John Travolta’s Bizarre Get-Well Excuse on Get Shorty

You wouldn’t be able to tell by watching the finished film, but John Travolta was anything but assured on the set of “Get Shorty.” Travolta’s character, a Miami loan shark named Chili Palmer, was unflappable, annoyed when people threatened him, and unblinking if someone drew a gun. He never turned off the charm, always merrily in control of every situation. Without raising his voice, Chili would merely say, “I’m going to tell you the way it is.” Chili was an interesting contrast to the flummoxed, fudging producers of Hollywood he found himself among in “Get Shorty.” 

Off-camera, though, Travolta was a wreck. The “Grease” star seems to have trouble with memorizing dialogue and reading lines correctly. Indeed, an audience of billions can attest to Travolta’s propensity for flubs as, in 2014, Travolta introduced singer Idina Menzel at the Academy Awards as “the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem.” Travolta rarely, if ever, came to the set with all his lines memorized. Notoriously, he needed his dialogue written on cue cards, and the filmmakers required many takes before Travolta got his timing correctly.

Barry Sonnenfeld, who solved arguments from a pillow fort while shooting “The Addams Family,” directed “Get Shorty,” and the beleaguered filmmaker recalls the struggles he had with Travolta while making the film. In his new memoir, “Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time: True Stories from a Career in Hollywood,” Sonnenfeld relates a particular incident with Travolta wherein he finally put his foot down and forced him to finally get those lines memorized… or else. Sonnenfeld refused to edit around Travolta’s performance, as he feels comedies are better played in wide shots with natural, actorly timing. Eventually, Sonnenfeld called Travolta aside, put his feet to the fire, and told him he had four days to memorize an upcoming scene. Off book. It was now a necessity.

Travolta also made a very unusual demand of Sonnenfeld. It seems that when Travolta had trouble with dialogue, he immediately complained that the script had “too many words.” The actor demanded that scene be shaved down, and longer chunks of dialogue needed to be shortened. For one passage, Sonnenfeld recalls, Travolta demanded that exactly six words be excised, he didn’t care which. Sonnenfeld, rather than caving to the demand, merely insisted that they read out the scene together, finding something that felt natural. Travolta demanded it be six words over and over, however, and Sonnenfeld ultimately cut an eight-word line just to placate his leading man.

But another dialogue-heavy scene was coming, and both the actor and the director knew it. What’s more, the shooting location was only open for a small window, and it was vital that the actor be off book. Sonnenfeld laid down the law: 

“So, John. You have tomorrow off and Monday’s a holiday, which means four days without work. Tuesday, we have a really hard scene. It’s got a big page-count and we only have the Presidential Suite at the Century Plaza Hotel for one day. You need to know the dialogue. You can’t be fumbling for words. I want to play a lot of the dialogue in master shots and don’t want to edit the scene into a million pieces to tighten up your performance. You’ve got to come in next week knowing your lines. So, let’s read the scene now, and you tell me if there’s anything you think you’ll have trouble with.” 

They read the scene, Sonnenfeld sent him home with two additional scripts, so there was no excuse for not being able to read and learn the lines. It seemed like Travolta was taking the job seriously. Four days was more than enough time.

Everything seemed to be okay… until Tuesday. Despite having the whole weekend to prepare, Travolta didn’t have his lines down cold. Or down at all. 

“Tuesday morning, it was immediately clear John had not even glanced at his script over the past four days. We rehearsed and rehearsed, and the words just wouldn’t come. I showed the scene to the crew with John reading from his script, and we started to light, sending our actors off to hair and makeup. Ten minutes later, Graham, the producer, found me on set. ‘We’ve called for the doctor. For Travolta. He’s not feeling well.'” 

In his memoir, Sonnenfeld quipped that the doctor might have a magical injection that would cure Travolta and also teach him his lines. A doctor was called to set, and they found nothing wrong. Travolta still hammed it up; when Sonnenfeld went to Travolta’s hotel room, he was sulking with a wet towel over his eyes. The director recalls saying:

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, John. Is there any chance we could shoot David’s side, just his medium shot and close-up with you off camera reading from the script? And maybe, by doing that, you’ll, through repetition, learn your lines, and we could shoot the master and your coverage later in the day? Do you think thats worth a try?”

Travolta just let out a weak, “Uh huh.” Sigh. It was then that Sonnenfeld knew he’d have to give up on his vision of shooting the scene in a big master shot. He ended up shooting Travola’s scenes separately from his co-star’s scenes — he was filming with Danny DeVito — and editing the scene today. Sonnenfeld didn’t like it that way, but it worked. Watching “Get Shorty” today, though, the scene works fine.