Release Date: 10/20/1995
First Weekend At Number One: 10/20/1995
Weeks at Number One: 3
Thanks for reading! This is my ongoing series where I track the evolution of American culture in my life by reviewing every number one film at the weekend box office since I was born in chronological order. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my introduction post here.
Everyone loves a comeback. When the underdog is down entering the fourth quarter, bottom of the ninth, or the final round, when it’s all or nothing, there aren’t many souls alive who don’t enjoy seeing the losing team turn it around and win the big game. In his 2007 study ‘The appeal of the underdog: Definition of the construct and implications for the self,’ sports psychologist Nadav Goldschmied puts it like this:
…People in American society believe that underdogs are unique exemplars which are expected to do significantly better than the initial expectations.
If you beat the odds, if you prove the world wrong, most Americans will cheer for you as someone to emulate. This is a big reason why, in 1995, people were beyond thrilled for John Travolta’s comeback.
The star of Saturday Night Fever and Grease [3/5] had spent over a decade starring in box office bomb after box office bomb after box office bomb following a brief period of critical and commercial success in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Despite being a major icon for a time, he had fallen by the cultural wayside as so many often do. But finally, in 1994, Travolta starred in the movie that turned it all around for him.
Pulp Fiction is, of course, excellent [it’s a 5/5 from me]. But one thing that was lost on me when I first watched the film was the contextual significance of Travolta’s role in it. I didn’t grasp the years between Travolta’s time on top and his appearance as Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s classic. As a youth, I knew that Travolta was in Saturday Night Fever, and then he was in Pulp Fiction. They may as well have come out a week apart from each other from my perspective.
But the man’s many old fans must have been over the moon. Here was Travolta again, finally, putting in a great performance in a great movie that made a lot of money. Though he didn’t win the Oscar he was nominated for, Travolta may have been riding higher off the movie’s success than anyone else involved, including Tarantino.
Travolta had been the (relative) underdog. General audiences, seeing him as that exemplar, were invested in his comeback. It makes sense that his next movie after Pulp Fiction would be a success. A supporting cast of great talent and a verified hitmaker of a director were merely icing on top of the comeback cake.
John Travolta was the star of it. Of course the people of ‘95 were going to buy tickets for Get Shorty.
Based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, Get Shorty follows charismatic loan shark Chili Palmer (Travolta) as he travels from Miami to Los Angeles to collect on a debt. Along the way, the gangster/movie fanatic gets the chance to shakedown a B-movie producer (Gene Hackman) and uses it as a networking opportunity, pitching him on a movie idea that sounds suspiciously like Palmer’s own life.
Unlike Se7en, which was a director’s last chance to make a stylish career work in the Hollywood system, Get Shorty is the result of a successful filmmaker working with full studio support. Barry Sonnenfeld got his start as a director of photography and entered movie business alongside the Coen Brothers, working with the pair on their first feature film, Blood Simple. From there, he worked with other acclaimed directors like Rob Reiner on When Harry Met Sally [5/5] and Danny DeVito on Throw Momma From the Train [3/5].
After handling DP duties on Reiner’s Misery in 1990, Sonnenfeld transitioned to directing with his adaptation of The Addams Family in ‘91 [2.5/5]. The sequel Addams Family Values and the Michael J. Fox led For Love or Money (both in ‘93, busy year for Sonnenfeld) didn’t do as gangbusters at the box office as The Addams Family, but Sonnenfeld still had some pull in Hollywood by the time he read Get Shorty.
The director loved the book immediately, and called old friend Danny DeVito to let him know that the actor would be a great fit for the role of protagonist Chili Palmer. DeVito bought the movie rights right away and was set to lead the feature while Sonnenfeld directed. But plans changed when DeVito got the chance to direct one of his dream projects, an adaptation of Matilda [4/5]. Danny had to shift his focus to that, and dropped out of Sonnenfeld’s movie.
Without their star and his production company involved, Tristar dropped Get Shorty from their production calendar.
Luckily for Sonnenfeld, MGM swooped in and offered to finance the picture, but only on two conditions. First, DeVito still needed to be in the cast somewhere in a secondary role. Second, the actor playing Chili Palmer needed to be a star.
By chance, Sonnenfeld was invited around this time to watch a rough cut of the yet-to-be-released Pulp Fiction. Like the millions who would later go on to visit cinemas to see the movie in 1994, he was pleasantly surprised to see a quality, principal performance turned in by none other than John Travolta.
Indulge me a quick history lesson.
John Travolta was THE hot young star of the 1970s. After a small role in Brian De Palma’s Carrie and a recurring role on high school sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, he exploded in popularity with the one-two punch of Saturday Night Fever and Grease in ‘77 and ‘78, respectively. The former was beat out at the year end box office only by the first Star Wars movie [5/5], but the latter dominated, handily becoming the highest grossing movie of 1978.
Travolta started the 1980s by starring in Urban Cowboy. The film wasn’t quite the cultural touchstone as his previous films, but it did make a lot of money at the box office and garnered more positive critical reviews for Travolta. For his next film role, he reunited with Brian De Palma for the 1981 political thriller Blow Out. Travolta played the lead role as a movie sound effects engineer who accidentally captures the audio of a government assassination.
Blow Out is a great movie. De Palma pulls from both Hitchcock and Italian giallo films in his tale of conspiracy, intrigue, and romance. It’s a movie that is both smart in its construction and trusting in its audience to follow along with some of its more technical scenes. The story twists and unravels in satisfying ways, and a downer ending mirrors De Palma’s anger at the rise of American conservatism during the Reagan era.
Travolta is fantastic in the film. He plays totally against the singing and dancing persona that he had become known for in his biggest roles. Unbelievably, he actually comes off as a regular human being caught up in something bigger than he could ever imagine. Blow Out still works today on nearly every level, and has made me really curious about the rest of De Palma’s filmography from around this time [it’s a 4.5/5].
Unfortunately, despite very strong contemporary reviews, Blow Out bombed hard at the box office. The prevailing theory is that word of mouth got around that the movie had a depressing ending, which led to enough people to decide to pass on seeing it. The movie flopped, never coming close to recouping its $18 million budget.
From there, Travolta starred in Staying Alive, the flop sequel to Saturday Night Fever. Following a few other box office bombs, he barely worked in film for the rest of the 1980s. It wasn’t until Look Who’s Talking in 1989, where Travolta played second fiddle to a baby with an inner monologue voiced by Bruce Willis, that he was finally in a movie that made money again, even if it was a total dud with the critics. Two more sequels to Look Who’s Talking kept Travolta working but firmly locked out of “superstar” status.
Then, cinematic serendipity. Upstart director Quentin Tarantino wanted to cast Michael Madsen for a new crime epic, but Madsen had other commitments. A meeting with Travolta went well, and Pulp Fiction as we know it was born. The movie was a box office craze, a critical smash, an instant classic, and the source of Travolta’s first Best Actor Nomination at the Oscars since Saturday Night Fever (though he did end up losing to Tom Hanks for his role in Forrest Gump [4/5]).
Sonnenfeld, though, was ahead of the curve. He had seen Pulp Fiction before nearly anyone else, and correctly surmised that Travolta was about to be a star again. This was the guy to play Chili Palmer in Get Shorty.
Sonnenfeld reached out.
Travolta said no.
He tried again.
Travolta declined again.
I can’t find any source that explains why Travolta declined this leading role in a major film by a successful director, but it’s something he did back in the ‘80s quite a bit. Despite his few movies that decade falling flat over and over again, he actually passed on leading roles in both An Officer and a Gentleman and Splash, both of which went onto be much more successful than any of Travolta’s other work around that time.
John Travolta seems like a strange guy, and that’s before you even factor in the Scientology. In interviews he exudes this odd, blank charisma that is almost uncanny. The man has sung and danced in some of the most iconic performances of the 20th century, but I don’t know if I’d describe him as theatrical. He’s delivered great performances that are all very different from one another, but I wouldn’t say he’s ever disappeared into a character. He’s always John.
Travolta is unquestionably talented, but his nonplussed demeanor during press tours and refusal to work much at all in the 80s makes me wonder about his relationship to acting. Did he grow disillusioned with it after Blow Out? When you reach such high levels of fame and success so early into your career (he was only 23 when Saturday Night Fever was released), do you approach the rest of your life with a “Mission Accomplished” mentality?
Maybe I’m just confusing him being a decent, normal human being for oddness because of his job as an actor. In a 2019 video he shot with Yahoo where he discusses some iconic roles in his career, Travolta spends far more time talking about the wonderful connections he made with actors and directors while making some of the most famous movies of all time than the craft behind his performances.
It’s actually quite nice, and comes off as genuine. But he does say something when talking about making Face/Off with Nicholas Cage that gives me pause (bolding my own).
It was much harder for Nick to find me. He said, “Who are you? I’ve been looking at all your movies but you’re always a different character. I don’t know who you are.”
[I said] “Mostly, Nick, I play characters. I’m not very busy being myself on-screen, nor do I really want to be.”
It’s not that I don’t find myself interesting, it’s just that I don’t have a valence of behavior that has hooks to it.
I’m sure that John Travolta has personal beliefs, character quirks, and all the other things that make us human. And it’s impossible that he brings none of that to his roles. But the fact that he thinks he can’t because there’s nothing of himself to bring after decades of success as a leading man makes me sad, honestly. It almost makes me thing that every acting job is just a job to him, a way to use his talents somewhat dispassionately and hopefully make a few new friends in the process as opposed to a way for him to express some meaning or exhibit his craft.
Maybe that’s why he turned down Get Shorty at first: he just didn’t need to work or make any new connections at the moment. Eventually though, Tarantino himself told Travolta that he should absolutely do Get Shorty. Seeing as the director had totally revived his career, the actor was keen to listen to him. At last, the movie had its star in the lead.
That’s a lot of words that I just wrote about the casting the role of Chili Palmer and the bizarre career of John Travolta up to 1995. And was that a glowing multiparagraph review of Blow Out that I slipped in there too?
Well, there’s a reason for that. I find all of those topics to be much more interesting than Get Shorty.
I’ll start with this: Get Shorty is a comedy where I didn’t laugh much at all. Sure, it’s a satire, a genre that typically goes for knowing snorts more than loud guffaws. And yes, comedy is subjective and typically degrades in effectiveness over time due to changing societal expectations of what makes us laugh. But it’s not just about age. I’ve laughed at Buster Keaton silent films more than I laughed at Get Shorty.
The movie displays a surprisingly sanitized version of Hollywood, despite the involvement of violent gangsters in its plot. Sure, it shows the industry as full of greedy sleazeballs, but compared to some other movies about show business I’ve seen, this is a lighthearted roast at best.
In 2015, Flavorwire published an article listing their Top 50 Movies About Hollywood. While Get Shorty made the unranked list, so did contemporaries like L.A. Confidential [3.5/5] and Barton Fink [3/5]. These are films that are distinct, gritty, often frightening in their depictions of tinsel town. Later movies like Babylon [4.5/5] and even games like L.A. Noire are more compelling for a similarly unflinching portrayal of Hollywood (I don’t rate games in this column, but L.A. Noire is one of the my favorites from the 2010s).
Despite a twisty plot that crisscrosses Los Angeles, an impressive ensemble cast, and nothing short of technical proficiency across the board, Get Shorty commits the ultimate sin of being kind of boring. There’s nothing objectionable in its craft or writing, and everyone turns in a decent performance, but nothing stands out to me as something that lingers in the mind after the credits roll. Would some intense set pieces that shake the characters from their dry smarm have helped make the movie more memorable? That version of Get Shorty sounds a lot like Pulp Fiction, so maybe.
Maybe that sanded down approach to showing what happens behind the camera is part of why the movie did so well. After all, L.A. Confidential, Barton Fink, and Babylon didn’t do anywhere close to the box office numbers of Get Shorty, despite more critical acclaim. The audience sees gangsters punching each other while delivering inside jokes about show business and gets to think they’ve peeled back the curtain on how movies are made.
Granted, we were coming off of a month of Se7en being the most popular movie in America. Maybe it makes sense for people to want to lighten up a bit.
The primary cast around Travolta and Hackman is rounded out by some truly great actors. Rene Russo has fun as a scream queen and love interest for Palmer, while DeVito shows up as the titular “shorty,” a diminutive actor and potential star for Palmer’s flick. I loved Delroy Lindo and Dennis Farina as rival gangsters from Los Angeles and Miami respectively, and James Gandolfini, four years before the first episode of The Sopranos aired on HBO, has a fun performance as a sensitive mob heavy.
The actors generally do well with what they’re given. Travolta is charmingly suave, Lindo and Farina menace and act a buffoon when necessary, and DeVito is clearly thrilled to play the role of an out of touch actor. One has to imagine that by the time ‘95 rolled around, he had encountered his fair share of them in his career both in front of and behind the camera.
That said, I didn’t love all the casting of Get Shorty. I typically prefer Gene Hackman when he’s portraying a character with more confidence and conviction. Here, he plays a backstabbing weasel of a b-movie producer. I couldn’t buy his character at all.
Speaking of things that weren’t sold well, Rene Russo had basically no romantic chemistry with Travolta, despite an otherwise solid performance. I don’t think this is necessarily her fault though. Off the top of my head, I can only think of a couple of times any actress has had good chemistry with John Travolta. I’m not even implying anything about the years of rumors about his sexuality; I’ve seen plenty of openly gay actors have incredible heterosexual chemistry once the cameras start rolling (we all watched Bridgerton season 2, right?).
I think it goes back to that thing Travolta said about not bringing much of his true self into roles. This strategy would require building up every character’s persona from the ground up based on the script and any supplementary material around it. The romantic arc between his and Russo’s characters is such a minor part of the story, so I could see him reasoning that he didn’t need to put much effort into crafting that side of Chili Palmer.
Or maybe they just lacked chemistry, could be that simple.
No actor is bad here, but I’ve seen all these performers in better roles, just like how I’ve watched Hollywood satires that were more biting and funnier, and how I’ve seen crime plots unravel more satisfyingly.
I read a bit of the Elmore Leonard source material ahead of watching the movie, and can confirm that screenwriter Scott Frank does a great job transferring over the great dialogue of the book in his adaptation. But the pacing, especially in the back half of the film, is uneven. Some plot points are labored over despite little impact on the overall story, and threads that seemed important earlier are dropped without much explanation.
Sonnenfeld, at least, knows how to shoot a movie in a way that keeps the fun energy moving. Creative dolly work raises the energy of scenes, with plenty of low tracking shots through interesting sets while compelling dialogue is rattled off. Sonnenfeld’s camerawork lends the movie strong sense of visual coherence. I was never confused as to what was happening while watching Get Shorty. I just wasn’t sure why I should care.
By the third act, the plot has gone this way and that, added in new characters and motivations, and escalated the stakes to life and death. But the movie can’t help but be cute, always with a wink and nod to the camera that slows down the whole story. “Heh, this is just like the movies I watch,” says Chili Palmer. “There’ll be a big twist and a love scene and a great shootout.” Then that stuff happens in the movie and I just roll my eyes.
I wish I liked or disliked this movie more. Unfortunately, it falls in the middle, and becomes my least favorite kind of movie: one I feel nothing about at all in the grand scheme of things.
Audiences and critics of 1995 disagreed with me. The movie topped the box office for three weekends straight, and reviews of the time were generally favorable. Janet Maslin from the New York Times adored it, saying:
It's part of the joke here that Chili is a die-hard cineaste and loves reminiscing about smart, stylish tough-guy films he has enjoyed. "Get Shorty" belongs on that list.
Get Shorty cemented the Travolta comeback as a trend. The psychological benefit audiences gleaned by seeing the actor’s underdog story continue, combined with a few weeks of weak competition for the top spot and a generally wide appeal, make the reason behind the movie’s success pretty straight forward. By the end of its theatrical run, the movie had pulled in $115 million on a budget closer to $30 million. Not only was that actor you liked from the ‘70s back in movies, but they were good, cool movies that made money! Even better!
For the record, Elmore Leonard liked the movie too, calling it “definitely the best adaptation I’ve had” in an interview with the New York Times around the time of the film’s release. I looked it up, and while some of his works had been adapted before ‘95, I’ve never seen any of those films. There was a 1957 adaptation of his short story 3:10 to Yuma, but I’ve only watched the 2007 remake of the same name. That’s an awesome movie which will appear in this space one day.
The success of Get Shorty led to the book’s sequel, Be Cool, being adapted in 2005, with only Travolta and DeVito returning to take part. I haven’t seen it, but since the subject of the story shifts from Hollywood to the music industry, its cast includes a few notable musicians turning in cameos as themselves. Steven Tyler, Andre 3000, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit all show up.
(This would actually mark the first of two collaborations between Durst and Travolta; the former would direct the latter in 2019’s The Fanatic, a movie I have heard nothing but hilariously terrible things about.)
Be Cool didn’t garner nearly the level of critical love as its predecessor, and it barely turned a profit. The adventures of Chili Palmer have ended there in the years since. I can’t imagine Travolta was too emotionally affected by that. He had plenty of success in the years between Get Shorty and its sequel, and had a few more good years left at the box office after that even. This is means we get to continue following the career arc of a truly fascinating figure who, from time to time, starred in forgettable films like this one.
Rating: 2.5/5
Next Week: The adventures of actors with more interesting stories than the movies they’re in continues as we review Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
See you then!
-Will