Stayin' Alive 1977-Style

Saturday Night Fever was the first movie to say the words "blow job" and the first to use a Steadicam, both landmark achievements in film. There was no way I wasn't going to see it on the big screen although not for either of those reasons. I wanted to be taken to an era long, long ago in a borough far away and was I ever.

Sure, I was around in 1977 but I wasn't paying attention enough to remember it being quite as different a world as it clearly was. From the moment Travolta and his posse walk into the club with cigarettes dangling from their lips, I was reminded of it though. If you can smoke in an enclosed tube like the subway, you can smoke anywhere and people did.

And at diners, coffee shops and the local White Castle, waitresses wore real uniforms. And not just uniforms, but uniforms with aprons tied in big bows in the back. In one scene, Travolta's dad got upset with him when he started clearing the dishes after dinner because that was something women did. He actually said that. And mothers pushed baby carriages down the street. Not strollers, baby carriages. How many people have ever seen that today?

As for inflation, Travolta gets a $4 a week raise at the paint shop where he works and is thrilled with it. A sign in a window advertises "Six rooms, 2 flights up, Upper 70s, $250 a month." How freaking unbelievable is that?

The hair was all feathered and blown dry, the clothing 100% polyester and the accents pure Brooklyn-ese. And even though Travolta was a 23-year old playing a 19-year old, I can't believe he ever looked that young. When a friend heard I was going to see SNF, she told me that when Fred Astaire saw that first scene of Travolta strutting down the street at the start of the movie, he told Travolta that he "had" it and could look forward to a successful career. Astaire saw it in that cocky walk, which is still very much in evidence watching it today.

As I went to leave, the usher, a 20-something, asked me how I liked the film. I said I was amazed at how different a world 1977 was and he went off. "I know, right? When I saw this was playing on the big screen I just had to see it. I was dying to see what credits looked like in 1977. Did you see him smoking in the subway? Man, I can't believe that movie got a PG rating with a gang bang and that fight scene. What a different time! I'm coming back tomorrow on my morning off to see it again!"

I couldn't believe it; he was having the exact same reaction to the movie that I'd been having and it had nothing to do with disco or dancing. 1977 might as well have been 1877 for how much relevance it had to what we know now. Let's put it this way: there wasn't a single scene or reference to phone use in this movie and yet somehow people had full lives.

But at its core, SNF was a dance movie during a time when guys had needs, sex was casual, and dancing was everything. Or as Travolta put it best, "You make it with some of these chicks, they think you gotta dance with them."

That's just how it worked in 1977, kids.