Tainui Kuru as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever.
Tainui Kuru as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever.
It’s 40 years since Saturday Night Fever was released. As a new stage show comes to New Zealand, Paul Little wonders what all the fuss was about and Kurt Bayer joins rehearsals.
Staying Alive, You Should Be Dancin, If I Can't Have You - who today can hear these disco classics without wishing we had never been born? My 20-year-old self had plenty of reasons not to watch Saturday Night Fever on its 1977 release - Eraserhead and Star Wars to name but two from that year.
There was that shrill, hectoring music, the glorified line dancing purporting to be choreography, the guy from Welcome Back, Kotter giving a master class in puppy dog-eye acting, costume design by Satan - what was to like?
But having sat through the film under duress as "research" for this piece, I discovered there were things to enjoy.
If you could watch it with the sound off, it would be almost a pleasant viewing experience, with numerous bleak delights typified by when the Catholic kid asks the ex-priest if he can get the Pope to give him a dispensation to get his girlfriend an abortion.
Despite the bouncy beats and a final moment of hope that doesn't ring quite true the movie is almost relentlessly downbeat, surprisingly bleak for a dance musical. Two nihilistic bits of dialogue at the start and finish sum up its theme: "You can't f*** the future. The future f***s you" and "Everybody's dumping on everybody".
For many people the film has been an epoch-defining event for nearly half a century, and its imminent 40th anniversary will surely see many revisiting it. If you haven't already seen it, my recommendation is: go ahead - do it, if you have the disco balls.
There is something goin' down Although Saturday Night Fever has boogied on down in history as the pinnacle of disco's delights it actually came so close to the end of its life cycle that Disco Duck, the novelty single that was a musical nail in the genre's coffin, is included on the soundtrack. In fact, the movie gave the music a new lease of life. Now, predictably - because there is money to be made - the 40th anniversary of the film is being celebrated with all the hoo-ha and packaging you'd expect.
The Saturday Night Fever (The Original Movie Soundtrack) 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition box set features two CDs with the remastered original album and four remixes by Serban Ghenea (no, I hadn't either - multiple Grammy winning producer, apparently). The remastered album is on 180g 2-LP vinyl in a gatefold jacket with faithfully replicated album art and a Blu-ray disc with the film's 4K-restored 40th Anniversary Director's Cut and Theatrical Version, plus bonus features.
Which is all well and good but nowhere near as exciting as the SNF 40th anniversary concert at Coney Island in July, which featured the film's choreographer, Deney Terrio, AND the Trammps doing Disco Inferno AND Yvonne Elliman doing If I Can't Have You AND Tavares doing More Than a Woman AND poor Karen Lynn Gorney (see below) doing whatever she does at these things.
We know how to show it SNF had two publicity images, both of which put Travolta front and centre in ways that made his underdog character look like a colossus.
One features him solo, with a mirror ball of planetary dimensions in the background that he almost manages to eclipse. The other has him with arms extended in the classic disco pose, one straight up, the other pointing down, looking like nothing so much as a hip waiter telling a customer the toilet is upstairs.
In both he looks directly at the viewer. Karen Lynn Gorney, thanks to the perspective, is approximately half his body length and gazes at him with her hands raised in awe.
Night fever Stats to die for - the soundtrack album was top of the US album charts for 24 weeks in a row and the UK album charts for 18.
It stayed on the Billboard charts for 120 weeks.
It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004 and entered the US Library of Congress National Recording Registry as a culturally significant work in 2013.
Actor John Travolta dancing with actress Karen Gorney in the movie "Saturday Night Fever" 40 years ago.
It was the best-selling album ever until Michael Jackson's Thriller in 1982 and the best-selling soundtrack until Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard in 1992, which tells you something about the relationship between best-selling soundtracks and musical quality - there isn't one.
It also revived the Bee Gees' career - so, thanks for that.
It was based on a 1976 article in a magazine written by Nik Cohn, whose pop history Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom and pinball novel Arfur are two books that can still be read with pleasure today.
And when I say written, I mean invented.
Cohn set out to write about the nascent gay disco subculture in New York but walked into a fight on his first outing and never really went back.
However, in a way that was not uncommon in the new journalism of the time, he put together his article "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" based on impressions gleaned from various sources, rather than from hard research itself.
To the regret of many feature writers, the conversion of 3000-word pieces into smash hit movies never really became a thing.
More than a woman Whatever happened to Karen Lynn Gorney who played Travolta's love interest, Stephanie? Nothing.
It's not often that a performer is introduced and firewalled in the same movie. Gorney rose from and quickly returned to obscurity.
She has since maintained a sideline as a talking head in disco docos such as Get Down Tonight: The Disco Explosion, When Disco Ruled the World and Disco: Spinning the Story and is no doubt planning what to do with the money she'll make when the 50th anniversary rolls around.
Livin' on the music so fine Saturday Night Fever was such a successful musical they've made it into a musical. A stage version of the movie with a somewhat sanitised story line was first produced in London in 1998 and comes to Auckland this week. Not starring John Travolta, although they could probably get Gorney. - Paul Little
'A touchstone for a generation'
Clarkville Peace Hall, built 1919, is jiving. Reports of disco's death are greatly exaggerated.
Sure, it's not quite the mean streets of '70s Brooklyn, but the pants are tight, the poses are right, index finger to the sky.
"It's all about the music," says 37-year-old producer McDonald.
Saturday Night Fever is the iconic coming-of-age story of young Tony Manero, who learns the value of life in 1970s Brooklyn.
By day he is a humble paint store clerk but at night he escapes the realities of his life - the dead-end job, the clashes with his unsupportive and squabbling parents, the racial tensions in the local community and his association with a gang of dead-beat friends - by turning into the polyester-clad king of the local discotheque.
McDonald is fresh from a nationwide tour of The Sound of Music, with 33 performances in 26 venues in just over a month.
He has been doing this kind of gig since leaving high school. He has taken classics by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Gilbert and Sullivan as well as Grease and Menopause the Musical on the road to town halls and theatres around the country.
Finishing touches are being put on the Saturday Night Fever show.
Of course there's a giant 1m wide disco ball. And a 1957 Chevrolet Fleetmaster car.
The set, including the glitzy mirrored Saturday Night Fever backdrop, all fits into a large truck. Crews drive ahead of the cast overnight to set up the next night's shows. McDonald owns six Toyota Estimas the cast usually ferries around in, but this year he got a bus. It's a slick operation.
McDonald brought his cast together to Clarkville, close to his home at Swannanoa, near Christchurch, to rehearse and to gel. The performers - including Tainui Kuru, who plays Tony (John Travolta's character) and also starred in Grease - come from New Zealand and the professional dancers hail from Australia.
"They're pulled away from real life and any other distractions and have been really coming together well," McDonald says.
The live music is being supervised by musician Laughton Kora.
McDonald expects to have the crowd get their groove on. Many early bookings are coming from Christchurch workplaces organising nights out.
"Saturday Night Fever is a touchstone for a generation," says McDonald.
"When you see the amazing dance moves and hear all the hits, you can appreciate why it became one of the greatest jukebox musicals of all time. "It's going to be a great fun night out." -Kurt Bayer
Saturday Night Fever is in Kerikeri and Auckland this week then has a nationwide tour. See ticketek.co.nz
