How many times can you have a comeback?
John Travolta smiles when asked if he’s irritated when pundits call his latest film, “A Love Song for Bobby Long,” his new “comeback movie,” like they did when “Pulp Fiction” and “Primary Colors” came around.
“It’s an artistic reference–it’s not that you don’t exist and you’re not doing movies,” the actor said. “It’s this: ‘Did you do the movie that appealed to a group of journalists and critics and an audience that says he’s an artist?’ That’s all it is. It’s not if you’ve been busy, been working, been starving, it’s none of that.”
After big-budget action movies last year in which he played a bad guy (in “The Punisher”) and a hero (in “Ladder 49”), this meandering tale set in New Orleans seems quite different for Travolta. He plays an alcoholic former professor who lives with a young protege (Gabriel Macht) in a house that’s suddenly owned by a jaded teen (Scarlett Johansson) after her mother dies.
More Top Picks Dewalt Max Xr Dcf887b
The two times Travolta was nominated for a best actor Oscar were for “Saturday Night Fever,” during the height of the disco era in 1977, and for “Pulp Fiction,” during his first “big comeback” in 1994. Since then, he’s been honored for works such as “Get Shorty” and “Primary Colors” and vilified for “Domestic Disturbance” and “Battlefield Earth.”
“The [American] Cinemateque did a tribute to me nine years ago,” the 50-year-old actor said. “I think that once you’ve hit 40 and you’ve been around since 12 doing movies, there’s no choice but to do some sort of tribute. It doesn’t make me feel older and broken like my character in ‘Bobby Long.’ “
First-time director Shainee Gabel worried about working with such a star.
“John is the 800-pound gorilla, but he didn’t act that way on the set,” Gabel said. “He was always equal with everyone else.”
“Often in the tiny movies, you get to stretch the most,” Travolta said. “Where you get to take the most chances is often in these independent movies. Life and living it contributed to this character. I couldn’t have done it at 23. That’s the luxury of getting older, you get to be more right in characters.”
Travolta said he has met plenty of people like Bobby Long, and it was his idea to whiten his hair prematurely.
“I’ve been on the receiving end of an alcoholic, where they’re wicked to you and the unedited verbiage that comes out of their heads and you go, ‘Whoa,’ but he’s also bright and very poetic,” he said.
When he first met Macht and Johansson, he took them out for a shot of whiskey and a round of pool so they could get friendly.
“He was great on the set, singing show tunes, telling stories,” Macht said. “I remember first seeing him in ‘Grease’ and saying, ‘I want to do what that guy does.’ “
Travolta compares Johansson, who was inducted in the Motion Picture Academy last year after her role in “Lost in Translation,” to Marilyn Monroe. “Elizabeth Taylor was a freak of nature, as was Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe. I think that she is light-years ahead for her age.”
Travolta relishes playing broken people, and he’ll next be seen in March in the comedy “Be Cool,” the sequel to “Get Shorty” that again features his flawed but confident gangster Chili Palmer.
“I think that the story mostly says that broken people can be helpful, that they have something to offer,” Travolta said. “But you learn that regardless of how broken they are, there might still be something there for each other.”