the soundtrack. And
my question to you is, were you aware that with

(58:45):
we may never have had the Saturday Night Fever. The
popularity of the film and the soundtrack without Hitler and
the nazis no, Okay, there's something I learned. Not really
Hitler didn't give us anything I was gonna say, but
clear no, But but should say that when cars were

(59:11):
first manufactured, pretty soon people realize like, oh, we should
put radios in cars, that that would be great, and
so they develop, they develop radios for cars, and they
tried and like, that's great, but then you don't really
have a choice in what you're listening to. And they
tried a couple of trays of ways to put a

(59:32):
record player in a car. But for those of you
who don't know how a record player works, they're very, very,
very sensitive to movement, and if you slightly, even a
little bit jostle a record player, it will not play
the record, it'll skip it. So yeah, and then somebody
else was like, oh, well, I can make a record
player that will only play forty fives. That's great, but

(59:54):
that is only one song. And if you're driving then
what then what do you do because you have to
flip the record over. Well, in the nineteen twenties, the
Germans develop magnetic tape, and they keep it a secret,
they keep it under wraps, and they use it for
government purposes. So the Nazis are using magnetic tape, you know,

(01:00:20):
for transmitting messages and so on and so forth. And
after the war when the Allies come in, they seize
some of the machinery from the Nazis, from like their
radio stations, and they bring it back to the US,
and a certain young man named Bing Crosby sees this
and is like, whoa why is there some potential here?

(01:00:42):
So he invests in developing magnetic tape and the magnetic
using magnetic tape for music instead of instead of nazism, yeah, fascism,
And they first develop eight two track tape, so you know,
a machine in your car again, so you can choose

(01:01:02):
what to listen to in your car, and you could
play one song and then hit a little button. It
will flip the play the opposite side of the tape
and play the second song that's a two track, and
then they had a four track, and then eventually, by
the time this movie comes out, we have the pervasiveness
of the eight track.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
And really, to me, I think like the thing about
the thing about the success of this soundtrack and this
film and why just it was just a juggernaut is
because young people are driving. What's on the radio isn't
necessarily what's cool. In those days, you didn't have as
many options for radio. We certainly didn't have like satellite
radio where you can have a station for literally anything

(01:01:43):
like I just want to hear synthpop from nineteen eighty four,
there's a whole station for that. But in those days,
like what was on the radio?

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
What was on the radio? And you know, it could
be Harry Como, it could be something like the Beg's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
But even though the soundtrack was a hit and was
on the radio a lot people, it wasn't on the
radio enough for people. And so they would buy these
eight track cassettes, the whole album, the whole soundtrack on
a cassette where they young people could listen to them
at home, pop it in the car. When you go
in the car and they're buying this soundtrack up like crazy,

(01:02:20):
practicing those dance moves and making that they're generating the
radio play by buying this album on the A track
and playing it in their cars and in their homes.
You know, kids used to listen to a track at
home with headphones like you and I are wearing right
now to not offend their parents. But that's you know,

(01:02:44):
the A track I think is a is an unsung
hero of this story about how just it just wildfire?
This soundtrack we'll talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Yes, So Robert Siegud was representing the Beg's and part
of their comeback, and so he sent they were recording
an album a live album, but blot. People also say
that Bege's were nothing, and then this soundtrack brought them back. No,
they had a couple of hits a couple of years before,
and they were actually going to release a live album.
So they were in France at his chateau and they
were mixing this live album and Robert says, hey, I'm

(01:03:17):
producing this movie. I need four songs. I need a
fast song, I need a low song, I need a
faster song, and then I need an end song. And
the Begees knocked it out within a week. And they
did this without reading the script. It's just that they
were already playing with ideas and they wrote when Robert
Stigwood wild to me right, Robert stigwohod you hired John Badam,

(01:03:40):
Like they went over the script and he's like, okay,
you need to get these locations. You need to find
me actors and oh, by the way, here's a cassette.
Listen to this music because this is going to be
in the movie. And there are three number one hits
on this and he was wrong because there were four
and he released this is another thing he did is
sheer brilliance. He released this soundtrack a month before the

(01:04:00):
movie even came out. So and this one hit single
like I think Staying Alive came out in September. The
movie comes out in December, and then in November they
land it's a double album as well, by the way,
so you had to pay like twelve bucks to get it.
It wasn't cheap and they couldn't print them fast enough.
I mean, all these songs and we have like Disco
Inferno is on there night Fever more than a Woman,

(01:04:25):
If I Can't Have You by my favorite by Yvonne Elleman.
I mean all of them were from here. And that's
and that was Stigwood's brilliance. When Michael Eisner, who was
one of the chiefs at Paramount, and Barry Dillar, they
were two chiefs that didn't believe in this movie. They
were like a month before the movie was being released,
they didn't even care about it. And Eisner was going

(01:04:46):
on a family vacation where he was skiing and he
went up the skis and he's at the ski bottom
of the skis and he's getting set up, set up.
He hears Staying Alive and then he gets in the
chair and as he's going up with the chair. He
can hear Staying Alive in the distance from people's like
transistor radios and shit. And then he lands and he's
at the lodge and they're playing Staying Alive. And he
called Paramount and says, I think we may have a hit.

(01:05:09):
And Paramount still was like, nah, they just like that song.
They had no idea what they had.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
I mean, it's so again I keep bringing up last
week's episode, but it's I think it's a good, a
good comparison to this. And we talked about how, you know,
Bond movies are famous for their themes. They always have
a great theme song. Every Bond movie has to have
an amazing theme song, and Goldfinger is, like I was
saying last week, maybe my favorite. And we talked about
how when Shirley Bassi recorded Goldfinger, she was literally singing

(01:05:41):
in a studio with the opening credits projected on a
screen so that she could add a little this or that,
you know, as she saw action happening on the scene.
The musicians could add little flourishes here and there. And
it is like when you see this film and you
see those shoes, like walking down the sidewalk, it is

(01:06:03):
impossible to believe that the Begies were not in a
studio watching this on the screen and like and like
inspired by what they were seeing it, but they weren't.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
They were not there, and they it's it's unbelievable. And
they had like rough versions of it, and that's what
the cast and the crew listened to, and they all said,
this is really good. It's going to be a hit,
but you know, it's it's just this kis met. It
was just like several really talented people. Did they ask
the Beges to mention New York? I don't remember that,

(01:06:35):
but I'm sure he told them it's about a kid
that's a dancer in Brooklyn. I mean, they knew that,
and it was taking place at a club. So he says,
I need, you know, four dance songs. One of them
has to be a ballad and the rest, you know,
some can be mid tempo and a couple have to
be kind of more high, like a higher pace. So
that's why they did that. I also spoke to Yvonne
Elleman and she her husband Bill Oakes, was the soundtrack, created,

(01:06:58):
the soundtrack, produced it, put it all together, and when
he was taking his final master tape, he was based
in La. He was taking it to the airport to
send to Robert Stigwood. He was behind a car that
had a bumper sticker that said death to Disco, and
he was like, y, we're too late? Are we going
to be too late? But they were not too late? No, no,

(01:07:19):
And you still can't escape that music, No, you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
And and you know it just became other things. It's
still disco music. So yeah, there's whole this whole movement
of the death to Disco the disco records, which I'm
sorry is just homophobia. It's just and racism, gay racism
and violence. And I'm not going to entertain it any

(01:07:44):
more than that. But yeah, no, it never went away.
People still continue to love that song and buy that soundtrack.
Ye it is still a best selling soundtrack and it
is and there are other artists on the soundtrack and
it is a very The production of it is so
good way that the songs are paced so that you
you know, if I'm on a car trip and I'm

(01:08:06):
listening to that whole album, start to finish on it,
because on the a track you kind of you could
some of them have like where you could jump ahead
a track.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
But you can also ruin them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Hey guice, you could wreck your tape doing it, so
most people were like, don't touch the thing. So it's
perfectly paced where we've got that the day and then
the ballads, and it's just this alchemy that creates this

(01:08:38):
beautiful moment. And let's show a little bit of we
haven't talked about Karen Corney.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
Yes should I and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Chrum, but let's show her. Let's show her body double.
Can you introduce this clip that we're about to see
right now?

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
So, Karen Lyn Gorney was a soap star. She's the
first Tarra I think on Days of our Lives, and
she was a bit older than the character. I mean,
they were kind of shocked she was higher. Jessica Lang
almost got this part for Stephanie. She came. She was
very far along in the audition process. Her and Amy
Irving and John Travolta like the both of them, but

(01:09:10):
uh they a Delo Dino de Laurentis wouldn't take Jessica
Lang out of her contract. She had a contract with him.
So it was only like a week before something that
they hired Karen Lynn Gorney. She uh yeah, and she's
her her her dancing is interesting. We're going to see
a clip here. Well, is this her dancing? Uh No,

(01:09:31):
that's my whole point. And I didn't realize this, and
people told me when I interviewed them that she had
to get They needed a dance double for her at
the club and few the places.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
And he has seeing the scenes where she's actually dancing.
I mean, she's not a dancer, not a dancer.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
She's she actually became one afterwards. Yeah, I will say
that I do like, actually do like her chemistry with
John Travolta. Absolutely, I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
I like, I like the energy that they have between
each other because she she's from that same world, but
she's on a different track than he is. And I
think it really you it seems very real. But a dancer, No,
what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Baby? Look at she's a dancing man. She's proving.

Speaker 4 (01:10:45):
Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Yeah, you know what, you know what a girl? You
know you've received before?

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
Noah, I've seen her here about a month ago.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
She got the wrong pot in her of course for
the later scene in the dance studio would beg to
differ with that opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
Lorraine Fields, who was Lester's assistant, once again, she told
me that when Karen was at the dance studio and
they filmed the dance studio scenes, it took a while
to get her relaxed. She actually broke out in fever,
blisters and hives because she's so nervous. Yeah, so and
so when they were at that studio in those scenes,
she eventually she could loosen up and she could do it,
but they when they got to the club, she completely froze.

(01:11:36):
And so, yeah, that's a French dancer. I mean, I
didn't notice this until I saw it on four K
and then it's like, oh, it took a job of hide.
Oh yeah, they hide it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
But you could totally see, Like on four K, well,
if one of those things that, like like in Flash Dance,
once you see that guy in the mustache, you can't
you can't not see the mustache. This is there. But
when we first spot in the movie theater, we were like, wow,
look at her spin Yeah. I mean, but I like,
I do really love all of their scenes together and
the I think it's I cannot believe that they pulled

(01:12:09):
this cast together in the amount of time that they did.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
It's yeah, it's really something. So what do you think is.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
What's our what's our twenty first century takeaway. I think
that a part of it is the movie itself. It's
very gritty, it's it's very super seventies New York at
the time. I think it's like a style of filmmaking
you don't see anymore. I think it had that in
a movie that was filled with popular songs, so it
had a big audience. Not everybody went to see Mean Streets.

(01:12:40):
Not everybody goes to see Watching Bull That that's just
not everyone's cup of tea. So I think like seeing
something this gritty and realistic and the seventies mixed with
like a very likable leading man and the music it was,
you know, that kind of made help make it popular.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
I think. So some of that is that. I think
some of it is when I was a kid, I
wasn't old enough to see this movie. So one of
the first albums I owned was this soundtrack, and it
was a double soundtrack, so you had like you open
it up and there were all these pictures from the film,
and so I made up a movie in my head.
And it's like, so for me, when I hear this

(01:13:15):
music reminds me of the movie, and then it makes
me feel a particular way. I think sometimes it's for
some people, it's just they tell the cast all the time,
they hear stories. I met my wife, you know, I
took her to see this movie, or I remember just
like taking dance lessons because all of a sudden, dancing
became really popular. So but I think it's also very

(01:13:35):
very popular. Yeah, And I also think it's just I
think it's also the striving, like he wants he's not
sure what he wants and he's not sure what he's
good at, but he knows he can't stay where he is,
you know. So he's feeling this inertia and he has
all this energy to get out. And I think that's
something we can relate to. And I think Stephanie, I
know people get Carolyn Gorney and the character Stephanie kind

(01:13:55):
of a hard time. But I have so much empathy
for Stephanie and I did too, and I and I
think the way that she performs it is so I
love her. I do too. There's a scene where she's
she basically she works at this pr agency. She has
this thick accent, and she has an affair with one
of her bosses and then he basically uses her to

(01:14:17):
like divert attention. So this wife doesn't know how much
ex wife doesn't know how much money he has, so
she kind of assists him, but he teaches her the
ropes of the agency, and then he gives her an apartment,
which I think is a fair trade. And but but
John Travolta is very judgy about it, like, oh, you
slept with that man? How dare you?

Speaker 5 (01:14:34):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
Because it's also the seventies at time, and she's like
I love that scene where she's in the car and
she's crying and she's like, what am I supposed to do? Like, yeah,
I don't know anything. What are options? What are my options?
I don't want to be in Barridge. I don't want
to work at a bakery and get married and have
kids right now. I want to be in the city.
I want to have fun. But I don't know what
I'm doing. And I know that it felt I moved
to New York. I didn't know what I was doing.

(01:14:55):
When I had my first office jobs. I always worked
retail and in restaurants. Yeah, yeah, what do you do?

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
So?

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
Yeah, there's and there's men that do you know that
are predators in the office that go after younger women
that don't seem to know what they're doing, and they
come over like, oh, I'll show you this is how
we do things here. And that's like they're like, so,
I don't know, I find it a very relatable movie.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
Yeah, I agree, I totally agree. So do you know
this is not we're a traditional episode where we try
to figure out if we like the book or the movie.
Of course we like the movie better. Yeah, what will
fans of this film? What do you hope fans of
this film will come away with from your book?

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
I hope that they appreciate just how many people it
took to make this happen. When this movie became popular,
Paramount didn't have a lot of faith in this movie,
so they didn't put any money into a publicity campaign.
So normally, three four months out a movie comes out,
you go to all the magazines and you give them
artwork and you ask them to go to screenings because

(01:15:57):
you want to get this buzz. They're like, we're not
spending money on that, so they only they all their
money was on just like shortly pressed magazine like weekly
magazines and newspapers, and then they were caught off guard.
All of a sudden, it was like the most popular
thing ever. So they started putting people in interviews. But
it was like John Travolta, and it was Denny Terrio,
and it was Robert Stigwood, and there's there's just there's

(01:16:21):
more people that were a part of this success and
they're very proud of it. Like the people that are
part of this movie are super, super proud to be
a part of this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
It's amazing what they were able to achieve with this film. Like,
it's such a good story, it's such an enduring story.
Even though, as you say, like the landscape of Brooklyn
and New York in general is so different now than
it was then, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
Still so relatable. It's still so of New York.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
And I mean it is a classic, classic American film. Yeah,
very excited to read the whole book when it comes out.
Tell us again when it's coming out, where they can
pre order it, and what it's called.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
It's called Fever, The Complete History of Saturday Night Fever.
This is what it looks like. You could pre order
on Amazon, you can pre order at Penguin Random House.
It will also there's a Kindle version. There will also
be an audiobook version, so you can listen to it.
But it's August twenty fifth, and I spent a lot
of time on it. I'm really proud of it, and
I can't wait to hear what people think.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
Well, I'm really proud of you, my friend. I think
this is I'm so excited for you. I'm so I mean,
I loved filmed in Brooklyn. But I'm I just a
little bit of this that I've already read. I'm just
I just love people's you know, you take something that
somebody knows so well, that the you know, our culture
knows something. This movie, our culture knows so well, and

(01:17:50):
to get all of these perspectives from hand, perspectives of
people who were actually there, and oh, it's just I'm
I'm so excited to read the whole thing. I cannot
wait to get my hands on it. So as we
go out, let's talk about this one little cameo by
a certain somebody people might know. I know her as
president of the Screen Actors Guild. Who are we about

(01:18:17):
to see? I believe it's Fran Dresher, who plays Connie.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
R Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
So everybody, thank you so much. Get the book, order
it now, Fever, what's the whole pop? What's the whole
time Fever?

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
The Complete history of Saturday Night Fever? And by the way,
so let's just do this before we play her. Yeah, Margo,
where can they find you? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
You can find me online at colonniabook dot com. And
all my social media call outs are at She's Not
Your Mama and where can they find you?

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
I'm at Brooklynfitchick dot com. I'm at Brooklyn Fitchick for
threads and Instagram, I'm at blue Sky and TikTok, i
am at Brooklyn Margo, and then I'm at my name
for YouTube and I have a bunch of clips on
there if you can see for yourself. And that's Margo,
Donnie you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
All right, Thank you everybody, and enjoy friend Dresser on
Saturday Night Fever.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
It's hey, are you as good and bed as you're
on that dance flock? Wha?

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
Are you as good a bed as you on the
dance floor?

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
He never made it in a bed?

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
What's this? This thame a regular plot? But you see,
we're gonna have to drink good summer.

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
Lush.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
Thank you so much for listening to the book. Versus
Movie podcast. We're a part of the Speaker podcast network.
Go to spreaker dot com to check out all of
the shows they offer. We asked that you make sure
to subscribe to our podcast, Book Vsmovie and your podcast
app so that way you'll never miss an episode. If
you want to interact with the Margos, the best place

(01:20:24):
to do that is in our private Facebook group. Go
to Facebook and type in book Vsmovie podcast group and
ask to join. On social media, you can find us
on Instagram and threads. You spell out book versus and Movie.
Our email is Book Versus Movie Podcasts. Spelled it all
out at gmail dot com. This is Margo D. And

(01:20:45):
you can find me at my blog Brooklynfitchick dot com.
And I'm at Brooklynfitchick for Threads and Instagram and on TikTok,
I'm at Brooklynmargo. I'm also at Brooklyn Margo for Blue
Sky Margo P. You can find her on all social
media at She's Natcho Mama. We really appreciate the listen

(01:21:06):
and if you have ideas for us. We not only
cover books, but also short stories, magazine articles, plays, songs, poems.
Be creative

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Saturday Night Fever (A Complete History): John Travolta, Nik Cohn, John Badham, & Robert Stigwood

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