Another bad guy

John Travolta tackles role of villanious alien is 'Battlefield Earth'

Published: Friday, May 26, 2000

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Bad guys have been pretty good to John Travolta of late.

After a down stretch so long it would have killed most careers, the star of ''Saturday Night Fever'' and ''Grease!'' became bankable once more with Quentin Tarantino's ''Pulp Fiction'' (1994), playing an inquisitive but amoral and befuddled hit man.

'''Pulp Fiction' communicated a possibility to me,'' he said. ''Like the old actors, Cagney and Bogart, I discovered that I could still be entertaining and likable, and be evil. That possibility led to 'Broken Arrow,' which led to 'Face/Off,' which led to 'Battlefield Earth.'

''As long as you're entertaining being evil, you're fine.''

Hits like ''Get Shorty,'' ''A Civil Action'' and ''The General's Daughter'' brought him back to the top tier of his profession. Now he's spending a little of that career capital on a risky sci-fi project close to his heart. For 15 years, Travolta has tried to get ''Battlefield Earth'' before the cameras.

It's a sci-fi epic set 1,000 years in the future. But more tellingly, it's a film based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Travolta is a Scientologist, the most famous one on Earth. But even though Tom Cruise, Chick Corea, Jenna Elfman, Kirstie Alley and several other celebrities share that with him, most of Hollywood does not.

And faith isn't enough to get a movie on the screen.

''I didn't have the clout to get it made,'' Travolta says. But clout wasn't the only problem.

There was the script.

''It was a long time in the making, mostly because I didn't finally get (the script) right until recently,'' Travolta said. ''A year and a half ago, we got a version of the script that tackled the book and did it justice.''

Then there were the special effects.

Hubbard's novel features gigantic aliens, futuristic technology and battles everywhere.

''I don't think if we'd done this book 15 to 20 years ago, the special effects would have measured up to what we were able to do,'' he said. ''Now, they're state of the art, realistic. This was just the right time to make this film.''

But, of course, he's leaving out the obvious holdup to ''Battlefield Earth.'' Hubbard invented Scientology, the controversial self-help religion that has been under fire for decades for its expense to its followers, its medical claims and the intimidation tactics its leaders use to quash dissent and bad publicity.

Could anti-Scientology bias have kept Hollywood from making the film?

''Quite the opposite,'' he said. ''It's so many people's favorite book, when word got out that we had the green light, the options I had for people who wanted to work on it were amazing.

''All the 'Star Wars' (production) people were on it, and they worked on it for six months for nothing. They had the same commitment they had on ('The Phantom Menace') movie. That blew me away. Clearly, it wasn't just me. It was this book.''

Something of a compendium of Hubbard's sci-fi writings recast in a new story, 'Battlefield Earth' did earn some good reviews when the novel came out in 1982. But some critics have claimed that sales figures have been inflated by Scientologists buying multiple copies, a Donald Trump trick for creating a best seller.

Some, such as Richard Lieby, writing in The Washington Post, see the book and film as a metaphoric treatment of Hubbard's philosophy, that psychology and psychiatry are the root of modern evil the villains of the piece are the ''Psychlos.''

But any suggestions of a link between the film and Scientology draw swift rebukes from the church leadership. Travolta also dismisses such suggestions.

The $80 million film doesn't have an A-list director, but George Lucas recommended his second-unit man from ''Phantom Menace,'' Roger Christian.

Aside from Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, the movie doesn't boast a lot of ''names.'' And the biggest name, Travolta, is in pretty deep character makeup throughout the film.

He decided that he was no longer young enough to play the idealistic young hero of the piece. So he became the gigantic arch-villain.

''I always liked how Terl looked'' on the cover of the book, and on billboards advertising the book, Travolta said with a laugh.

''It was so correct. But getting that was hot, uncomfortable, claustrophobic. It made me be more evil, what can I say? It motivated the wicked feelings.''