MovieChat Forums > John Travolta Discussion > what happened after blow out?

what happened after blow out?


all of a sudden no good directors want to work with him, why?

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De Palma was a B-movie director when he made Blow out and he made the awful sequel staying Alive directed by Stallone himself.

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That's what did it.

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You really don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Carrie had been a huge hit. The Fury didn't perform as well though De Palma had a much bigger budget to work with on it. Dressed to Kill was a smash. Blow Out is no "b-movie". It is probably the best work De Palma and Travolta have ever done.

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Staying Alive was seen as a comeback. It was the two-punch of Two of a Kind and Perfect that did him in.

Blow Out became a cult film, but it didn't light the world on fire when it came out.

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B movie director?? He had done carrie before that, he was an A list director..

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After a blow out they wanted a blow job.

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His output was pretty slim during the eighties anyhow....with a lot of questionable choices throughout
The main problem was that his hit movies (Grease, Saturday Night Fever) were not made into instant franchises....and with smaller, more personal projects (like 'Blow-Out') weren't exactly huge box-office hits.....the returns dwindled.
Whereas, the likes of Stallone capitalised on legit hits (with a three year period) Travolta waited 6 years for Staying Alive (which didn't even help by being a bad movie anyhow) and he wasn't even invited for the Grease 2 gig.
Travolta's problem was that he is a legit actor....but known (primarily) for popcorn 70's blockbusters. After the terrible 'Moment By Moment'....and the semi-interesting 'Urban Cowboy'.....he was pretty much written off after 'Blow-Out'.....and following it up with 'would-be' fluffy romantic vanity-projects, like 'Two Of A Kind' & 'Perfect'....then NOT working for another 4 years (taking him to 1989)....pretty much sums up his lack of anything throughout the 80's (and was likely seen as a liability for the crop of good directors at the time, anyhow?)
Thankfully he *did* milk the 'Look Who's Talking' franchise (to saturation point) which had great returns, but resembled nothing like high art?

De Palma is the only true great director he's ever worked with (IMO)

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You should ask what happened after Saturday Night Fever & Urban Cowboy. Blow Out was a ridiculously awful film. He did make one more good one: Pulp Fiction, but that was really a fluke.

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I like Blow Out. It's a taut, low budget thriller, with modest goals that are met well.

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What always interested me is that Travolta's big flops of the early eighties(after Blow Out, which was also, while well-reviewed, not a hit) were "inversions" of his three biggest hits:

Staying Alive -- a bizarre 80's sequel to Saturday Night Fever, with Travolta muscled and oiled-up under the direction of muscled and oiled-up Stallone.

Two of a Kind -- a new pairing for Travolta with Olivia Newton-John, except this time NOT in a time-tested Broadway hit brought to the screen with a 50's nostalgia hook(big in the 70's). I don't recall this one having much of a plot at all; people simply weren't interested and didn't come.

Perfect -- Based on a magazine article by the same writer who wrote the magazine article that became Urban Cowboy. Except this time, the world in question -- aerobics -- had no musical hook or plot to speak of.

Those three -- following the "quality" flop of Blow Out, seemed to put Travolta off the "hire list" for major films, for a long, long time.

He famously came back with the talking baby movie, but his face wasn't even on the poster for the first one. There were sequels to keep him afloat until QT rediscovered him for Pulp Fiction and his very, very big comeback kicked in.

About that comeback: Travolta, knowing he already had a "name" and didn't need to be built up, started charging top dollar for his services immediately after Pulp Fiction, and then lined up about five movies in a row, well into the future, to "protect" his new salary.

The strategy worked. Travolta was a big, big star after Pulp Fiction for about another decade. If he has faded again, well...he made plenty of money getting there.

But a sad personal life...

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