Andy Warhol, Movie Critic
Another excerpt from the Andy Warhol Diaries. The other person in “we” is Bianca Jagger:
Tuesday, January 3, 1978
We cabbed up to 86th Street ($2.75) and we finally hit Saturday Night Fever at the right time and were able to get in. Well, the movie was just great. That bridge thing was the best scene–and the lines were great. I guess it’s the new kind of fantasy movie, you’re supposed to stay where you are. The old movies were things like Dead End and you had to get out of the dead end and make it to Park Avenue and now they’re telling you that it’s better off to stay where you are in Brooklyn–to avoid Park Avenue because it would just make you unhappy. It’s about people who would never even think about crossing the bridge, that’s the fantasy. And they played up Travolta’s big solo dance number, but then at the end they made the dance number with the girl so nothing, so underplayed. They were smart. And New York looked so exciting, didn’t it? The Brooklyn Bridge and New York. Stevie Rubell wants to do a disco movie, but I don’t think you could do another one, this one was so great. But why didn’t they do it as a play first? What was this first, a short story? They should have milked it–done it as a play first and it would have run forever.
posted 9 March 2010 in Excerpts and tagged Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever, Steve Rubell. 2 comments
March 10th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Andy didn’t know how right he was about that whole “short story” business.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Heh. I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re absolutely correct.