The Bee Gees weren’t originally a part of the movie. Later on, Cohn admitted that he’d made the whole thing up.
Cohn was writing about the scene around the Bay Ridge disco 2001 Odyssey.
BEE GEES HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE SONG MOVIE
Stigwood, who’d previously produced the movie versions of Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy, optioned “Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night,” a New York article from the British music critic Nik Cohn. Saturday Night Fever was the brainchild of Robert Stigwood, the Bee Gees’ manager and label boss. Travolta doesn’t even dance to the song in the movie. Weirdly, the first of those #1 singles isn’t one of the really iconic songs. The soundtrack spawned four #1 singles, more than any album ever had before. It led the Bee Gees, already in their imperial era, to absolutely dominate the charts in 1978 to an unheard-of degree. That album sold tens of millions of copies, and it remains one of the 10 biggest-selling albums of all time. Travolta was nominated for an Oscar, and he went on to star in 1978’s biggest movie.īut in terms of cultural impact, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack arguably had an even bigger impact than the movie. It made a star out of John Travolta, previously known mostly for playing a Tony Manero-esque kid on the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter. In the booming film year of 1977, it earned more than any movie that wasn’t Star Wars or Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. It earned more than $100 million against a budget of less than $5 million. Instead, you think about the spectacle of Travolta peacocking around a lit-up dancefloor, making the entire club stop to watch. If you see the image of Travolta, resplendent in a white suit, his finger pointed heavenward, you don’t think about the bleak realities of Tony Manero’s life. It’s rough.īut that’s not how we remember Saturday Night Fever. His big moment of triumph, winning a dance competition, is a total sham, and he knows it. He gets into a gang fight with a Puerto Rican crew, the culmination of a feud built on racism and mistaken identity. He sits by silently while his friends commit rape. The film is one of those shaggy, downbeat ’70s character studies about people with deep, unresolved problems. Pretty soon, he doesn’t even feel that escape anymore. The only place where he really comes alive is on the dancefloor. He starts out the movie with a go-nowhere job by the time it ends, he doesn’t even have that. He doesn’t like his friends much, and they don’t like him much either. His parents don’t understand him, and he doesn’t understand them. Brooklyn teenager Tony Manero - John Travolta, who will appear in this column pretty soon - is an electric dancer, a joy to watch, but his life is a mess. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.Īs a movie, Saturday Night Fever is one hell of a downer.
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