|
In 1997, 20 years after the release of Saturday Night Fever, British journalist Nik Cohn admitted that his original magazine article "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," published in New York Magazine, was a fabrication. That story was the inspiration for the film, and although the story turned out to be fake, the slice of life that the movie presents still rings true to legions of fans.
Saturday Night Fever was the late film critic Gene Siskel's favorite movie. Late in his life he even purchased Travolta's famous white dancing suit at a charity auction. To Siskel the film contained two main themes. The first was the youthful yearning to escape or better oneself, represented in Stephanie's, and later Tony's, desire to move to Manhattan. The second was the development of Tony from someone who objectifies women to someone who can treat a woman as an equal.
To the average movie patron though, Saturday Night Fever was the "hot" dance movie of the '70s. In fact, it rolls all the cultural cliches of the '70s into one ball of wax. The clothes, the music and the dances, which at the time were considered the epitome of cool, now stand as the embodiment or everything you may love or hate about that decade.
Star Wars and Close Encounters may have been bigger box-office draws that year, but when folks were tired of zooming around outer space, they wanted their feet firmly planted on the dance floor. Disco music was all the rage before Saturday Night Fever's release, but afterwards, the movie soundtrack became synonymous with the craze. Selling over 20 million copies, Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb's soundtrack spawned four number one singles.
Saturday Night Fever grossed $142.5 million in 1977 and an additional $74.1 million in rentals. The other top five movies that year were Star Wars, $461 million; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, $128.3 million; Smokey and the Bandit, $126.7 million; In Search of Noah's Ark, $55.7 million; and The Spy Who Loved Me, $46.8 million.
|
:/-1:c
|
SCHEDULE
Current Airings
TNT.tv is part of the Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network.