After decades of movie stardom, John Travolta has stepped behind the camera for his latest project Propeller One-Way Night Coach, an adaptation of his 1997 children’s novel of the same name.
The hour-long film follows a young aviation enthusiast and his mother on a cross-country flight to Hollywood, with Travolta also serving as narrator and making a brief on-camera appearance. The movie has been in the works for years, with others interested in producing and directing it along the way, but Travolta said “only I can connect these dots the way it should be connected” in a story based on his own flying experience.
And in his directorial debut, the star incorporated what he had learned on sets throughout his career, telling The Hollywood Reporter at the L.A. premiere on Thursday, “I feel that in the 50-plus years I’ve watched directors, I’ve watched great ones, I’ve watched good ones, I’ve watched OK ones, I’ve watched mediocre ones and I’ve watched bad ones, and you sift out what they did right, what they did wrong. I only used the successful actions of the great ones — Robert Altman, Mike Nichols, Quentin Tarantino, Tony Scott, John Woo, Brian De Palma.”
He sorted through what those greats have in common and noted, “It’s funny because you let them do all the work for 50 years and you go, ‘OK, this works, that works, that works, that doesn’t work, that doesn’t work,’ and then you put it in a totality, and then finally you go, ‘That’s how you direct a movie, that’s what should be done.’” Travolta also revealed that he “showed an early cut to a very famous person who’s also director and they gave me one note, which was excellent,” but declined to reveal who that very famous person was.
Kelly Eviston-Quinnett, Ella Bleu Travolta, Clark Shotwell and John Travolta at the L.A. premiere.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Newcomer Clark Shotwell stars as the young boy and Kelly Eviston-Quinnett as his mother, while Travolta’s daughter Ella Bleu Travolta plays a flight attendant aboard the plane. Ella said her father brought excitement and confidence to the set in telling his story, and “he knew exactly what he was looking for for all of these performances so he knew exactly what to ask for — he’d never do more than two or three takes, he knew exactly when he had it.” All five of Travolta’s siblings also appear in the movie, which Ella said was “the coolest thing ever… we do plays and shows at home all the time, so now we’re just doing it in a different setting.”
After premiering the film at Cannes — where he received a surprise Palme d‘Or — Travolta has been open that his directing experience may be a one-time thing, having already brought his passion project to life. Looking ahead, he noted how the movie is about always having “something to look forward to and see the world glass half-full, not half-empty, and that’s how I view life. I still view life that way. So, I’m ready for life to invite me to do something that I might find more interesting than things I’ve done in the past.”
Propeller One-Way Night Coach is now streaming on Apple TV.
