Almighty painter

Chapter 615 The Birth of an Actor

"When John Travolta was 16, he performed on Broadway and continued to perform until he was in his twenties. Because of his outstanding appearance and dancing skills, he was selected by the audition director and starred in a Friday TV series under Warner, Welcome Back, Kotter, which made him famous."

Koko scratched the cat gently.

It was as if Awang was twisting in her arms and turning into the once popular dancing king in Hollywood.

"Under the spotlight, as long as the opportunity comes, a person's fame is a matter of a moment, and he is such a lucky man. When he was 20 years old, he was just a musical actor on Broadway, but just four years later, Travolta had become a world superstar and the highest-paid actor in Hollywood."

"The papers said he was the second sexiest man ever to walk off Broadway, the second sexiest man the nation's girls ever dreamed of."

"The second one? Who is the first one?" Gu Weijing asked curiously.

"The first one was Marlon Brando, who was getting old at the time. But soon, no newspapers said he was the second one. Because he was so popular, he was not the second Brando, not the second Elvis. He was just himself, John Travolta."

"Dancing King Travolta."

Koko said calmly, "He is the king of dancers and a legend in musicals. He was nominated for Best Actor by both the Oscars and the Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine rushed to print his big photo on the cover of the magazine and sold it from coast to coast. After watching his movie, President Carter postponed the State Council meeting and invited him to lunch at the White House. A few years later, the most popular British princess in history, Diana, visited the United States."

"Reagan, who was a B-movie actor at the time, racked his brains to show the princess the most American charm in front of everyone, so the first person he thought of was John Travolta. He specially invited the King of Dance to dance with the princess, and thus one of the most classic diplomatic scenes in the history of British and American diplomacy was born."

The girl spoke in a calm tone.

"Do you like his stage image so much?"

Gu Weijing asked in surprise.

He thought that a girl of Koko's age should like popular idol stars or band lead singers who are in their prime.

He wasn't very familiar with John Travolta.

But since he was a popular movie star during President Reagan's era, no matter how young he became famous, he was already an uncle in "Pulp Fiction".

Pulp Fiction is another movie that is much older than they are.

No matter how skilled Hollywood actors are at performing, they are probably in their seventies or eighties now.

It should be a white-haired old grandfather.

There is no girl who even calls out "JOHN" to reminisce the past. When Koko's mother was in school, had she already changed from a radiant and beautiful girl to a fat aunt with yellow teeth?

However, Koko was able to describe the old man's resume in such an orderly manner that she could even recite it by heart.

For a young girl like Koko, it's a bit too old school.

"I always thought you were the kind of fashionable singer who would like Taylor Thrift?"

Gu Weijing looked at the girl holding the cat and thought to himself.

"A little too old, isn't it? I really like Swift."

The amazing thing is.

Gu Weijing didn't say what was in his mind.

He could never figure out what Koko was thinking, but Koko could always guess what he wanted to say.

"Travolta is not my type. His appearance is the classic aesthetic preference of American aunts in the 1960s and 1970s. I think his face is too square, his hairstyle is too old, and the wide cleavage in his chin is too deliberate."

Koko said calmly, "But that doesn't stop me from watching all of Travolta's movies, especially the dance scene in Pulp Fiction. From the two minutes and eleven seconds after the heroine came on stage, I can recall every frame in my mind. It was indeed a great performance with tension."

"I always wonder what was going through Travolta's mind when he was dancing that scene for Quentin in 1995, and what was he thinking later when he was at the Kodak Theatre to accept the Oscars, years after he last stood here."

"What do you mean?" Gu Weijing raised his eyebrows, "Hasn't he always been very popular?"

"He was once very, very popular. Remember what I told you, Ghost?" Koko's voice echoed in Gu Weijing's ears, "Most actors' career peak is short-lived, like a flash in the pan. I told you that every actor's first wish is to play the leading role, and his second favorite is to play a role that he has a tacit understanding with and can attract him like a shadow, in which he can find himself."

"The plot of Pulp Fiction is full of the director's black humor. Travolta plays Vincent, a killer in a black suit who is cold but delicate. In the timeline shot with himself as the protagonist, Vincent is extremely handsome, killing people without getting his clothes stained with blood, and he is passionate with the boss's woman. He is principled and loyal. Even though the two of them have sparks, he sends her home after dancing with her and then leaves. He walks a delicate knife edge between temptation and resistance, exuding a deadly charm."

"He was almost perfect, sparkling."

"But in other people's timelines, he was just a passerby who was shot dead by a failed Loser fake boxer when he went home to get something. When he died, he was sitting on the toilet with toilet paper and reading a magazine. It was not cool at all. The camera was fleeting, and he fell down with one shot."

"All his tenderness, sensitivity, passion, and uninhibitedness could not make him take one more bullet than an ordinary person. He was just like the ordinary supporting actor who would die 200 times a day on a Hollywood set."

Koko's breath gently touched Awang's earlobe.

"I believe that when Travolta walked onto the set, he saw a lot of himself in this character."

"The most successful actors can leave their mark on an entire era." "If the 1950s and early 1970s in Hollywood belonged to Marlon Brando, and the 1960s belonged to Hitchcock, then the entire late 1970s belonged to him alone. He is a combination of Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley. The emperor of musicals in the history of human film and television. But the last five years of the 1970s were the last five years of the traditional musical."

"The gorgeous afterglow of the setting sun."

"In the acting industry, fame comes and goes quickly. It took him less than five years to become famous, and it took him only five years to go from an Oscar to a Razzie Award. Then there was a decade of silence. At first, newspapers reported with relish that Travolta had acted in some crappy movie again, but later the media was too lazy to report it. Because he was completely a thing of the past, completely forgotten by the times."

"In the gorgeous song and dance background, he is the omnipotent king, but without song and dance, he is nothing. People who can't keep up with the times will always be thrown into the trash can. Just like those stars who were abandoned by the camera because they had no dialogue skills during the huge transition from silent films to sound films, this kind of thing will never be uncommon."

Gu Weijing imagined such a scene.

The once most successful and glorious Hollywood star in the world was ruthlessly thrown into the trash can by the times because of his unsuccessful transformation.

The theater cat in my heart, who was always bragging about his past to others in the club, seemed to move suddenly.

The gunshot of the times has sounded.

He fell down immediately.

"I believe he saw his own shadow in the script of Pulp Fiction. He was once the king of dance! Not the king of Broadway, New York, Hollywood, or the United States. There is no need to add any prefix. If you say the name of the king of dance in the whole world, everyone knows that it refers to John Travolta, the only king of dance. He is synonymous with disco dancing. From Asia to the corners of Africa, young people all imitate his dancing moves, and girls look at his posters with affection."

"In the 1970s, he was a superstar in the industry, so cool that he had no friends. But now it's almost the millennium. Reagan, who invited him to the White House, was shot, and Princess Diana, who danced with him, has a shaky marriage. The trendy men and women who danced disco in school auditoriums and bars have become bald uncles and fat aunts with children. The superstars in the minds of this generation of young people are Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage. If parents tell their children today that 'there is a cool dancing king', they will think you are referring to Michael Jackson."

“Young people don’t dance disco anymore and don’t know who he is.”

"Even for the role of the killer, Quentin originally wanted Day-Lewis, but when that didn't work out, he switched to Bruce Wesley, who wanted to play the more important fake-fisted boxer. Then he switched to Michael Madsen, who played the killer in Kill Me Again and received rave reviews a few years ago, but he refused again. Finally, it came to Travolta, the outdated dancing king. On the director's casting list, he was the backup of the backup of the backup."

Koko crossed her arms.

Awang seemed to be affected by the girl's bleak and low mood, and stopped making a fuss in her arms.

The tabby cat stuck out its tongue and licked Koko's chin.

"It's hard to say that an actor like Travolta is unsuccessful. In the entertainment industry, his peak is as high as Mount Everest. He represents an era. Throughout history, few actors have been as lucky as him. He has billions of dollars, a beautiful girlfriend, a large estate in Beverly Hills, and limited edition sports cars. He even bought a fighter jet as a private jet."

"It's unfair for such a person to talk about his sadness and unhappiness. But he is also a forgotten ghost. The only difference is that my mother's teacher needs to recite his name as a remembrance of the good times in the past, but he himself does not need to recite anyone else's name as a symbol of nostalgia - he himself is the symbol itself."

"He once had the spotlight of the whole world on him, so he couldn't stand the loneliness of being forgotten. Others live in his name, but he lives in his own memory. He took one bad musical after another, and screwed them up one after another."

"Mechanically, like a confused ghost repeating what he did in his previous life. He desperately wants to attract the audience's attention. The world has moved on, but he is still dancing in the same place. He dances so hard, but because he lives in a different timeline, the whole world ignores him."

"Until he met Pulp Fiction."

Koko bit her upper lip.

"I have always felt that in terms of depth, Pulp Fiction is not as good as Schindler's List and Forrest Gump, but Travolta, a former dancer, played the role better than Tom Hanks and Liam Neeson, two award-winning actors. At least I can relate to it more."

"In the song and dance sequence in the crime movie Pulp Fiction."

"In those short two minutes and eleven seconds."

"When the director yelled "Action" and the disco music started, the ghost came alive. Travolta became the dancing king again, back to the 1970s when he could make the world go crazy and scream with just a twist of his head and a glance. The ghostly actor found his true self in the ghostly role."

Koko reached out and picked an olive-shaped branch from the old locust tree and handed it to Gu Weijing.

"Later, he became famous overnight with Pulp Fiction, successfully transformed himself, and returned to the media spotlight with consecutive films such as Face/Off and Broken Sword, becoming a top Hollywood star. That was the second spring of his career, just like Brando's comeback in the early 70s with The Godfather. But this is not the point. Very few actors can have their second and third springs."

“But no matter how many springs they bloom, most flowers will eventually wither and be forgotten one day. Just like when I mentioned his name to you just now, you actually didn’t know who he was. Becoming a ghost is the fate of an actor. The only difference is that some people become ghosts while they are alive, while some people are lucky enough to become ghosts after they really die.”

"Only a few of the few, one in ten thousand, can have their characters always radiate vitality. They can be like some trees, evergreen all year round."

Koko lowered her head and teased the cat.

All actors are the same.

The scenery is like John Travolta, a ghost.

My mother's teacher, the former Broadway dancer, is a ghost.

Her mother, although she was not even as good as that dancer, the fat aunt once shone brightly in the Garden Theater, but her mother didn't even get the chance to perform on the stage.

But she is also a ghost.

Only when she tells herself about dance, about her memories of dancing, does she become normal.

She lived her whole life in the dreams of her youth.

(End of this chapter)