John Travolta (Urban Cowboy) Urban Cowboy (1980)

John Travolta (born February 18, 1954, Englewood, New Jersey) plays Bud Davis in Urban Cowboy (1980). He was twenty-five during production and twenty-six at release.

Travolta arrived at Urban Cowboy at the absolute peak of late-1970s stardom

By the time Urban Cowboy started shooting in summer 1979, Travolta had been the biggest star of his generation for three years. Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–79) on ABC made him a teen idol; Saturday Night Fever (1977) made him an Oscar nominee; Grease (1978) made him a global commercial phenomenon. Urban Cowboy was the third title in what Paramount and his agents understood as a "movement musical" trilogy — disco, fifties rock, country.

"I knew Bud Davis was going to be the third act of the dance. Saturday Night Fever was disco, Grease was rock and roll, Urban Cowboy was the two-step. The body had to learn a new vocabulary every time." — John Travolta, Texas Monthly (2018)

The two-step and the bull were the dance vocabulary the film required. Travolta trained for months on a borrowed mechanical bull at his Santa Barbara ranch, working with rodeo coach Buck Flowers. Most of the bull-pit shots in the picture are him.

The role was different from Tony Manero or Danny Zuko

Travolta's two prior leading roles were charismatic young men whose talent — dancing — was the engine of the picture. Bud Davis is different. He is not gifted, he is not the best in the room, and the film's argument is that his talent (riding the bull) is not what redeems him. Bridges asked Travolta to play a man whose climactic action is verbal apology, not physical performance. The shift was deliberate.

"Jim Bridges said to me, 'Bud is not Tony Manero. Tony is the king of the room. Bud is the kid in the room. He has to lose before he can win, and the win is not on the bull. It's at the trailer.' I worked the whole part backward from that." — John Travolta, American Film (1980)

This is the role that shows what Travolta could do when he stopped being a charismatic kid and started being a leading man. He plays Bud's pride as a young man's pride — easily wounded, often misdirected — and the apology in the trailer scene works because the actor lets the line cost the character something to say (see The Trailer Apology).

Travolta and Winger did not get along on set

The Travolta-Winger antagonism is one of Urban Cowboy's production legends. They did not warm to each other personally during the shoot. Both have addressed it directly in subsequent interviews.

"It was not a love affair. We were not friends on the set. But that's actually what the movie needed — two people who were rubbing each other the wrong way the whole time. You can see it. The movie wanted that friction." — Debra Winger, The New York Times (2008)

Travolta has been more diplomatic about it but has not denied it. The friction is in the picture as the picture's grain. The fights between Bud and Sissy don't read as performance.

Urban Cowboy was the bridge to the lean 1980s

After Urban Cowboy, Travolta's commercial run cooled. Blow Out (1981) — directed by Brian De Palma — is the picture his admirers value most from the period; it was a financial disappointment. Staying Alive (1983), Two of a Kind (1983), Perfect (1985), and The Experts (1989) ranged from underperforming to disastrous. He was fully out of fashion by the late 1980s and made a celebrated comeback in Pulp Fiction (1994).

"I had a long fall after Urban Cowboy. I picked the wrong pictures. I was offered American Gigolo. I was offered An Officer and a Gentleman. I turned them both down. Those went to Richard Gere. So you can blame me for Richard Gere's career, basically." — John Travolta, GQ (2014)

In retrospect Urban Cowboy is the last film of Travolta's first run. The picture closes the late-1970s phase and the next twelve years are a long detour to Pulp Fiction. Urban Cowboy is the bridge — and the picture in which his command of the leading-man register is most fully on display.

Cross-Film Connections

Sources