New York Post
Dec. 27, 1999 (Page 6)

TRAVOLTA'S BIG BITE ON MOVIE SET

JOHN Travolta is hungry to make a movie based on a mediocre book by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. But it's the star's appetite for fatty foods that's the talk of the set on another picture he's in.
Travolta was supposed to have started shooting "Standing Room Only," a biopic of lounge singer and Sinatra crony Jimmy Rosselli, in April. His wife, Kelly Preston, was to play Rosselli's wife, Donna. "Psycho" director Gus Van Sant was to helm the movie. But the star's avarice bogged things down before principal photography had even begun, reports Mark Ebner in Los Angeles-based Mean magazine. The project was underfunded from the beginning, but far from cutting costs, on the one-day test shoot that did take place, Travolta splurged.
The day began with Travolta breakfasting alone in his luxury trailer on eggs and caviar prepared by his personal $32-an-hour chef, Peter Evangelitos. After that he had to spend a few hours in makeup. After that it was lunch time -- for Travolta only.
Travolta had $49 worth of filet mignon ground into hamburgers. The first burger he was served wasn't rare enough. There was something wrong with the mayonnaise on the second. Luckily, the third was OK.
"The guy just eats and eats," a crew member told Ebner. "He's like one of those geese who gets force-fed [to make] foie gras."
Meanwhile, for the past six years the Scientology-obsessed star has been developing "Battlefield: Earth," based on a novel by Hubbard. He will play Terl, a ruthless 10-foot-tall alien with talons for hands. The film is supposed to start shooting in Canada in August.
But the novel is described in The Economist as "an unsuitable saga, atrociously written, windy and out of control." And the screenplay sounds worse. Ebner removed Hubbard and Travolta's names from the title page and sent it to two script readers for unbiased feedback. "A thoroughly silly plotline is made all the more ludicrous by its ham-fisted dialogue and ridiculously shallow characterization," opined the first reader, from Mike Ovitz's Artists Management Group. "The storyline is slow-moving, predictable and obvious [and] the dialogue is laughable."
"About as entertaining as watching a fly breathe," concurred the second reader.
Travolta's rep did not return calls.