XANADU 1980

8/8/80. These cryptic numbers jumped out at me from posters, billboards, and newspaper ads all over Los Angeles during the summer of 1980. Was it apocalypse? Armageddon? Well, yes and no. The numbers represented August 8th,1980: the theatrical release date of the roller disco movie musical, Xanadu.  

The tale of a legwarmer wearin', sundress rockin', rollerskatin', glow-in-the-dark muse (the heavenly Olivia Newton-John) who comes to earth to inspire a disillusioned artist (the uncomfortable-appearing Michael Beck) and retired bandleader (the ever-charming Gene Kelly) realize their dream of opening a roller rink/disco/nightclub; Xanadu is like nothing I've seen before or since. It's a law unto itself.  

The cast of Xanadu recreates the reaction of the nation's film critics in the summer of 1980

Widely panned on its release, the detonated bomb that was Xanadu had a catastrophic effect on the screen careers of its promising young stars, temporarily decimated the musical legitimacy of its composers, and single-handedly lay waste the roller-disco fad; all in one fell swoop. Yet, like a phoenix rising from the ashes (or a zombie that refuses to die even after you've fired a bullet into its brain), Xanadu has gone on to become a genuine camp/cult classic and is perhaps the most beloved bad film since Valley of the Dolls (which, by the law of averages, really should have been turned into a stage musical by now).

Olivia Newton-John is Kira

Gene Kelly is Danny McGuire

Michael Beck is Sonny Malone

Given the lengths to which the film's participants and Universal Studios have gone to distance themselves from it over the years, many would be surprised to learn that back in 1980, Xanadu was released with the kind of massive advertising blitzkrieg usually only afforded sci-fi & action films. Ostensively poised as the next Grease (a film I absolutely loathed that surprised everybody by becoming the largest grossing film of 1978), Xanadu was almost obnoxiously ubiquitous.  

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

On the contrary, the glut of TV specials, radio promos, magazine articles, comic books, merchandising tie-ins, and cross-promotions mirrored my own excitement when I learned that my favorite rock group of all time (The Electric Light Orchestra—the preferred band of all the stoners at my high school) would actually be collaborating with Little Miss "Have You Never Been Mellow", Olivia Newton-John (arguably the most white-bread singer on the charts next to Debbie Boone).

This was before the days of pop stars changing their images with each new album release, so the prospect of the new-and-improved, 1979 model ONJ of "Totally Hot" (the terrific album that prompted a music critic to cite: "The tight pants Olivia wore at the end of Grease must have gone to her head") cutting loose in an original movie musical scored by a band known for its deliriously theatrical bombast, had me thinking that Xanadu had the potential to be another cinematic mind-blower like Ken Russell's film of The Who's Tommy. To say I was stoked to see Xanadu is a monumental understatement. I was so excited I practically gave myself a nosebleed.

Starry Eyed
One of the things I liked most about Xanadu was its sweetly optimistic vision of the 80s as a multi-generational, cross-cultural utopia where differences are accepted and originality encouraged. Lady Gaga would be proud.

I saw Xanadu on opening night at Mann's Chinese Theater with an audience that apparently hadn't read the reviews telling them that they weren't supposed to be having a good time. The theater was packed and the air was full of the excitement of attending an event. Every musical number was met with thunderous applause, catcalls and whistles greeted various names during the closing credit crawl, and (probably for the first and last time) only the intentional humor got laughs. 

As for me, I had passed through the looking glass somewhere around the time Gene Kelly, age 67, danced on an oversized pinball machine, displaying a beatific smile and the same effortless grace of that young man who made his screen debut in For Me & My Gal (1942).

I don't know what hit me (perhaps I was kissed by a muse myself), but I left the theater that night a different person from the one I was when I went in.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

It's ironic that the dominant design motif in a movie as unwieldy as Xanadu is the sleekly economic elegance of Streamline Moderne. Real and studio-enhanced examples of Streamline Moderne architecture appear throughout Xanadu, as befitting the film's blending of music and design styles from the 40s and 80s.

Both critics and audiences were at a loss to figure out what Sonny Malone's dream of being a serious artist had to do with the opening of a roller-disco nightclub. The script drops the ball in making this clear, but close inspection of the film reveals that Sonny's artistic dreams come imaginatively true in his designs for Xanadu.

The model of the Hollywood Bowl "Muse" fountain in Sonny's apartment...

...becomes a fountain for real-life muse, Kira, to dance in front of in the realized Xanadu of Sonny's dream

One of Sonny's earlier discarded sketches (top) is realized as a modernist Greek column (behind Beck in the photo above) in his final design for Xanadu.

The Streamline Moderne appliances in Sonny's apartment (top) find whimsical expression in Xanadu's metallic chairs (center) and the oversized waffle-iron stage that Ms. Newton-John is perched on above.

PERFORMANCES
Save for Gene Kelly's, there are no performances to speak of in Xanadu, so I'd rather not waste space by bashing the leads. There are plenty of sites online for that. What I would like to address is the matter of onscreen chemistry (or the lack of it) which provides Xanadu with many of its unintentional laughs and much of its homoerotic subtext. First off, not since Can't Stop the Music has a film worked so strenuously to establish the heterosexuality of its hero.

Perhaps the filmmakers thought Kira's neutered sexuality (until the smoking-hot finale where she sings something like 28 songs in succession) and Sonny's penchant for tight jeans and skimpy shorts, made Xanadu even gayer than it already was (not possible really, but let's go with that); so within the film's first half-hour, we have every third line of dialog reminding us that Sonny is a babe-magnet who's irresistible to women. Friends offer to fix him up, women flirt outrageously, and for the really slow-witted, an annoying co-worker (just the sort who would be the first to be killed off were this a horror film...which it kinda is) just comes out and flatly makes a comment to that fact. Later, when Sonny meets up with a buddy whose van he painted, the friend is given insipid post-dubbed dialogue relating to the sexual allure of mini-van murals --Hey, and the chicks love it!"-- calculated to dispel all viewer suspicion that muscular guys in short shorts roller skating along the Venice boardwalk are anything but skirt-chasing, sexually hyperactive heteros. 

Real Men Roller Skate

What throws a monkey-wrench into all this over-emphatic machismo is the fact that Beck and Newton-John exhibit zero screen chemistry, while Beck's scenes with Gene Kelly fairly crackle with magnetism and unintentional sexual innuendo. While everybody was making sure that every female in the cast was hailing Sonny Malone as some kind of roller-skating Super Fly, someone failed to notice that they gave Gene Kelly too many lines that make him sound like a genial sugar-daddy on the make. As Beck and Kelly develop an across-the-generations friendship, Kelly has one line after another where he's comparing business partnerships to marriage or sex. And wouldn't you know it, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly have an easier, more natural screen rapport than Beck has with his fluorescently glowing love interest.

Sonny and Danny, moments before yet another ill-timed interruption from Kira

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

It's no accident that Xanadu's soundtrack album took on a life independent of the failure of the film. The music by John Farrar and Jeff Lynne is some of the best ever composed for a musical. "All Over The World" is a lasting favorite (it always makes me feel happy inside) and the much-anticipated (by me) teaming of ONJ and ELO on the song "Xanadu" makes for one of the best pop singles to come out of the 80s. The unique musical qualities of each artist seem to bring out the best in both. ELO's soaring, overreaching orchestrations have always cried out for a voice as ethereally sensual as Olivia's, and Lynne manages to get her to shed some of the saccharine from her voice to deliver a solidly virtuoso pop performance. Nobody could maneuver the rhythmical twist and turns of this elaborately arranged piece the way Olivia Newton-John does. I think it's the best vocal performance of her career.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

August 8, 1980, is a date that has more significance for me than the release of a lovably awful musical that nevertheless captured my heart and imagination back when I was a young student filmmaker hoping to break into the movie business.

8/8/80 represents the day I decided I was going to become a dancer.

A revelatory decision made all the more astounding when taking into account that, after studying film for nearly 4 years and being exposed to some of the greatest cinematic works ever created, the motion picture that inspired me to change the course of my life at age 22 was none other than that much-maligned muse of a musical, Xanadu. (This should give hope to producers of flops the world over.)  Maybe it was the music, the choreography, the visual style, or maybe the film's theme about the importance of following your dreams...who knows? It makes me ask myself: is the emotional experience of seeing a "good" film more valid than the emotional experience drawn from seeing a "bad" one, and should it matter so long as they make us feel something? Whatever the reasons, I left the theater that night convinced that there couldn't be a life more blissful or fulfilling than a life spent dancing.

The dancers beckoned, and I said YES!

Briefly summarized, I wound up quitting film school and threw myself into several intense years of dance training. Never looking back, nor regretting the decision, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I have been a professional dancer for over 25 years now and I'm happy to say that it has far exceeded my expectations of what I thought it could bring to my life. I never before believed that dreams could come true like they did in the movies. And like it or not... Xanadu is the film I have to thank for it all. Although I must confess that I wasn't as happy about that fact as I am now. Until about the year 2000, it really wasn't "cool" to say you liked Xanadu. Whenever anyone would ask me about the Xanadu license plates on my car, I would lie and say it was in reference to Citizen Kane. Such disloyalty!

I'm in my 50's now and still dancing. And I only hope that should I be lucky enough to make it to my 67th year, my heart contains even a glimmer of the joy that Gene Kelly's smile radiated in that pinball sequence that still knocks me for a loop after all these years. It's funny.. who'd ever guess that one of the worst films ever made would lead me to my very best life? Worst film ever made? Don't you believe it.

You Have To Believe We Are Magic

*Footnote: To coin the title of another Olivia Newton-John hit, in an odd "Twist of Fate," I was invited to appear and tell my story in the retrospective documentary "Going Back to Xanadu" included as a special feature on the 2008 Xanadu DVD release. Talk about full circle. Me on the DVD of the movie that changed my life, talking about how it changed my life! You can't tell me that a muse didn't have a hand in all this...Magic indeed!

I participated with Don Fields of the Xanadu Preservation Society in the "Xanadu" 40th Anniversary podcast via "Stuck in the '80s."

Xanadu's Impact on My Life

Hollywood Bowl Muse Statues

The Pan Pacific Auditorium

Further Proof of Xanadu's Lasting Impact on My Life

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2013