John Travolta

Last night the BFI Southbank showed the new John Travolta / Robert DeNiro pic, Killing Season. As it was (supposedly) the European premiere of the film, I'll get round to doing a proper review - needless to say it was entertaining, and the two stars had great chemistry, but result was sadly predictable and the tension was short-lived.

Anyhow, the BFI also treated us to a Q&A with Vincent Vega himself, and with Wossy on question duties. Rather than the frequent sycophantic gushing Jonathan Ross usually lays on his guests, he did a stand-up job and even threw in a few piss-takes for good measure. Unfortunately, it turns out Travolta is bloody arrogant, claiming most roles he's done 'were written for him', and most roles he hasn't done were also written for him, but he turned them down - cue second-rate stars taking over (namely Richard Gere). He even went as far as to say that Terence Malick's 17 year hiatus from the film industry was mostly down to Travolta's rejection of the Gere role in Days of Heaven, that Flight was written for him but he couldn't get past the unrealistic flight scenes, so stepped aside for Denzel Washington to take over, and claimed he was more experienced and talented than most pilots "I had electricity failure in my Gulfstream over Washington, for most that would be the end as it was IFR flight rules with inclement weather, but for me it was fine as my instinct kicked in and I landed safely no problem". It may well be that his stories are true, but who's he trying to impress? He's a multi-millionaire global superstar jet pilot. We all know that. No need to hammer it home (although the love-letter questions from audience members didn't help - most were hot air blown straight up the star's arse).

Aside from the fact that Travolta has been in an array of absolute classics, and delivered some of the coolest characters on screen, he's clearly a bit of a tool ( a cool tool, but a tool) and his only saving grace was that he didn't refer to acting as an art form like Daniel Day-Lewis or half of Hollywood's self-praising tossers.

Still, it was interesting to hear the interview, and as I mentioned above, it was good Jonathan Ross was there to keep the funny streak and also ground the star who at times started ascending to his ivory tower.

Thought I'd include a few pictures of the guys in action: