Where do you go when the record is over...

Catch it.

John Travolta graduated from minor celebrity to superstar with Saturday Night Fever. Travolta plays Tony Manero, a Brooklyn paint-store clerk who'd give anything to break out of his dead-end existence. In life, Tony is a peasant; on the disco dance floor, he's a king. As the soundtrack plays one Bee Gees hit after another (including "Stayin' Alive"), we watch white-suited Tony strut his stuff amidst flashing lights and sweaty, undulating bodies. Tony's class aspirations are mirrored in his relationship with his dance partner, Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney), a secretary eager to move into the glamorous world of Manhattan. Saturday Night Fever's huge success grew meteorically thanks to the towering popularity of its soundtrack; during the first half of 1978, when the movie's disco songs saturated the singles charts up to four at a time, it was no longer clear whether the hit movie was feeding the hit songs or the hit songs were feeding the hit movie. This crossover between music and movies set the pace for many movies to come, as it also marked the rise and fall of 1970s disco culture. Two versions of this film exist: the original R-rated version and a PG version, edited down to more "family-friendly" fare and fed to the public with the tagline, "Because we want everyone to see John Travolta's performance

Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 American dance film directed by John Badham and starring John Travolta as Tony Manero, an immature young man whose weekends are spent visiting a local Brooklyn discothèque; Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual friend; and Donna Pescow as Tony's former dance partner and would-be girlfriend. While in the disco, Tony is the king. His care-free youth and weekend dancing help him to temporarily forget the reality of his life: a dead-end job, clashes with his unsupportive and squabbling parents, racial tensions in the local community, and his associations with a gang of macho friends.
A huge commercial success, the film significantly helped to popularize disco music around the world and made Travolta, already well known from his role on TV's Welcome Back, Kotter, a household name. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, featuring disco songs by the Bee Gees, is one of the best selling soundtracks of all time.[4] The film is the first example of cross-media marketing, with the tie-in soundtrack's single being used to help promote the film before its release and the film popularizing the entire soundtrack after its release. The film also showcased aspects of the music, the dancing, and the subculture surrounding the disco era: symphony-orchestrated melodies, haute-couture styles of clothing, pre-AIDS sexual promiscuity, and graceful choreography.
The story is based upon a 1976 New York magazine article by British writer Nik Cohn, "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night". In the late 1990s, Cohn acknowledged that the article had been fabricated.[5] A newcomer to the United States and a stranger to the disco lifestyle, Cohn was unable to make any sense of the subculture he had been assigned to write about; instead, the character who became Tony Manero was based on a Mod[6] acquaintance of Cohn's.


Two theatrical versions of the film were released: the original R-rated version and an edited PG-rated version. (The PG-rated re-issue was in 1978; the middle-ground PG-13 rating was not created until 1984.)
The R-rated version released in 1977 represented the movie's first run, and totaled 118 minutes.
After the success of the first run, in 1978 the film was re-issued to a PG-rated version and re-released during a second run to attract a wider audience. The R-rated version contained profanity, nudity, a fight sequence, and a multiple rape scene in a car, all of which were de-emphasized or removed from the PG version.
Producer Robert Stigwood said in a recent interview[when?] on "The Inside Story: Saturday Night Fever", about the PG version: "It doesn't have the power, or the impact, of the original, R-rated edition."
The PG-rated version was 112 minutes. Numerous profanity-filled scenes were replaced with alternate takes of the same scenes, substituting milder language initially intended for the network television cut. To maintain runtime, a few deleted scenes were restored (including Tony dancing with Doreen to "Disco Duck," Tony running his finger along the cables of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and Tony's father getting his job back).
In 1979, Paramount Pictures paired up the PG-rated version of the film as a double feature along with its other John Travolta blockbuster, Grease.[7]
Both theatrical versions were released on VHS, Laserdisc, CED Videodisc, and DVD. But the R-rated version never saw wide release until its Laserdisc (in limited edition) and DVD issues. The R-rated special-edition DVD release includes most of the deleted scenes present on the PG version. Both the PG- and R-rated DVD releases also include a director's commentary and "Behind the Music" highlights. Starting in the late 1990s VH1, TBS, and TNT started showing the original R-rated version with a TV-14 rating. The nudity was removed/censored, and the stronger profanity was either edited or (on recent airings) silenced. But this TV edit included some of the innuendos from the original film that were edited or removed from the PG version. Turner Classic Movies has aired the film in both versions (the R-rated version is commonly seen on their normal lineup, while the PG version has appeared on TCM's "Funday Night at the Movies" and "Essentials Jr." program blocks.)
The network television version (which premiered on November 16, 1980 on ABC) was basically a slightly shortened form of the PG-rated version, but contained several minutes of out-takes normally excised from both theatrical releases to make up for lost/cut material. It is among the longest cuts of the film..
A sequel, Staying Alive, was released in 1983. It starred John Travolta and was directed by Sylvester Stallone. (Staying Alive, rated PG, also predated the introduction of the PG-13 rating.)






It Is Now Rated PG Because we want everyone to see John Travolta's performance... Because we want everyone to hear the #1 group in the country, the Bee Gees... Because we want everyone to catch "Saturday Night Fever".