“Saturday Night Fever” Director Says They Had to Make Fake Call Sheets After Thousands of Fans Crashed Set to See John Travolta
“Saturday Night Fever” Director Says They Had to Make Fake Call Sheets After Thousands of Fans Crashed Set to See John Travolta
Meredith WilshereSun, May 31, 2026 at 2:58 PM UTC
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John Travolta in 'Saturday Night Fever'
Credit: Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
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John Travolta's immense popularity while filming Saturday Night Fever caused production delays as thousands of fans swarmed the Brooklyn set
The crew used tactics like fake call sheets and decoy cars to divert fans and continue filming
Director John Badham praised Travolta's deep understanding of his character, Tony Manero, in the iconic 1977 film
Following the success of Welcome Back, Kotter, John Travolta drew crowds wherever he went, which proved to be a bit of an issue on film sets such as Saturday Night Fever.
Director John Badham recently joined The Hollywood Reporter podcast It Happened In Hollywoodto talk about the making of the 1977 movie.The director, 86, said that Travolta's fans shut down production, and the team had to get creative about distracting them.
“On our first day of shooting, they almost completely shut us down. In fact, they did shut us down by lunchtime," he remembered. "We shot in the morning, but we had 15,000 people on the streets of Brooklyn getting in every camera shot that we had, and all we're trying to do is get a shot of him buying a shirt in a shirt store."
John Travolta in 'Saturday Night Fever'
Credit: Holly Bower/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
“We were underneath the 86th Street train in Brooklyn, and these little girls were going up the steps to the elevated train. And they start calling out to John, who's standing below where we're lining up a shot, and they say, ‘Vinnie Barbarino!' And John is waving to them," he continued, referencing Travolta's character in the '70s sitcom.
While, at first, "about eight or ten" fans showed up, the “next thing you know, there were 15,000 people out there struggling to see them.”
One way Badham and the rest of the crew tried to throw them off was by making up fake call sheets.
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John Travolta in 'Saturday Night Fever'
Credit: Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
“We're having to open up on the street at 6:30 in the morning to shoot before people are awake and know that we're out of there, so we can run and hide in one of our interior sets like the paint store," Badham said.
The 1977 film featured Travolta and Karen Gorney, with music by the Bee Gees. The film centered around Travolta's Tony Manero, who finds solace and purpose at the disco.
Badham recalled that eventually the residents of Brooklyn caught on to the fake call sheets, and they had to use doubles.
“They had figured out the fake call sheets, and someone said, ‘I tell you what, instead of one car that we have a camera on, let's get this double. We have two identical Travolta cars, and we'll pile people in it and send them off like that's the real shooting car, and then we'll take the real one in a different direction,” he said.
Of Travolta's performance in the movie, Badham said, “he understood that character way better than me. John understood exactly what that character was about and where he was coming from and what he thought about himself.”
Despite having to jump through hoops to make the movie, it turned out to be a success, becoming a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
