The movie John Travolta only made because Quentin Tarantino told him to: “Trust me and do it”
Even though they’ve only made one movie together, John Travolta and Quentin Tarantino will always be inextricably linked in cinema history because that one movie they made together was Pulp Fiction.
The writer and director always wanted Travolta to play Vincent Vega, which had almost as much to do with his decades-long obsession with the actor as it did with his suitability for the part, since Tarantino had literally built a shrine to the Saturday Night Fever star in his home.
They’ve had a couple of chances to reunite in the years since, but on one occasion apiece, the other didn’t bite. Tarantino floated the idea of having Travolta play Seth Gecko in From Dusk Till Dawn, but since the latter wasn’t the biggest fan of vampires, he decided it wasn’t worth his time.
That’s fair enough, but Travolta approaching Tarantino to direct Battlefield Earth was outright hubristic. In what world did he think the acclaimed, Academy Award-winning auteur would even contemplate helming not only a blockbuster sci-fi, but a big-budget ode to the leading man’s beloved Scientology?
Shockingly, the Reservoir Dogs mastermind passed, and the job went to Roger Christian, best known for helming the second unit on Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. However, in between Pulp Fiction and Battlefield Earth, they did kind of collaborate, with Tarantino having a word in Travolta’s ear and telling him that playing Chili Palmer in Get Shorty was the right move.
Michael Keaton, Dustin Hoffman, and Warren Beatty had all passed, and there was a brief moment where Danny DeVito, who ultimately played Martin Weir in the film, was under consideration. Director Barry Sonnenfeld was never convinced, and he had Tarantino to thank for getting his man.
“It didn’t work out with Danny playing Chili,” he said. “Thank god he played the role he was born to play, which was Shorty. John Travolta turned the movie down twice until Quentin Tarantino intervened. Tarantino had dated one of Get Shorty‘s producers, who gave him the script.”
After perusing the pages and discovering that the guy he’d pulled back from the brink of the Hollywood scrapheap and steered to an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’ had knocked it back twice, he insisted that it would be in Travolta’s best interest to accept the offer at the third time of asking.
“He called John and said, ‘This is not the movie you pass on,'” Sonnenfeld recalled. “Travolta said he didn’t get it, but Quentin said, ‘Trust me and do it’. John was perfect as Chili Palmer.” Naturally, Tarantino was right; Get Shorty was a box office hit, and the star was awarded a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’ for the role he had to be talked into playing.
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