Original subtitles

I started out making a film

about the New York disco scene in the '70s

and I discovered a sort of genius center for it all.

Whether it was disco, the Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever, you name it

Robert Stigwood's fingerprints are all over.

He was the Wizard of Oz of the 1970s.

I moved back to New York in late '75, beginning of '76.

I had gotten a job to work for RSO

the Robert Stigwood Organization.

Robert, at that point

was in the music business.

And other than the Bee Gees

I really didn't know that much.

I knew he had Eric Clapton he was managing.

And it was just at a moment

where he was transitioning

into producing movies.

I'm, like, in my early twenties

and I'm head of development and production.

And one of the first things Robert had done

when he set up the new company

was sign John Travolta to a three-picture deal.

But we didn't have any pictures to support it.

So I said to Robert, "What do I do now?"

And he said, "Well, you go out and buy projects."

In '75, '76, in New York, there was a very cool disco culture.

You know, music was happening

and people were coming out to do something

that you weren't allowed to do in any other environment.

And as I'm looking for stories, I met this sort of cutting edge

rock 'n' roll journalist called Nik Cohn.

Nik had this particular insight

about music, and about people

and nocturnal explorations of Manhattan and the boroughs.

And he'd written a New York Magazine article

called the "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night."

It was an incredible story

about a kid growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

And the part of his life that comes alive with his dreams

which is on the dance floor.

For me, what made it stand out was, I totally got this character.

He was like somebody that I could have known growing up.

There were a lot of the kids I'd gone to school with

who, what they lived for, was Saturday night

and how they looked, and how they danced

and how other people thought about them.

I don't know if Robert actually just read the story

or if Kevin said, "You ought to read this"

but Robert's the one who called me.

It was 4th of July weekend, I believe.

It was, like, two weeks

after the article had come out.

And I said, "It was fascinating, wasn't it?"

And he said, "Yes, it was fascinating.

Do you see what I see?" I said, "I don't know what you see."

He said, "This is a hundred-million-dollar movie."

When we got the article

Robert's first thought was, "This could be John's first picture."

And we sent it on to John, and John said, "I'm in."

If anybody else had bought that little magazine story I had written

any other producer

Fever would not have happened. We wouldn't be talking about it now.

When they bought that story

Robert said to me

"I smell something real here."

He existed by sense of smell, to say.

He had a wonderful sense of smell.

He just get the sense of, you know

"You put that there, and that there, and that there"

and they might work together.

In the last five years, Robert Stigwood

a diffident, awkward Australian

who shambled into a fortune on the other side of the world

has become the entertainment industry's newest

and most unexpected tycoon.

Stigwood is 37, a millionaire, and one of the world's biggest owners

and manipulators of other people's talent.

You don't personally come across as somebody with immense drive

or tremendous, abrasive cutting edge, or anything like that.

You strike me as sort of a rather shy person.

Yes, but drive, I think, comes from inside oneself.

I first met Robert

when I was the tour manager with a band called The Merseys

and that would have been '66.

And he was the agent for the Merseys and The Who.

And when Cream formed, Robert was their manager.

And he called me to hook up with Cream.

Robert's reputation was a good one.

He conducted business ruthlessly, but on behalf of his artists.

I was speaking to you from a club in...

In Hamburg, and I'm Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.

Robin here. Robin, we've heard rumors that the group is splitting up.

Would you mind to verify those rumors?

If I was to say that was true

then I would be the premier of Russia.

No, no.

Ladies and gentlemen

would you meet Robert Stigwood, and Barry, Robin, and Maurice.

Good evening.

- Do you all remember... - No.

The first meeting?

Somebody sent you a tape of these boys from Australia?

Yes, they did.

And I heard it and I was absolutely astounded.

It was the most brilliant harmony

singing and composing I had ever heard.

Did you make them audition for you live?

I'm afraid I did.

He came in, aided by two men.

- Holding each arm. - Go ahead.

He had a hangover like you wouldn't believe.

He sat down in front of us...

Don't worry about it. This was 11 years ago.

He put his head like this, you know, and said, "Carry on."

So we did what we had worked up

which, in Australia, we had a nightclub act

and our act was a medley of Peter, Paul, & Mary songs.

Ending with Maurice kissing Robin.

This was a long time ago, folks.

- I am straightened out now. - You couldn't do it...

He never saw a minute of it.

He heard something and said

"Come and see me in my office later on"

and staggered out again.

We later discovered that he didn't have a hangover at all.

He just couldn't stand what he was hearing.

It didn't take a genius to know

that one had an incredible new, exciting talent

and I signed the record deal for them.

I was actually on the payroll of The Beatles

which was a company called Beatles & Co.

I was just 17. I was... I was a dog's body.

I was the guy that got the fleas out of Paul McCartney's dog.

I can't claim that, you know...

It wasn't a great career start, but it got me to meet people

and that's how I met Robert Stigwood.

Stigwood was working with Brian Epstein.

Brian had sort of hit a place in his life

where he wasn't sure how much longer he wanted to manage.

And obviously, The Beatles were the biggest thing ever...

Brian Epstein was fed up with managing.

He wanted to manage a bullfighter, as I remember

and The Beatles were going their own way.

So Robert was brought in, really, to run the company.

I became joint managing director of NEMS

on Brian's invitation.

With Brian looking after The Beatles

and with me really administrating and running the business.

Robert was in negotiations with Brian

to take over as The Beatles' manager.

If I paid him half a million pounds, I would control the company

including The Beatles.

The Beatles didn't know about it, and they didn't like him.

And they certainly didn't like the Bee Gees.

We said, "Well, let's just get this straight."

We're not going to be sold to anyone.

If you... you can continue to manage us, we love you.

We're not going to be sold.

We said, "In fact, if you do, we will record 'God Save The Queen'

for every single record we make from now on

and we'll sing it out of tune."

Robert, finally, the way he explained it to me

was, he said to The Beatles, he said

"You know, we've kind of ruined our work relationship with each other

so why don't you guys do your thing and I'll do mine."

And Robert took his artists, the Bee Gees, Clapton.

And they said, "You can go and take the Bee Gees with you."

And he started his own company.

I got word that Robert Stigwood

was starting a company in New York.

And I just leapt at it.

This was a chance to sort of build his empire.

And his attack on America

was spearheaded by Jesus Christ Superstar.

When we were doing the Superstar album

before it was shown, Robert got in touch with us

and Robert definitely knew what he was doing.

I mean, a lot of people had turned us down.

I mean, I think we always hoped it would become a show

but, I mean, we had a number one album in America

which was a great thrill for us.

In a way, if nothing else had happened

we might have thought, "Well, great, we did better than we thought."

But Robert was the sort of person who could see beyond a hit record.

He thought super big.

And his timing was fortuitous.

He was lucky to be around when he was.

Now, when I was just a little boy

From Woodstock on

Hollywood was totally in transition.

My poppa said...

Part of it was that young people had other choices.

They had the choice of how they wanted to spend their time.

Did they wanna go to concerts? Did they wanna listen to music?

And the movie business had realized it had to change.

To try to become relevant.

They started to use music

to illustrate a movie.

Easy Rider becomes sort of a snapshot

of that particular moment.

Or The Graduate.

It was what can you provide that feels relevant and urgent.

How do you guys get to be a secret service man?

It's why you see all these fantastic filmmakers

you know, like Scorsese, Taxi Driver.

It was a dog day afternoon.

Sidney Lumet.

Francis Ford Coppola. Steven Spielberg. George Lucas.

They were just all of these voices making really signature films

and getting to make them without handcuffs, creatively.

You're looking for things

that you wouldn't have thought would have worked as a movie before.

Because you were reaching a new audience.

Who are you? What have you sacrificed?

And so for Robert, these were things that he understood.

He had a great vision of how these things could work together.

And he helped these guys build Jesus Christ Superstar

into a worldwide phenomenon.

He put together a concert tour

and then the Broadway show

and then the film.

Tell me what you think about...

There's been quite a bit of criticism

from the religious sections of society.

How do you feel about this?

It's a free world, you know.

Let everybody say what they like about anything.

Ever since I was a young boy I played the silver ball

People had wanted to make a movie of Tommy for many years

and the guys would never give them the rights.

And what they knew with Robert was, Robert understood music

and so they felt looked after.

Robert got Jack Nicholson

just as a lark to come in for three days.

And Ann-Margret, and Tina Turner... right after she left Ike.

And she thought Robert was just her savior.

My first official function

with the Stigwood Organization

was the opening of the movie Tommy.

The movie opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre

and then everybody walked to the subway station on a red carpet.

Robert had taken it over.

The following morning, all of these celebrities flew

from the opening in New York to Los Angeles

for the television program that was a 90-minute special.

Tommy Archer is greeting

the celebrities as they arrive

coming into the foyer

for the premiere performance, right here, of Tommy.

It's like an Old Hollywood premiere.

Well, it's... it's a New Hollywood premiere.

I think Robert was more into show business

than music.

The showbiz side of it, that's what he excelled at.

He covered concerts, records, stage, film

he was good at it all.

Plus, he was a good impresario.

I'm a gambler. I act instinctively.

You have to know what people want

and I suppose I'm fairly tuned into that.

Robert really understood

the synthesis of movies, music, and storytelling.

He was always looking for where trends were going

and had such a great nose for what works.

You have to go all the way back

to Elvis Presley, to The Beatles, to rock 'n' roll

and then finally comes disco.

A very large, very lucrative new business of dance music.

Maybe the biggest wave yet.

Because it certainly seems that more and more Americans

are getting more and more into the disco scene.

When I came over to America in the early '70s

New York Magazine hired me to write about music.

It was the beginning of disco.

Disco was essentially gay music and black, gay music.

But it was inclusive, it was all inclusive.

In the '70s, I was living in New York.

We were into jazz

and we thought our world was the hippest.

One night, I went out with my girlfriend

and we went to a disco.

And we just couldn't believe

that there was this whole other, really hip world.

The crowd was such a disparate crowd.

It was Latino, black, gay, straight

but the fact is, is that everybody treated us with love.

In the Black Panthers, we used to call that liberated territory.

And that's what a disco felt like. It was liberated territory.

Robert used to make numerous trips to Paris.

I'm talking about '71, '72.

Going to discotheques on the Left Bank.

It was the place where gay people used to meet and dance.

He used to love people taking enhancing stuff, you know

to be able to enjoy the music

and to experiment with their bodies on the dance floor.

Things that men wouldn't do before that, I think.

Robert was...

How did they put it in Britain?

They... He was a confirmed bachelor.

England, I mean, wasn't the place to be gay, if I may say so

because it was outlawed.

In the '60s, it was a very harsh environment.

You could be fired, disgraced, your family kick you out.

So for gay people

dancing with someone of your own sex

that is a real emblem of liberation.

Before there was ever a Saturday Night Fever

before the disco craze

Robert got it.

He saw that

it was a new phenomena

taking over the world.

Hi, I'm Murray the K.

Murray the K's Hustle

is now Murray the K's Hustle C'est la vie.

After the hustle, suddenly disco was mainstream.

You had secretaries and ordinary guys going up to hustle class.

There were these hustle contests

and disco dance contests

all over the straightest parts of New York.

I went to one

and I met a great, great dancer called Tu Sweet Allen.

And I wrote an article about him in New York Magazine.

Tu Sweet mentioned that there were these Italian clubs in Brooklyn

that were the opposite

from what I thought of as disco culture.

And so, he and I went out there.

It was very, very forlorn in those days.

Bay Ridge, around the clubs, was a desert.

Locked up body shops.

Bay Ridge was a sort of bastion of Italian life.

It was tribal. Everybody was Italian.

So we get out to one of these Italian clubs.

And we walked in, and Tu Sweet went on the dancefloor.

And I would say three seconds, he was jumped on and pounded.

We were out of there in 25 seconds.

And this wasn't just a sort of a stern warning

this was a beat down.

You see 180 from the original Manhattan clubs.

They were misogynist, they were anti-gay.

My God, they were anti-black.

I was an illustrator for New York Magazine.

Nik had said, "There's a whole scene happening at clubs in Brooklyn

that people were paying no attention to."

So the magazine said to me

"I think it'd be really interesting

if you went out with him

and took a camera to look around.

See what you can do."

So we went back

to this converted, sort of supper club

called The 2001 Club.

The club was kind of corny

with these wrought-iron balconies and stuff

which is not to knock it

because it had a great sort of funky charm.

Odyssey wasn't the most elegant place, put it that way.

But what was good about it

they would always have groups, you know.

Every disco group

they had there on a Friday night or Saturday night.

Gloria Gaynor, The Trammps.

That was our home club, 2001 Odyssey.

In Brooklyn, that was one

of the most popular clubs there.

We worked there all the time.

I mean, we were really well-liked.

But, I mean, we didn't come to socialize.

We come there to work, it's our job.

At that time, I don't even think blacks were even allowed

in the neighborhood

because it was an Italian neighborhood.

It was very Italian.

The boys were called "cugines".

The cugine in the car.

Italian guy with the blown-back DA haircut

in their daddy's Cadillac

which was very popular, or maybe a Monte Carlo then.

And had a certain look that they all feeded into.

The gabardine pants, the huckapoo shirts.

When I got my photographs back

there was so much nuance

that was somewhat concealed

in the dim light of the club.

Nuances of expression, of anger, hostility, sadness even.

Girls that got left and were sitting in their booths alone

while everybody else danced.

Guys looking for clues as to how they should behave.

You could really see them assemble in a hierarchy.

What I tapped into was that eternal dreaming.

Someone who is trapped, whose life is going nowhere.

And who, Saturday night, rolls around

has this dream come true.

It was something I'd seen where I grew up in Northern Ireland.

Catholic teenagers, who had no outlet and nowhere to go

dressed as teddy boys

dancing on the sidewalk to "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard.

When I went to London in the early '60s

Mods were just starting

and I'd see them work nine to five in the grunt job

and yet you were a king Mod at the weekend.

I fell in love with the idea of the alternate reality.

You'd watch all the rites and how they interacted.

This extraordinary vanity.

This male, teen-thing of preening, of peacockery.

So when I walked into 2001, I didn't think

this is a specific culture. I just thought, "Here it is again."

New York Magazine called it

"The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night"

which was a rather pretentious title.

When the article came out, Robert called me up.

I said, "You have a movie here already."

I said, "Come to my apartment this afternoon."

Robert said, "Come around for tea."

I think he was attracted to the street feel.

I mean, that's where he would have smelled something real.

My next film's a story about a ghetto

called Bay Ridge in Brooklyn

and Italian kids in dead-end jobs

and how far away Manhattan is.

And a young guy who discovers himself.

It's much more exciting than I tell it.

Robert did not know who would direct it.

He didn't know how it would be cast.

He didn't know what the script would be.

He just knew the skeletal bones

of a fabulous story

which had global appeal

was right there in that New York Magazine.

That was where Robert

was really inspired.

He could see a magazine article like that

and he could see the whole thing.

He said, "This is a movie."

And Robert saw the soundtrack just as being the killer ingredient.

Robert believed that the movie had to have...

That rhythm. The same rhythm you heard in a discotheque.

And right away, he said

"We're gonna get the Bee Gees to write the music."

At the time, the Bee Gees had a couple of bad years.

There were probably two albums that I was involved in

Life in a Tin Can, I remember

one was Mr. Natural, that no one bought.

"They were stiffs," as they say in the record business.

I didn't feel they were really on the right track musically.

And this happens to stars very easily.

They close their ears and just go their own merry way.

And I told them so.

I was saying, "For God's sake.

Listen to what's happening in the world today."

And so what Robert did, which was inspired

was he got Arif Mardin, who was the producer of Average White Band

to produce the next album.

Arif Mardin was a staff producer at Atlantic Records

and would come into

our studio in Miami

with various Atlantic artists.

We were working on Average White Band.

Then one day, he goes

"Boy, have I got a group for you, Karl."

He says, "They sing like angels."

And I said to Arif, "Who's that?" And he goes, "The Bee Gees."

The Bee Gees had major hit records

but they had passed through the success zone.

They had been sort of passed over.

Arif Mardin, though, was a genius.

So he says, "Yeah, it's gonna be a little more R&B."

"A little more rhythm," you know, because that's what the studio was.

And I said, "Well, great, let's do it."

They came in, and I met their band, their house band.

And I think it was about 20 minutes later

that I knew Barry was the leader of the group.

And we hit it off.

We all just, you know, had music in our minds.

Because Atlantic Records was all about R&B.

Arif goes, "You know, we tried to click track, at one point

in the drummers' headphones."

He said, "Karl, are you up for that?" And I said, "Sure."

So I found a metronome hidden way back in the bowels of Criteria

and put a microphone on it, and that became a click.

So that the drummer would have a positive feel

to where those beats belonged.

Jive talkin'...

And everybody in the band heard the same click.

So when Barry played guitar, Barry was grooving

because Barry has amazingly good time.

That became a fundamental approach that we got ahold of, was this pulse.

The difference in our music now and then

is our music is completely

sort of black-orientated now

where it wasn't completely then.

We could play this kind of music that we're doing now.

And we dare not do it

because at that time, people would say, "They didn't."

They wouldn't say, "It was the Bee Gees."

There you go with your fancy lies

Leavin' me lookin' Like a dumbstruck fool

With all your Jive talkin'

It became one of the guiding factors in making a lot of those records

was, "Where's the groove?"

- You read the lyrics? - Yes.

Albhy, I'm ready to sing, got the lyrics finished.

- Love it. - All right.

You sing them, we play them, tape them.

Okay them.

The three people who were in the room

eight hours a day

were me, and Karl, and Barry.

Barry and I loved R&B. We connected on that level.

We were never making disco records.

We were making R&B records with good songs.

At that time, Barry was sort of tapped

into the collective unconscious.

When he'd write a new song

it wouldn't be, "How big of a hit will this be?"

It would be, "How many weeks at number one?"

Main Course, we had three number one records.

When we did "You Should Be Dancing" off Children of the World

Stigwood came into the studio, and he got the vibe.

He says, "Oh, my gosh, this is a hit record."

He could just feel it.

Robert took advantage of that form of music that was all there

and he handed it to the Bee Gees.

So when Saturday Night Fever comes about

the Bee Gees weren't exactly rookies at this.

At the time, they were mixing a live album in France.

Robert said, "Do you have any songs?"

And they said, "Yeah, we've got a few

but we're gonna keep them for our own next album."

So I sent the script to them, you know

thinking they'd like to read it, which was a mistake.

They never read the script.

But about ten days later

I got a package from northern France.

And these songs came piling out, one after the other.

"More Than A Woman", "Night Fever."

"If I Can't Have You."

"How Deep Is Your Love."

And "Stayin' Alive".

And the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

This was extraordinary, to get five demos

of obviously brilliant songs

which is exactly what we wanted for the film.

To have those songs was an enormous boost for me.

We were in pre-production on the movie

and we were really rushing.

We had a start date

because we had John Travolta booked for that time

on his hiatus from his TV show.

You gotta loosen up here, all right? All right, start to relax.

Start to feel who you are.

I said, "A Bar bar bar Bar bar barino"

A Bar bar bar, bar bar barino

A Bar bar bar, bar bar barino

You got me rockin' and reelin' And a boppin' and a reelin'

Barbarino

You're toughen, eh!

Travolta was having a moment as one of these teen idols.

The young, sweeter than thou, male adolescent star

is a multi-million dollar business.

Donny Osmond and "Puppy Love", TV's Partridge Family

created David Cassidy as the newest dreamboat.

FaVE! and STAR! and 16 and Tiger Beat

they tell the kids what their hero wears to bed

and how to get a pillowcase with his picture on it.

Somebody else would have signed him maybe to a film.

But Robert signed him to three films.

Robert paid John a million dollars to do three movies.

At the time, it was the biggest dollar amount

that was ever given to a television star to do a movie.

Everybody was laughing about it.

Because nobody had done that, you know.

Coming from television into feature films.

Travolta, all of the research said

is a television person.

He's not a movie person.

There were a lot of actors that had not transitioned to movies

but Robert just had this instinct about John Travolta.

In 1971

Robert was touring Jesus Christ Superstar

in the States.

Travolta wanted to be cast.

He was very young at the time. He probably was like 15 or 16.

I remember the day my father started saving

for my college education.

It was my tenth birthday

and he opened a savings account

for $10.

"Brian," he said, "you're gonna have it better than me.

You're not gonna have to stand on your feet all day

just to make a buck."

Robert made a note on his yellow pad that this kid will be a great star.

Robert said, "I don't wanna have this star

and then not own him for two more movies.

I'll make him a star and then I'll make him a star

a second time, and then a third time."

Then he had to find those three films.

Well, Grease was sitting there.

Grease was an old show that had been running on Broadway.

The first stage show, Grease, didn't really work.

I mean, it was good, but it wasn't a huge success.

Most people thought it was just a fun '50s revival show.

But Robert saw it was more than that.

Robert said, "What about it for John?"

And sure enough, it was exactly what John wanted.

I get a call from Robert Stigwood.

Stigwood said, "I think this is the kid for us.

Why don't we put him in Grease because he can sing and dance."

And then, when the article came out

Robert said, "This will be just right for Travolta."

So we got Travolta just based on the article.

Do you dance?

I'm gonna get to dance in a film

in January and it's gonna be hot.

Are you scared?

No, it's about discotheques themselves

so I'll be, like, King of the Discos.

He believed in John

and he felt that everything else was gonna fall into place.

But there was no plan for how it was gonna be made.

My job was to make a deal with Paramount Pictures.

Robert spoke directly with Barry Diller.

And they agreed they would be the distributor

and the deal would be financed by us.

We wanted 50% of the gross

and it was compromised at 45% of the gross.

That was the deal.

No one had ever done that.

When George Lucas, who had made a deal for Star Wars at Fox

heard about it, he wanted that deal.

He wanted the Stigwood deal he'd heard about at Paramount.

George told me his lawyers could not believe the deal

that Robert had somehow extracted at Paramount

on this little disco movie.

It helped that Robert was pitching a movie

that none of them really believed in, so they didn't care.

They didn't think it would make money.

They gave him 50%.

Paramount didn't think

it was going to be a hit.

But Robert had an extraordinary instinct.

And he built up this little group of people who he trusted.

I must've looked about 12.

Literally, I had no experience.

What was I doing in that job?

At this point, I'm like in my early twenties.

I'm basically running the show

and I have no experience.

And I said to Robert, "Well, now what are we gonna do?"

And he said, "You gotta go get a director."

So I had this magazine article.

Then I'm going around to various agencies.

I go to CAA, I go to William Morris.

Basically, nobody was that interested in anything I had to say.

I go to this guy, Marvin Moss.

And I'm talking to him about a particular client

and he says to me, "You know what, kid, my directors do movies.

They don't do magazine articles."

In that time, articles, they weren't turned into films.

I mean, Tom Wolfe wrote all those, you know, very famous articles

but they weren't turned into movies.

It was just something that didn't happen.

I had been in California for, like, three days to go back to the hotel.

And I make a reservation to come back to New York.

And I figure, "I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

And the phone rings, and it's Marvin Moss who calls me

and he sort of says, "I was on a long phone call with a client

who you wanted to talk to.

He's read the article and he's interested

but you should see his movie first."

You could see it in New York. When are you going back?

And I said, "Over the weekend.

My boss is gonna be there."

And, you know, so Stigwood needs to see the movie, and...

So Robert and I go to see Rocky before it's released.

And we hire John Avildsen.

And Avildsen said, "I wanna work with this guy, Norman Wexler."

Norman Wexler is a guy

who's literally just gotten out of a mental institution

is a famous bipolar cat, and had written a bunch of movies.

And after each one of them

he sort of would have this manic flip and set his life on fire.

Avildsen said, "If you want gritty, this is what he makes.

He's a little crazy but he's someone I admire very greatly."

I go down to his apartment in Chelsea

which consists of a bed, a table and two chairs

and this guy who chain smokes.

I've never supervised a script before.

I'd go at like two in the afternoon when he got up

and he would show me the pages he had written the night before.

And it was fantastic.

Stigwood loved it.

And when Travolta read the script, he loved it too.

When I first saw it, I said, "Jee, you know, this character

seems like he's underwater most of the time."

But then every once in a while, he comes up out

and sees everything exactly how it is.

And has so much knowledge about, like, he knows everything.

When Robert saw the first draft of the screenplay

and his heart was pounding.

He said, "Freddie, this director, this screenplay, it's all here.

It's all in the script. I could see it. I could visualize it.

This is the movie."

I was living in Hollywood Hills.

In my condo building

there was this young lady that was on a soap opera.

We were out by the pool one day

and she said, "You've done a lot of dancing shows, haven't you?"

I said, "Yeah."

She goes, "My manager is Bob Lamont, now he manages John Travolta."

She goes, "Well, they've got this script

that they're gonna use for John

and they're looking for a choreographer."

And now Bob lived up in the Hills, about a mile away.

So I drove over to his house. I come in the front door.

I didn't even know what the movie was about

but I knew I had a chance, so I moved all the furniture.

He had a nice stereo system

and I found "Jungle Boogie" by Kool and the Gang.

And I just started doing all the steps.

The knee drops, the clock splits, locking up.

Those knee drops, up and down, I picked up a lot of those steps

from Don Campbell, and The Lockers, and Soul Train.

So the next thing I know, they called me in, at Paramount.

They said, "We're signing you up to teach this man how to dance."

John Travolta said

"Everything I do, I want it to be great."

I would take him to these clubs

and he started discovering the nightlife

and the dancing and the music.

He was like a sponge.

I just tried to work

on making him a really good, believable street dancer.

One night, Kevin McCormick and Robert Stigwood come in

to see what we're doing

and where we're going with this dancing.

We went side-by-side

and start doing the step backs, the crazy legs, the wavy arms

and all the steps.

We got through, and it was dead silence, you know.

Nobody said anything, they'd all look over at Stigwood.

And all of a sudden, Robert Stigwood got this big smile on his face.

He goes, "I love it."

When Rocky came out

John Avildsen became a maniac.

He and John Travolta

went from loving each other to he was impatient with John.

He thought he was too fat. He thought he needed to train.

He didn't think he could dance.

John takes everything incredibly seriously

and had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do dance-wise.

And Avildsen wasn't, you know

he couldn't even select a choreographer

and never could really quite key into what it was gonna look like.

He just gets more and more impatient.

He decides he doesn't like Norman's script

which we all loved.

At this point, Stigwood called me to say, "What's going on?"

And I said, "There's something else.

John has decided that he doesn't wanna use the Bee Gees' music."

And he said, "Really?

Call John and tell him

to be at my apartment tomorrow morning at ten o'clock

and you should be there too."

So Avildsen and I show up. We're there, waiting.

Stigwood comes in

and he said, "John, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is

you've just been nominated for

an Academy Award for Rocky.

The bad news is, you're fired."

And I said to Robert, "What do we do now?"

And he goes, "Go out, go get a director."

So I came out to California.

There was a director, John Badham, who I'd met

who'd just been fired off of The Wiz.

My agent said to me

"Do not read this script.

They want you to do this

but I wanna make a deal first

before you go and read it."

And I said, "Oh, okay, oh, yeah."

So I promptly started reading it.

Well, like an hour and a quarter later

I'm running around our little house at that time

going, "This is great. Oh, my God."

The characters, the dialogue, the situation.

Everything about the Tony Manero character

just leaps off the page.

I'm a guy who was, A, born in England

B, raised in Birmingham, Alabama

had been in Brooklyn, maybe, once.

And what I knew about dancing

was the dance classes my mother sent me to

when I was 12 or 13 years old.

And yet, for me, it jumped off the page.

And only as I'm on a plane two days later to go to New York

to get this thing shooting in two-and-a-half weeks

that I go, "Oh, my holy God. This is a musical."

I get to New York, and I go to meet Robert

and one of the first things he does is hand me a little tape cassette

and he says, "My boys, the Bee Gees

have done five demos that we're gonna use in this movie."

And he said, "Three of them are gonna number one hits."

We started production flying

by the seat of our pants, you know.

All the locations weren't locked down.

You know, it was a $3,500,000 movie.

It's not like it's a luxurious studio budget.

We were shooting the movie at the same time

as me getting the music. We were really rushing

because, you know, I'd never done it before.

I didn't know that you had to get a sync pulse and a click track

all this stuff, you know.

It was like, we were sort of making it up as we went along.

There was something quite wonderful about being in that neighborhood.

You have to fill the club with extras that can dance, you know.

Better that they're people from the neighborhood

who get this, you know?

I did the movie when I was 20 years old.

My brother and I would compete

in dance contests.

They did a contest for the movie.

At the end of the contest, we won

we would get one day in the movie.

We ended up walking in, Saturday afternoon.

And I was a little, like, starstruck.

John Travolta was in the corner, reading his lines.

Karen Lynn Gorney was there.

So I said, "Oh, my God, this is really it," you know.

The most beautiful memory for me, and this is straight up, no lie.

John Travolta stopped reading his lines when we stopped dancing.

He came right over to me

and he put out his hand, and he said, "You guys are great.

You're wonderful. My name is John."

And I said, "Well, who don't know that?"

My brother goes, "Yeah, okay, like I don't know that."

I was like, "Shut up."

We have Elizabeth and Joseph Curcio.

Give them a hand!

To be in a movie, with John Travolta, I couldn't believe it.

And once it got out, it was like an epidemic.

The whole 86th Street.

Our very first day of filming

you couldn't turn anywhere

without seeing people.

Even if you looked straight up

you were seeing kids hanging over the building.

We had to shut down by lunchtime. We could not shoot.

Mr. Stigwood, in a short period of time

has developed a reputation

as being someone who knows exactly what he wants.

How much control does he have over the people who work for him?

Well, I think...

the great thing about...

doing pictures with him would be

that he likes the artists to have a lot of say so.

Because I think he trusts artists' instincts.

One of the most important things

working with Robert is that

he gave that kind of freedom

within the projects.

To get a lot

of your own creative ideas in there.

And he really did, I must say.

John had a very evolved sense

of what the dance solo should be like

and really thought it should be covered in a specific way.

And his imagination led him to what it had to be

to be excellent.

And when he saw the dailies

Badham had a much more ordinary version of it.

You know, it wasn't anywhere near captured

the way he had slaved for about 18 months

to really make it look fantastic.

The first time we saw the dailies

there were a couple of places

where we went, "Why did you do that?"

And he said, "When you're ready to shoot it my way

then, you know, I'll be in my trailer."

The movie literally shut down for three days.

John wouldn't go back to work.

He just couldn't imagine finishing this out

because Badham had screwed it up.

And Robert had to be a peacemaker to sort of put it back together again

so we could get everybody back up on the high wire of making the movie.

We really talked about it, and argued a little bit

and he said, "Well, if you really feel that strongly about it

it must be, it must be right."

Absolutely, he was right.

So I went into John's trailer

and said, '"Okay, come on, we're gonna do this.

You're right. I take your point. I'm sorry. So we'll go and fix it."

In the end, it was rather simple coverage

that sells it, you know.

That really gave you how magnificent it was.

I always think about John

as being incandescent in that moment, you know.

He becomes that character.

Oh, hey.

For me, it was both an incredibly intense experience.

But I kept thinking, like, "How lucky am I?"

Every day, I couldn't wait to get there, you know.

And I think everybody sort of felt the same way

because they knew something special was going on.

I was on the lot in Paramount Studios that summer.

We were editing the movie.

I was doing Grease at the same time.

We were shooting Grease in Venice, California.

So we were going from "Summer Nights"

or something like that to "Night Fever" at night.

And I remember they said, "How's your little disco movie?"

That was the phrase I got from Michael Eisner, of all people.

He was the president of the studio.

He had Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

A movie with Richard Gere scheduled for Christmas.

That was the Paramount Christmas picture.

And the idea that Robert wanted this little disco movie

to come out before it, and to come out in more screens

was absurd to Eisner.

You know, people think Saturday Night Fever

somehow kicked off disco. It actually didn't.

It was dying on its feet when we came out with that movie

I have to tell you.

Disco was almost over. I was worried we were too late.

I remember, when I'd finished mastering the album

I was up all night in Hollywood at Capitol Records.

I had the album that I'd been working on for nearly a year-and-a-half

in the back of my car

and I was stopped at a traffic light on the way home

on the Brea in Hollywood.

And in front of me, there was a truck

and on the bumper sticker said "Death to Disco."

I remember calling Robert.

I said, you know, "I've got a feeling we might be too late."

Saturday Night Fever did not do well in its sneak preview.

We flew to Ohio.

People weren't quite sure what to make of it.

When we got the so-called "focus group" report

it said, "Saturday Night Fever

sounds like a venereal disease you pick up on a Saturday night.

Boy in a white suit. Subliminally, that's a sissy boy."

You know, all these silly things.

For a movie, musical, it's quite dark, you know.

There's the rape scene

and then, you know, the scenes in the back of the car

and the guy, you know, falling off the bridge.

This is not your grandma's musical.

Tony!

- Look at me! - Look at you punk.

Bobby, get down! It's too dangerous!

The language alone

we had endless discussions about taking all the language out.

Fuck the future!

No, Tony, you can't fuck the future.

Because it was full of F words

that Paramount just couldn't get their heads around.

Come on, fuckhead!

Hey, the son of a fuck won't budge!

Robert was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel

bungalow five or ten.

Barry Diller and the execs at Paramount met with Robert.

They had breakfast.

And Barry said

"There's too many fucks into the script.

And it's bad for the audience, for the young audience.

What can I do to sweeten you off?"

And, "Can you take a few of the fucks out of the script?"

And Robert said, "How many do you want?"

"Well, at least five. There are about 20, at least five."

Robert said, "Well, five, that's 5% extra off the gross."

And Barry, "You've got a deal."

Ultimately, Robert, I think, agreed to one dirty word being taken out.

I remember very vividly.

I'm in the airport, getting ready

to get on a plane to LA

and somebody paged me

and I thought, "Who the hell that is?"

And I picked up the phone.

Michael Eisner got on the phone and started screaming at me.

I think he had just watched the new cut of the movie.

"Who do you think you are? What are you doing?"

He just went on, and on...

He was enraged that there was still a lot of language in the movie.

When I told Stigwood...

he thought it was the funniest thing ever.

And it made him absolutely determined that it was done.

And that's exactly what it was gonna be.

Robert was very driven by the idea, "You can't do that."

The moment any suit said to him, "You can't do that"

it was, "Right, roll up your sleeves. Here we go, lads."

Paramount made clear that they were not really gonna push it.

I had no idea what we had.

I didn't even know it was a musical.

I was walking down the street on Central Park West

and I ran into Robert Stigwood

and he said, "Do you wanna come upstairs and listen to music?"

I can say, categorically, I went up and listened to it

and I had no idea it was a musical still.

That was the thing that triggered Robert

to go and do what no one had done before.

Release the soundtrack before the film came out.

He instinctively knew that he could use that to water anticipation

And that, more than any trailer, the music from the movie

would really compel people to wanna come and see what it was.

Eventually, Michael Eisner said

"How will we know if your record's a hit?"

And Robert said, "Guarantee it, it will be a hit.

It'll be number one." "How will we know?"

He said, "Okay.

If it's number one, then you give me 250 more screens."

"If the next one goes number one, you give me 500 more screens."

It was an escalating thing. He wrote this all down.

So they went with it.

But of course, he had the last laugh.

We were number one seven times with it.

Every time you turned on the radio, you heard, "How Deep Is Your Love"

"Stayin' Alive", "Night Fever", "More Than A Woman"

and "If I Can't Have You."

Four singles from Saturday Night Fever

have hit number one since the album's released.

More than from any other new album in history.

The album Saturday Night Fever

is projected to sell some 12 million copies.

Right, take that. Now can you put it in the dumpster?

The album has sold more than ten million copies

on its way to being the biggest selling album of all time.

I was skiing in Vail, Colorado.

I think it opened December 7

this was, like, two weeks earlier.

And I heard the guy at the lift at the bottom

and I heard "Stayin' Alive".

And then I went up to the top of the lift, the top of the lift

and went to the restaurant, and there was "Stayin' Alive".

I called up Barry Diller and I said, "Do we have a hit here?"

Presenting the world premiere

of Paramount Pictures' Saturday Night Fever

starring John Travolta.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is John Travolta.

The movie is Saturday Night Fever.

And the star is John Travolta disco-dancing his way to fame.

Ladies and gentlemen, will you welcome, the Bee Gees.

- Did you get Saturday Night Fever? - I do, I have Saturday Night Fever.

- Did you disco dance? - I discoed on down.

- Me too, I had such fun. - Okay.

When the film did open, and it opened massively to a lot of screens

the cinema operator was immediately asking for more prints.

They wanted to add more screens.

Paramount said, "The cinemas are billing us

for the ushers they are having to bring in

to stop the dancing in the aisles."

Saturday Night Fever put rock 'n' roll to bed with a bad cold.

Saturday Night Fever has apparently revived disco fever.

Hundreds are rushing to schools to learn the right steps.

What it did, was it gave disco

another, maybe, five more years of life.

In the year or two after Fever came out

you couldn't go to a single night club anywhere in the world

without people wearing white suits, and chains and dancing like Travolta.

Everybody was going to the clubs

dressing up, fixing their hair, looking good.

People that would never dance, never wanna dance

wanted to be John Travolta.

To me, it was always just this little magazine story.

And then suddenly, it wasn't.

I met Robert in '78 in France

when he was having so much success coming through.

I was driving a limo.

One afternoon, I was sent to the airport with two other limos

to pick up a group of people coming from London.

I can see this lovely group, young people arriving.

All smiling and full of fun.

And then, Robert is amongst them, with a white scarf.

And he picks my car.

Robert said, "Can you put the radio on?"

"Okay," and of course, as soon as we put the radio on

"Stayin' Alive" is blasting through the loudspeakers.

He says, "This is my music."

I said, "No, you're not a musician"

and he said, "No, I'm the producer of the film."

Could I ask, for example

what Saturday Night Fever has grossed, thus far?

I think around 110 million at the moment, in America.

And what do you anticipate after it's all wrapped up

in a nice big bag?

I would think something in the region of 250 million.

It's a very popular film.

Robert said to me, "You stay on, I'm gonna use you.

I need to go to Sanremo. I'm buying a yacht."

Everything is moving forward.

He's getting his toy, his big yacht.

Money was flowing in.

And the album?

The album, I think, is nearing

18 million double albums worldwide, if I can remember.

But that would be the record breaker of all time.

Yes, it's already the biggest grossing album

in the history of music.

When that movie came out, we worked every day.

Wasn't a day we didn't work.

It was unbelievable, you know, how much money we made.

Had a suitcase going to the bank.

The Bee Gees were a little surprised, like everybody else.

It just mushroomed beyond what expectations would be.

They had a 727 plane, Spirits Having Flown.

They sold out Dodger Stadium in LA.

They sold out Madison Square Garden for five nights in a row.

I don't think anybody really foresaw the phenomenon of this movie

other than Robert Stigwood and John Travolta.

I remember, when we were shooting Grease

John asking me, like, "So, what do you think about Fever?"

Because he wanted to know how it was shaping.

I said, "Well, you look great, you look fantastic."

He said, "No, is there any chance

for, maybe like, an Academy recognition for it?"

And I thought, "Oh, my God, this is ridiculous.

This is not an Academy movie. Are you nuts?"

Johnny!

Well, he had the last laugh.

He got a nomination, Academy role for it.

- How are you? - You wanna win tonight?

- Sure, why not? - What would the win mean tonight?

Terrific, terrific validation.

See you later.

Robert was so relieved that he was right in every which way.

Fever came out, and then Grease.

No reason why kids should have liked it

but Stigwood, brilliantly, got enough new music into it

that it was both recognizable but new again.

Robert said, "I want two hit songs."

This really happened, just like this.

He said, "I want two songs

that could go with this script, with this character.

And if I have two hits, I could sell this album."

They wrote "You're the One That I Want"

and "Hopelessly Devoted to You"

and it worked.

Grease sold 28 million albums. This was a big deal.

Those two movies, Saturday Night Fever and Grease

carried Paramount through several fiscal quarters.

Robert, I'm over the moon about our three-picture deal

and that it has become so successful.

The winner is, Evita, producer Robert Stigwood.

I mean, from about '75 to '80

almost everything that was successful

was Robert Stigwood.

You know, Grease, Tommy, Superstar, Evita

RSO Records, the Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever.

He had all these things going at once, more or less.

He's on the cover of Newsweek.

And, you know, we used to joke to him and say to each other

"If only they knew how mad this all is."

There was so much money flowing in at the time.

In the New York office

the flower bills were something like $15,000 a month.

I mean, the amount of money that was spent by everybody in the office

I would say, was just staggering.

But, you know, "It was there to be enjoyed."

That's what Robert said, you know.

"Rather my guys enjoy it.

Rather than pay the IRS too much money."

You know, and within a couple of years, you know...

it had started to change.

Turn all the lights off.

This sign was the original sign used

when they made all the posters for Saturday Night Fever.

Or so it says.

Let's give them the salute

ladies and gentlemen.

It's time to ring out the old

and bring in the new!

Because we've got something to say about that.

I hate disco music

Those disco music really sucks

That's right.

I hate disco music

Those disco music really sucks

I think it was that natural pushback

that anything really successful gets at some point.

They had become so mainstream that anywhere you went in the world

the weddings, funerals, they always played disco music.

- I hate disco. It's a snore. - Yeah?

I think it sucks, man.

Disco sucks. Disco is a disease.

Why does it suck? Because that's something gay men do.

It was about the fact that these people

were asserting themselves and shouldn't have.

I saw Ted Nugent last Saturday, you know what he said about it?

He said he was glad for disco

because it kept them away from his concerts.

"Those guys don't come close to me, boy."

Fifty thousand people got in

before the White Sox called upon Chicago Police

to help close the gate.

It was build a Disco Demolition Night.

Then came the main event.

A crate of disco records was blown up in centerfield.

It was directed very much

at the Bee Gees more than disco, I think.

It was they were fed up with the Bee Gees, it was weird.

The Bee Gees were upset about that, you know.

Having their records burnt in the middle of a ballpark.

Who wouldn't be?

We're not really a disco group, we do all kinds of music.

And what happened with Saturday Night Fever

is we actually were asked to write the music and we did, so...

And they used the film as a disco film

which we didn't... weren't aware that is what they were gonna do

that it was gonna be done.

And the music... I think the songs... stand on their own apart from disco.

If "Stayin' Alive" had come out five years ago

no one would have called it a disco record.

It's as simple as that.

Saturday Night Fever was the apotheosis of disco.

And then all bets were off.

The film definitely expedited disco's death.

It took the mystery out of it.

There was no cool scene around it anymore.

Once, everybody is going out in Suburbia, USA

and pretending that they're John Travolta

it's done, it's done.

Anything that big, it has to end.

The success, I knew, was gonna be a problem.

The movie Saturday Night Fever grossed record earnings

and escalated actor John Travolta to the heights of superstardom.

Practically, everyone involved made a bundle on the film.

But there's one man who says he should've made a bundle, but didn't.

And he's taking action to see to it that he does.

Some guy who said he spoke to Nik in Brooklyn

somebody quite specific, took it to court.

What makes you think that Tony Manero is you?

I know because I was interviewed by Nik Cohn

who wrote the original script

"Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night"

and it was developed from

that article from New York Magazine.

From what I understood

Nik Cohn came down to the club one night

was observing stuff.

I'm not sure, don't quote me on.

I know... somebody was interviewing somebody.

Basically, there was a guy coming down, asking about this.

You know, all different questions.

In filing the suit, what are you really after?

I would like Paramount themselves

to come out and admit that I'm the character

and I would like these writers to back down

and admit that it's my original gem.

That lawsuit went on for a number of years.

And in the end, Nik said

"I don't know what this guy's talking about.

I made it up."

I made up the main character

and built him around a mod I had known in London in the '60s.

There was a certain degree of authenticity about it

in the sense that I had watched the various rituals.

So the attitudes of the main character

in terms of his mates, that was observed.

The actual character himself did not exist.

I have to say I made that up.

They were guesses.

And trying to put myself in somebody else's shoes.

When I looked at any group of young teenagers, in any culture

it was just, "I wonder what it's like to be that way."

So my imagination would go, and...

and that's what came out.

So he didn't even really talk to some kid named Tony Manero?

Oh, my God.

For a long time, he had just an infallible touch

and then, suddenly, he didn't.

Moment by Moment was a disaster and humiliating to him.

A horrifically bad movie.

It may be too early to pick the worst movies of the year

but it is not too early to cite one of the worst movies

in the past ten years.

Maybe the worst big-budget movie ever made.

It is Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The Sgt. Pepper film and album just was a disaster.

It was a bad idea, looking back on it.

But I'm trying to remember what other flops he had.

We did the sequel to Saturday Night Fever

called Staying Alive which was not enjoyable for me.

Stallone was the director

and I was the English meat in this rather weird Italian sandwich

with Travolta on one side, and Stallone on the other

and it was me in the middle

as producer of the film by then.

But, I mean, we were just retreading.

And I think Robert's interest sort of

well, really, it went away.

And he folded up his record company, and moved to Bermuda

and never really went back.

He decided to lift his foot a little bit

and go into yachting for a couple of years.

- Oh, wow, look at this! - Look at that!

He had his retreat in Bermuda, a beautiful place in Bermuda

where he would spend, you know, months on end.

He became fantastically wealthy.

I watched Robert make, you know, a billion dollars for Paramount

within three years

I think 300 million of it wound up in his pocket.

If you sell 22 million soundtrack albums

and you're averaging $4 an album as your profit

that's $88,000,000 more

and you're not splitting that with the studio

because Paramount never had a piece of the album.

The studio wasn't interested in soundtracks.

They said soundtracks don't sell. So he said, "Fine, I'll keep it."

Which was kind of a mistake on their part, I think.

That was probably one of Robert's lasting great achievements

is to wake up the synergy between records and film.

You saw the film, you'd buy the album.

You listened to the album, you'd go to the movie.

The soundtrack became part of the way

that you looked at a movie's success or failure.

You know, Urban Cowboy.

Let's see if there's a country music application to it.

It just became this crazy phenomenon.

Top Gun was successful on its own but music certainly helped it.

And it went on for a really long time.

Robert really did change a lot of things.

The good news was he made more money

than he ever could have imagined.

And I suppose, the bad news is, once he did that

I think the incentive to keep working

to keep plugged in, to keep looking for new things went away.

There was a great loneliness at the heart of him.

He was always very unsure of himself.

Pink faced, not comfortable, he was never comfortable.

He was only close to the people who were in his very immediate circle.

Basically, lived with him.

I mean, the beautiful boys came in and out.

Well, I had you...

If you didn't make that move

I had you checkmate.

He fell in love with Barry, with me, with everyone around him.

And then, all you had to do was put the record straight.

And that was it, then he was happy to be around you.

So he wasn't pushing anything to anyone.

Yes, they're cheating again.

Would you believe that?

The two, he gives him advice.

His deepest instinct, I think, was still to just charge, madly.

Don't think about the odds, just keep going.

But that's impossible to sustain.

There comes a day where you just can't keep doing that.

And the cultures have moved on

and you no longer have the feel for it.

And part of the art is, at that point, getting off the train.

And that's what he did.