“Grease” will be the word once again when the Sedona International Film Festival brings a showing of the seminal 1978 musical to the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m.
The show will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the film’s director, Randal Kleiser, before the evening’s festivities continue in the Sedona Red Rock High School cafeteria, which will be decorated to look like it’s straight out of Rydell High and will host live music by the Swingtips.
“Lighting in a bottle” was how Kleiser described the film’s chemistry between leads John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, supplemented by a soundtrack contributed by rock ’n’ roll heavyweights Frankie Valli, Frankie Avalon and Sha-Na-Na.
Kleiser pointed out that Valli’s opening song “Grease” was written and produced by Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees. “It’s very unbelievable that after 45 years, people are still watching it and loving it,” Kleiser said. “People from all over the world and all ages. I travel a lot and everywhere I go, grandmas and little children and teenagers all love it.”
The question-and-answer session with Kleiser will include a presentation of behind-the-scenes photos and stories from the making of the film. For instance, Frankie Avalon’s musical number “Beauty School Dropout” was especially challenging to film.
“That set was really dangerous, it was very tall and skinny,” Kleiser said. “The steps [were] about 40 feet to the concrete floor of the stage and [Avalon] was really worried [he would] trip and fall — and so [were] the girls because they were in high heels on the skinny set with concrete below. So we brought in mattresses and put them all around.” While audiences are now familiar with John Farrar’s closing number “You’re the One That I Want,” that wasn’t the case in 1978.
“Nobody had heard that song, including me, until the day that we filmed it,” Kleiser said. “So suddenly, we’re there and we got to figure out what to do with it now? Everyone loved it and I did, too and I said, ‘Well, how are we going to put this together?’ Luckily, [choreographer] Patricia Burch had been working with John and Olivia on some choreography. Then we had to figure out where to put it. We looked around, saw the Shake Shack and went in there and figured out how to do it. And funnily enough the Shake Shack restaurants were based on that [amusement park ride] in that clip.”
“Olivia, of course, was exactly the way you imagined her. On screen she was the same as she was in person and she was nervous about doing this movie. She wanted to back out and John and I wanted her very much. We asked her if she would do the movie and she said, ‘Only if I can see a screen test and see how I look next to John.’ She was worried about being too old for it … And so we did the test and then she saw it and she liked it. That’s how she got the part. She auditioned us rather than us auditioning her.”
Newton-John died in August 2022 at the age of 73 after a decades-long battle with breast cancer. She left a musical legacy including disco, country and four Grammy Awards.
“She was an icon of light, she was so beautiful,” Kleiser said. “She always signed her emails to everyone ‘love and light.’ And that’s kind of the way she appeared. Everyone that I met loved her … and she was just like an angel, she was fantastic.”
Taking the stage during the SIFF afterparty will be the Swingtips, who have been active since 1996 and got their start performing at Disney World.
“I started writing for film and television as we started having our songs licensed for film and television,” the group’s lead singer Kregg Barentine said. “So it’s kind of cool that we’re a part of this event, because this is part of what my career has been. I wrote for television, ‘Roswell,’ ‘Felicity’ … a lot of our songs from our albums have have made it into feature films and television episodes.”
The audience for their Sedona show can anticipate taking a trip back in time when the group performs.
“They’re certainly going to hear a lot of music from the ’50s, so Bill Haley & His Comets, Elvis and then of course we’ll be playing songs from the movie,” Barentine said.
Kleiser will also be holding a free workshop at the Yavapai College Sedona Center on Saturday, March 2,at 10 a.m., entitled “Directing in the Digital Age.”
“I love to talk to filmmakers and wannabe filmmakers about what I’ve learned,” Kleiser said. “I had studied at [University of Southern California] film school, with two people who helped me learn about directing actors. One was Nina Foch, who was in ‘The 10 Commandments,’ and she was a wonderful teacher, and then we made a DVD of her course called ‘The Nina Foch Course for Filmmakers and Actors.’ I’ll do a little bit of that. And then the other person I learned about directing [from] was Jerry Lewis, who we all thought would be silly as a teacher, but he turned out to be smart and serious about directing. He talked about two kinds of directors, the performance director, and the technical director and he said that the best thing would be to come combine them and be a total filmmaker. That’s the name of his book, ‘The Total Filmmaker,’ which he got from our class … So I’ve always wanted to be a total filmmaker and combine technical and performance, which is what the talk will cover.”
Tickets for the event are $18, and because of a sponsorship from Tlaquepaque, the afterparty is included in the price of admission.
“We are happy to participateand be a part of the Sedona International Film Festival’s 30th birthday,” Tlaquepaque managing partner Wendy Lippman said. “‘Grease’ has always been a long-time favorite, go-to good feeling kind of movie, and when we heard they were celebrating 45 years, we wanted to be a part of it.”
Tickets to the showing of “Grease,” are found here.
For more information about the workshops and for the complete showing schedule, visit SedonaFilmFestival.org or call (928) 282-1177.
