Getting Schooled on Urban Cowboy: A Music-Loving History Teacher Weighs In

Kristin Nilsen 0:00

So when he arrives in town, he is introduced to the Mecca known as Gillies. Gillies is a Texas sized Honky Tonk full of manly men and beautiful braless women in cowboy hats, all doing the Texas Two Step, and Bud is immediately smitten. This is where he meets sissy, played by Deborah Winger. They dance, they fight, they get married, move into a trailer, all in about

Unknown Speaker 0:24

10 minutes.

Michelle Newman 0:38

Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who had exactly zero after school activities.

Carolyn Cochrane 0:47

We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition,

Kristin Nilsen 0:59

and today we'll be saving the movie that gave us Gillies, mechanical bulls and the hit song, looking for love, that would be the John Travolta classic Urban Cowboy. I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristen, and

Michelle Newman 1:12

I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.

Speaker 1 1:18

Well, I spend a lot of time looking for you, single bars and good time. We

Kristin Nilsen 1:28

never, in our wildest dreams, pictured ourselves doing an episode on Urban Cowboy. It just never popped up in that shared document we have where we collect all of our episode ideas. Never, and yet, here we are. So here's a little back story on how we got here today. This summer, we released an encore presentation of our episode honoring Olivia Newton John, and in this super sized edition of the episode, we added a new conversation inspired by one of our favorite podcasts for the record, the 70s, hosted by Amy lively is a frequent resource for us, and this time, it was her episode called the John Travolta trilogy that gave us something to talk about. We chatted about John Travolta and his movies and how that related to Olivia Newton, John. But when we got to Urban Cowboy, it went something like this, did you see it? I mean, probably I don't really remember. I didn't see it. Yeah, me neither, huh? Well, so it just so happened that Amy, lively herself, was sitting in the dentist chair listening to that episode when she heard our completely ambivalent comments about Urban Cowboy, and she wrote to us right away, and she was like, you guys, you should really give Urban Cowboy a chance. It's a classic of our generation, and there's a fascinating back story to how it even came to be. And so guess what we did, we're not stupid. We said, Hey, Amy, would you like to come on the pop culture Preservation Society and talk about Urban Cowboy and if you've ever listened to for the record the 70s before, you know you're in for a treat. Amy comes locked and loaded with an incredible depth of knowledge paired with intense research and thoughtful analysis, and she wraps it all up in a big Gen X bow. If you two were ambivalent about Urban Cowboy growing up, I suggest you stick around.

Michelle Newman 3:15

Well, let's not forget she has the best radio voice. It's a really good radio voice. I am hypnotized.

Carolyn Cochrane 3:23

I think anybody says that about us? No,

Kristin Nilsen 3:27

with my Minnesota accent, zero

Michelle Newman 3:29

chance. Carolyn,

Kristin Nilsen 3:32

but first, okay, before we dive in, let's give you a little refresher course on Urban Cowboy. So Urban Cowboy is the story of Bud, played by John Travolta, who was moving from his tiny Texas town to a bigger town outside of Houston in search of a better life, namely a steady job at the plant. I don't know what they're making at this plant, but it is dangerous. It's like hard hats and climbing electrical towers, and it's dangerous

Carolyn Cochrane 3:59

refineries, oil refinery story? Yeah, yeah, it's definitely an oil refinery the whole area there, yes,

Kristin Nilsen 4:07

but it's dangerous. It's hard, so dangerous. So when he arrives in town, he is introduced to the Mecca known as Gillies. Gillies is a Texas sized Honky Tonk full of manly men and beautiful braless women in cowboy hats, all doing the Texas Two Step, and Bud is immediately smitten. This is where he meets sissy, played by Deborah Winger. They dance, they fight, they get married, move into a trailer, all in about 10 minutes. But then a sexy con man comes to town to run the mechanical bull at Gillies and Bud's insecurities become the main character in this movie, leading to both the breakup of his marriage and the man making finale, pitting bud against the sexy ex con in a mechanical bull riding contest, after which the bad guys suffer consequences. Says, The Lovers reunite, and the world is said to writes, once again, maybe it sort of depends on what your life experiences are.

Michelle Newman 5:07

We'll see, right, right? I would say, they meet, they fight, they get married, they fight, they fight, they fight, they fight. In fact, Bud's last line, I think to sissy is I'm so sorry, all the way back to that first time I hit you. Okay, I'm not remembering it exactly, word for word, but she just like melts. And that

Kristin Nilsen 5:31

is not facetious. This is not a joke.

Carolyn Cochrane 5:33

No, not real. And I have to tell you guys, one of the fun things I like to do is to go under Reddit whenever we are doing something like a movie or a soundtrack or something. And so I, I just put in Urban Cowboy in the Reddit search. Oh my gosh. People have feelings about, Wow, this movie, especially about that plot line. One of the comments I read and this woman said, this was very this is a very accurate description of what life was like for my aunt in Pasadena, Texas, who caught my her husband cheating, went to the trailer park, beat up the woman that he was cheating with. She got arrested, went to jail, got bailed out, went back to the trailer parking, up the woman, and then went home to her husband. So maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but I think for the times and this part of Texas and the way life was there, it was an accurate, sadly, portrayal of what was going on. Well, I totally

Michelle Newman 6:35

agree. And obviously the scenes very problematic, the issues that are going on, especially the abuse of women, verbal and physical. But I think, much like with Saturday Night Fever you guys and like Carolyn just has proof of as a 55 year old woman watching it, I was, I want to say, okay with it, but I was realizing that this was a very true reflection of the life and lifestyle of the people and the situations and how they were living, and watching it through that lens that I think Amy lively gave me in the Travolta trilogy podcast, but also from our discussion of Saturday Night Fever and the themes that both movies share. I don't want to say like I was okay with it. I wasn't like, Okay, you hit her. I don't mean it like that. I mean, like, I could overlook that and realize that this was a depiction of the times, and I could be angry at him or whatever. But ultimately, you guys, I liked it. I liked the movie

Kristin Nilsen 7:32

I had to watch Notting Hill afterwards.

Carolyn Cochrane 7:36

Well, you guys, as usual, I was hoosker dude out the wazoo when I watched this, not because I'd seen the movie before, because honestly, I don't think I'd ever seen it all the way through until this past weekend, I did not see it in the movie theater, and my memory of it was that it was in constant rotation. When we finally got HBO, I would always be catching like pieces of it, but never all at the same time, and I never had the need to sit down and actually watch it all the way through, which I'm kind of glad, because I feel like I came to it this time, obviously with adult eyes, but also with the benefit of reflection. Because you guys, I lived there, the only one I am, the only one of the three of us that lived in Houston. Well, up until 1978 was when I moved and then we moved back in 1983 and they really leaned into that Texas stereotype of the cowboy and spitting his, you know, chew stuff and his lone star long neck and his pickup truck driving, you know, through Houston, listening to his country music with his cowboy hat on. At the same time, there were a lot of people that this was the way they live. Oh, I'm just

Michelle Newman 8:47

wondering, for Kristen, thinking back on our discussion on Saturday Night Fever, and I know how much you like that movie, but then you don't like this one. What's the differentiation for you? That's the question I've been asking myself. Yes. I feel like bud is the motivation for Bud's character is very similar to Tony's motivation and his growth. And you can maybe agree or disagree if the characters have grown, yeah, but, but I would argue that they have, in a way. But I feel like they're very similar too.

Kristin Nilsen 9:19

It's they are both the same movie and the opposite movie. So upon upon its surface, it is the complete and utter opposite movie of Saturday Night Fever and its themes. It is the exact same movie. And we'll get into that with Amy a little bit more. And so I did ask myself that question, because remember when we came to Saturday Night Fever, Michelle was like, I'm out. I'm out. This is the worst movie I've ever seen. And we're like, hold on, let's, let's get, let's go deep, right?

Michelle Newman 9:45

Not just worse. Like, oh, this is so bad. I was very disturbed by the themes and by the actions of the characters, until we dissected it and I read articles about it, and I really, sort of like, we joke about, we do a college dissertation. I did learn about it. I learned of maybe what it was depicting, and how it was depicting these people's lives and how they acted towards women and everything. And so then I then I thought it was like, wow, this is actually kind of brilliant, and that's what I was bringing to Urban Cowboy with me. And

Kristin Nilsen 10:13

I asked myself the question, were you able to go deep with Saturday Night Fever? Because that was a culture that was more familiar to you, and this one is a culture that is not familiar to you. Here's part of my answer is that I was a lot clearer on what Tony's journey was and and who was there to help him get there, and and how he achieved it in the end, I don't know if John Travolta was tired after Greece and Saturday Night Fever. I just don't think he delivered in the same way. And this is often a podcast about growth. And so did bud grow an inch? Grew an inch, and only because his fancy new girlfriend that he was cheating on his wife with confessed to a truth that made him go after sissy again. He doesn't come to any growth on his own. He he didn't seem to have any desire to change. Whereas Tony is struggling. Tony is in conflict. He wants to change, but his culture keeps dragging him back. Bud is like no shit, man, I'm gonna kick the shit out of everybody here, including my wife and I like it.

Carolyn Cochrane 11:21

I think a lot was packed into a very short amount of time in Urban Cowboy versus Saturday Night Fever. They there was just no character development or anything. We didn't really know anything, right? I mean, you think about the first scene when Tony's at the dinner table with his family eating, how much we learn about him and the family dynamics in that few minutes of that scene. The writing was so much better and the editing this seems like it was put together in a few minutes the

Kristin Nilsen 11:52

only benevolent character. There are two benevolent characters in this movie, and it's his aunt and uncle. The rest of the people are shit. They're all completely malevolent people, and I hope I never come into contact with people like that. And nothing happens in the movie until the uncle dies, and that's like two hours in. I kind of have

Michelle Newman 12:09

to disagree with you a little bit, because I do feel like there are redeeming qualities too, especially sissy. Like, I feel like I could do an entire episode just dissecting the character of sissy. I mean, I feel like she's super layered. You guys. Deborah Winger was only around 24 when she filmed this movie. I found this a great article in Texas Monthly magazine that was published in 2015 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the movie, and I'll share that in this week's Weekly Reader, because it's Deborah winger and John Travolta, plus the writer and the director and the producers, and they're all sitting down doing an interview. Deborah winger knew she was sissy, and she said at 20, probably 23 at this point, she says, I understood the whole thing, her womanhood, the Redneck thing, the kind of shame that leads you to do stupid things for love, the tough veneer she had. And you can you get a glimpse into her and her life and how she's grown up, that is

Kristin Nilsen 13:03

a very good statement where she's where she about her veneer and the stupid things that you do for love, because I have written right here in my notes, sissy, you are better than this. You need to make better choices, right? She doesn't

Carolyn Cochrane 13:16

have any role models, right? Don't? You want

Michelle Newman 13:18

to explore why she wasn't, you know, why was

Kristin Nilsen 13:21

that? Well, I mean, that has an awful lot to do with the culture and with what it means to be an abused woman. All of that goes into it. I know why you go back. I understand that it's more the stupid things, not the sad things that she did, that that made me want to shake her a little bit, because I did feel like I had faith in her. She was one of the redeeming people in that movie. And I think that was another reason that it was meant to be a John Travolta vehicle. It should have been her vehicle, because she's the one who makes all of the changes. She's the one with the conscience going back

Michelle Newman 13:53

to what you said, and the uncle doesn't even die until two hours in of the two hour run time of Urban Cowboy, about an hour and 45 takes place on a mechanical bull. Yeah, the article says the bull was the perfect metaphor. It was a machine. If they could conquer that, they'd conquer the city. So it's like, if they they're using the bull as a metaphor. I didn't really get that in the movie right now that I'm reading it, I'm like, okay, then that makes it a little bit more intentional. And I feel like then the movie has a little bit more depth to it than you might see at the beginning, because, like Carolyn, I didn't see it. I mean, I don't think I did. The only thing is, is I'm so familiar with so much of it. And so I'm wondering if, because it became such an instant piece of pop culture, they actually say the Urban Cowboy movement became the first pop culture craze of the 80s. And so I'm wondering if maybe I absorbed the movie through the pop culture. I went to Gillies when I in about 1982 and I knew, believe me, I knew I was there. I knew it was all about Urban Cowboy. I have a bumper sticker and like myself. The bumper stickers were everywhere. It's very

Kristin Nilsen 15:02

clear why I didn't see it. First of all, this is not my environment, even cowboy chic, whatever thing that was the big craze was the first craze of the 80s that didn't really make it to Minnesota. I'm not saying it didn't make it to Minnesota. Maybe it didn't make it to the Twin Cities. I'm sure every major city had a country bar because of this. But it wasn't something that was infiltrating our culture. It wasn't in our fashion or anything like that.

Michelle Newman 15:24

Make it made it to Fred Moore junior high school, but it might have been something that that was going on in the adult clubs.

Kristin Nilsen 15:30

It might it might have been, but you'd think that that would seep over into like the music that was played, or the clothes that people wore, and it wasn't something that people admired. So I think there's a regional aspect to it as well. I was really hoping that it would be just like fun music and dancing, like celebrating Honky Tonk culture, but they showed me what was inside the honky tonk culture, which made me hate Honky Tonk culture, right? I wanted it to be music and dancing. You didn't like the music? Yeah, I liked the music. They just showed me too much. They just showed me too much of what was behind that music. And it was scary, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 16:09

for sure. And I guess I come to this from such a different perspective, because I feel like I kind of lived at not necessarily the Gillies moment, but up through middle school. So we, I moved in 1978 I went to school with kids that dressed like they just got off the farm, which they kind of did in the ranch, because I'm living in suburban Houston, which is the, you know, we're encroaching on those farms and ranches that were on the outskirts of Houston. Now, you know, a subdivision goes up, so you've got the kids who just got off their horses, and you've got me and my suburban kind of clothes. So we actually had names, a name for those kids. They were the kickers, and our radio station was k, i, k, k, a, and everybody had that bumper sticker, and they had their little Western shirt. You were kickers, and you had your leather belt with your name embossed on the leather belt tooled exactly so they were real. Those were real people to me. And then when we moved back in 83 of course, I did High School in New Jersey, but my sister did it in Texas, in another suburb that was encroaching on this ranch area, and asked my sister she spent weekends in the dance halls. She can two step like no other. Then I go to college, and I go to college with some of these people who grew up doing all this stuff. So my, you know, fraternity and sorority parties, we were doing the cotton eye Joe, we there were people out there that really knew how to two step. I never did. Andy and I tried. We almost got divorced over the fact that I can't do it. So it wasn't as far of a reach for me, which I think, no, not

Kristin Nilsen 17:39

at all of a reach, and

Michelle Newman 17:41

not for me either. I mean, I was born and grew up in Dallas and around there, but until 1979 I lived off and on in Dallas. But I don't forget, I was visiting my dad twice a year in Woodson, Texas, probably like the town, but from that had, you know, I know stop lights. I don't think there was a stoplight in woods in Texas. I like I said I liked this movie. I am obsessed with the soundtrack right now, but that part felt familiar to me too, just the kind of the outfits and the kind of small town mentality, kind

Kristin Nilsen 18:11

of and even the, you know, I'm one of those people who has lived in every kind of place. I've lived in rural areas, suburban areas and urban areas in almost every region, but not the south. So when I lived in a rural area, I was living in Northern California. We had farmers, but we didn't have cowboy hats. So it's a completely and utterly different culture.

Carolyn Cochrane 18:32

I'm just going to add to that only because I live there, I can say this, it's not even the South. It is

Kristin Nilsen 18:38

Texas, yes. Okay, this is important, Carolyn, because part of what was so when I say that this movie frightened me, I'm not kidding. I felt unsafe watching this movie, and part of it is because of what that culture is, how that culture embedded itself into male dominance, right? So it's like I didn't know if this movie was either, was it exposing something, was it revealing something, or was it celebrating something? I don't know which, but that thing was deeply ingrained toxic masculinity and dominance over others, not subtly, overtly, in a way that makes me feel deeply unsafe.

Carolyn Cochrane 19:21

I'll argue probably that I don't care where you go. You go to like a working class neighborhood in New York or Chicago. I mean, you've all you've got the neighborhood bars, you've got the corner bars where the guys gather and stuff happens, and my parents met at a bar dancing in New York City. So I think those elements happen everywhere, especially when alcohol is involved, and maybe, well,

Kristin Nilsen 19:46

in Tony mineros culture, exactly the same thing that working

Carolyn Cochrane 19:49

class kind of you're just living paycheck to paycheck, and half the time you spend three quarters of it on alcohol, whether that's just sitting at a bar and watching, you know. A football team play, or at the Union meeting. I just, I think Texas maybe celebrated it a little more, or thought it was kind of, you know, hung their house well,

Kristin Nilsen 20:09

I mean, let's take it down to the to the nitty gritty of this movie. What is the mechanical bull about? It's about dominating an animal, and then you dominate each other in this contest. It's complete. So they so they do take it to a Texas sized level there, of course, in all regions of the country there, there's one upsmanship, mostly with men, especially when there's alcohol present. But this whole movie was devoted to that concept. He was dominating his woman. He was going to dominate all those men in the bar. Everything was about dominating. Mm, hmm, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 20:41

I can't say that was maybe 100% accurate of every Honky Tonk dance hall kind of thing. But I would say again, these working class people who worked hard dangerous jobs in let's not forget how hot it is there. I mean, there's just so many elements that could make someone angry. Not that I'm trying to make excuses for anybody but, man, yeah, alcohol and heat. And

Michelle Newman 21:04

I just keep going back to, you know, the way that the table full of guys talk to the talk to the waitresses and stuff, and Saturday Night Fever, and it was still so demeaning and so awful. They're different cultures, but I think it's apples and oranges. I don't think I can say one is worse, but I feel like I don't now watch them like I might have watched them when I was a teenager, or in my early 20s, and just gone, oh my god, they're gang raping that girl. I'm shutting it off, or, oh my God, he's just slapping her, and I'm shutting it off. I'm watching it now, understanding that this is a reflection of the culture and reflection of the times, and a reflection of what those people are going through. Yeah. I

Kristin Nilsen 21:39

mean, that's a you bring up something, you bring up something important, because in in Saturday Night Fever, there's the moment where he's going to hit Stephanie, and he's stopping himself, and he wants to hit her so badly, and he's holding back. He's holding back, and she's going, come on, do it. Do it. And that's where you see the struggle of this movie. You never get that moment with bud. You're just knowing they're gonna drive away into the sunset. And you'll hit her tomorrow. Yeah, I

Carolyn Cochrane 22:02

think that they they just leave a lot to the imagination, because they wanted to get all this music in, and they wanted to get all that mechanical bullying, bully bullying in that they couldn't go deep, like we could have any kind of discussion about Urban Cowboy that we had about Saturday Night Fever with actual evidence from the movie to back it up. Like we can talk about a scene in Saturday Night Fever where there wasn't really, mean, the longest scenes were Charlie Daniels singing, you know, Devil Went down to Jordan, best part of the movie. But it's just to me, like you couldn't, you can't sink your teeth into Urban Cowboy like you could into Saturday night yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 22:41

that's why you get Saturday Night Fever, getting Oscar nominations. And you don't see Urban Cowboy getting Oscar nominations.

Carolyn Cochrane 22:47

Well, Deborah winger got nominated for Best Supporting Actress for a Golden Globe. Did she really? Yes, and Best New Star. Okay, everybody, there are some fun facts that have that I discovered when I was doing my research. So would you are we ready for my rabbit hole?

Michelle Newman 23:02

Yeah, let's go down the rabbit hole. Let's jump down

Carolyn Cochrane 23:04

rabbit hole. Rabbit Hole. Let's go down the rabbit hole. With Carolyn, here we go, getting back to your point, Michelle, earlier about some of the casting. I thought I would just share with you some of the other people that were considered for the movie. Dennis Quaid was considered for that the role of Bud, and then Sissy Spacek and Michelle Pfeiffer were the other two that they really looked at. Sissy Spacek maybe getting a little bit more of a nod toward that. She didn't like John Travolta, though. Yeah, they didn't have any chemistry. They didn't have any chemistry. Yeah, that's bad that

Kristin Nilsen 23:36

they did not do that. And Dennis Quaid that could work. That might even be better. And

Carolyn Cochrane 23:41

John Travolta almost wasn't cast in the movie because he was actually under contract to film American Gigolo during this time, but he thought that the American Gigolo script was too reminiscent of that iconic film, moment by moment with Lily Tomlin, and he knew how horrible that had done at the box office. And he said, No way. So he negotiated his way out of that film. And we all know Richard Gere I cannot even picture John Travolta in. How can gigolo no anyway, and then Paramount let him out. But they said, you have to do two films for us instead. And that's when he got the Urban Cowboy roll, and he was excited about that, so excited, I guess, that he put a mechanical bull in his home and trained on that. And he became so proficient that they did not need a stunt double, and he did all of his own work on that. I'm

Kristin Nilsen 24:33

sorry, but people look funny doing that. I know they think they look cool, but we didn't even talk about

Carolyn Cochrane 24:38

the scene when Deborah is on there.

Michelle Newman 24:42

Five minutes sex act on

Kristin Nilsen 24:44

the mechanical bone. That was pretty she was the best one out of everybody. It was a pretty good, very well done.

Carolyn Cochrane 24:53

Yes, she stood with no and not holding on to anything. She just balanced Okay, and

Kristin Nilsen 24:59

just. Go back to a previous thing instead of being impressed by his woman's prowess, but is pissed because she's better at it than him. I also

Carolyn Cochrane 25:08

read that in a 2015 documentary about the movie, John Travolta was quoted as saying that Urban Cowboy was probably his favorite film experience to do as an actor, really, I don't think necessarily say it's the best script or his best role, he just had the best time doing. Yeah, I think, you know, drinking a lot and having a lot of good Mexican food. Probably do you know that this was the first film choreographed by Patsy Swayze Patrick. Swayze, mother, really, and she owned a dance studio in Houston. So that was her first film that she choreographed. She did a few others, but here's one that I thought I can totally see a similarity. She also choreographed Hope Floats, which is one of my other favorite movies. Top five movie for me, yeah. So I guess put a little, you know, Western Texan flair in there, and you're gonna get Patsy. Okay, that was a fun little fact. So Johnny Lee, Johnny late Lee sang the song looking for love. And Johnny Lee, I mean, that song is so stuck in my head, like I would have thought it was a bigger name, but he was actually a local Texas Honky Tonk singer. He was part of Mickey Gillies band, but obviously went on to a little more prominence after looking for love came out, and guess what? You guys, in 1982 he married Charlene Tilton.

Kristin Nilsen 26:27

No way. That is a Texas story. Is that I love that is an awesome story. Only

Carolyn Cochrane 26:33

for two years did that marriage last, but it's still fun to know. Okay, the actress who played Pam, we haven't, we never even talked about Pam.

Kristin Nilsen 26:41

Wait, have we said who she is? Pam is the fancy girlfriend that is cheating Deborah winger with Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 26:45

yeah. So she's the oil, the oil, like company president's daughter, yeah, lives on high falutin penthouse in Houston. Anyway, very attractive brunette with her hair, when it was up in that bun, didn't she remind you of like Jane Seymour? Yes. Connie, totally bun. That was off to the side.

Michelle Newman 27:03

She looks like the lady that's, oh, my God, I'm forgetting her name now, who was in all the movies, but who we know, who played not only the ice skating coach and ice castles, but the mom, oh yeah. She wears our story. She wears like that, swirly, yeah, somewhere in time, bun, swoop, and

Carolyn Cochrane 27:22

then it's like off center. It's just it was that's

Michelle Newman 27:25

a totally loose by 1980 bun. Yes, a loose off

Carolyn Cochrane 27:29

center bun, you guys. She was almost cast as Shelly Long's replacement in Cheers. Oh, couple of fast other things quickly we've got. Do you remember when Wes? So Wes was the bad the bad man, con man, Dirty. Dirty con man, dirty con man, okay, that's right, dirty con man. There's a scene where he swallows the worm at the bottom of the bottle with

Kristin Nilsen 27:52

that scene, why is that in the movie? It was so dumb. Oh, well,

Carolyn Cochrane 27:56

I guess good for you for saying that. Maybe I don't know that. Scott Allen, I think, is the actor's name would appreciate that, but it was improvised. He kind of did it as a joke, but the directors liked it, so they kept it in. Okay, I have one more here, but you guys, did you notice there's the scene where they are punching that punching bag, like, yeah, and there's a song, and there's someone on the stage singing, not given any face time, like Charlie Daniels was, but I happened to catch her face, and I was like, That is body,

Unknown Speaker 28:25

right? Oh, yeah, okay. In fact,

Kristin Nilsen 28:27

when she came on the screen, I'm watching the movie all alone, and I screamed, buddy, right? I was so happy to see her face, it was like drinking a cold glass of water in the parched sun. Don't

Unknown Speaker 28:41

let it make you wanna smile.

Kristin Nilsen 28:48

Okay, so let's get to the important part of this episode. Our expert extraordinaire, Amy lively is the host of the popular podcasts that was plural podcasts for the record the 70s and for the record, the 80s, which have been pivotal in providing research and inspiration for the pop culture Preservation Society, according to our website, in Amy's words, for the record, the 70s is a music and History podcast that is not about the best or the worst of the 70s. You like what you like, and you do not need to justify or apologize. It is a look at the intersection of the music, politics and culture of the decade that had to follow the 60s. Notably, Amy is a high school US history and literature teacher, and views this podcast as an extension of her classroom with occasional swearing. This is a long time coming for us. It's taken us four years to come together in one podcast, and I'm so excited and honored that you're here with us today. A huge, hearty welcome to superstar podcaster. Amy lively.

Speaker 2 29:47

Oh, thank you. That's That's quite the opening. I appreciate that I'm a lot of my friends would say I've been preparing for this moment my entire life to talk to somebody else about Urban Cowboy. So I. Here I am.

Kristin Nilsen 30:00

The barn door is open. Let's do this. Okay, so we talked at the top of the episode about how this episode came to be, which is when we listened to your episode called the John Travolta trilogy. So I just want to make sure that the listeners know that what we're going to talk about today is just one portion of that episode. So if you want to go deeper into all of the John Travolta movies, you need to listen to for the record, the 70s, the John Travolta trilogy. Okay, so question number one, let's kick this off. Let's go. So in your episode, you say that Urban Cowboy is part of what you call, like, I just said the John Travolta trilogy. And that trilogy, it didn't come from nowhere. Can you tell us where, where this John Travolta person came from, and the timeline of that trilogy that ends with Urban Cowboy.

Speaker 2 30:50

So the trilogy is we have Saturday Night Fever, Greece and Urban Cowboy, but Travolta, John Travolta, came into our public consciousness before that. It's kind of weird to think about Travolta playing anyone other than Danny Zuko in Greece, but he played duty on stage. That's 1973 is when he did that. He dropped out of high school and was pursuing this career. Kind of always wanted to be a star of some type, and so he played duty on stage. He had a small role in Carrie. Do you remember that? Yes, the problem, yeah, yes, yeah. He had a small role in that. And, you know, he was the boy in the plastic bubble, but in terms of how he, I think, was preparing himself to be part of this trilogy. Really goes to Vinnie Barbarino on Welcome back, Cotter, the sitcom with Gabe Kaplan. I remember my parents were taking me to a theme park in Kansas City, Missouri called Worlds of Fun, and we were going to see Gabe Kapler. Well, we're going to go see Mr. Cotter. And I was disappointed that Barbarino was not there. I'm like, wow, but Vinnie Barbarino was, I think, in a lot of ways, kind of the precursor to John Travolta's interpretation of Danny Zuko kind of had that fun loving troublemaker vibe, but you didn't really take it very seriously. He was he was cute, he danced easy on the eyes, that sort of thing. So I think he kind of parlayed that interpretation of this person to this teenager who's supposed to be trouble, but you don't really believe it

Kristin Nilsen 32:38

into into heart of gold, the troublemaker with a heart of gold,

Speaker 2 32:42

right? Yeah, yeah. So harmless. You know, might have give this outward impression of somebody to be afraid of, but really kind of harmless. But the two characters that I think that are more linked are Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever and Bud Davis in Urban Cowboy. And there's a lot of similarities there with these, this idea of the troubled soul living in a difficult time. So you have Saturday Night Fever. This young man who's working at a hardware store selling paint by day, and then by night, takes all of his money, blows it at the Odyssey 2001 night club. Something similar happening in Urban Cowboy with this really difficult economic crisis. I want crisis is probably not the right word, but this just overall downturn in the economy, you've got this guy again, who's kind of got this troubled soul that you can see is in there. He's trying to find his way. He during the day, he works in an oil refinery. At night, blows off steam at at Gillies. And so I think that there's something that connects all of those characters to make the trilogy. Yeah, we were

Kristin Nilsen 33:55

talking saying that it's the same movie, but the opposite movie, like the same exact movie, when in the opposite setting, yeah,

Speaker 2 34:02

yeah. Well, if you take it for what the what the heart of the movie is a young man who's trying to find his way in the world, and really, I think, wants to be someone else, right? And goes to a place where he can be that someone else, when you think about what a disco is, right? You have people who are dressing up. They're literally playing dress up, right? And going and dancing and being someone else. And the same thing is happening in Urban Cowboy. And if you go back and kind of look at the whole that was brief, but there was definitely a Western craze. I don't know if it made it to your to your realm, when we were just

Kristin Nilsen 34:41

talking about that, because it didn't really come to Minnesota. It didn't it's not that we weren't aware of a Western craze. We definitely knew there was something happening. I'm sure there was a country bar in Minneapolis that people went to as a result of Urban Cowboy. It wasn't as big a part of the

Michelle Newman 34:56

culture. I think it was a huge moment pop culture history. The Urban Cowboy movement was a huge movement in 1980 and this article that I had read referenced it as gaudy Texas chic, which is so true, right? And

Kristin Nilsen 35:13

you can say the same for disco. You know, that was Gotti in the same way, in the sparkly way instead.

Speaker 2 35:18

Yeah, no cowboy other than an Urban Cowboy, is going to dress the way bud Davis dressed in Urban Cowboy. And if you go back and listen to some of the interviews that you can dig those up on YouTube or what have you, people who are going to these types of clubs in 80 and 81 I mean, they are doing the same thing. They're literally dressing up being somebody else, because they're not really cowboys.

Kristin Nilsen 35:44

It's all both of these movies at the at the end of the day are about the dance floor. And I think it's so funny that we really did miss that when the movies came out. That didn't occur to me. I knew all about Gillies and but it never occurred to me that that Tony Manero and Bud Davis are all about the dance floor. Yeah,

Speaker 2 36:03

yeah, you could Brooklyn. I don't think that either movie would have been popular without the dancing. I mean, I said in my Travolta trilogy episode that Saturday Night Fever, the movie is not about disco. I mean, it seemed like it, because on the surface, that's what's on the movie poster, and that's what we remember, but the movie itself isn't but you couldn't have the movie without disco, because you need this place for Tony and his friends to go to, to forget the real world that they're living in. And that's the same function that Gilley serves these people who are working these jobs in the oil refinery, or people like sissy, who are doing things that are just, you know, think she, what did she do? Does she work in a convenience store or something, her parents, or parents, right? Or something, yeah, I mean this. We're not disparaging anybody who does those things, right? That's not what this is about, because I grew up with people like that. But these characters clearly want to do something else with their lives.

Kristin Nilsen 37:07

They all want to grow beyond their their boundaries. Tony wants to get out of Bay Ridge. He wants to go to Manhattan, but wants to get out of his small town of spur, Texas. He wants to go to Houston. It's the same themes, and everybody wants something bigger and better. It's

Michelle Newman 37:22

so obvious to me now as as you know a 55 year old woman watching Urban Cowboy through the lens that you gave me through, listening to the Travolta trilogy, and with many of the same themes we discussed in detail in our own Saturday Night Fever episode. It made it make so much more sense, and it made, for me, the problematic plot points so much more okay, in a way, understandable, because you know it, they are the same themes of like a reflection of the time and what these people are going through and the struggles that they're having and everything. So I'm

Speaker 2 37:58

guessing, by problematic one of the things you're talking about is the violence,

Michelle Newman 38:02

oh, talking about, absolutely the violence, the violence towards women and that just, you know, attitude of the men in the movie. Yeah,

Speaker 2 38:10

you know, in when the movie came out in Travolta, was doing the, I guess, the typical press tours and what have you, a rather rude BBC interviewer asked him an important question. I just didn't like his tone with it all. But he said that bud seemed to be kind of like, what did he call him a male chauvinist pig? That was the term of the era. Anyway, Kristen thinks

Kristin Nilsen 38:35

what John Travolta said basically,

Speaker 2 38:37

was like, are you all you know? How are you feeling about that? And Travolta is like, Well, clearly I don't agree with that, trying to separate himself from the character. But he said, I don't know if the answer satisfied the interviewer, but I totally got what he was saying. I mean, I grew up in this era. He said, that's that is the way it was. He said, that's the way that we don't have to like it. This is kind of what I say to my students when I talk about difficult things, which I do all the time because I teach US history, I'll say, does that make sense? Meaning? We don't have to say we like what we're hearing, but can we take that in and absorb it as something that was going on? And I think that's kind of I mean, I don't like it either. I don't I the scenes in Saturday Night Fever with Donna Pascal, yeah, don't like that. But also understand that this is something that happens. So me, that doesn't mean I like it. And

Kristin Nilsen 39:32

then in a work of art, you have to that has to be there for a reason, right? There has to be a reason for something difficult to be in the movie, whether you're exposing it or is the character grappling with it, is somebody going to get beyond it? And this was the conversation that we had earlier. I just felt like Tony Monaro did a much better job of growing beyond it than bud did. But maybe that's because, like you said. Said, this is the way it was. Maybe it wasn't his job to grow and change beyond it. The thing that I struggled with was, is this exposing that, or is it celebrating that? If it doesn't do anything and it just lays there on film, then is it a form of normalizing it? All in all, just like Saturday Night Fever, there are things that are just very uncomfortable. It's just very, very uncomfortable. Yeah,

Speaker 2 40:24

I don't know that, in Saturday Night Fever, Stephanie Tony's love interest, I think she demanded more of him power. Yeah, I don't know that sissy actually demanded the same things of bud. She wanted his attention and she wanted his love, just like and, you know, Wes in a similar way, he was a distraction, right? But in a similar way she wanted him, yeah, yeah. But I think that, and what's interesting, of course, is that Tony doesn't get Stephanie, Bud does get sissy. But, you know, that's a whole other conversation for another podcast. I guess interesting. I understand your point, your point on that. Kristen, yeah, and

Kristin Nilsen 41:04

it's still something that I'm grappling with. And this is why we have movies. There's another really important similarity between Urban Cowboy and Saturday Night Fever, and that is that both of these stories were inspired by an article. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 2 41:17

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of where the similarity ends. And here's what I mean by that. So the article that inspired Saturday Night Fever, the tribal rights of Saturday night, I think, is what it's called. It was written by a British author named Nick Cohen, and he moved to New York City, convinced his editor of New York Magazine that he wanted to do this article on the latest craze, disco. And so, yeah, he didn't know anything that he was writing about. He made it up. And he kept that secret for 20 years. He finally, at the 20th anniversary of the movie, revealed I made it up. And he said, I thought it was so obvious, I can't believe that everyone believed this, that you went along with it, and so I'm still annoyed by that. Me personally annoyed by this, because I feel like he really did disco a disservice. That's where I'm at, because I am pretty passionate about disco not sucking, and disco having an important role in history for gay rights and for the Latino community and this sort of thing. So I'm annoyed that this is what we a lot of people came away thinking disco was the difference too. With Urban Cowboy Aaron Latham, who wrote the article that inspired the movie, is the complete opposite of Nick Cohen. This is a man with impeccable credentials as a journalist. He was published in The Washington Post and, I think Esquire, and he knew what he was writing about. He was from spur the town that I didn't know that, yes, so, I mean, this is something he knew this world, and the article that he wrote was based on real people that he interviewed went to killies, and so this was his reality. And this movie, this script and this soundtrack, by the way, you could, you could tell, meant a lot to him. Aaron died about a year and a half ago, and in his kind of final days, final hours. He asked his wife, by the way, his wife, Leslie Stahl might remember her, oh yeah. 60 minutes, he asked her and his daughter to play the soundtrack while he's kind of leaving this, this world. Wow. And which can tell you that this is how much this all all meant. I mean, this is a guy who reported on Watergate, and what he's wanting to think about and kind of absorb in his final hours is Urban Cowboy.

Kristin Nilsen 43:49

So this article that so he was writing, I don't know if expose is the is the right term, because that sounds like you're trying to expose something negative. It sounds almost more like he was laying bare the culture from which he came. Yeah,

Speaker 2 44:03

you know, I wrote down his quote because I didn't want to forget it. This is what he said he was trying to do here. He said he wanted to tell journalistic stories through the vehicle of love stories. So which I think he, I think he accomplished the best he could with Urban Cowboy. I mean, we can agree that there are problematic aspects of the relationships that sissy has with both of these men. But at the end of it all, I think the touchstone for him was looking for love, right? That that's what this was about. Is about who are, who are looking for love and looking

Michelle Newman 44:40

at the root of it, though, I will say that quote is striking me because, and I think Kristen will disagree with me, but even at the end of the day with Urban Cowboy, I was rooting for bud and sissy to get back together. I said earlier I was kind of laughing, and I'm gonna misquote him, but it. My memory, he says something his last line to sissy is something like, sissy, I'm sorry for the first time I ever hit you, or something like, all the way back the first time I hit you, the first time I hit you. And she's like, you know, melts basically inside. I was like, Yeah, even though I know in my heart, well he's gonna hit her again. Like, I feel like he is even if his, even if his, he hopefully he learned a lesson from the last conversation he had with his uncle. We don't know because we can't tell. But what you just read that Aaron, his intention with this movie to tell the love stories. I bought that love story. I did, even though it was very problematic, I bought it and

Carolyn Cochrane 45:40

Amy, I want to ask you and how Aaron felt about this, because one of the things I mentioned is that I felt like we didn't get the kind of character development and things in Urban Cowboy that we get in Saturday Night Fever. I feel like there was more to this story that maybe Aaron wrote in his article, did he ever address that? I feel like they tried to stuff in some of the dancing and some of the mechanical bullying, as I've called it, writing that mechanical bull to at the expense of maybe a little more character development, or a way to tell that story, a little more their love story, because I think there was a lot more there than we ever got to see.

Speaker 2 46:22

I think you're right. I don't have the exact answer for that, but I think the answer is that it exists because he kept pretty careful journals. So he all of his papers and his journals have been turned over to the University of Texas, and they are being cataloged and will be available for research purposes as soon as they finish doing that, and I suspect that we can probably dig into some of his thoughts about how bud and sissy, the characters turned out there. If you read the article and it is available, it's out there. And if you can't find it, contact me and I'll send you a link to

Michelle Newman 46:59

it. Oh yeah. Let's put it in the Weekly Reader this week. That's a good idea. If you read the article.

Speaker 2 47:03

I think that there was, there was a lot more going on with the characters that he met that become the characters in the movie than we actually get to see in the movie. I think the focus becomes a little bit too much. Now this is being said, I love Urban Cowboy, but I think that the focus becomes too much about the bull. The mechanical bull becomes in terms of star, then maybe more attention given to bud and less to the bull. That's my I will say, agree

Michelle Newman 47:33

with you. And I read an article that I was talking about earlier in Texas Monthly magazine that was published in 2015 on the 35th anniversary, I believe. And you know, John Travolta is interviewed and quoted Deborah Winger. The I think Aaron is, I think the director also the two characters who bud and sissy are based upon, have stories to tell in there about this was true. This wasn't that. Was when I said earlier that they say that the bull was a metaphor. They say it was a machine, if they could conquer the bull that conquer the city like, you know, the tough times and the the conflicts they were having with the city. But it was, it was a good seven eighths of the movie, the bull, yeah. Bull should have had a name and a credit, yeah, at the end of the

Kristin Nilsen 48:18

movie. And it brought, and, you're right, it robbed us of more information about their relationship. Well,

Carolyn Cochrane 48:22

I wonder too, Amy, you said earlier that Aaron was heavily involved in the stage production. We talked a little bit about the stage production in our earlier conversation, we were talking about that you would maybe have that opportunity in the musical to tell more of the story and give a little bit more, you know, background, unfortunately, in 2003 or whenever it came out, not a whole lot of people wanted to see it, I guess. No,

Speaker 2 48:49

no, no, they didn't. Maybe, I think it was the wrong time for that. I totally agree, totally Yeah. I think at some point they could maybe try a revival of it for no other reason. Yeah, I think it probably would work now. I think the themes would work now. I also think that the music would draw in people too. And that was an issue with the stage production that, like Clint Black was like, Oh my gosh, this ruined country music, which is a ridiculous thing to say, Okay,

Kristin Nilsen 49:17

let's go there. Let's talk about the soundtrack, because there is we can talk about the individual songs, and that is the place where I did have access to Urban Cowboy from, because I didn't see the movie, and it wasn't really a part of our local culture, but the music was on the pop radio stations, which sounds like that's the thing that Clint Black probably hated,

Speaker 2 49:38

yes, well, the listeners of my podcast know that I really resist this idea of trying to find some purity in country music. I mean, give me a break. Country music is a conglomeration of it has its roots in many things, just like rock. The same thing happens. With people who were taking rock oh so seriously in the 60s and 70s, like, What are you talking about? Rock has its roots in other things too. So what was already happening when the Urban Cowboy soundtrack came around, as you were seeing this kind of pop influence on country, I mean, Rhinestone Cowboy? Anyone Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 50:22

I think back to, I mean, Kenny Rogers, we were listening, yes. Now, granted, I did grow up. I did live in Texas, so we but I'd know Kenny Rogers, he had a Christmas special, he was sure. And Olivia named John, I mean, she was a country artist. First I saw at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and she was, that was, those were her roots. And Anne Murray, you could argue it was country as well. So, I mean, Charlie Daniels, come on, yeah, and Charlie Well, and Charlie rich and Charlie pride, kind of, all of those names that you know were probably playing on the Adult Contemporary charts. And, I mean, I knew them all. And,

Speaker 2 50:55

right, well, yeah, the The soundtrack was originally supposed to be all Eagles songs, because, as we know about, supposed to be all eagles. Yeah, well, that was where his clients, he still ended up getting all of his clients and his his own acts on the soundtrack. But I, I still think that the criticism is, to me, doesn't hold water. If you think about the first time that bud and sissy talk in the movie, this isn't the first time she sees him. This is the first time that they talk. And she has kind of this famous line, are you real cowboy? And he says, Well, it depends on what you think a real cowboy is right? So it's implying, no, right? I'm not really a real cowboy. The title of the movie is Urban Cowboy. These are not real cowboys. These are people who are playing the role of cowboys at Gillies on the dance at Gillies, right? Which is, you know, this world's largest Honky Tonk, but evolves into this kind of like playground for adults who want to go and pretend, right? Yeah.

Carolyn Cochrane 52:08

Can I ask this question? Because in my mind, again, growing up in Texas and stuff, obviously, we all have this vision of what a cowboy is, no matter where we live. But to me, those were cowboys actually, that were working the refinery and hanging out at Gillies. And the urban cowboys were the ones that Pam and her little friends at the bar in Houston were trying to play like they were the corporate oil execs during the day, and then they were truly putting on the costumes where I didn't feel that as much with John Travolta's character and the people in at Gillies, I to me, those were the cowboy esque people.

Speaker 2 52:48

And so you feel like Travolta was, or was not, a real cowboy. He was, he was okay, I mean,

Carolyn Cochrane 52:53

to me, someone that lived on a farm or a ranch in spur Texas and wore, you know, the cowboy boots all the time, and the Wrangler Jeans and the snap shirts, those, in my mind, were what a Texas cowboy ish was at the time. It wasn't Jr Ewing in Dallas, which I do think this was riding on those coattails That, to me was the Urban Cowboy, the

Speaker 2 53:17

city cowboy, yeah, well, and you are a credible witness to that. I'm going to add to that and put my teacher hat on here for a second, and think back to what cowboys actually were. And you know, we had this myth of the Wild West and this myth of the cowboy, that they were like riding this wide open range and independent and nobody telling them what to do. And that is totally not what cowboys were, right? Cowboys were not riding the wide open range. They were herding cattle along a trail, and there was probably barbed wire on either side. And they were working for somebody else, doing very difficult work that they were not being paid very well for. And then when they finished the job, you know, in history, they would get to Dodge City, Kansas, or Abilene, or something like that, they would blow off steam in the saloon, right? So to your point, yes, absolutely. If you want to say that Bud was a cowboy in that respect, totally historically. So I think my comment was more like, you know, sissy, it's up. It's open to interpretation. If you think I'm really a cowboy or not, and if I'm not a cowboy in the traditional sense, then maybe the music isn't going to be either. We're going to have some city slickers be on the soundtrack. You know, we're going to have like Bob Seeger from Detroit, beyond, beyond the soundtrack well, and

Kristin Nilsen 54:34

the Eagles, the Eagles don't really belong on Fast Times, and The Eagles don't really belong at Gillies either. Yes, somehow they are on both. Thank you.

Speaker 2 54:43

Well, Don Hanley was from Texas. We'll give him, all right? I'll give him Don Henley from Texas, but the band has definitely got that California vibe to it. Yeah, sure, yeah. I

Kristin Nilsen 54:53

think for me, the the number one song from the soundtrack, the thing. That permeated my culture. Was looking for love. I was looking for love

Speaker 1 55:04

in all the wrong places, looking for love too many faces, searching their eyes, looking for traces of what I'm dreaming of, hoping to find a friend and a lover. I bless the day I discover another heart

Kristin Nilsen 55:30

looking for love that, to me, is a very deja vu song that puts me in a place in a moment. And then we talked about the Devil Went down to Georgia a little bit. The Devil Went down to Georgia that moment in the film. It's one of the longest songs, one of the most prolonged and one of the most dramatic scenes in the movie. And for me, it was sort of the pinnacle. It was foreshadowing what was coming. The Devil Went down to Georgia. Is the theme of that song. Is also kind of the theme of what is happening that is coming in the movie. We're gonna have this mechanical bull riding contest, and who's gonna sell their soul to the devil. And it just heightened the tension. And I was like, All right, now we've got some movie making going on.

Speaker 3 56:14

The boy said, my name's Johnny, and it might be a sin, but I'll take your bet you're gonna regret because I'm the best as ever been.

Speaker 4 56:22

John haros, enough, your poet, player fiddle hard, cause Hell's broke loose in Georgia, and the devil deals the cards. And if you win, you get this shiny fiddle. Let them go. But if you lose, the devil, get your soul.

Michelle Newman 56:35

That's one of my top songs when I was eight years, nine years old. And you know the Anne Murray song was that was played at their wedding reception. I believe, could we just have an entire episode to talk about ensemble and the pictures that, that little, what, like two minute montage of them trying to take the photos. I thought was brilliant, if you know, you know, and if you don't go watch them,

Unknown Speaker 57:01

they're running rubble. Photos,

Michelle Newman 57:03

how every single photo bud is like his mouth open, or he's talking to someone, or he's looking down. It's so real, right? So good, but, but that song, but I think that what I was, what the point was, is that devil went down to Georgia day, yes, but I think almost all the songs are placed well,

Kristin Nilsen 57:20

you're all placed very well. What I mean is, from a movie making standpoint, that that song elevated the whole story. We're like, now we're going now the tension is being built, and I know what's coming this contest. Just

Michelle Newman 57:35

building, building, building, right?

Speaker 2 57:38

Yeah, you know, Charlie Daniels used to do that kind of fiddling, Justice filler on his on his albums, and so it's so interesting that that is what becomes what he is most known for, if he didn't follow his career. This is what you know him for, is for that from that song, and how he took that beauty, wonderful, tension builder, as you put it, Kristen, and turned it into a hit, a pop hit, I have

Carolyn Cochrane 58:03

to say pop hit. As far as the soundtrack goes. It wasn't until this past weekend, when I watched Urban Cowboy for the very first time, all the way through, that I even knew. I knew all the songs. I had no idea they were from Urban Cowboy. No, none at all. I just knew. I mean, you the Ann Murray song, the Kenny rod there's a Kenny Rogers song. I knew every word of those songs. I had no idea they were from Urban Cowboy. I had no idea looking for love was from urban Urban Cowboy. Or look what you've done to me. I know all those songs and I but they were separate from the movie. To me, I know they even went together. Where did you grow up? Carolyn, yeah, so it's really interesting. I I grew up in Houston, and suburb of Houston, that's right, you say 1978 then in 1978 we moved to, interestingly enough, New Jersey. So I did eighth grade in high school in New Jersey. First I was this big novelty in New Jersey because people knew Dallas, and, you know, I was, I guess, a freshman in high school when Urban Cowboy came out, and I really didn't have any desire, because at that point, I got the feeling like country was not cool, okay, but then we moved back to Texas in 83 and I went to college in Texas. My sister went to high school in Texas, and did, I was telling Kristen and Michelle, she's the best two stepper you ever saw. I mean, we lived in these suburbs that were butting up right to these ranch lands and farms that people had grown up on. So I have a little different perspective on this. But when it came out, I was living in New Jersey, and I just saw these songs as individual songs on the radio. Okay,

Speaker 2 59:39

well, I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, and we had, I think at that time, just one movie theater. We had two for a period of time when I was growing up, that did not include the drive in, which is a whole separate conversation, right, the drive in. And so, because it was a small movie theater, we did have, like, I think maybe three movies. Bees that were being shown, but they were the same ones, right? So, like, when Footloose came out, we saw it like five weeks in a row because it was shown and plus, we loved it. And same thing with urban cowboys. So we saw my friends, and I saw it multiple times. I was in junior high and so, and we bought into the whole western craze. And, you know, so interesting about it, I mean, I've never considered myself to be country in that way. Even though I grew up around farmers, I would never was one. I'm allergic to hay. I was never a farmer, literally allergic to hay and horses. But I loved the hat. I loved wearing the hat, and I still love to wear the boots. And to me, it's still a little bit of like, dress up. So for me this think I was like, what 13, what I saw in sissy, in the way she dressed, and the other women in the movie, except for evil Pam, who I never did, like, was a way to kind of be a badass, right? Yeah, I'm like, Okay, this makes me something else by putting this on and so I could, kind of, I had no, I mean, I wasn't in tune to the politics of the movie and in tune to, you know, what it meant to work in an oil refinery, but I did understand putting on these clothes and being somebody else and listening to this music that

Carolyn Cochrane 1:01:12

I got. So when I was listening to your podcast, I almost wanted you to be in the room right then, because I had a question for you as you talked about this western craze of the 80s, and this feeling of cowboys and being independent and getting to call their own shots, and the Wild West and all of that, did that lend itself to Ronald Reagan becoming our president? Did that craze in his election? Did they influence each other? I think so.

Speaker 2 1:01:40

I think so very much. Do you remember the type of movies that Ronald Reagan was in? Do you remember that at all? I mean, we weren't around, but do you remember the type of he was in these, in those types of movies? Here's a again, I'm going to put my history teacher hat on just for a moment to kind of get us to how do we get to this point where we're all we're buying into Urban Cowboy 1960s 60s into the just the earliest part of the 1970s we have civil rights movement. We have the fight for women's rights, the right for safe and legal abortion, all these things are going on. And then we get into the mid 70s, and we're supposed to try to be living in this world that we've created, and a lot of people do not know how to live in this world that we've created, and it's feeling just a little too liberal for some people. And so you start to see evangelicals get more involved in politics, and you combine that with the Carter Presidency. I mean President Carter, we know, was only served for one term and was given a lot of the well the blame for core economy, and he gave a speech talking about this malaise in the country, and never denied that we had a low vibe and a low morale. So along comes Ronald Reagan, who is all about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. His literal slogan was mourning in America, not mourning like we're sad, but mourning in America. It's a new day. And so I think that the country just had some fatigue when it came to all of these things that we had been protesting and fighting for, which came to fruition. But it's like, Oh, you mean we have to, have to live this way. Now I'm like, I don't know. How are we supposed to do that? And so let's go back to something more simple. And if there's anything that the wild west or the Old West myth is it's simple, and even Aaron Latham said when he wrote this article about that inspired urban cowboys like, when the country gets more complex, we will always go back to simpler values. And I think that's kind of where Urban Cowboy fit, and why it was so popular at that time.

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:52

And I think there are a lot of people out there who are, and we see this today, who are comforted by a swagger, yeah, they are not comforted by the the wise and gentle Jimmy Carter. That was comforting to me, yeah? But to some people, they need an actor who plays a cowboy to come in and pretend that he's gonna, you know, what's this called, with the lasso, something with a lasso he's gonna harvest. Yeah, he's gonna, I'll use it as a verb too. Yeah, that he's just gonna take control, and he's gonna do with a smile on his face and a hat on his head, the

Speaker 2 1:04:26

country literally elected an actor. Yeah, right to like, yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:04:32

and he would sound familiar. We would be

Unknown Speaker 1:04:35

nuts to do that again.

Michelle Newman 1:04:39

What You Say You said in your and your podcast episode The Travolta trilogy, you said that the people who frequented Gillies were looking for an old west that didn't exist anymore. And that really helped me understand, and it kind of explained, you know, the fist fights and the bravado. And I kept because as I'm watching, I'm thinking, why don't 19. Was many decades ago, but at the same time, it's like, this whole, like, reckless fist fight. And then when you said that they're looking for an old west that doesn't exist anymore, I was like, Oh, well, then they're kind of recreating it. And

Kristin Nilsen 1:05:11

they're, yeah, they're creating a Ronald Reagan

Carolyn Cochrane 1:05:13

movie. Is what they're doing. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 1:05:15

something that's more comfortable and easier to maneuver through.

Kristin Nilsen 1:05:18

Yeah. Um, do you remember? I want to go back to the soundtrack for a minute. I When Carolyn, you mentioned this song. Look what you've done to me. Who does that song? So I noticed that there are some truly pop songs.

Country in any way. They tended to drop those songs in when fancy Pam was on the screen, fancy Pam in her fancy Houston apartment, and I wondered, what other songs are there that are like that?

Speaker 2 1:06:15

Let's see here, what did, what did Joe Walsh sing in this? Oh,

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:20

yes, that was very poppy. What is it? Though, I can't remember. We

Michelle Newman 1:06:23

don't need to look it up. Okay, so we have Hello Texas, by Jimmy Buffett. That was

Carolyn Cochrane 1:06:29

a fun song. Having lived in tech, like, I've heard that song a lot, like, that's something that people would play at, again, fraternity parties when

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:37

you and I only knew that by breaking the movie, but it jumped out in the movie to me as being a really fun song, yeah, but not country. No, no, it's not. And I was a little surprised, because they're, they're on the dance floor at Gillies. And I was like, Jimmy Buffett is Key West. That's not Texas, right? And it's so clearly Jimmy Buffett need

Michelle Newman 1:06:55

a margarita all night long. Joe Walsh, that's

Unknown Speaker 1:06:58

what I was thinking. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:18

yeah, that's totally not country

Michelle Newman 1:07:20

times like these. Dan Fogelberg,

Speaker 5 1:07:23

tell me a secret, tell me a lie, tell me the truth, and you have to say what you see fit, but don't ask me why. Love it's hard to keep up.

Kristin Nilsen 1:07:52

Me, oh yeah, that one is also not country. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:07:54

that's in the background, right? Nine

Michelle Newman 1:07:56

tonight by Bob Seger in the silver bullet. Man, not country. Stand By Me, Mickey gilly's version, which and the Travolta trilogy, you cover very well. I loved that version. I

Speaker 2 1:08:10

did too. And I just thought it was so ironic how Mickey Gilly was kind of, I wouldn't say, opposed. He was a little skeptical about his bar being in the movie and this sort of thing, and then suddenly he's a star. He's like, this is a great idea.

Michelle Newman 1:08:27

Well, like I was telling Carolyn and Kristen earlier in about 1982 we were visiting friends in Houston, and I went to galleys pictures in the parking lot. But I have a bumper sticker somewhere and a box somewhere because it was, believe me, it was a tourist attraction.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:39

Yeah? My parents went, yeah. They did,

Michelle Newman 1:08:41

yes. We have Cherokee fiddle by Johnny Lee. Then we have my favorite, other than looking for love. No, this is my favorite. Could I have this dance as my favorite? Because that's just Yeah, and

Kristin Nilsen 1:08:53

that is their, their wedding dance in the movie. And it is, it is just the perfect. It really is a perfect wedding dance. Can I have this dance for the rest of my

Unknown Speaker 1:09:05

life? For the rest of my life?

Unknown Speaker 1:09:11

Would you be my partner every night

Unknown Speaker 1:09:19

when we live together?

Carolyn Cochrane 1:09:34

I had no idea that was from Urban Cowboy. My parents would dance to that in our living room. Yeah, and I had no idea it's from urban I

Speaker 2 1:09:40

didn't either. Well, it was written to be a wedding song. They needed a wedding song. Yeah, and, you know, I think I mentioned this in the podcast episode, that everybody wanted sissy white boots, but they don't exist. They didn't exist. It was created like, I gotta have those. Well, they don't, they don't exist. Then

Michelle Newman 1:09:54

we have lion eyes by the Eagles. You. I

Speaker 2 1:10:14

thought I a great song. Yeah. Great song has nothing to do with anything in the movie, but yes, it's great.

Michelle Newman 1:10:27

Yeah, looking for love by Johnny Lee, of course, which I would have never if I was, you know, on Jeopardy or whatever, and I had $5 million at stake. Who sings looking for love? I would have said something like the eagle. I don't I would have never in a million years,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:10:40

I had to do a deep dive on Johnny Lee as Kristen and Michelle, know, because I found out some fun facts about him. But he was just really a Texas country artist at the time. He was in the house band with Mickey Gilly. And there were, again, having lived in Texas, a lot of those, that's a real Texas sound, kind of. And there are a lot of those artists that every once in a while they might get a hit, that you would know, but they were more known for doing the circuit of Texas kind of thing.

Speaker 2 1:11:07

Yes, I'm glad that he got the chance to do that. I think that if there's, you know, with all the things that you might find problematic about the soundtrack, I again, love the movie. I loved the soundtrack. I think it was important, if you could, to include Texas acts in it, and to not just exploit them, but to actually use them. So that is a score.

Michelle Newman 1:11:28

Okay, moving on. We have, don't it make you want to dance by Bonnie Raitt, seeing Bonnie Raitt on stage there for just a brief

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:37

but we wouldn't call that a country either, right? What does Bonnie Raitt is? She's

Unknown Speaker 1:11:41

blues. She's blue. Bonnie raids, blues, yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:11:43

yeah. Then, of course, the devil went down to Georgia, which we already talked about, by the Charlie Daniels band. Here comes the hurt again, from Gilly.

Speaker 2 1:11:51

Yeah. That was, that was pretty well placed, too. That was great. Then we

Michelle Newman 1:11:55

have orange blossom special slash hoedown, which is by Gillies Urban Cowboy band. Orange Blossom special was

Kristin Nilsen 1:12:01

a huge tap dancing song, and the dance competition circuit in 1980 Yes, you had to wear an orange dress that was sort of like the country looking dress. And it was like every dance studio had an orange blossom special tap dance,

Michelle Newman 1:12:16

number 14, one of my I just, I love this one. And again, like we've said, when, when it started playing in the movie, I was like, Wait, this is where This song Love the world away from Kenny Rogers. Yes.

Hurts against the wind. Linda Ronstadt, okay, oh, and JD Souther, yeah, that was yes. And yeah, yeah, and 10 of those songs were top 10 billboard Country Singles, that was my next question. Again, for love, stand by me. By Mickey Kelly, look what you've done to me. By boss Skaggs, could I have this dance? Anne Murray, love the world away. By Kenny Rogers, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:13:12

Those are all very radio friendly for 1980 Yeah, we're you know that that time top 40 was still kind of diverse. It's going to become much less so as we get it further into the 80s, but at that time, it still was, and that was all very, very friendly for FM. And

Kristin Nilsen 1:13:29

I think if people listen to that soundtrack today, maybe they don't know that those songs are from Urban Cowboy, but I think you will be instantly transported to a very, very small slice of time in your life, it'll send you backward. Yes. Okay, so tell us now what? So what was the result of Urban Cowboy? What happened to John Travolta after Urban Cowboy? In my memory, he kind of disappeared, with the exception of two little weird movies. Where did he go? And what happened? John

Speaker 2 1:13:57

Travolta did not disappear. He continued to make movies all the way through the 1980s until we were ready to love him again with Pulp Fiction. You know, I'm thinking about he and the movies were rather forgettable. So in your defense, Kristen, if you don't remember perfect, you know, and staying alive was just a bad movie. And he made the one with Olivia Newton John, because I think that he just really loved her, and she loved him, and they wanted, I don't, I'm just putting words in their mouths, I don't know, but they love each other, so they, I think they just wanted to make a movie. Here's, I think what you're asking me is like, why did we love him so much? And then we stopped until he played Vincent. Is okay, you're right.

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:42

I know all of those movies you just said, but in my mind, he was gone. But clearly he wasn't, because

Speaker 2 1:14:46

he was making movies that we were not going to see. I mean, he had made one in there. So what's interesting is that, you know, he was supposed to be in in American Gigolo, and dropped out and. He, He has given multiple reasons for why he dropped out. You know, I have read that it was the script was too similar to moment by moment, which he did with Lily Tomlin, which the critics just trashed. And he thought, I think it was a little unfair, because then, because the critics trashed it, people didn't go see it. But also, in that time, his mom died. I mean, one thing we know about John Travolta is he's had a lot of loss in his life, thinking back to like Diana Hyland, you know, nothing all that. And even recently, with his wife dying and his child, right, and his child, I'm just going to offer up my theory about why the movies he did in the 80s were not as well received. And I could be wrong, but I think it has something to do with this. I think with the trilogy, with those movies, that if you were a man, you wanted to be him, and if you were a woman, you wanted to dance with him, and you can interpret dance however you want to, right? And we then he starts doing these movies where that's not true anymore. So I was watching Saturday Night Fever this weekend, and I was just kind of standing there eating a snack, watching it on my TV, and that iconic scene comes on where he's doing the solo to You should be dancing. And I think it's the character Bobby, who says to Tony's brother, the priest, who's there. He said, Look at him. He's the king. And I was like, This is it? This is the thing, right? Because the people would look at him on the screen. So they're sitting in their movie theater chair with their popcorn and their Dr Pepper or whatever. And you know that there are these guys who want to be him, and they could even say that's true about Danny Zuko, his interpretation of Danny Zuko, and even say that's true about bud Davis, the way, the swagger and all that. But then he starts playing these roles where, no, we don't really want to dance with him because he's not dancing, and we don't, other than staying alive, which was Ben, and we don't really want to be him either. So along comes Quentin Tarantino, right, who loved him in Welcome back Cotter, and he loved him in blowout, and he loved him in Greece, and he offers him this role in Pulp Fiction because he loved him and wanted to kind of help revive his career, as it were. And Travolta really wanted this role. Didn't think he was going to get it. Gets the role, gets critical acclaim for it. He's doing press for this movie, for Pulp Fiction, and he has to take a moment. I think he was at the Cannes Festival, and he had to take a moment because he was nearly in tears. He almost started to cry because he was getting this LOVE So you were saying he was kind of self deprecating, and so I think that he really was feeling like they don't love me anymore with these other movies, and I keep doing them, and I don't know why, and I think that just with Pulp Fiction, it was just a better script. And so maybe people wanted to be him again or not, I don't know, but I think that's what the attraction was with the trilogy. And then it just it goes away with the movie choices and the script choices he made. Well,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:18:20

movie going, audience ages as well. Like, you know, we were a certain age when we saw those movies and had Tiger Beat magazines with him and in posters. And as I mentioned earlier to me, he is Vinnie Barbarino, or, like almost John Travolta is a character, and that he's just plunked in each of those movies, but so it was like he was the same person, just in different settings. And you only have so many of those movies to go, and you only have so many people who are willing to kind of suspend belief and believe you're an Urban Cowboy. But we rooted for them

Michelle Newman 1:18:57

all. Yes, I did.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:59

I'm hard headed and I'm prideful, and I want to apologize clear back to when I hit you the first time. I love you, sissy

Kristin Nilsen 1:19:15

two. Amy, this was amazing. This has been so educational. I know our listeners are gonna just be wanting more. And I hope you guys run over and listen to the John Travolta trilogy on for the record the 70s.

Speaker 2 1:19:26

Thank you so much. Enjoyed every moment of it. I was looking for

Unknown Speaker 1:19:31

love in all the wrong places. Looking for love too many faces.

Kristin Nilsen 1:19:39

This is the kind of discussion that's necessary about the movies of our past. The point isn't necessarily, is it good, or is it bad, or does it hold up, or does it not? Or did I enjoy it, or did I scratch my eyeballs out? It's more about where it came from and what it meant at that moment in time, and for me today, having never seen it. It was a profound missive from the past that explained everything about how we got to where we are now. And yet, for some people, it's a comforting and twangy trip down memory lane. In other words, Urban Cowboy is a cultural juggernaut all wrapped up in a colorful, musical dance hall sized bow. This is why art is important. Go see a movie today, preferably in the theater. Thank you everybody for listening today, and we will see you next time. And

Michelle Newman 1:20:29

we want to give a huge shout out to our amazing Patreon supporters. Your contributions at all levels directly. Help us create this podcast and keep it and this whole society trucking. And today we're giving a special shout out to our newest patrons, Elizabeth, Cynthia, Katherine, Nancy and Erin, and also to Johanna and Leanne Deb film talk, Kimberly D and another Kimberly. Kimberly was another popular name I'm thinking, in the 70s. And if you're enjoying this show and want to join our community of patrons, just head over to patreon.com P, A, T, R, E, O n.com, and just put pop culture Preservation Society up in the search box to learn more about the different tiers and exclusive perks available to our supporters. We appreciate all of you so much. And don't

Carolyn Cochrane 1:21:22

forget that one of the best ways you can support us is by sharing the podcast with your friends. And if you haven't already putting a little review over there on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to pop culture Preservation Society that helps us get to be seen by more people. And it makes us so happy to read those reviews. We really appreciate it, you guys, and

Kristin Nilsen 1:21:42

it makes us feel good,

Michelle Newman 1:21:45

little serotonin boost That's right. In

Kristin Nilsen 1:21:48

the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the cast of Threes Company, two good times,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:21:53

two Happy Days, Two Little House on the Prairie. Cheers. Cheers. The information,

Kristin Nilsen 1:21:58

opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belong solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we're always right, there is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nanu. Nanu, keep on trucking, and May the Force Be With You.