Last night I watched Staying Alive on ABC Family. It was one of the best Saturday nights I have had in a long time. How great is it that Saturday Night Fever's Tony Manero (John Travolta) decided he was so good at disco dancing that he would begin to train as an 80's jazz dancer and audition relentlessly for Broadway shows? I want to extend a personal thank you from the bottom of my heart to Sylvester Stallone for making this movie happen. Directed by Sylvester Stallone. Co-written by Sylvester Stallone. Produced by Stylvester Stallone. I love Sylvester Stallone.
This movie boasts some amazing dialogue; although since it's the alleged 'sequel' to Saturday Night Fever, who would expect anything less? Example A: Tony Manero says to the snobby dancer he has fallen for, something to the effect of "I give you my best pick up lines and you try to mangle my face". If that's not good enough for you, there is always the infamous final line of the film, "Do you know what I want to do? ....Strut". Despite this awesomeness, at times it is difficult to make a connection between the Tony Manero portrayed in Staying Alive and the Tony Manero we saw six years earlier in Saturday Night Fever. Although Travolta is supposed to be playing a character that is a total jerk still, in Staying Alive, he really doesn't seem to have the same Tony Manero attitude that exists in Saturday Night Fever. Perhaps the 1980's softened him a little bit? Who knows.The best part of this movie might be that the choreography is absolutely terrible. Staying Alive is littered with about a billion high kicking grande battements with a layout of the back, slow motion grande jetes (leaps), 80's jazz runs, fast sweepings of jazz hands across the face (right left right) with intensity, hip swivels, shoulder shimmies, and rapid arm chopping motions in front of the face whilst doing lunges. In short, the choreography that was meant to be groundbreaking pictured in Staying Alive is now completely obsolete. Therefore, Staying Alive is incredibly awesome. Unfortunately I can't find any video clips of Travolta dancing in Staying Alive. It's really a shame because aside from the dancing, the music in the movie is also quite awesome. However, In case you are suddenly craving some classic(ridiculous) Travolta dancing, here you go.
I'm currently taking a class called Film Survey in Dance and I've been learning about the differences between choreography created for performance vs. for film. When created expressly for film, everything down to camera angles are mapped and plotted out that will manipulate the choreography and turn it into something completely different than if it were being created for performance purposes. Having learned this, I happened to notice that Staying Alive is chock full of amazing camera angles, edits, and entire dance sequences performed in slow motion. The slow motion proves to be especially effective when John Travolta is dancing in his loin cloth and headband. My theory as to why they chose to do so many segments in slow motion is because John Travolta can only pull off about 5 dance moves that make him look legitimately good enough to be starring in a crazy jazz dance show on Broadway in the 80's. Yeah, it totally works.
My favorite thing about Stayling Alive is that it came out in 1983, the very same year I was born. I feel so proud to have been brought into this planet in a year that gave so many great contributions to popular culture.
1 comment:
in one of my film classes we talked about saturday night fever's director, John Badham, and his intentions with the film. fever wasn't made to highlight or glamorize the disco scene at all but was a study on a bubbling underground that he didn’t necessarily find appealing or enchanting. i think stayin alive lacks this depth in its approach.
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