 | Thursday, March 03, 2005, 1:58 AM EST.
'Cool' John Travolta Returns to Screen as Chili Palmer
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The smash hit comedy Get Shorty was a huge success on many fronts. It
introduced a hip new kind of gangster, revising pre-existing stereotypes; it was a major
breakthrough for John Travolta, introducing audiences to one of the most memorable
characters of his career; and it encouraged a broader readership to take notice of
novelist Elmore Leonard’s impressive body of fiction. In Hollywood, when you hit that
big, a sequel isn’t far behind. It took almost 10 years for production to get underway,
but in early 2004, filming finally began on Be Cool entirely in Hollywood, California.
Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed Get Shorty, commented recently that when
Travolta first took the role of Chili Palmer, he wanted to play him as a “street James
Bond.” When asked about that observation, Travolta says, “Chili’s a gangster, but he
has an image of himself as a much cooler gangster, more along the lines of James
Bond. And one of my favorite screen idols was Sean Connery, in particular as Bond, so
I just took that as inspiration for my own take on Chili Palmer.”
Without a doubt, Chili Palmer is totally cool; he’s confident, nothing fazes him,
and he doesn’t get flustered. But unlike a typical shylock, Chili has a distinct morality—he’s a gentleman’s gangster. Is Chili too moral for the cutthroat movie and music
industries? “Morality is subjective,” says Travolta. “I think Chili has a sense of fairness
and a sense of justice. His approach to both may be a bit unorthodox, but he has an
innate sense of those qualities, and at the end of the day Chili Palmer is a good guy.”
Many feel that Chili Palmer is one of Travolta’s best characters. Does he agree?
“I think it is one of many wonderful roles of a lifetime, and it was fun to experience what
Chili does in the music industry in a whole new unit of time. The challenge in Be Cool
was how Chili would respond to the his new environment—he’s actually more
comfortable because there are more gangsters in the music business than the film
industry,” he laughs.
“Chili always takes advantage of an opportunity,” continues Travolta, “giving two
things consideration: is it appropriate to take advantage, and is it fair and just? He’s just
clever that way. Chili never really worries about anything. He’s a created character
that’s based on confidence, and even if he’s not particular confident in a certain
instance, you’d never know it. He’s always analyzing how to get in and out of situations
in a very cool way.”
Travolta was thrilled Uma Thurman chose to accept the role of Edie Athens.
“Uma and I are very comfortable together on screen,” he says, “and in Be Cool we’re
playing very different characters than we played in Pulp Fiction. In Pulp Fiction we were
basically playing two people that were hell-bent for death, and in Be Cool we’re playing
two people that are cool and rugged, cool-bent for life.”
When asked whether he and Uma would return to the dance floor together for a
scene in Be Cool, “I said it would have to be something Chili would feel good about
dancing to. Chili would dance to something with a Brazilian sound or a Latin rhythm or
something like that. He’d probably do a fox trot, the cha-cha, a samba, a mambo—something with which he could keep his Frank Sinatra-era, low-key, New York-style
cool. The Black Eyed Peas had just done a brilliant rap version of a Joabim song from
1962 called ‘Sexy,’ and it’s exactly what I would have wanted to dance to.”
Of his other co-stars, Travolta also really got a kick out of The Rock’s charcter,
Elliot. “In this film The Rock shows the sense of humor he has,” says Travolta, “and he
shows his ability to act by taking on a role that’s very unique. He has so many
wonderful, incongruous moments. One of the reasons I took this movie was because of
a certain scene he’s in. To see The Rock, dead serious, doing a two-character scene
about cheerleaders from Bring It On as a monologue—the intrinsic comedy in that
scene is flawless. That’s as good as it gets.”
To film the scene in which Chili and Edie head to a Lakers game to enlist
Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler into their scheme to save their record label, Travolta enjoyed
watching the crowd’s reaction. “We filmed at an actual Lakers game at the Staples
Center, and the people saw Uma and I come in and out several times. You could tell
they were wondering why we kept coming in and out, sitting down to talk to Steven Tyler
in exactly the same way. They thought it was real life,” he laughs. “Steven was a
natural, and it was funny that the crowd didn’t get that we were making a movie.”
Continuing to praise his co-stars, Travolta says of André Benjamin, “This man is
a revelation—he is so gifted as a comedian. I love his music, but I almost love him
more as a performer. He knocks my socks off—he’s hilarious in the movie.” Moving on
to Cedric the Entertainer, he says, “One of my favorite lines in the film is Cedric’s. He’s
about to shoot somebody, and he says, ‘And don’t tell me to Be Cool. I am cool.’ Isn’t
that everything this movie is?”
And though there are many seasoned performers in the film, Christina Milian is
relatively new to the screen. Travolta says, “Christina is truly gifted, not only as a singer
and performer but she’s also got acting chops. She’s a natural; Christina has it all. I’m
very, very proud of her in this movie.”
And of the director that held it all together? Travolta says, “Gary has more fun
than I’ve ever seen any director have. He just saw us as a master chess game and he
was putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together. I got a kick out of watching him
enjoy this. He definitely had a vision in mind for the movie, and it’s very comforting as
an actor. He also left one take of a scene for us to do what we wanted to do, or if we
wanted to improvise, we’d improvise. When you improvise a take, you’re going to get a
little bit more life in it because actors feel they are creating something, and Gary
embraced that process.”
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