The_films_of_the_seventies

= Saturday Night Fever =

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: [|navigation], [|search] This article is about the film. For the stage musical, see [|Saturday Night Fever (musical)]. For the soundtrack album, see [|Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)]. US movie poster for //Saturday Night Fever// || [|Norman Wexler] || [|Karen Lynn Gorney] || [|Maurice Gibb] [|Robin Gibb] [|David Shire] || March, 1978 (PG rated version) || 113 min. (PG rated version) || //**Saturday Night Fever**// is a [|1977 film] starring [|John Travolta] as Tony Manero, a troubled [|Brooklyn] youth whose weekend activities are dominated by visits to a local [|discothèque]. While in the disco, Tony is the king, and the visits help him to temporarily forget the reality of his life: a dead-end job, clashes with his unsupportive and squabbling parents, racial tensions in the local community, and his associations with a gang of dead-beat friends. A huge commercial success, the movie significantly helped to popularize [|disco] music around the world and made Travolta a household name. The [|//Saturday Night Fever// soundtrack], featuring disco songs by the [|Bee Gees] , is among the best selling soundtracks of all time. The film is also notable for being one of the first instances of [|cross-media marketing], with the [|tie-in] soundtrack's single being used to help promote the film before its release and the film popularizing the entire soundtrack after its release. The story is based upon a [|1976] //[|New York magazine]// article by [|British] writer [|Nik Cohn], " [|Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night] ." In the late-1990s, Cohn acknowledged that the article had been fabricated[|[1]]. A newcomer to the [|United States] and a stranger to the disco lifestyle, Cohn was unable to make any sense of the subculture he had been assigned to write about. The characters who became Tony Manero and his friends were based on [|Mods] [|[2]], an English youth movement that also placed great importance on music, clothes and dancing. The film also showcased aspects of the music, the dancing, and the [|subculture] surrounding the disco era: symphony-orchestrated melodies, haute-couture styles of clothing, sexual promiscuity, and graceful choreography. [ hide ] * [|1 Plot] 
 * = // Saturday Night Fever // ||
 * = [[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/45/Saturday_night_fever_movie_poster.jpg/200px-Saturday_night_fever_movie_poster.jpg width="200" height="301" align="center" link="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saturday_night_fever_movie_poster.jpg"]]
 * ~ Directed by || [|John Badham] ||
 * ~ Produced by || [|Robert Stigwood] ||
 * ~ Written by || [|Nik Cohn] (magazine article)
 * ~ Starring || [|John Travolta]
 * ~ Music by || [|Barry Gibb]
 * ~ Cinematography || [|Ralf D. Bode] ||
 * ~ Editing by || [|David Rawlins] ||
 * ~ Distributed by || [|Paramount Pictures] ||
 * ~ Release date(s) || December 14, 1977
 * ~ Running time || 119 min.
 * ~ Country || [|United States] ||
 * ~ Language || [|English] ||
 * ~ Followed by || // [|Staying Alive] // ||
 * == Contents ==
 * [|2 Versions and sequel]
 * [|3 Cast and roles include]
 * [|4 Soundtrack]
 * [|5 Filming locations include]
 * [|6 Trivia]
 * [|7 Academy Awards]
 * [|8 Blu-Ray Release]
 * [|9 See also]
 * [|10 External links]
 * [|11 References] ||

[ [|edit] ] Plot
The film is about 19-year-old Tony Manero ( [|John Travolta] ), a young [|Italian American] from the [|New York City] borough of [|Brooklyn] who works a dead-end job in a small hardware store by day, but rules the dance floor at night with his frequent appearances at 2001 Odyssey, a Brooklyn dance club. While at 2001 Odyssey, Tony is seen in the company of his three close friends, Joey ( [|Joseph Cali] ); Double J ( [|Paul Pape] ); and the meek Bobby C. ( [|Barry Miller] ), still in high school. It is presumed Bobby C., though younger, is part of the gang because he is the only one with a car (a run-down [|Chevrolet Impala] ). An informal member of their gang is Annette ( [|Donna Pescow] ), a neighborhood girl who has apparently been Tony's partner in previous dance competitions and longs for a more permanent relationship with him. Tony, knowing Annette has the right moves to win an upcoming dance competition, recruits her to participate with him in the contest, much to her delight. Her happiness is short-lived, however, when Tony abruptly terminates their partnership after seeing Stephanie Mangano dance at the disco and later at a neighborhood dance studio. Stephanie is a tall, attractive, talented dancer with what Tony assumes is a more committed potential toward winning the competition. Despite her initial frosty and superior attitude toward Tony, after much urging, Stephanie ( [|Karen Lynn Gorney] ) agrees to partner with him in the contest. Stephanie works in [|Manhattan] as a secretary for a magazine; she is poised to move there and has more opportunities to work her way up. This awakens in Tony the need to transcend his working-class roots of [|Bay Ridge, Brooklyn]. However, Stephanie ultimately reveals her own vulnerabilities to Tony. Also examined in the film is Tony's relationship with his family, including Frank Jr., Tony's older brother and clearly his parents' favorite, who abandons a career in the priesthood. Tony's mother dotes on Frank Jr., who shatters his parents' dreams of what he refers to as "pious glory." This may be partly because Frank Jr. no longer wishes to spend his life in [|celibacy], but mainly, as he tries to explain to Tony, because he has doubts about his faith and is disillusioned with the Church. Bobby C., who looks up to Tony, asks him for advice for getting out of his relationship with his devoutly Catholic girlfriend Pauline, who is pregnant with his child. Though Tony tells him to dump her, Bobby C. faces pressure from his family and others to marry her, which he clearly does not wish to do. After she refuses to get an abortion, Bobby asks Frank Jr. if [|Pope Paul VI] would grant him [|dispensation] for an abortion. Bobby's feelings of despair deepen when Frank tells him dispensation would be highly unlikely. Double-J and Joey are Tony's more like-minded friends; macho, foul-mouthed, bigoted, chauvinistic, and with hair-trigger tempers. They engage in wild behavior such as balancing themselves along the dangerous railing of the [|Verrazano-Narrows Bridge], often while in varying states of drunkenness. Another member of the gang is beaten up by some Puerto Rican youths and is put in a hospital. Tony, Double-J and Joey vow revenge and storm a Puerto Rican bar frequented by the Barracuda gang only finding out later that they were not the antagonists. On the evening of the dance competition at 2001 Odyssey, Tony and Stephanie finish their dance to wild applause. The last couple to compete, however, is a Puerto Rican duo whom Tony realizes has blown him and Stephanie away after seeing their spectacular performance. Nevertheless, Tony and Stephanie take the top prize, which Tony immediately dismisses (realizing they didn't deserve it), claiming the contest was rigged in his favor (because of his popularity at 2001). He grabs the trophy and prize money from Stephanie and presents them to the Puerto Rican couple (who took second) instead, telling them they deserve it. Angry, Tony accuses his friends of being phonies who will not be honest with him. Dragging Stephanie with him, he attempts forcing a crude pass on her in the car until she fights him off and escapes. He then sullenly takes off with the gang, along with a drunk and high Annette, whom Joey says is going to "give everybody a piece." Double-J and Joey both take turns with Annette, but Annette starts to cry and struggle after she comes down from the drugs she had been given and realizes she does not want to have sex with them. They pull the car off the bridge, but this time, Bobby C., who normally stays in the car, joins them, and is attempting more dangerous stunts than Tony, Double-J, and Joey. Realizing that Bobby is acting recklessly, Tony tries to coax him off the railing. Upset at his lonely life, his situation with Pauline, and a broken promise from Tony earlier that he would call him, the needy Bobby rants at Tony's lack of care, and accidentally slips, falling to his death. The friends are shocked and grief-stricken. When a policeman called to investigate the incident asks Tony if he thinks Bobby C. committed [|suicide], Tony responds, "There are ways of killin' yourself without killin' yourself". After leaving his friends behind, a distraught Tony spends the rest of the night riding the subway. He finally shows up at Stephanie's apartment, apologizing for his earlier bad behavior. He tells her that he plans on leaving Brooklyn and coming to Manhattan to escape from his family and friends and what he considers to be a fake life. He also tells her that he wants to try and salvage their relationship by being friends first and see what develops from there. Recognizing Tony's honest wish to change, Stephanie takes his hand in hers, and then him into her arms in this final scene. Versions and sequel

There were two theatrically-released versions of the film: the "original" R version and the PG "edited version." The R-rated version is 119 minutes. The PG-rated version was released in [|1978] as an attempt to attract a more youthful audience. It is 113 minutes, with profanity replaced by separately-filmed scenes that substituted milder language that were initially filmed for the network television cut of the film (such as a scene where Tony's dad gets his old job back), and with several scenes shortened or cut. (The **PG-13** rating was not created until 1984.) Both theatrical versions were released on [|VHS], but only the R-rated version was released on [|Laserdisc] and later on [|DVD] , and the DVD version is shown in [|widescreen] only. (However, some of the extra scenes from the PG version were included as "deleted scenes" for the DVD release.) In addition, a network television version, based primarily on the PG version, contains several minutes of outtakes deleted from the theatrical releases. However starting in the late 1990s [|VH1] and [|Turner Network Television] started showing the original R rated version with a TV-14 rating. (Some of the language and nudity had been edited out but including some of the innuendos from the original that had been cut out of the PG version.) A blu ray edition will be released on May 5 in the United States and the following week across Europe. The R-rated version contains scenes of profanity, nudity, drug use and a rape scene which has been de-emphasised or completely removed from the PG version. A sequel, //[|Staying Alive]//, was released in [|1983]. It starred John Travolta and was directed by [|Sylvester Stallone]. (//Staying Alive// was rated PG; it also pre-dated the introduction of the PG-13 rating.) 

Cast and roles include

 * [|John Travolta] - Tony Manero
 * [|Karen Lynn Gorney] - Stephanie Mangano
 * [|Barry Miller] - Bobby C.
 * [|Joseph Cali] - Joey
 * [|Paul Pape] - Double J.
 * [|Donna Pescow] - Annette, a former girlfriend of Tony, still in love with him
 * [|Bruce Ornstein] - Gus
 * [|Julie Bovasso] - Flo Manero, Tony's mother

Soundtrack
Main article: [|Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack)] Track listing: (*) //"Calypso Breakdown" and "Jive Talkin'" were not contained in the film.// The novelty songs "Dr. Disco" and " [|Disco Duck] ", both performed by Rick Dees, were played in the film but not included on the album. 
 * 1) " [|Stayin' Alive] " performed by [|Bee Gees] - 4:45
 * 2) " [|How Deep Is Your Love] " performed by [|Bee Gees] - 4:05
 * 3) " [|Night Fever] " performed by [|Bee Gees] - 3:33
 * 4) " [|More Than a Woman] " performed by [|Bee Gees] - 3:17
 * 5) " [|If I Can't Have You] " performed by [|Yvonne Elliman] - 3:00
 * 6) " [|A Fifth of Beethoven] " performed by [|Walter Murphy] - 3:03
 * 7) "More Than a Woman" performed by [|Tavares] - 3:17
 * 8) "Manhattan Skyline" performed by [|David Shire] - 4:44
 * 9) "Calypso Breakdown" performed by Ralph MacDonald - 7:50 (*)
 * 10) "Night on Disco Mountain" performed by David Shire - 5:12
 * 11) "Open Sesame" performed by [|Kool & the Gang] - 4:01
 * 12) " [|Jive Talkin'] " performed by [|Bee Gees] - 3:43 (*)
 * 13) " [|You Should Be Dancing] " performed by [|Bee Gees] - 4:14
 * 14) " [|Boogie Shoes] " performed by [|KC and the Sunshine Band] - 2:17
 * 15) "Salsation" performed by David Shire - 3:50
 * 16) "K-Jee" performed by [|MFSB] - 4:13
 * 17) " [|Disco Inferno] " performed by [|Trammps] - 10:51

Filming locations include

 * [|Verrazano-Narrows Bridge]
 * Phillips Dance Studio
 * 2001 Odyssey, which was later renamed Spectrum (a Gay club) in 1987 before being demolished in 2005. The club was located at 802 64th Street, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York.
 * Six Brothers Hardware and Paints formerly located at 7309 5th Ave in Brooklyn was the backdrop for Tony's place of employment. The store was owned and operated by a father and his six sons of the Albergo Family. It became a popular tourist stop after the release of the movie. The father was Giuseppe (Joseph Sr.) and the six brothers were Joseph, Domenic, Marco, Peter, Angelo, and Ralph. The owners have since sold the store and have retired. See the following website: []

[[|edit]] Academy Awards

 * **Award** || **Person** ||
 * **Nominated:** ||
 * [|Best Actor] || [|John Travolta] ||