“You’re going to be really surprised by the one I pick,” John Travolta said when I asked him which of his films he’d store in a time capsule. It was 1996, and I was writing about the star of Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy, Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty. He would have good cause to choose any of those. But no. “I’m going for the one that would give the most therapeutic value to the future, and that would be Grease,” Travolta said. “It’s amazing the joy level that it gives new kids, old kids, for generations, you know?”
One generation’s joy can be another generation’s torment, but the kitschy musical about a 1950s high school featuring Travolta as lovable greaser Danny opposite Olivia Newton-John as good girl Sandy and Stockard Channing as racy Rizzo, remains infectiously popular 40 years after its debut. More than 12 million viewers caught Fox’s Grease: Live in 2016, and a ticket to the annual Hollywood Bowl Grease Sing-A-Long can cost the hopelessly devoted $600.
At 17 I saw the film five times the week it opened, so as I pull up to west Los Angeles’ Venice High School it’s hard not to get goose-bumpy. Palm-fringed Venice High’s circa-1935 Art Deco facade is familiar to decades of moviegoers. A Nightmare on Elm Street and American History X, among others, were both filmed here, as was Britney Spears’ “...Baby One More Time.” But Grease was the word that made the school famous.
