‘The interpretation was certainly a broad comedy where I had in mind more of a ‘Being There' ( the 1979 Peter Sellers film) subtle comedy in mind. And then it spread more into slapstick and I didn't know how to do it the way it was presented to me. I had approval and I arrived in Paris and there were changes and I didn't know how to do the movie, the new movie they wanted me to make. So I thought:' Well, I don't like missing out on this opportunity or this money but I can't.....''
‘I love strong directors. I just think that there's only one simple point: you have to agree on the movie you're making and that's everybody's right. If you're offered A and then you're given B you say wait a minute. You're at a restaurant: I ordered A. You gave me B. It's not that you're a bad waiter. It's about the chef. It's not what I ordered and that has nothing to do with aptitude or ability or anything other than what you've agreed upon.
‘That is what you have to make sure and what I think I've learned is what I already knew which is protect yourself in your contract that script dated X is a script you all agree upon not the rewrites that happen from the agreement on. That's a different thing and it's happened on every script I've been involved with and we've got it back. It happened on ‘'Get Shorty'' and on ‘' Broken Arrow ''.
‘I made sure that the script we agreed upon was the script we shot and if changes were to happen they were mutual changes.
‘Was Scientology involved? Look, what I do is whatever upset that might happen I've got to get it off my chest. I do that through Scientology but my decisions are always my own. Always. Of course, I consult Scientology but along with my wife and my best friends and my management and my agent and my lawyer.'
‘ I did come back for my son to make sure if an operation was necessary --which it wasn't -- and he's fine. But I liked Roman a lot. He was a charming fellow but it wasn't about that. It was about viewpoints on a movie and it wasn't the movie I was presented with originally. It was a different one.'
The legal wrangles are still going on and could do so -- maybe, in a lawyers' benevolent fund -- for years. Travolta also goes on.
He's completed ‘Face Off' co-starring this year's Best Actor Oscar winner ( ‘Leaving Las Vegas') Nicolas Cage. At the helm was ‘ Broken Arrow ' director John Woo. Hollywood sees it as the great action movie of 1997: ‘ It's a mix of action and sci-fi and drama. It's set in the future about twenty years from now and there's an ability to change faces. Through a series of events we change so I play him, he plays me, two or three different times. Nic and I have to figure out how we do that -- it's going to be a very interesting puzzle to solve.'
His other problem is his wife. Her star is also rising and their difficulty is juggling their family and their films: ‘ We'll have to orchestrate something because now it's very clear that she'll be as busy as I am and we'll have to make some basic rules. I think we went into marriage knowing that. I married an actress and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel she had a future and a career and vice versa. If you marry someone in the same profession you have the same issues you have to negotiate.
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