He’s referring to the overnight resuscitation of his career that occurred when Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Not only did the movie win the Palme d’Or, but the movers and the shakers of the film industry woke up to the fact that a large talent had been lying dormant in their midst. Playing a small-time hit man who takes a mobster’s wife out on one of the most misbegotten dates in movie history, Travolta still radiates star charisma. It’s not the narcissistic heat of a 23-year-old disco king but the twinkle of a sly and sensitive 40-year-old actor who doesn’t give a fig for glamour. Travolta finds rich pockets of humor, sweetness and dimwitted ardor in this stringy-haired, heroin-shooting lowlife. It’s a beguilingly unpredictable performance.
The movie doesn’t open until early October, but in the eyes of the industry the “new” Travolta is already hot. “After Cannes, everyone who saw it offered me a job – six or seven important directors and producers. Oh man, what’s going to happen when it comes out?” At the peak of his popularity in the late ’70s, he was offered the best roles of his age group. This was pre-Brat Pack, when Travolta was virtually the only twentysomething star in the land. “Now I’m getting more varied, mature, interesting parts. It’s my second opportunity of getting the best scripts.”
The ironies of Hollywood are not lost on him. The surprise success in 1989 of “Look Who’s Talking” (comeback #4) should have made him a bankable star again. It did bring offers – to make two less-than-inspired sequels. End of comeback. Why is this time different? Travolta remembers once asking Warren Beatty for advice: what was more important, having a big popular hit or the industry loving your movie? The industry loving your movie, Beatty replied: they’re the ones who give you your next job. “I never fully grasped that until now.”
Already he’s lined up two back-to-back movies. Having worked for near minimum on the $8 million “Pulp Fiction,” he passed up more lucrative offers for “White Man’s Burden,” with Harry Belafonte, because the material intrigued him: “It’s about racism and class distinction.” The director is a first-timer, Desmond Nakano, which gave Travolta pause. “I’ve never done well by first-time directors,” he says, recalling the ignominious reception of “Moment by Moment,” the love story with Lily Tomlin that did him so much damage that his next film, 1980’s “Urban Cowboy,” became his official comeback #1. After “White Man’s Burden,” he’ll star in the adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s “Get Shorty.” It’s another low-level-hustler part – he’s a New York collection man for the mob who hits Hollywood and fast-talks his way into the movie business. Barry (“The Addams Family”) Sonnenfeld is directing.
Travolta says he has no regrets. “The nice thing about time is you get to have a sense of humor about your ups and downs.” On the set of “Pulp Fiction,” even before his rediscovery, he seemed a much happier and more peaceful man than the 26-year-old I’d last seen, struggling with the burdens of sudden fame and unable to relish success. For one thing, he was working again with a director who understood his talent, as Brian De Palma had when he made “Blow Out,” or Robert Altman, who cast him in the TV movie of Harold Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter.” “Quentin was such a gift to me. I never felt more valued as an artist.”
His personal life had settled, too. Last week he and his wife, actress Kelly Preston (whom he met on the set of “The Experts”), celebrated their third anniversary. Their son, Jett, is now 2, and Travolta finds himself amazed by fatherhood. “It’s put me in such a vulnerable spot – you’d do anything that would help them survive better.” He calls Daytona Beach, Fla., home – partly for tax reasons. It’s where the longtime aviation buff and pilot keeps his Learjet and his larger Gulfstream II “corporate jet.” But he spends several weeks of the year in a turn-of-the-century summer cottage (“nothing short of spectacular”) on an island off the coast of Maine. Now that he’ll be working six months straight in Hollywood, he’s also renting a place in L.A. Still a firm believer in Scientology, Travolta seems to have ridden out the bungee-jumping swings of his life in considerable style. “The next 25 to 30 years could be the most interesting part of my career,” he says. The title of his comeback movie #3 might as well be his motto: “Staying Alive.”
