Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What was the first movie John Travolta starred in?
Travolta first became well known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979) and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Although his acting career declined through the 1980s, Travolta also enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and he has since starred in films such as Face/Off, Swordfish, Wild Hogs, and Hairspray.
Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in "Emergency!" (S2E2), in September 1972, but his first significant movie role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film "Carrie" (1976). Around the same time, he landed his star-making role as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared (as Arnold Horshack's mother). The show aired on ABC.
The Bull attracted people like Aaron Latham a frequent visitor of the club. Sherwood Cryer told Latham to write about Gilley's, and from Latham's experiences. He wrote a cover story for Esquire magazine titled "The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy America's Search for "True Grit"' for its September 1978 issue. The stars would be John Travolta as "Bud" the lead character and Debra Winger as "Sissy" "Bud's" romantic interest. The movie was filmed on site in Pasadena. It was an enormous box-office hit in 1980. The film's sound track album featured "Looking' For Love" By Johnny Lee. And Mickey Gilley with "Stand By Me". John Travolta coming to Pasadena Texas is what did it for the movie. A man who had made disco movies popular was now making Country movies popular also. After that, Country Artists were playing to people who might have ignored country music. The movie was one of the best things to happen to country music and Pasadena.
Jim Quinlan (born May 1, 1934) is an American journalist, writer and screenwriter. 
Quinlan wrote the screenplay for the 1996 movie Michael starring John Travolta.
According to Samaha, he got around the "negative factor" of the Scientology connection by the simple expedient of "yell[ing] at everyone, 'This is a science-fiction film starring John Travolta!' again and again". Samaha acknowledged that "everyone thought I was crazy or mentally retarded" for taking on the project, but pitched the film as ""Planet of the Apes" starring John Travolta". Others in Hollywood were still skeptical; an unnamed producer was quoted by the "Los Angeles Daily News" as saying that ""Battlefield Earth" has the stench of death. It should never have been made. It's an $80 million vanity project for Travolta." Travolta's theatrical agency William Morris was also said to be unenthusiastic, reportedly leading to Travolta threatening to leave them if they did not help him to set up the film. Fellow Scientologist Tom Cruise was said to have warned Warner Bros. that he thought the movie was a bad idea. Cruise's spokesperson later denied this.
Allmusic considers the song to be a tribute to John Travolta and fellow actor Patrick Swayze, although it also contains references to Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump. A biography about John Travolta, written by Bob McCabe, was titled "Quote, Unquote" after the song. The main theme from the movie "Grease", a movie John Travolta was famous for, was sampled twice in the song. 
Samaha specialized in rescuing stars' pet projects. Franchise Pictures sought out stars whose projects were stalled at the major studios, bringing them aboard at reduced salaries. Samaha's approach made waves in Hollywood, earning him a reputation of being able to produce star vehicles more cheaply than the larger studios. His unorthodox deals raised eyebrows and the entertainment industry magazine "Variety" commented that they were "often so complex and variable as to leave outsiders scratching their heads". As Samaha put it during an interview about "Battlefield Earth", "I said, 'If John [Travolta] wants to make this movie, what does he want to get paid?' ... Because I do not pay anybody what they make. That is not my business plan."
Eyes of an Angel is a 1991 American drama film starring John Travolta and directed by Robert Harmon. It was released in France, Sweden, and on television in the United States as The Tender. It was released straight-to-video in 1994 under its proper title to coincide with Travolta's bigger name release, "Pulp Fiction". According to the opening credits, the movie is based on a true story. The film was shot entirely in Chicago.
Collie's songwriting credits include Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Alabama, and George Jones. He is also noted with writing songs for Hollywood Movies such as Lions Gate's The Punisher starring John Travolta and " Fire Down Below" starring Steven Seagal.
Kleiser directed several television movies in the mid-1970s, including 1975's "" and 1976's "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble", which starred John Travolta. Kleiser was then tapped to direct his first feature film, the 1978 film "Grease", in large part because of Travolta's recommendation based on their work together on "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble". Kleiser would go on to direct several more feature films, including "The Blue Lagoon" (1980) with Brooke Shields, "Summer Lovers" (1982) with Daryl Hannah, "Grandview, U.S.A." (1984) with Jamie Lee Curtis, "Flight of the Navigator" (1986), featuring the first use of digital morphing in a film, "Big Top Pee-wee" (1988), "White Fang" (1991) and "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid" (1992).
In March 2012 Newton-John was interviewed by Malaysian newspaper "The Star" and was asked when was the last time which she talked with Travolta, her answered: "About a month ago. We’re working on a project together. [...] It’s not about "Grease"!". In late September the virtual shops of Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com listed an album named "This Christmas" by Travolta and Newton-John, set to be released on November 13, 2012. Rav Holly, from Rav Media Group, posted on Facebook a photo with Travolta and Newton-John, and stated that the company was making the album photoshoot. An official statement came on October 2, with a post on Olivia's official website and Facebook page.
In 1997 Hollywood producers were working on developing a film version of "To the Stars". Producers Barbara Boyle and Michael Taylor were preparing to bring the book to the film screen for Touchstone Pictures, a division of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group. Boyle and Taylor had previously worked with actor John Travolta on the film "Phenomenon", and the project was planned to be part of Travolta's vision to make films out of L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction novels. Hubbard's novel "Battlefield Earth" was first on his list, and Travolta starred in and helped fund the film version of the book which was released in 2000. A film version of "To the Stars" had not yet begun production as of 2008.
Travolta's wife Kelly Preston also appeared in one scene, playing Terl's "baldish Psychlo girlfriend" Chirk. Travolta originally saw himself in the role of Jonnie, but by the time the movie was actually made, Travolta felt he was too old to play the role, and took the role of the main villain instead. Travolta's role in the film required what he described as an amazing physical transformation: "I wear a tall head apparatus with strange hair. I have amber eyes and talons for hands. It's quite remarkable ... I'm on 4-foot stilts." To star in the film, Travolta turned down the movie "The Shipping News" and postponed production on "Standing Room Only".
The movie was not a box office success, though the very small budget meant its losses were also minimal; it was widely seen as a blip on the radar during John Travolta's massive comeback as a movie star during the post-"Pulp Fiction" phase of his career.
Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to TV in the first season of the anthology series "American Crime Story", titled "", in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro.
The racial integration of a take-off of the show, dubbed "The Corny Collins Show", provides the backdrop to the 1988 John Waters movie "Hairspray" starring Divine and Ricki Lake, the Broadway musical "Hairspray" starring Harvey Fierstein and Marissa Jaret Winokur, the 2007 movie "Hairspray" featuring John Travolta and Nikki Blonsky and the 2016 NBC television musical "Hairspray Live!" starring Fierstein and Maddie Baillio. Although he never appeared on Deane's show, Waters attended high school with a "Buddy Deaner" and later gave Deane a cameo in his 1988 film in which Deane played a TV reporter who tried to interview the governor who was besieged by integration protesters.
"Pulp Fiction" is full of homages to other movies. "Tarantino's characters", writes Gary Groth, "inhabit a world where the entire landscape is composed of Hollywood product. Tarantino is a cinematic kleptomaniac – he literally can't help himself." Two scenes in particular have prompted discussion of the film's highly intertextual style. Many have assumed that the dance sequence at Jack Rabbit Slim's was intended as a reference to Travolta's star-making performance as Tony Manero in the epochal "Saturday Night Fever" (1977); Tarantino, however, credits a scene in the Jean-Luc Godard film "Bande à part" (1964) with the inspiration. According to the filmmaker;
Everybody thinks that I wrote this scene just to have John Travolta dancing. But the scene existed before John Travolta was cast. But once he was cast, it was like, "Great. We get to see John dance. All the better."... My favorite musical sequences have always been in Godard, because they just come out of nowhere. It's so infectious, so friendly. And the fact that it's not a musical, but he's stopping the movie to have a musical sequence, makes it all the more sweet.
Jerome Charyn argues that, beyond "all the better", Travolta's presence is essential to the power of the scene, and of the film:
Travolta's entire career becomes "backstory", the myth of a movie star who has fallen out of favor, but still resides in our memory as the king of disco. We keep waiting for him to shed his paunch, put on a white polyester suit, and enter the 2001 Odyssey club in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he will dance for us and never, never stop. Daniel Day-Lewis couldn't have woken such a powerful longing in us. He isn't part of America's own mad cosmology ... Tony Manero [is] an angel sitting on Vince's shoulder ... [Vince and Mia's] actual dance may be closer to the choreography of Anna Karina's shuffle with her two bumbling gangster boyfriends in "Bande à part", but even "that" reference is lost to us, and we're with Tony again ...
Estella Tincknell notes that while the "diner setting seems to be a simulacrum of a 'fifties' restaurant ... the twist contest is a musical sequence which evokes 'the sixties,' while Travolta's dance performance inevitably references 'the seventies' and his appearance in "Saturday Night Fever." ... The 'past' thus becomes a more general 'pastness' in which the stylistic signifiers of various decades are loaded in to a single moment." She also argues that in this passage the film "briefly shifts from its habitually ironic discourse to one that references the conventions of the classic film musical and in doing so makes it possible for the film to inhabit an affective space that goes beyond stylistic allusion."
In September 2010, Fiore Films announced that it had secured the rights from Gotti to produce a movie about his life, in particular his relationship with his father. According to "Variety", several producers had expressed interest, but Gotti chose Fiore, a small, newly created production company. The movie, tentatively titled "Gotti: in the Shadow of My Father," was to be directed by Barry Levinson. John Travolta was cast to star as Gotti's father, and Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, played his on-screen wife, Victoria Gotti. Junior Gotti was played by Spencer Lofranco. The production of the film eventually lost Barry Levinson. On July 25, 2016 principal photography on the film renamed to "Gotti" had begun with Kevin Connolly as director. The film was released on June 15, 2018. On June 9th 2018 the documentary TV Mini-Series Gotti: Godfather and Son was released.
Travolta had converted to Scientology in 1975 and subsequently became one of the Church of Scientology's most prominent supporters. Hubbard sent him an autographed copy of "Battlefield Earth" when the book was first published in 1982; he reportedly hoped that Travolta would turn the book into a film "in the vein of "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"". While Travolta was interested, his influence in Hollywood at the time was at a low after participating in a series of flops. He gained renewed influence with the success of the 1994 film "Pulp Fiction", which garnered Travolta an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He had not forgotten Hubbard's wishes to see the book on the big screen and took on the task of making "Battlefield Earth" into a movie. Travolta described the book in interviews as "like "Pulp Fiction" for the year 3000" and "like "Star Wars", only better".
He lobbied influential figures in Hollywood to fund the project and was reported to have recruited the aid of fellow Scientologists in promoting it. According to Bill Mechanic, the former head of 20th Century Fox, "John wanted me to make "Battlefield Earth". He had Scientologists all over me. They come up to you and they know who you are. And they go, 'We're really excited about "Battlefield Earth".'" This did not impress Mechanic: "Do you think in any way, shape, or form that weirding me out is going to make me want to make this movie?"
In 1998, the project was taken over by Franchise Pictures, a recently established company whose head, Elie Samaha, a former dry cleaning mogul turned nightclub owner, specialized in rescuing stars' pet projects. Franchise sought out stars whose projects were stalled at the major studios, bringing them aboard at reduced salaries. Samaha's approach made waves in Hollywood, earning him a reputation of being able to produce star vehicles more cheaply than the larger studios. His unorthodox deals raised eyebrows and the entertainment industry magazine "Variety" commented that they were "often so complex and variable as to leave outsiders scratching their heads". As Samaha put it, "I said, 'If John wants to make this movie, what does he want to get paid?' ... Because I do not pay anybody what they make. That is not my business plan.'" He learned of "Battlefield Earth" from Cassian Elwes, an agent at the theatrical agency William Morris, and approached Travolta. A deal was soon struck and financing was arranged; Travolta significantly reduced his normal fee of $20 million, lowering the film's cost from the $100 million that had previously been forecast, and costs were reduced further by using Canadian locations and facilities.
After his retirement from the NFL following the 1993 season, Long pursued an acting career, focused mainly on action films—including "Firestorm", a 1998 feature in which he starred. He also appeared as a co-star in the suspense movie "Broken Arrow", alongside star John Travolta. He played a minor role in the movie "3000 Miles to Graceland" alongside Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell and Courteney Cox. In "That Thing You Do!", Long appears as Mr. White's (Tom Hanks) "partner" Lloyd in the extended cut of the movie, released on DVD in 2007. Long's part was entirely cut from the theatrical release.
In 1991, Quinn had his first major role in the movie "Shout", which starred John Travolta and in which Quinn shared an on-screen kiss with Gwyneth Paltrow in her debut film. 
The "Travolta dress" (also known as the "John Travolta dress") is a dress once owned by Diana, Princess of Wales. It was worn for the first time at a gala dinner at the White House in November 1985. It is named after the American actor John Travolta, with whom the Princess danced at the dinner.
The subsequent film adaptation, released in 2000, was a commercial failure and was criticized as one of the "worst films ever made".
From the book's release, Scientologist and science-fiction fan John Travolta aimed to bring Hubbard's book to the big screen in a series of two movies with himself playing Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, as well as producing. A first film was planned to be released in 1983, but due to rising costs, trouble in finding a studio that would fund the project, and Travolta's waning star power, the project was cancelled. It was finally produced by Franchise Pictures and released in 2000 as "Battlefield Earth". Directed by Roger Christian, it starred Travolta (who by now felt he was too old to play the hero) as Terl, Barry Pepper as Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, and Forest Whitaker as Ker.
His most recent feature film project (as of January 2019) was the 2003 thriller "Basic" with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. Reviews for "Basic" were mostly negative. Roger Ebert gave it one star out of four, saying it was "not a film that could be understood", and that "If I were to see it again and again, I might be able to extract an underlying logic from it, but the problem is, when a movie's not worth seeing twice, it had better get the job done the first time through". Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gave it two stars out of four and said the film "keeps adding layers of confusion so that it becomes less interesting as it goes along! The final 'twist' seems to negate the entire story, like a bad shaggy-dog joke."