Travolta eating away his frustration over Scientology flop
Hollywood, USA
June 25, 2000
Oesterreichischen Kronen Zeitung/ScheinwerferPacking on frustration
John Travolta, the once so wiry dance star from the "Stayin Alive" movie, and his 292 pounds of body weight are approaching the dimensions of former sex symbol Marlon Brando, who now tips the scales at 343 pounds.
Quite obviously, according to Travolta's friends, John is eating out of frustration. The ballooned-out Scientology drone ["Nachbeter": mindless repeater] has committed a 1.4 billion shilling flop with his film "Battlefield Earth," a novel by his master teacher, Scientology inventor L. Ron Hubbard. Critics in the USA and London have shredded "Battlefield Earth" into the celluloid graveyard: "This loud, overblown monstrosity is even worse than the worst Sci-Fi turkey. Total feeblemindedness for 100 million dollars."
Especially bad for John Travolta - he lavished millions of his own money upon the Ron Hubbard project. "The show is an attempt of an unskilled adult to re-write Spartacus as a science fiction story," a London film critic annihilated Ron Hubbard's book, while "Battlefield Earth" crashed at America's film theaters without a whine or a whimper.
The film is set in the year 3000. Humankind is threatened by extermination, its members crawl around in caves and and are enslaved by tyrannical Psycholos [sic]. The Psycholos are supposed to be twelve feet tall, but look more like regular mortals in oversized ski boots.
Their sneering security chief is John Travolta. Does them no good. Because a blond rogue does away with slavery and revs up the engines of jets that have not been flown for a thousand years after a couple of hours on a flight simulator. Travolta's part is to play the stupidest of all monsters in the history of film, as he uses his secret knowledge to provide for his Spartacus antagonist.
Star producer Roman Polanski listened to the news of the box office catastrophe with a touch of satisfaction. Polanski had wanted to film Dostoyevski's "Der Doppelgaenger" with John Travolta. "On the second day, just as the roles were being read, Travolta threw his script away and left. He was frustrated. The financial bloodletting may have hit Travolta hard, who, with his wife Kelly Preston have always been paraded as a model couple for Scientology.
However, there is also a good side to the grandiose flop. Nobody will become a Scientologists because of "Battlefield Earth." Just the opposite. The whole thing will not help Scientology at all.