Introducing Travolta/Cage: The Podcast, the Column, the Legend

A few weeks back I had what I like to think was a real Eureka moment. I was watching the Southern-fried detective yarn The Poison Rose for My World of Flops as part of John Travolta Month and I thought about how much I love Travolta, and how utterly fascinating I find every element of his life and career.

I absolutely adore the entirety of Travolta’s existence, the egregiously terrible as much as the iconic and awesome. I’ve loved Travolta for as long as I can remember. I don’t just love Travolta’s movies: I also love the dancing and the flying and the singing and the mega-watt smile and regrettable long-term participation in a fascinating greed and fame cult known as Scientology. 

The Poison Rose probably wouldn’t even make a list of the top 40 most entertainingly terrible Travolta movies yet I was riveted all the same both because it is spectacularly, flamboyantly bad and misconceived in that distinctive late-period Travolta fashion and also because of how neatly it ties into the delusions and themes of this particular tragicomic period of Travolta’s career. 

Like Gotti and Speed Kills, The Poison Rose adorably imagines that if you slap the right toupee on Travolta voila, instantly fifteen to twenty years slip away and he can confidently play characters in their late forties and fifties despite being deep into his sixties. 

There’s something both comic and tragic about this self-delusion, and something oddly heroic about Travolta embracing his baldness instead of hilariously and unconvincingly trying to hide it in ways that only made it more achingly apparent. 

I love Travolta so much, and he has made so many movies that I figured that I could do a podcast where I only talked about the movies of John Travolta and simpatico trash culture icon Nicolas Cage and never get bored. 

Then I realized that due to the nature of podcasting and my career I could do just that and replace my current podcast, which was in a bit of a creative rut, with a new podcast devoted exclusively to a years-long chronological jaunt through the films of Travolta and Cage to be titled Travolta/Cage: A Podcast About the Greatest Actors in History with Worthington/Rabin. 

Every episode Clint, myself and an awesome guest will discuss one Travolta movie and one Cage movie to determine which movie is better and which actor is superior, on both a micro and a macro scale. The idea is to scientifically provide a definitive answer to a question that has obsessed mankind since the beginning of time: who ultimately is the better actor, John Travolta or Nicolas Cage? 

I like to think that Travolta is secretly talking to Clint and myself about our podcast.

By the end of this five year long journey we’ll have a conclusive answer to this most pressing and important of questions. 

We want you to be a big part of this journey so we’re inviting all our Patreon subscribers to vote along at two new tiers. For five dollars you can show your support for your man Nicolas Cage at the CAGED HEAT level while for six dollars you can be HIGH TRAVOLTAGE. Your tier level will factor into the final voting and brackets so complicated that neither Clint or I understand them. 

It’s gonna be fun! I’m super pleased with how The Weird Accordion to Al turned out, as a book more than as a column, and I think this will be a similarly Herculean endeavor spanning years that will allow me to dive deep into an object of obsession in a way that will eventually create something greater than the sum of its parts. 

Also like The Weird Accordion to Al, Travolta/Cage will be an online feature. I’ll be writing about all the Travolta and Cage movies I watch for the podcast for the site and at the end of that epic quest I intend to edit the holy living fuck out of the online columns and publish a book version of the column.

One of the reasons Cage and Travolta are perfect for this is because they’re both so obscenely prolific. According to IMDB, Travolta currently has 78 credits and Cage 104 so we’ll have enough material for a good four years, by which point both men will undoubtedly have made plenty more motion pictures for us to cover, each better and more relevant and important than the last.  

Cage has made substantially more movies than Travolta and doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. If we finish Travolta before Cage and end up covering twenty late period Nicolas Cage movies I will be fine with that. That will be a great problem to worry about. 

Here’s a rough schedule of the films we’ll cover for the first ten episodes to give you a sense of the awesomeness in store: 

Episode 1

Carrie/Valley Girl 

Episode 2

The Boy in the Plastic Bubble/Rumble Fish 

Episode 3 

Saturday Night Fever/The Cotton Club

Episode 4 

Grease/Birdy 

Episode 5 

Moment by Moment/The Boy in Blue 

Episode 6

Urban Cowboy/Peggy Sue Got Married 

Episode 7

Blow Out/Raising Arizona 

Episode 8

Staying Alive/Moonstruck 

Episode 9

Two Of a Kind/Vampire’s Kiss 

Episode 10

Perfect/Never on Tuesday

Pretty fucking good, eh? As that list illustrates, Travolta and Cage have made a lot of great movies as well as legendary trash. We’re starting this podcast project because we love these dudes and want to spend years happily wading through their filmographies. Will we also make fun of their movies? Of course! We love Travolta and Cage but we also love to make fun of them and this will give us plenty of opportunities to do so. 

Clint and I are both super appreciative of everyone who listened to the Happy Cast or pledged or sent in questions. We both really enjoyed doing the podcast and working with each other but feel like we never quite cracked the code and the podcast was never quite what we wanted it to be. 

We feel much more confident in Travolta/Cage. It’s got what I hope is a juicy hook but one that’s organic and natural and speaks to our combined passions. Think of this as either a hard reboot or the next step in the evolution of the Happy Cast. 

Regardless, if you don’t already subscribe, subscribe to Travolta/Cage and spread the word, if you can, and please do join our Patreon as well to let the world know where you stand on this most important of issues. 

I am #TeamTravolta and it looks like we’ll need all the soldiers we can get, since Cage understandably seems to have gotten off to a strong lead and is the heavy favorite to win this epic contest of historic importance and significance.

Also, we’ve got a Twitter account I encourage y’all to follow over at @travoltacage!

I’m super optimistic and excited about Travolta/Cage. So join us on this epic adventure through four decades of the best and worst pop culture has to offer through the prism of two American heroes so original and so unique we absolutely had to pair them together. 

Sign on for the Travolta/Cage Patreon over at https://patreon.com/TravoltaCage

And of course y’all can also pledge over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace