Travolta/Cage #5: Moment By Moment/Birdy (with Alonso Duralde)

This week on the podcast, the tables turn for our intrepid young hunks, as John Travolta’s hot streak comes to a close with 1978’s Moment by Moment and Nicolas Cage gets a big, juicy, Cage-tastic role in 1984’s war drama Birdy. And we’ve got film critic Alonso Duralde (The Wrap, Linoleum Knife, Who Shot Ya?) in the passenger seat for this sizzling mix of May-December romance and homoerotic Vietnam melodrama!

Moment by Moment is the third and final film of Travolta’s contract with Robert Stigwood, a languid romance between a half-witted, drug-addled beach bum (Travolta) and a recently-separated middle-aged woman (Lily Tomlin) who discovers herself in the arms of this hunkasaurus. Too bad it’s performed with all the urgency of a school play, and Travolta and Tomlin’s chemistry is more familial than erotic.

Then there’s Birdy, Alan Parker’s 1984 adaptation of the William Wharton novel about two best friends (Cage and Matthew Modine) wrestling with their Vietnam trauma and using the power of only-slightly-heterosexual manlove, and the majesty of flight, to fix themselves and each other. Cage lost 15 pounds and pulled out two teeth (without anesthetic) for the role, and he throws every ounce of that baby-Cage madness into every scene.

Which one reigns supreme? Listen and find out!

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