‘Goofy Guy’ Even Though John Travolta Plays Cool Fellows In Movies, That’s Not How He Sees Himself

Could anyone be more cool than John Travolta? Remember him in that white polyester suit, flinging his partner across the floor in “Saturday Night Fever”? Or how about Vinnie Barbarino, the totally cool sweathog leader on “Welcome Back, Kotter?” Or how about the sweet, buff guy in “Urban Cowboy?”

And there couldn’t be anyone - not even Johnnie Cochran Jr. - who’s as cool as Travolta in his new movie, “Get Shorty,” which opens Friday.

As the slick, confident, self-possessed Chili Palmer, Travolta is the quintessential cool guy.

But Travolta sees himself in a completely different way. “I’m probably sort of a goofy guy,” he says. “There are moments when I feel cool. But let me tell you about my feeling cool: It doesn’t last. I have such instant karma on being cool. I can count maybe five or 10 times in my life when I believed I was cool, and every one turned to instant karma slapping me in the face.”

As an example, Travolta tells of the muggy Sunday morning when he was feeling the blahs and decided to try on a little “cool” to make him feel better.

“I have this beautiful red Jaguar, 1964, and I haven’t driven it in three months. It’s Sunday and I’m feeling under the weather. I didn’t sleep a lot last night and I haven’t eaten yet and I’ve got to have a meeting with a director and I’m feeling drab.

“I look at that car and think, ‘If I were to turn down the top, if I were to have a cigar, if I were to turn on the theme from “A Man and a Woman” - duh, duh, duh, la-di-dah-di-dah (he sings) and if I were to drive down Sunset Boulevard, perhaps, maybe, I might feel a little better, and I might be the cool movie star that I am.”’

So Travolta decides to try it. “I’m on Sunset Boulevard, got on sun glasses, the top’s down and people are looking and whappp! (the car stops) right on the curve of Sunset Boulevard. That’s the curve where you always think ‘If I were to get stuck there it’d be awful because I’d get killed and I’d be embarrassed.’

“Right on THAT curve. My face is as red as the car. It won’t start. And honk, honk. Oh, God why did I try to be cool. I see in my rear-view mirror some guy yelling. No, please. I’m getting redder. I got out and tried to push the car. Then people recognize me. ‘Oh, you need any help?’ ‘No, I’m fine.’ But I wasn’t fine. Suddenly this guy from one of the big mansions (on the boulevard), he sees me and says, ‘You need help?’ I say, ‘Please.’ So we push the car into his driveway. That is what happens to me every time I actually believe for one second that I’m cool.”

You can’t fake it, says Travolta, even in Hollywood. “A facade of anything may not work,” he says. “If you truly are confident, it works. If you pretend you’re confident, they’ll smell it out.”

He confesses that he thought he was kind of cool in high school. “I cared how I dressed. I cared about how I looked so people thought that was possibly cool. I thought it was good manners to dress well. So who knows?”

It doesn’t matter if Travolta doesn’t live up to his idea of a totally hip guy. He turns in a gem of a performance in his latest movie, “Get Shorty,” as an implacable Miami loan shark who tries swimming in the depths of Hollywood’s underworld.

Travolta’s career was revitalized by his portrayal of the dense thug in “Pulp Fiction,” and this new portrait in “Get Shorty” is just as fascinating.

At first Travolta wanted to turn down the role in “Shorty,” but Quentin Tarantino, the young director of “Pulp Fiction,” called him and said, “This is not one you pass on; this is one you say yes to.” Travolta hadn’t read Elmore Leonard’s book on which the film is based. And once he did, he was convinced.

This week he starts shooting “Phenomenon.” “I play an average guy who gets struck with a stroke of genius and only wants to help people through it and suffers certain tragedies. It’s brilliantly written, and I can’t wait to play it.” Co-starring are Robert Duvall, Forest Whitaker and Kyra Sedgwick.

We’ll next be seeing Travolta in “Broken Arrow,” in which he plays a “psychotic, military war-monger.”