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Indieview shares an exclusive excerpt from Donohue’s book below and chronicles the musical chairs behind filmBoard members, both original and possibly. The book will be released by Kensington Books Tuesday, August 26.
When the script is taken care of by Norman Wexler, producer Robert Stigwood John Guilbert Avildsen (professionally known as John G. Avildsen) to direct the film. Born in 1935 in Oak Park, Illinois, the Avildsen father worked as a mechanic and spent his downtime making films with his 16mm Bell & Howell Filmo Camera. His English mother was an actor from Liverpool who taught the AVILDSEN the importance of paying attention to the audience.
Avildsen worked at an advertising agency (with Wexler for a time) in the early 1960s and made industrial films for clients as different as IBM and Jeep and learned to direct and edit their work quickly. This became his “Film School” and his first pictures were “Nudies” or “Sex Ploitation” with titles like “Turn on to love” and “Guess what we learned in school today.” They were cheese but he gained enough experience to work for cannon films and bring his playwright for the trip.
Although he was only 5 “5”, Avildsen radiated confidence and self -insurance. Some actors loved this, such as Jack Lemmon, who specifically asked Avildsen to direct him in 1973 “Save the Tiger”, who won him his first actor since 1955 “Mister Roberts.” In his career, he will direct seven actors for Oscar nominations including Lemmon, Frank Gilford, Burgess Meredith, Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Pat Morita and Burt Young.
Avildsen was dismissed from some projects in their lives, which often happens during the first set of films when people end up with different agendas. For example, with 1973’s “Serpico”, based on the life of real whistle -detective Frank Serpico who fled the country after revealing the troublesome deeds of several police in New York City. While the two became friends and Norman Wexler was hired to write the script (his other Oscar nomination) Avildsen went to hire producer Martin Bregman’s girlfriend Cornelia Sharpe in the role of Serpico’s girlfriend. He was released and Sidney Lumet finished the director.
His most famous work in 1976, when he signed up to direct “Saturday Night Fever”, was “Rocky.” Created by Sylvester Stallone, they were two on the lumber heads throughout the production. Stallone (a conservative) saw Rocky as a young man who worked hard to achieve his goals and liberal Avildsen saw it as a boxer fighting against the facility. With a budget of $ 1 million, they went to shoot in Phailadelphia on a twenty-eight day shot with a nonunion crew. Burgess Meredith plays Rocky’s coach Mickey and Burt Young as Talia Shires (Adrian) brother Paulie. Everyone would receive acting nominations for several awards, but the big one was the Oscar Award 1977 for best picture.
At the same time, the executive producer Kevin McCormick met with many rejections shopping around Nik Cohn’s New York Magazine article “Tribal Rights of a New Saturday Night” for movie studios that Stigwood bought specifically for John Travolta As part of a three-picture/$ 1 million deal with the 23-year-old Sitcom actor who had dreams of movie star.
When he beat agents and studios in Los Angeles when he searched for a director, McCormick reminds to hear, “” Listen, children. My customers make movies; They do not make newspaper articles. “And I literally booked my episode back to New York the next day and thought, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
Then happiness changed. “And then the phone rang, and it was this guy.” You are lucky. The guy you wanted to come to was in my office today, and he read the article, and he is interested in a meeting, but you should see his new movie first. John will create a show for you all in New York, ”McCormick told me.
“So we saw” Rocky “and hired John Avildsen before that movie even opened. And then our film developed, and Avildsen wanted to be the director, DP (director for photography) and editor as well. I mean, he literally wanted several credits,” he remembers.
Having a sense of “Rocky” would be a huge hit, Stigwood initially satisfies his new director’s ideas for screening changes. Although he and Wexler were close friends, Avildsen did not take over the script with their own version, which made the main character Tony Manero as more of a nice guy. The type of person who helps old ladies with their food and warns the children about the dangers of drugs. Stigwood Chafed by doing something less than a shit movie.
His first meeting with Travolta over breakfast at Beverly Hills Hotel was the first step in the failure of his term as director. He looked down at the TV star and thought he had no sex apple. He insisted on the Travolta train with Jimmy Gambina, the boxing expert who had a role in “Rocky” (Mike) and helped set the boxing sequences. This would help him lose “baby fat” and they will worry about the dance later. The star wanted to explore the script more seriously, but the director was adamant that it would change to have a more positive view.
Then, after officially shooting Norman Wexler, he began to give new pages to McCormick, which then transferred them to Stigwood. He is reminiscent of, “Avildsen was to go through a rotating door with writers, and the script got worse every time. And the last thing he gave me in the new script,” I’ve been thinking about Bee Gee’s music. I just think they’re over. You want something more modern. “So, Stigwood called, and he said to meet me at the airport tomorrow.
Stigwood was furious about Avildsen’s changes and instructed McCormick to set up a meeting at Stigwood’s Central Park West Penthouse for ten next morning, February 10, 1977. The executive producer reminds, “John and I was, who, twiddling our thumbs in the living room. Stigwood came in and he said: ‘John, you can see you. I’ve ever been to. “
In the documentary, Avildsen blames his shooting on the fact that he was caught with “The producer’s boyfriend’s girlfriend.” Wexler told the Los Angeles Times on June 12, 1977, “Avildsen moved in a Capra-‘Rocky direction, all involved in sweetness and light.” Consensus is that he was fired because he wanted to switch to film in a direction that Stigwood and Travolta hated. Wexler was brought back when screenwriters and McCormick had the task of finding a new director with three weeks left before production began.
Thirty -eight year old John Badham had an unusual background. He was a self-proclaimed “Army Brat” who grew up in England and Birmingham, Alabama with a mother who played in local television programs and a stepfather who was a retired army general. With a scholarship to Yale, he worked with several musical productions as a stage manager and actor. It was in college when he first saw Orson Welles “Citizen Kane” that made him consider working on television and film.
During his junior year, his nine -year -old sister Mary was thrown as a scout in 1962’s adaptation of “to kill a mockery.” Based on the Pulitzer Prize 1960 novel by Harper Lee, the movie Gregory Peck played as Atticus Finch and Robert Duvall in their movie debut as Boo Radley. Mary was nominated for an Oscar price, which gave her a little jealous brother the desire to succeed on her own.
His resume was full of TV from “Night Gallery”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, until 1974’s “The Law” with Judd Hirsch and Bonnie Franklin who won him a Primetime Emmy for outstanding special. In 1976 he directed his first feature “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings” with Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor and James Earl Jones. The story takes place in the 1930s and is a fictional story about the Negro League Baseball. It was planned to be released in the summer of 1977.
Meanwhile, he had been chosen to direct the musical version of “The Wiz” with Diana Ross as the star. Hit Broadway -show was an urban remake of “The Wizard of Oz” with Ross with Dorothy. Badham could not find out how to movies Ross (34 at that time) as a young girl and felt badly equipped to work around this problem, decided to get himself to get a bizarre idea. In a production meeting, he discussed shooting the entire film from Ross’s perspective. “We never see her – only her shoes, sometimes.” He was started immediately.
In February 1977, Badham was unemployed, divorced his wife and suffered the worst flu in his life when his agent called him a new job. He had read about Avildsen’s shooting in Liz Smith’s column and wondered what happened to the project now called “Saturday Night.”
He told me: “My agent said, don’t read it now until I do a deal about this. So, of course, when I was the kind of person who does the opposite of what your mom tells you, I quickly started reading it. An hour later, when I was done, I was cured. My temperature was normal. I go around brilliant, this is good.
He was hired immediately and after a tense first breakfast meeting with Travolta, he assured him that the film would be the vision they all think is best. That it will be smart, dirty and strongly has Travolta’s dance, which he spent months working on. Travolta was anxious to know the female leadership. Amy Irving and Jessica Lange were recently considered, but other commitments (mainly Dino Delaurentis, who chose Lange for the 1976 strait “King Kong” and would not release her from her contract) and lack of chemistry with the accurate star made it difficult to find the perfect Stephanie.
He also needed to hire the rest of the role (only Travolta was locked up), completed over sixty places for shooting (including the nightclub), hiring a choreographer and then the Bee Gee’s part was. When he first meeting Stigwood handed him over a cassette tape that told Badham, “There are three songs a song here.” It was an early demo of Gibb Brothers heavy soundtrack and Stigwood was wrong. There would be four numbers one songs on it.
Badham quickly flew to New York and his first indication of what a low budget film looks like – he was picked up by production manager Michael Hausman at Laguardia Airport. According to Hausman, “On these days, you can actually drive to Laguardia Airport and park your car right at the curb and go to the gate to meet someone. John Badham came out of the plane, and I introduced myself.”
“We get to my car, which was a truck. It had a seed in the front and the back was a pickup. In Front of my pickup was a limousine. And he started walking towards the limousine. And, in said, no, john. Gonna Drive You To The Hotel. And For Many Years Now, Whenever He Talked About Making That Movie, He Said, That Was Mike’s way of telling who is responsible and how it will be, “he reminds me.
From “Fever: The complete story of ‘Saturday Night Fever’,” by Margo Donohue. Reprinted with permission from Kensington Books. Copyright 2025.
Indieview’s 70s week is presented by Bleecker Street ”RELAY. “Riz Ahmed plays a” fixer “in world -class that specializes in brokers lucrative payments between corrupt companies and the individuals who threaten their ruin.RELAY“” Sharp, funny and smart entertaining from his first scene to his last twist, ‘Relay’ is a modern paranoid thriller as Harkens back to the genre’s 70s heyday. “From director David Mackenzie (” Hell or High Water “) and also in the lead role Lily James, in theaters August 22.
