Saturday Night Fever

"Then, two months later, we opened *Saturday Night Fever.* All of us inside the company loved the little movie we’d made, and with hubris we decided to preview it for the industry at the grand Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard thinking that if we were standing this tall behind it everyone would take notice. At five of eight, the place was practically empty. Our old-time head of publicity came over to where I was sitting and whispered in my ear, “Travolta’s the problem; he’s a television person. You don’t put a television person in a movie. The kid just doesn’t put asses in seats.” Well, not old Hollywood asses. But two weeks later we opened the movie, and there were vast lines around the block at every theater across America. Television execs and a television star had broken into the movies. We were on our way. The next year, 1978, we went from last place to first among all the major studios. And we would stay number one for the next seven years. Miracle of miracles."

"It was a shock surprise to the industry, this solid hit from nowhere, but it was emblematic of how we were changing how movies got made. Kevin McCormick, a young producer working for Robert Stigwood, saw Nik Cohn’s *New York* magazine article “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” and bought it. That article became the loose basis for *Saturday Night Fever.* We heard about it, thought it was simply a great and original concept, and started to develop it—no stars, no pedigree, no package, no nothing—just a *good idea*."

"Robert Stigwood had signed Travolta to a three-picture deal, and we had shot *Grease* in the late summer of 1977, before *Saturday Night Fever* came out. It was a pretty shoddy production all the way through. Everything looked crummy, including the grass, which was supposed to be bright and green and was mostly patchy brown. Many of the shots didn’t match. The pace was uneven. Travolta’s instant fame created a dilemma for us, because after seeing the first rough cut, shortly after *Fever* had become a smash, we thought *Grease* was going to be a disaster. *Fever* was of the moment and *Grease* was a throwback bit of goofball nostalgia. We’d been geniuses in creating a superstar, and now we were about to be the dopes who killed his career in the very same year."