John Travolta is taking pieces and parts from his own acting experiences to bolster his directorial debut.
Directorial Debut
The highly recognized actor stayed behind the camera for the first time in his career for Propeller One-Way Night Coach. The film is an adaptation of his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age book, which he wrote in the 90s. After standing behind the scenes, Travolta is opening up about his experiences directing.
He shared with Entertainment Weekly, “I have worked with the best directors in the world, and took the commonalities of what they did, how they behave, what their choices were, and I registered that in the back of my mind, always.”
He added, “And then I also looked at the mistakes other directors made, where you go, Hm, that’s just not what the best do. They don’t have a vision. They’re not telling the story. They’re excessive. They’re obsessing over extensive amounts of takes, and they’re wasting time.”
Using Past as Guidance
Travolta credits his new role in Hollywood with his decades-long career, in which he learned a lot. This includes appearing in films such as Carrie, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, and Pulp Fiction.
He said, “It’s over 50 years I’ve been doing film, so if I hadn’t learned something, I wouldn’t have been paying attention. So I felt like the culmination of all these great directors gave me the opportunity to not make the mistakes that you could make if you were directing for the first time.”
Travolta approached Propeller One-Way Night Coach with a plan in mind. He shared, “I could just feel how well it was working. I had it all edited in my mind. We did very few takes. The actors were so good, and they were so effective, that my saying on the set was, ‘It doesn’t get better than that. Let’s move on.'”
He continued, “My co-producers were saying, ‘He’s not doing enough coverage.’ I said, ‘Trust me, this is all I need.'”
Future Projects
After his directorial debut, John Travolta is open to directing another project in the future. However, he will only commit to projects he’s truly passionate about.
He shared a moment where Adam Shankman talked about Hairspray, stating that “it encompassed everything he ever wanted to do on film … and I feel similarly about this little book and this movie; this is my heart. This is my soul wanting to express something. So my answer to would I do it again or what it would be, it would have to affect me that way.”