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Travolta trades genders for 'Hairspray'
Film is new Hollywood take on Broadway musical and cult flick
By DAVID GERMAIN | AP Movie Writer
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LAS VEGAS -- John Travolta fans finally have their two big wishes: His return to movie musicals after almost 30 years and his first role as a plump Baltimore housewife.

Travolta heads the bill in a new production of "Hairspray," whose cast helped preview the film Wednesday night and blew the roof off the joint with show-stopping footage and live music-and-dance numbers at ShoWest, an annual convention of theater owners.

"I've had the itch for 30 years" to return to movie musicals, said Tra-volta, who wears a fat suit and prosthetic jowls for the gender-bending part, his first musical role since 1978's "Grease."

"I thought maybe it's smart to come back to it in a whole different way, an unexpected way. Because how do you top 'Grease'?" Travolta told The Associated Press.

Adapted from the Broadway stage hit, which in turn was based on John Waters' 1988 cult film starring Ricki Lake, "Hairspray" is the story of Tracy Turnblad (newcomer Nikki Blonsky), an overweight sweetheart of a Baltimore girl who takes a stand for civil rights in the 1960s by leading the charge to integrate a teen dance show on television. Travolta plays Tracy's tubby mom, Edna, a role origi-nated by Waters regular Divine in the first film.

With Adam Shankman directing, the new film features Michelle Pfeiffer as the villainous TV station owner and mother of Tracy's rival, Queen Latifah as the saucy record-shop owner Motormouth Maybelle, Amanda Bynes as Tracy's best pal and Christopher Walken as Tracy's dad and Edna's husband. Walken gives Travolta an affectionate kiss on the cheek in one scene.

When Travolta first appeared on screen, it took a few moments for the crowd of theater owners to realize who it was. They began whispering to one another, "That's John Travolta?" Each of his scenes were greeted with hearty laughs and applause as Travolta played the part with surprising sweetness and femininity.

"I tried to make it so you never really knew it was me, that you thought it was some sort of eccentric overweight woman. Divine always had kind of the wink that it was a man playing a woman, but I tried not to have the wink," said Tra-volta, who spent five hours a day getting into his makeup and did his four musi-cal numbers for the film inside the hot, heavy get-up.

"It's not easy, but part of my character interpretation is I pretended that she thought she was 100 pounds. I played opposite the weight, like a flying ele-phant or something."

Pfeiffer, a fan of the Broadway version, said "Hairspray" has a deceptive social consciousness wrapped up in a sugary, toe-tapping package.

"It's very entertaining, very funny and at the same time deals with subject matter that is really uncomfortable for most people to talk about," Pfeiffer said. "You don't realize that this kind of brilliant message about bigotry and racism is being washed over you while you're being entertained in this sort of sweet, innocent way."

Latifah, who scored an Academy Award nomination for her previous movie adap-tation of a stage musical, "Chicago," said she loved both Waters' original film and the Broadway adaptation of "Hairspray."

"This was a chance for us to do it our way. I always like to see what hap-pens when a director and the studio use their imagination to bring something from Broadway to the screen, especially when it's been on the screen, then Broadway, now back to the screen," said Latifah, who performed one of her num-bers from "Hairspray" for theater owners Wednesday night.

Fans of Waters and the Baltimore milieu of his films can take heart that the original filmmaker endorses the new version, which hits theaters July 20: Waters appears in a cameo near the beginning of the film as a dirty old man who flashes Tracy on the street.
Take a look
Actor John Travolta, left, in character as Edna Turnblad and actress Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad appear in this scene from the new film "Hairspray." (AP Photo/New Line Cinema, David James)
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Reader comments on this story - 2 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

weak wrote on Mar 18, 2007 11:30 PM:

" The only thing good about John is his hot wife. "

Crybaby wrote on Mar 17, 2007 6:52 AM:

" Ol' John has been away from movie Musicals for thirty years. And no one even bothered to notice. Except him. "
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