“HW, did you ever hear the philosophy that once a man admits that he’s wrong that he is immediately forgiven for all wrongdoings?”

Oral history articles are like my crack, and I’ve seen Pulp Fiction about a billion times, so Vanity Fair’s new oral history of Pulp Fiction was of obvious interest. Casting is a particularly tricky part of development, and it’s always fun to play the “what if” game (Nick Nolte as Han Solo?!? Nic Cage as Superman?!?). Some Pulp Fiction what-ifs and almost-weres include Daniel Day-Lewis as Vincent Vega, Paul Calderon as Jules Winfield, and Matt Dillon as Butch.

Harvey Weinstein was dead-set against giving the role of Vincent Vega to John Travolta. “John Travolta was at that time as cold as they get,” says Mike Simpson, Tarantino’s agent at William Morris Endeavor. “He was less than zero.” Simpson had given Weinstein a “term sheet” of Taran­tino’s demands, which included final cut, a two-and-a-half-hour running time, and final choice of actors. “One of the actors I had on the list was John Travolta,” says Tarantino. “And it came back: ‘The entire list is approved . . . except for John Travolta.’ So I got together with Harvey, and he’s like, ‘I can get Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn, William Hurt.’” By then, according to Simpson, “Daniel Day-Lewis and Bruce Willis, who was the biggest star in Hollywood, had both gotten their hands on the script and wanted to play Vincent Vega.”

John Travolta was washed up before Pulp Fiction, he was amazing in Pulp Fiction, and he hasn’t really done anything great since. Casting Travolta wasn’t like Christoph Waltz, where Tarantino discovered this amazing actor that no one had seen before. Travolta was around, but no one else thought he had it in him. I don’t know how many times Tarantino had to watch Look Who’s Talking coked out of his face to see that role in Travolta, but it’s one of the all-time serendipitous castings, where persona and role lined up just perfectly. It’s also fun to imagine Daniel Day-Lewis doing Pulp Fiction lines all perfectly enunciated in his Daniel Plainview voice. “Now HW, eating a bitch out and giving a bitch a foot massage ain’t even the same thing!” (I know that’s a Jules line, but I don’t care).

Bruce Willis’s interest in the project relieved Weinstein’s concerns that the movie lacked bankable stars. With the main role of Vincent Vega already cast, the only option for Willis was Butch, the boxer—which Tarantino had promised to Matt Dillon.

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Before we start making fun of John Travolta, let’s remember that he does a lot of charity work, recently donating money and supplies to Hurricane Sandy relief, and he’s been known to fly planeloads of supplies to disaster areas like Haiti and Hurricane Katrina. That he’s doing a Christmas Album with his old Grease co-star Olivia Newton-John might just be him being a good guy helping an old friend make some easy money. Or he just really likes to sing and dance. Probably a combination of both. (He also made a music video with his daughter once upon a time.)

Anyway, blah blah blah, me talking. Below you can watch John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in their video for “I Think You Might Like It,” of their upcoming album, This Christmas, which I’ve helpfully giffed for you above. You know what, song title? You thought right, I do like it. It’s a sweet little slice of pie about the joys of seeing old friends and wearing black t-shirts. They’re comfortable and slimming. Enjoy.
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Scientologists take a lot of crap, probably because they’ve dedicated their lives to a crazy story about alien spirits a science fiction writer made up to scam rich people. But what no one wants to talk about, is that if you pay L. Ron Hubbard enough money, you can heal the sick the sick with mind bullets like that dude from The Green Mile. Something like that. Anyway, that’s what John Travolta used to help a man with a broken ankle in Shanghai recently, this according to Scientology’s official paper.

The Saturday Night Fever star, who has been studying Scientology since 1975, spoke about the incident in the controversial religion’s latest edition of their publication, Celebrity Magazine.
“I was in Shanghai recently at a work event and the Master of Ceremonies’ best friend had recently gotten into a car wreck. He had broken his ankle and was in constant pain.”
“I asked him permission to do some Scientology assists and he said, ‘Okay sure’.
“People were standing around watching as I did them. You could actually see him confronting the pain and after a while he looked up at me and said ‘I feel better’ so I said ‘Okay end of assist.’
“He had gotten noticeably better and I was chomping at the bit for more.” [Celebuzz]

“He BLINDED me with SCIENCE!” added the man, boogieing down the street on his once-broken ankle.

Sometimes I pretend to be a powerful Scientologist, and I head down to the ICU at the local hospital, and I ask patients if I can do a Scientology assist. And then when they agree, I pull out my wiener and say, “here, hold onto the e-meter!” and everyone has a good laugh. Teaching patients to laugh again is the hardest part about treating a terminal illness.

Meanwhile, following his latest assist, Travolta is only 57 behind all-time assist leader John Stockton. Though some say Karl Malone was just carrying him all those years.

[banner pic is from John Travolta's Christmas album. Yes, this year's Christmas album.]

John Travolta, no stranger to doing embarrassing things, is apparently releasing a Christmas album with his former Grease co-star Olivia Newton-John. On the embarrassment scale, I’d rate this three Hairsprays, a Battlefield Earth, and half a music video tie-in for Old Dogs starring your daughter.

Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta are reuniting for a Christmas album, called This Christmas. The album will have an original duet written by the “You’re the One That I Want” writer and guest spots by Barbra Streisand (really?), Kenny G, Cliff Richard, Tony Bennett, James Taylor and Chick Corea. [BoyCulture via Gawker]

What, Yanni was busy? I imagine this is directed at the consumer who gave up any illusions of their own hipness many, many years ago. It might as well say “for your weird aunt” on the cover. And, while it’s easy to make jokes about John Travolta not even trying to hide his sexuality anymore, maybe he’s just being a good guy and doing an old friend a solid, and we shouldn’t make fun of him for being nice. Olivia Newton-John’s ex-boyfriend allegedly faked his own death a few years ago, and it’s quite possible the money isn’t exactly rolling in anymore. Though she did star in a direct-to-DVD musical about hockey a few years back. If you think Score: A Hockey Musical sounds awesome now, wait till you see that the trailer has two record scratches in the first 30 seconds.

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I worked very hard on this Photoshop

Penny Marshall recently wrote a memoir, My Mother is Nuts, which is apparently full of Hollywood stories in addition to the usual blah blah my family stuff that’s always in memoirs (kudos to Penny for not revealing some decades-old story of molestation and/or drug use to promote her book, that alone speaks to her being a class act). Movieline recently published an excerpt from the book detailing the development process for Big, and we all love playing the old they wanted Nick Nolte for Han Solo?!?, what-if game. Basically Penny Marshall wanted what she says were the three biggest box office stars of the day: Tom Hanks (the eventual winner, obviously), Dennis Quaid (HAHAHA), and future Stephen Baldwin defendant Kevin Costner. They all passed at first, but she eventually got Robert DeNiro interested and leveraged his interest to have her pick of the litter. The whole thing is a bit rambly and she does that punctuating-the-importance-of-a-thought-by-making-it-its-own-paragraph thing, so I’ve edited liberally. I’ll just start with my favorite bit first:

To make the high concept work, I wanted it to be real and believable. The biggest challenge would be casting the lead. I went straight to the three big box-office stars at the time: Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, and Dennis Quaid. All of them passed. Everyone passed. I tried a different approach. I looked for the kid who would be Josh’s best friend, and I picked Jared Rushton. He had the most spunk of those I saw. He worked well as I brought in actors, including Sean Penn, who was terrific but too young, and Andy Garcia, who was also great, though one of the studio executives said, “We don’t want to spend eighteen million on a kid who grows up to be Puerto Rican.”

That was how they talked.

“He’s Cuban,” I said.

Haaaa. Oh, Hollywood execs. “This kid is supposed to be from Bergen County, New Jersey! We can’t have him be Hispanic! They only make up… the vast majority of the population there!” Man, I wonder what they’d have done if they’d known he was born with a malformed siamese twin growing out of his shoulder. Additional trivia: He also played “Vince Mancini” in Godfather 3. That’s me!

I sense I’ve digressed.

I also read Gary Busey, who had the energy of a child, but I didn’t think he could pull off playing an adult.

Gary Busey actually has the energy of three coyotes and some of the rabbits they’ve eaten, on account of the coyote necklace he wears, which is made out of some coyotes that he killed and ate. He wears it as a talisman whenever he goes out for headbutts.

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