Take a gander at what John Travolta had to say about playing a woman, Edna Turnblad, in the new movie version of Hairspray (based on the stage musical, which was based on the original film):
He had to spend up to five hours a day encased in a full body suit weighing more than 30lb with five separate gel-filled silicone prosthetic appliances for parts of Edna’s face. But it had its compensations.
“I’m happy to be a man, but I miss being groped,” he says, laughing. “Everybody tried to grope me all day. Suddenly having breasts and a big bottom gained me so much attention. Men and women wanted to feel my breasts and feel my bum. I must be a slut because I didn’t care. Men were flirting with me and I was being given power I never had before. I found it fascinating. Women have power I didn’t know they had.”
Gosh! Being groped is actually empowering! Who knew? All this time I thought the power belonged to the groper, the person who was invading your space and putting his hands on your body, whether you wanted him to or not. Turns out that gropers are actually powerless at the sight of breasts and a big bottom! Ladies, stop complaining — you really enjoy lording it over those helpless, helpless men!
Jesus. Gosh, John, did you ever think that maybe the reason you’re enjoying getting groped is that you’re on a movie set, you know the groping’s all in good fun, and everyone else knows this is a woman-suit, and everyone knows that not only can you not actually feel the groping, but that you’re a big star with a lot of power already, and you can take off the prosthetics at the end of the day and go back to being John Travolta?
Not exactly getting your tits squeezed by some asshole on the train, when you can’t get away. Not exactly getting your ass goosed by your boss and having to take it because you need the job.
As offensive as *that* is, and oh, it is — there’s more. Check out the male anxiety on display here:
When you’ve been a sexy teen idol, a tough action star, danced with Diana, Princess of Wales and been nominated for two Oscars, you think long and hard when someone asks you to put on a dress and portray an outsized, overly protective mother.
And here:
“When they asked me to be Edna Turnblad I said, ‘Gee, 32 years as a leading man… why me? What makes you think I’d be the perfect woman?’
And let’s talk about what John thought about being the “perfect woman.” Edna Turnblad is a lower-middle-class housewife who takes in laundry and is married to a man who owns a joke shop. She wears housedresses, and doesn’t go out of the house much. Both Divine and Harvey Fierstein, who originated the Edna role on Broadway, played Edna as a frumpy woman who’d given up on trying to be pretty and didn’t quite believe her husband found her beautiful. Part of her anxiety about Tracy getting on the Corny Collins Show was that Tracy would be laughed at for trying to fit in because she was fat. In other words, Edna was projecting her own anxieties about being fat and feeling worthless onto her daughter, who — unlike her mother — didn’t have a demoralizing inner critic. And part of the fun of both the original movie and the stage version was seeing Edna’s rejecting the voice of that inner critic and following her daughter’s lead into fabulousness. Indeed, Edna’s transformation from “greasy Gorgon” to Edna! Turnblad! Diva! Extraordinaire! occurs in the stage musical during “Big, Blonde and Beautiful,” with Motormouth Maybelle (played in the original movie by Ruth Brown, and in the new movie by Queen Latifah, which tells you a little about how glammed-up the new movie is. Motormouth Maybelle is supposed to be a woman who’s not innately glamorous but has made herself that way).
Oh, but Travolta was having none of that. No frumpiness for him!
He was so determined to create the Edna he wanted that he rejected several versions of the fat suit designed for him until he was given one he considered made her suitably curvaceous and voluptuous.
“It wasn’t real to me to make her like a refrigerator,” he says. “I said, ‘Make her as big as you want as long as you give her a waist and make her pretty because it will be more interesting, more appealing and more entertaining.’ I wanted people to enjoy looking at her, because if she’s grotesque, it’s not fun.”
“My challenge was making sure I was convincing as a woman, so I drew on a library of memories of watching great female performances in the theatre and on film and in my family, and I used role models like Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Elizabeth Taylor… these women with voluptuous shapes.”
Yeah, who wants to see a frumpy Edna Turnblad? Too bad nobody saw the original movie or the stage version, both of which featured a frumpy Edna Turnblad. And why the voluptuous shapes (from the NYT)?:
Having grown up the youngest of six children in a bohemian working-class family in Englewood, N.J., he modeled his idea of a watchable woman on his “very sexy mother” (Helen Travolta was a high school drama teacher and sometime actress) and on the bombshells in the European movies they enjoyed: Ms. Loren, Anna Magnani, Anita Ekberg. “I’m not as beautiful as any of those people,” he said, “but I’m not unpleasant to look at, and I thought: ‘This is my library. Not grandmas or Aunt Bee from Mayberry, but the kind of person a blue-collar woman would aspire to be if she had money. What if that kind of woman had gone to flesh?’ ”
Divine (post-Mr. Pinky makeover) and Ruth Brown in the original movie: glammed-up versions of not-terribly-good-looking-to-start-with blue-collar women in the early 60s. Real-looking, in other words, which was part of what was wonderful about that movie and the stage version: these were not “Hollywood fat” or “Hollywood ugly” people who removed the glasses and shook out their hair and were gorgeous! but people who looked like they belonged in 1960s Baltimore and were maybe beaten down by life and by their circumstances (or their inner critics), but embraced glamour to the best of their abilities and budgets. The results were not sleek, or perfect, but a little outrageous and even a bit tacky. But that was part of the realness of the movie. Now you’ve got Queen Latifah and John Travolta in pretty drag running around a blue-collar 1962 Baltimore.
Travolta, though — he can play a woman, he can even play a fat woman, but godDAMNit, she’s got to be a pretty, voluptuous fat woman. Not a “refrigerator.”
And campiness? None of that!
“Playing a woman attracted me,” Mr. Travolta said. “Playing a drag queen did not. The vaudeville idea of a man in a dress is a joke that works better onstage than it does on film, and I didn’t want any winking or camping. I didn’t want it to be ‘John Travolta plays Edna.’ That’s not interesting. It had to be something I could go all the way with, disappear in, like I did in the Bill Clinton role in ‘Primary Colors’ or in ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ ” And here he got up and instantly incarnated those characters with a quick redeployment of his weight and posture.
Because, you see, camp might be fun, it might be in the spirit of a John Waters movie, and it might win you a Tony, but it doesn’t pay off at the Oscars:
There was no film precedent for this approach to Edna. Though Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” and Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire” did well donning drag, they were playing explicitly male characters who for plot reasons needed to dress as women. Edna is something much rarer: a female character whose DNA, as the stage director Jack O’Brien put it, requires that she be played by a male — the cosmic opposite of Peter Pan. Divine, whose real name was Harris Glenn Milstead, didn’t so much act Edna as perform a variation on his usual camp persona. What Mr. Travolta wanted was a seamless transformation; it was not lost on him that the last time such a cross-gender feat had been seriously tried — in “The Year of Living Dangerously” — it had won Linda Hunt an Oscar.
Just one more reason not to see this film. I thought it was bad enough that the role of Edna Turnblad went to a man whose belief system says that homosexuals can’t love because they are perverts, and therefore need to be ‘repaired’.
Why did John Waters even allow his movie to be remade?
I’m guessing money. Plus, it’s not really a remake of the movie, but of the Broadway show.
Which was great. Harvey Fierstein was perfect (Michael McKean later took over the role, though I didn’t see him in it). You never forgot that this was a man playing a woman — how could you, with that voice? Which is part of the spirit of the original (though Divine was actually more believable as a woman than Fierstein was).
Thank you. Waters’ movies are such favorites of mine, because regardless of whatever else is going on, he finds ordinary people more interesting than movie star types. Casting Travolta shows a certain not-getting-it thing going on, and the set designs from the ads depress me. The original movie looked like Baltimore.
Goddamn Quentin Tarantino for reviving this guy’s career.
Well, I think we can actually blame the “Look Who’s Talking” people for that.
Oh this is all disappointing to hear. I’ve never seen any of the versions of this movie or show–never got around to renting the movie, and while I live in New York and like musicals it didn’t seem worth the expensive tickets, so I was happy it was coming out on film so I could dig the catchy songs for the low low price of… eleven dollars (sigh. sometimes NYC sucks). I’ll have to rent the original to check it out though.
Also I found it surprising the article didn’t mention To Wong Foo as an example of an awesome drag movie. Maybe it’s a little (undeservedly!) obscure. Definitely a movie that shows heart + camp is not an impossible combination though.
The first time I saw “Hairspray”, I really had no clue Divine was a man! We lived in that area of Baltimore less than a mile from the store used to portray Mr Pinky’s; as Edna and Tracey exit the bus, you can see Patterson Park and downtown in the background. Even the cramped rowhouse they lived in was perfect- Edna could have been one of my neighbors.
Loved the original- canNOT imagine Travolta as Edna. What a shame…
“Divine, whose real name was Harris Glenn Milstead, didn’t so much act Edna as perform a variation on his usual camp persona.”
Oh, fuck you, John Hiscock, you clueless wanker. Don’t even try to claim that Travolta will be able to hold a candle to Divine in that role.
Great post. I am saddened that Waters’s great film is being debased in this remake.
I’m glad you addressed his “being objectified and groped is empowering!” comment. Unfortunately, that kind of rhetoric is something I hear from a lot of men– ie, “How would YOU like to be sexually harassed on a daily basis?” “Why, I’d love it!”.
It’s frustrating because, as you pointed out, he was being groped as a novelty; because it was entertaining to see John Travolta dressed up like a large woman. Not because he IS a woman, or because people thought he was one.
True groping and objectification has nothing to do with novelty or amusement, and everything to do with subjugation, domination and power. It is demeaning, degrading, and exhausting for women who must deal with it every day of their lives. Travolta’s statement was flippant and ignorant. Worse, it made light a subject that deserves to be scrutinized, not misconstrued as a form of female empowerment.
John Travolta in a woman-suit is still John Travolta in a woman-suit. Divine WAS Edna… and how the heck can this movie be made in CANADA? Baltimore itself was a supporting character!
I think that my beloved Baltimore was too busy being a fake DC for Live Free or Die Hard to be the real Baltimore for one of the most famous plays-turned-film.
If they bullocks the accents or get the local details wrong, there should be no forgiveness. This movie was based on specific real events, namely the desegregation of metropolitan Baltimore in the 1960s and white blue-collar culture. Baltimoreans will not forgive a botch.
As Tony Manero (Travolta’s character in “Saturday Night Fever”) warned his male friends: “You make it with some of these chicks, they think you gotta dance with them.” Maybe a few months in drag outside Hollywood, with better makeup to conceal his identity, would give him a different perspective on what it’s like to be a woman on a daily basis.
Dear Mr. Travolta,
Your breasts and butt were Not Real. They lack, among other things that real breast and butts possess, nerve endings. Not being an actual part of your actual body when they were being touched YOU WERE NOT BEING TOUCHED.
It makes a difference, you moron.
No love, not that there ever was,
Me
PS. Extra Double Plus Asshole points for suggesting that fat women without waists are, wait, what was your word… grotesque.
Christ…
It’s the groping thing that pisses me off - I hate it guys do that. You know when men dress up as women for stag dos (well, they do in Britain)? I see them in the town pubs and they act out the whole sexual attack thing in stiches laughing. It’s just not funny. I think they’d think I was very dour for that, but you’re right, being on a train as I was once and grabbed really hard between the legs so there were bruises and not even seeing the face of your attacker - that is the reality of it. I’m amazed he’d make a joke like that.
John Travolta is an idiot. That being said, I think I’ll still see the movie, because I like musicals.
I also think it’s interesting that over time, “edgy” migrates into “normal.” I can’t imagine the remake takes out all the racial/gender/body image rebelliousness of the original. I think that underneath all the Hollywood glam, some of it will have to stay. Image what that’ll be like for a thirteen year old girl built like the main character who doesn’t live near a Broadway Touring Company stop.
Anyway, the main reason I’m commenting is that I’m curious as to whether John Travolta’s comment about the perfect woman was as bad as it seems. I thought when I read it that he wondered whether he was perfect to play a woman, rather than that Edna was the perfect woman. I took perfect to modify his ability and performance, not her.
John Travolta, like a lot of men who think like him, has no fucking clue. Every guy who’s told me that he’d “love” to be groped or harassed by women change their tune when they go to P-Town or the South End of Boston and are convinced that all of these guys are CHECKING! THEM! OUT! ZOMG!!
And when I point out that hey, we don’t like it when you all do that to us, they get pissy. It’s different when other men do it (though I think they’d be less enamored of women doing it if women held the power men hold, and men’s complaints about this just weren’t taken seriously). It makes them uncomfortable. It’s unwanted attention. To which I say, No shit, jackhole.
Really. These idiots think that it’s so much fun? They’re welcome to switch places with us. For fucking real.
If the unexamined life is not worth living, why isn’t Travolta dead yet?
He has successfully acted exactly twice: as Tony Manero and as Vincent Vega. All the rest is crap. Casting him was not a mistake, but probably a cynical decision to Hollywood the thing to death.
“The vaudeville idea of a man in a dress is a joke that works better onstage than it does on film, and I didn’t want any winking or camping. I didn’t want it to be ‘John Travolta plays Edna.’”
Um… Maybe John didn’t see the same footage of his performance that I saw? ALL HE’S DOING IS WINKING AND CAMPING.
I saw the trailer at the Harry Potter movie and if I’m not mistaken, Travolta didn’t get a credit (even though the trailer went out of its way to showcase the various stars by name using the headshot->credit montage effect.)
It was freaky weird (and not in a John Waters way) watching Travolta simper in the role. The rest of the cast and production looked reasonably fun, but I couldn’t get past;
A) There being no need whatsoever of doing a remake of Hairspray
B) John Travlota trying to fill Divine’s shoes
This reminds me of some conversations on my running forum. Whenever women complain about men who honk, yell, or whistle at them while they’re running the men will poo-poo us and say “I’d LOVE it if a woman did that to me! What a compliment!”
Then a few days ago one of them complained about the amount of unwanted attention he got when he was walking around a hobby store recently. All the women were much older than he was and some were following him around making comments about wanting to set him up with their daughters. He actually got upset at the attention even though it wasn’t degrading or threatening.
I held my tongue, but I really wanted to tell the guy “Now imagine if you constantly have to put up with that kind of attention but the attention is threatening and degrading then welcome to our world!”
Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of his — specifically, his views on autism.
I remember when ‘The World According to Garp’ was released, reading an interview in which John Lithgow described being dressed as Roberta on the set, during which time men had difficulty refraining from groping him, wouldn’t take him seriously or converse without making suggestive remarks. He was pissed.
A similar experience to Travolta’s, but a vastly different perspective. Lithgow has just gone up a(nother) notch in my book.
Yuck. Travolta is losing his mind.
And Lithgow did 3rd Rock from the Sun… still one of my favorites
Christopher Walken was on The Daily Show last night — and what a trip he is, love him — and they showed a clip from the movie. Travolta was in the background of the clip, simpering and overacting.
I think John Travolta might be a robot that escaped from some sort of evil scientists laboratory. I cannot think of any reason a human being would make so many stupid and callous remarks so nonchalantly.
I bet that he felt really cool and tolerant for doing this movie.
“I held my tongue, but I really wanted to tell the guy “Now imagine if you constantly have to put up with that kind of attention but the attention is threatening and degrading then welcome to our world!””
Anne, I hate to be the humorless feminist here, but WHY did you, of all things, hold your tongue?
Not to presume to know what you’re thinking, but if your first response might be “to be civil”, I’m just musing over how frequently “civility” as taught to American women is code for “shut up and take it”, which I can’t help but think is somehow quite germane to the conversation here.
(Unless you were concerned about him becoming violent if you responded.)