Remembering...
Saturday Night Fever
American film directed by John Badham
Starring John Travolta,
Karen Lynn Gorney and Donna Pescow
Released December 1977
by Live Music Head
There
can be no mistaking
the era for which this film is set.
Minutes
into it,
Al
Pacino as Serpico
and Sylvester Stallone as Rocky
are
spotted gracing the walls
of Tony Manero's Italian-American bedroom,
alongside
that iconic poster
of Farrah Fawcett-Majors in a red bathing suit
smiling
a mouthful of sparkling whites.
Bruce
Lee is also pinned above his bed.
My
older brother was a fan
of the martial arts king back then too,
and
practiced kung fu with nunchaku,
which
scared the hell out of me.
The
year was 1977,
and
I was still too young to get in to see an R-rated movie,
but
the look on the face of my second-oldest brother,
ten
years my senior,
as
he spun the vinyl of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack,
made
me really want to see it.
John
Travolta was familiar to me already
as
the ever-cool Vinnie Barbarino on the television sitcom
Welcome
Back Kotter,
and
the songs of The Bee Gees too of course,
because
they were all over the radio.
In
fact,
the
popularity of The Brothers Gibb in the late seventies
was so over-the-top,
eventually
dj’s at radio stations across the land
refused
to play them.
Like
many rock and rollers back then, I too hated disco.
I
would never have admitted liking it, even if I did.
Today
however, I like it and I don’t mind saying so.
I’ve
grown rather fond of nineteen seventies disco.
The
songs are part of my dna after all.
And
since those early days
of being influenced by my older brothers,
I
must’ve seen Saturday Night Fever a hundred times...
on
pay-tv, vhs, regular tv, dvd,
and
again this month,
on
the big screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
The
first thing that comes to mind is that
it’s
a gritty little film about lower middle-class teenagers
having
meaningless sex in the back seats of really ugly cars.
And
for this viewing,
I
noticed the 8-track tape
sitting on the dashboard of one of ‘em
for
the very first time.
Goes
to show ya,
don’t
matter how many times you see a film,
there’s
always something to see, or learn, for the first time.
John
Travolta plays Tony Manero,
a
nineteen-year-old New Yorker who works a dead-end job
at
the local hardware store by day,
but
at night he’s a hero;
the
king of the dance floor at 2001
Odyssey,
the local discotheque.
He
and his friends hang out there on Saturday nights,
drinking,
drugging, and dancing
trying
to forget their desperation, and fears of the future.
The
movie is also a story about a Brooklyn boy
who
meets a Manhattan girl,
who
leads him over the bridge to what may be,
hopefully,
a better life.
British
rock journalist Nik Cohn had written an article
for
the New York Magazine called
Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night
based
on a working class man
immersed in the disco sub-culture
and
the fashion that accompanied it.
This
article was used by the film makers to plot out the movie.
Platforms
shoes, polyester suits,
tight
leather jackets and gold chains
are
seen throughout,
and
Tony is caught more than once
walking
about his house in black bikini underwear.
I
say, “No! No! No! No! Nooooo!
Only
boxer shorts on men for this chick,
or
nothing at all.”
But
of course black bikini underwear fit right in
with
the platform shoes, polyester suits,
tight
leather jackets and gold chains.
And
to me, the disc jockey at the 2001
looks
a lot like porn king Ron Jeremy,
also
a New Yorker
who’s
reputation began in the 70s.
But
it ain’t Jeremy, but Monti Rock,
the
real life dj from Studio 54.
And
when Monti spins You Should Be Dancin’,
look
out!
Holy
mother of god, what a tune!
"You
should be dancin' yea! Dancin' yea!"
The
Bee Gees certainly could write ‘em,
and
with that thumping dance beat,
Travolta
certainly proved he could move to it.
The
soundtrack,
one
of the biggest selling soundtracks of all time
had
my butt groovin’ and my boots tappin’ all over again
from
my seat in the King St theatre.
In
1997 when I was drunk in the Dominican Republic,
I
remember stumbling away from the bar, singing:
“If
I Can’t Have You, I don’t want nobody baby!
If
I can’t have you, oh, oh, oh… no!”
Because
that’s another great song
written
by Barry, Maurice and Robin,
sung
by Yvonne Elliman for Saturday Night Fever.
Of
the seventeen tracks,
seven
are written by The Bee Gees.
Of
the platinum chart-topper
that epitomized the disco phenomenon,
Barry
Gibb had this to say
about the second single released from it:
“Stayin’
Alive is really all about the strife that our culture's in.
New
York City is a perfect example of that.
And
quite prophetic in fact because it talks about
building’s
breaking and everybody shaking.”
Stayin’
Alive is about trying to survive.
And
that’s something many of us are still challenged to do,
in
every city,
as
the fallout and economic turmoil
since
the attacks on the World Trade Centre
continues
to be felt.
"Music
loud and women warm,
I've
been kicked around since I was born.
And
now it's all right, that's okay,
and
you may look the other way.
But
we can try to understand,
the
New York times effect on man!"
A
huge commercial success
and incredibly impactful on popular culture,
Saturday
Night Fever screens more like a documentary
than Hollywood fiction.
Due
largely for the realism,
for
each and every one of us who grew up
anywhere
in North America in the seventies
can
probably identify in some way, shape or form
with
one,
if
not all of the characters depicted.
In the year 2010,
Saturday Night Fever was
selected for preservation
"culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant".
The trailer for Saturday Night Fever...
