Proud Travolta touts Killing Season’
Millennium Entertainment
Robert De Niro,and John Travolta star in the thriller “Killing Season,” opening in limited release, including Ocala, on Friday.
Jul 9, 2013
By Dave Schlenker / Entertainment editor
John Travolta spent Independence Day with his family at their estate in Maine last week.
There, he said, he planned to relax with his wife, actress Kelly Preston, and their children, Ella and Ben. There would be barbecue, games, swimming and badminton — “just hanging out with each other,” he said.
He craved the down time. The actor had been in Europe for about two weeks prior, accepting awards, walking red carpets and promoting his new independent film “Killing Season,” a tense “essay on war” with Robert De Niro. Since late June, Travolta has attended three screenings of the movie — one in New York City, two in Europe.
The last screening was at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, where he also accepted a Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema.
Good times.
But make no mistake, Travolta was ready for barbecue and badminton last week.
His pace will quicken again in the coming days, as “Killing Season” debuts Friday. It will open in limited release in larger markets. But Travolta, whose primary residence is in Marion County, arranged to have the film open in Ocala, too. Additionally, he bought 1,000 movie tickets for locals; 300 were given to donors of local charity events the Travoltas have hosted, and 700 were given away randomly through a promotion on Ocala.com.
He bought the tickets, he said, to thank Marion County residents for their support since the family moved here 10 years ago.
Travolta clearly loves “Killing Season,” his first film with De Niro. Released by Millennium Films, “Killing Season” is an “actor’s movie” with an art-house distribution, Travolta said. Its fate will rely more on word of mouth than Hollywood fanfare.
“Because it doesn’t have big money behind it, the people will discover it, hopefully,” he said. “They’ll make their own decisions on it. They have to discover it because it’s not getting the big boom of a studio like a ‘Savages’ or a ‘Wild Hogs’ would get. But that’s the price you pay when you do a movie that really means something.
“When you make an independent, small film and you feel artistic credibility, what you’re looking for is, did it work or not? If you do ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild,’ you’re not looking at the box office. You’re looking at, did it work? And that movie sure did work.”
This is not the first time Travolta has ventured into art-house territory. In 2006, between his hits “Be Cool” and “Wild Hogs,” he starred in the crime thriller “Lonely Hearts” with the late James Gandolfini.
In “Killing Season,” Travolta plays a former Serbian soldier who travels to the United States to square off against an American veteran of the Bosnian War. There are secrets and surprises and a score to settle.
“He’s an ex-Serbian soldier who’s guilty of a lot of stuff,” he said of his character, Emil. “He’s trying to redeem himself and trying to redeem this American soldier for the crime that he committed. They are both guilty of things they want to resolve.”
Travolta traveled to Bosnia and the Republic of Serbia to prepare for the role. He studied the language, interviewed residents and learned as much as he could about this complicated war of the 1990s. He also studied faces and photos from the soldiers who served. That, he said, shaped his very intense look in the film.
“I made the hair real tight and short, the beard strong like I had observed some of the ex-soldiers over there,” he said.
Emil is all business and vengeance.
“I went away from the screenings knowing I had achieved what I set out to do. As a matter of fact, I sat next to John Gotti Jr. at the New York screening, and he said, ‘You played one scary (expletive). I know that kind of guy. I’ve experienced that kind of guy. And you nailed it.’ Hearing that from a tough guy like that was great.”
Travolta, incidentally, is set to play late mob boss John Gotti Sr. in “Gotti,” slated to start production later this year.
While a smaller production, “Killing Season” created some buzz even before Travolta and De Niro signed on.
Writer Evan Daugherty won the 2008 Script Pipeline Contest with the work, then called “Shrapnel.”
“I thought about writing a typical ‘cabin-in-the woods’ horror movie, but those have been done to death,” Daugherty said in an interview with Matt Misetich posted on scriptpipeline.com. “Then, I stumbled onto the idea of doing a ‘cabin-in-the-woods’ political thriller.”
He said he originally wrote it with World War II in mind, noting it would be interesting to explore aspects of war that are rarely seen in film.
“But above all,” he added, “I really wanted to see an old-school mano-y-mano action movie where both of the combatants are grizzled, old dudes.”
The script ended up on the 2008 Black List, which cites well-liked-but-unproduced screenplays.
“So I read it and loved it, loved the message,” Travolta said. “I loved the character. I could see myself doing it, and it lifted me up in terms of being a challenge.
“And when De Niro decided to come on board, it was a done deal.”