It Won’t Stay Dead – Reviving the Dark Night of “Fever”

On the phone with my beloved Christine earlier this evening, she mentioned catching the end of Saturday Night Fever while channel surfing. We’ve dated for ten years now and I never realized until this day how much she liked that movie. Memo to myself – pay better attention to your woman, bonehead. Personally, I have a long-time, double distilled hatred for the soundtrack from that film. At the time of its release, I was working for a company that manufactured the cassette and eight-track recordings for RSO, the organization with which Australian-born British impresario Robert Stigwood both won and lost fortunes (he buried money accumulated from Saturday Night Fever and Grease into the graves of subsequent creative missteps, highlighted by the Sergeant Pepper movie fiasco).


For month after month, I delivered boxes of empty cassette shells and top and bottom eight-track casing halves to the cassette-feeders and eight-track tape splicers, all nice, hard-working, underpaid women. The result of their labors, after label application (eight-tracks) or ink screening and jewel box insertion (cassettes), individual shrink-wrapping and assembly into corrugated shipping containers, stood evident in the mountains of music, block-stacked on wooden pallets and pulled by strong-armed and weak-minded young men such as myself through a series of checkpoints in the direction of the loading dock.


Much of the work we did was on spec, running production orders and holding finished product in inventory, then awaiting distributor purchase orders to pull and ship the stock. With SNF, it was different. Whole splicing lines and cassette loading sections ran the title exclusively, with individual shrink-wrap and box-load lines dedicated to it and, as soon as the pallets of packed corrugated boxes reached ‘so high,’ out the door they went. Work continued at that pace for over six months, non-stop. The fact that this was the soundtrack for a film that appeared to be an homage to Disco made the effort seem ignoble to my early-twenties eyes. Disco was a plague to my senses, as it was to many of my generation. I hated acting as an agent for the enemy by helping to spread this foul propaganda. My guilt manifested itself in nightmares featuring mirror balls and platform shoes.


I didn’t mention any of this to Christine. I may have made a gagging sound, but I don’t think she picked it up coming through my wireless headset. I listened as she spoke lovingly about the Bee-Gees and whatever other musical mutts contributed to the film score. She then suggested adding Saturday Night Fever to my Netflix queue, so we could see it again from start to finish. We’ve developed a routine of a weekday movie night, using my Netflix account to supply the content. It’s been a hit or miss process so far, mainly due to my inability to gauge her tolerance for black humor; Burn After Reading received a thumbs-down after viewing and Bruno a foot-down (literally), barely making it through the first twenty minutes. With Saw 2 and Saw 3 on the horizon, I thought that perhaps a concession on my part was in order.


I don’t want to waste the precious movie night on a young John Travolta, even considering the fact that a good dose of Johnny might rev up my love’s already impressive sexual engine. I considered delivering the DVD and then retiring to her computer room while she watched it alone, but that wouldn’t be right; a recent article called “Getting Out of the Girly Stuff” on Match.com contains several quotes from me (identified as Charlie from Long Island) where I contend that some level of compromise is necessary in sustaining a relationship.


Thus hoisted by mine own petard, I am exposed and helpless to this thing that I once thought to be as dead as polio. My only satisfaction in bowing low and sitting still while the lights from flashing floor panels wash over my glazed eyes (besides the true joy of making my lady happy) rests with the certain knowledge that the expanded popularity (and subsequent backlash) inspired by this movie actually helped to diminish the cachet of Disco culture among influential trend-setters. Then came Grease and, hey hey, my my, Rock and Roll never did die. Bless you, Robert Stigwood.