What is your take on Saturday Night Fever

[HairInTheWind]

I will give credit for the fashion and some of the dancing and nailing the Brooklyn diction.

I just don't think (IMHO) that the BeeGees did anything for me during the disco era.

The so-called "hustle" that John Travolta did during the contest is not one that you truly saw on most dance floors in New York City clubs but it was the latin couple's hustle you saw more of on the dance floor. However, it could have been the plot of the movie so that it would portray that the latin couple was so much better than Travolta.

I remember watching that movie for the first time and thinking the same as I do today about that dance number.

Thank God it's Friday, had a much better music track and didn't use music that was so commercialized and therefore introduced music that one would not always hear in the mainstream.

Granted, SNF is considered a cultural phenomenon and took the popularity of Disco to new heights...but by doing so did it cloud the real musical artists of that time?

Just as stated in the post "the classic of all classics" no one that posted mentions a BeeGees song, yet they seem to be taking credit for the disco movement allbeit on the commerical end of Disco!

The movie may have brought Disco to the mainstream and allowed for commercialism, but as for me....they didn't nail it.

[drlove]

There's probably a million different viewpoints on Saturday Night Fever's role in the core disco era (say 1974 to 1980), but mine would be that SNF's main positive contribution was quickly bringing disco to middle America (thus helping further disco as a cultural phenomenon) BUT, on the negative hand . . .it also brought disco to middle America. Huh? (you might ask).

Bringing disco to middle America could be viewed as a good thing:

(1) more respect and more potential profitability for disco artists (all the artists on the SNF soundtrack received a Grammy for Album of the Year; and belatedly, a best disco recording Grammy category was introduced in time for the ceremony in early-1980).
(2) legitimized disco music as an increasingly dominant genre of music (hence, the late '70s proliferation of all-disco-music radio stations, disco dance tv shows and the increase of the Billboard disco charts to a full-fledged 100 position chart).:icon_razz:

Bringing disco to middle America could also be viewed as a negative thing:

(1) some of the crowd enjoying this vibrant, alternative form of music suddenly found themselves enjoying something now defined as "mainstream", which sometimes prompts people to drop that & instead like (buy) something more edgy.
(2) corporate America (record labels/companies) milk it for its increasing net worth and start putting out some horrendous "jump on the bandwagon" crap labeled disco.

so I guess. .. re: SNF . . . beauty's in the eye of the beholder.

[RobbaDobba]

I grew up in Brooklyn, and can take you to exact spots where this was filmed. It holds a very special space in my heart (as does "The Warriors" for similar reasons), and is one of my absolute favorite films.

[EarlyGirl]

I suspect they rushed it into production, and didn't allow enough time for dance rehearsal because:
a) Travolta had danced on Broadway, and they thought it would take very little time for him to become a good club dancer,
b) They wanted to get the film out while disco was hot, and they were afraid it wouldn't last,
c) They figured only a few thousand young people in the NY metro area would know what the dancing should look like, or
d) Several or all of the above.
There were a couple of decent songs, but not all of them were great, especially the BeeGees numbers. But the BeeGees were a name outside of disco.
As a movie, it was okay, but the dancing was bad.
And why they cast Karen Gorney remains a mystery to me. If they were going to hire an unknown, why not one who could dance?

[Chap2Power]

I suspect they rushed it into production, and didn't allow enough time for dance rehearsal because:
a) Travolta had danced on Broadway, and they thought it would take very little time for him to become a good club dancer,
b) They wanted to get the film out while disco was hot, and they were afraid it wouldn't last,
c) They figured only a few thousand young people in the NY metro area would know what the dancing should look like, or
d) Several or all of the above.
There were a couple of decent songs, but not all of them were great, especially the BeeGees numbers. But the BeeGees were a name outside of disco.
As a movie, it was okay, but the dancing was bad.
And why they cast Karen Gorney remains a mystery to me. If they were going to hire an unknown, why not one who could dance?

I don't know, but I kinda liked Karen Lynn Gorney in the role she played. She very much looked like the hot, snotty babe that most guys would hit on, even if she was out of their league. Average dance skills aside, she is no different in this case than Richard Gere in Chicago: not a superstar singer to any degree, but he could carry a tune.

I think SNF was the key to unlocking the secret of disco to the rest of the world. Suddenly anybody and everybody was into disco. Talk about the gong of death. There was no hideaway, everything was exposed and the intrigue of clubgoing suddenly meant everyone was invited. And we all know what happened after that.

It's common knowledge that the BeeGees did not write the songs for the film; they were simply songs they were writing for their forthcoming album. The real travesty is that there was no extended version of "If I Can't Have You" by Yvonne Elliman, despite giving her the biggest hit of her career, and a nightmare for any DJ playing the record in a club, albeit with the help of an instrumental 7" single flip and a butchered 4:00 version on a Promotional 12" that featured the 6:55 mix of "Stayin' Alive".

Where the movies are concerned, I think the biggest difference between SNF and TGIF, is that TGIF spiked the unknown part of clubs onto the screen. One definite example is that SNF amped up every ethnic stereotype- this time being Italian--to the max. TGIF had one scene where a guy cut in on a couple dancing together, and proceeded to dance with the guy, not the girl !

While I do realize that SNF was based in Brooklyn, it is strictly the testosterone driven charachters in a purely straight club where almost everything that happens is pretty much predictable. TGIF at least gives us a very clever moment in which to think about. What SNF did for me, was show the suburban experience, with a typical cast of charachters: the stud boy, his lackeys, the insecure one, the slutty backseat girl (played great by Donna Pescow) and the unapproachable babe. In those days, all of us have seen or been a part of a pack of those people. But it just feels to typical.

SNF blew the opportunity by driving DJ's nuts by placing catalogue pieces and doing nothing to groundbreak anything in its soundtrack. It cemented the Brothers Gibb as hit makers, but Tavares, Ralph MacDonald, KC & The Sunshine Band and The Trammps couldn't have had any further career impact, save for the fact that KC is a casino act and they can say 'you may have heard this in SNF"...

I attended the 20th anniversary revival concert at the Paramount Theatre at MSG when I lived there, and it was interesting to see some of the songs performed live. The Bee Gees got the biggest bang for the buck from the audience because they shot to a different level of fame because of the film. Lightning did not strike again on Sgt Peppers or Urban Cowboy for RSO, proving that the formula of the films don't necessarily translate over and again.

One puzzling footnoote: in 2001 I went to Brooklyn to see Wild Orchid do a track show at what people told me was The Odyssey. It was bizzare to see that nothing had changed there from 1977: the decor, the same clothes, chains and stereotypes were raging and I thought that time had moved on, even in the neighbourhood.

SNF is now over 30 years old, and has come around to be a classic. But Thank God It's Friday gives you a different twist, and to me, a more realistic scenario of what a disco was. Trapped in a Stairway ? You bet...who didn't in those days ?

Vince