by Brett Hardel

Created on: January 26, 2009

Where do you go when the record is over...

An electrifying movie that put John Travolta on the map and based upon a 1976 New York magazine article called "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", the movie was a monster success and the soundtrack featuring disco songs by The Bee Gees became the best selling movie soundtrack of all time, winning a Grammy for Album of the Year. 19-year-old Brooklyn youth Tony Manero (John Travolta) has an unhappy homelife with an unemployed cynical father and living in the shadow of his older brother Frank Jr., (Martin Shakar) the star of the family who takes a crash landing when he returns home announcing that he's leaving the priesthood. Tony works in a paint store and lives for Saturday Night - when he and his buddies Joey (Joseph Cali), Double J (Paul Pape), Gus (Bruce Ornstein), and Bobby C (Barry Miller) splash on Brut and head for 2001, a local disco. Referring to themselves as "The Faces", the group defers to Tony as he reigns king of the dance floor, and they drink, take pills, and take girls out for make out sessions in the back of Bobby's 1964 Chevrolet Impala. Not exactly dead-end kids but more a product of their environment; they're racist, foul-mouthed, cynical, enjoy dancing on the railings of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, and only occasionally treat women as human beings. Tony is trying to rise above that and often gazes at the bridge in the hopes of someday living on the other side - the promised land of Manhattan. Annette (Donna Pescow), an unofficial member of "The Faces", is infatuated with Tony and he invites her to be his partner in a 2001 dance contest, but unceremoniously dumps her when he meets the frosty but sophisticated Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) and invites her to be his partner instead. While Tony looks up to his brother and Stephanie, he scarcely realizes that they are as lost as he is, just as Tony's friends look up to him not realizing how lost he is too. Tiring now of the escapades with his buddies - a rigged dance contest, a street fight, date rape, and the death of Bobby C while fooling around on the bridge - Tony begins to question the narrowness of his perspective and resolves to leave Bay Ridge behind once and for all.

Released in December 1977, the movie grossed $3,878,099 it's opening weekend and ended with a total of $237,113,184. To date the soundtrack has gone platinum fifteen times. In 1978 the movie was re-edited with six minutes of footage removed and re-released with a "PG" rating; owing to the frequent street language, extensive "clean" footage shot for television airings was used. Various DVD releases from Paramount include 25th and 30th Anniversary Collector's Editions - each has different special features - as well as being included in a double feature with the 1983 sequel "Staying Alive" as well as in the boxed sets "The Travolta Collection" and "DVD Dance Pack Collection".

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