Word: travolta
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...SHORTY A movie-mad mobster (dreamy, incisive John Travolta) reinvents himself as a movie mogul. He's a real shark chewing up Hollywood's rubbery simulacrums while helping some bottom feeders rise to the top in Barry Sonnenfeld's jaunty, well-acted comedy of bad manners...
...this time John Travolta knows all this in his bones, and it shows in his acting as a kind of acceptant curiosity about the world's nuttiness, which includes, of course, his own. There's something uncalculated about what he does, as if he's always wondering how the next sentence is going to come out, how he's going to surprise both himself and everyone watching him. "When I said, 'Action,'" says Sonnenfeld, "I never knew if he would do the next take in English, Japanese, Spanish or French. It's really hard not to play with John...
...next career choice was more dubious. White Man's Burden, due out later this year, is a flat fantasy about a future in which American blacks and whites exchange social status--the former becoming the ruling class, the latter doing the menial work. But Travolta delivers a heartbreaking portrayal of a desperate working stiff, unfairly fired from his job and turning to crime in order to support his family. Next will come Broken Arrow, a John Woo action film, and a mess of high-concept, high-profile pictures that signify his return to Hollywood's A list...
...Travolta is unimpressed by his "comeback." "It was last year's story, and prior to that it was a story in '89, and prior to that it was a story in '83, and prior to that it was a story in '80," he says, no trace of bitterness in his tone. "I've never quite figured out why I'm the comeback kid when another actor might just have a normal career of movies that work and don't work...
...Travolta's apparent indifference to the upward and downward lurches of his career that draws him the nervous attention he has trouble comprehending. People in the movie business like to pretend they inhabit a rational universe, one where you can determine a star's course through a series of well-plotted career moves. Strolling equably through a universe he implicitly defines as chaotic, playing what amounts to a real-life Chili Palmer--mannerly, sweet-spirited, yet utterly confident of his own strength--Travolta calls all their operating assumptions into question. And deepens his own mystery...