Travolta Fever Hits Town with the Filming of Criminal Minds

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Movie sets are rapidly becoming an all too common sight on the streets of Cleveland. With the runaway success of indie films at the Cleveland International Film Festival and national franchises such as Captain America, the city has managed to accommodate both local and big-time filmmakers alike – a considerable feat. We even dedicated an entire cover package to Cleveland's newfound filmic identity, and it doesn't look like the growth is about to stop.

Just yesterday, shooting for the deviant Criminal Minds shut down parts of Chester Avenue downtown. Craving a bit of adventure, this all too often desk-bound journalist meandered down to the set hoping to lay eyes on the action – and perhaps a peak at John Travolta or Jackie Earle Haley. But alas, the fates conspired against me. All I managed to catch were sweaty crew members scurrying in and out of a closed set in Pacer’s Ribhouse and a ditty about free beer from wandering super-bard Guitar Man. An on-set source did tell me Travolta will only be filming in Cleveland briefly. Instead of waiting around, I took a few moments to brush up on the Travolta canon. 

Pulp Fiction: Quentin Tarantino’s blood-spattered 1994 masterpiece is brutally spacey, pairing over the top violence and superbly inane dialogue. Opposite another Cleveland film scene stalwart, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta’s earthy take on hit man Vincent Vega is required watching before heading to the theater for Criminal Minds.

Grease: Singing, dancing, gaggles of girls and guys, and excessive use of hair products. What else is there in life? The 1978 classic, coming on the heels of the equally campy Saturday Night Fever, is a necessary part of the Travolta back catalog. Travolta’s experience as a song and dance man has been turned on its head since the '70s though, due mostly a totally regrettable billing in 2007’s Hairspray as Edna Turnblad – complete with wig, body modification suit and falsetto. Hopefully, the excessive accouterments will be safely stowed in the costumer’s closet this time around.

Swordfish: A personal favorite, due mostly to repeated scheduling on daytime cable, this thriller about a hacker forced to work for a terrorist group features Travolta playing the hilariously languid villain Gabriel Shear. Hugh Jackman plays hacker Stanley Jobson in a script with so many techno-cliques it’s terrible enough to only be watchable by high schoolers bound in bed by sickness.

To view road closures during the five-week shoot, click here.

Reintroduction to Community Affairs

So you're counting down the days until Captain America: The Winter Soldier premieres nationwide April 4. You've read our April feature story and know the trailers by heart (we're a little partial to the Super Bowl version), hunting for glimpses of the West Shoreway, Theater and Warehouse districts.

But if you need even more insight into what Cleveland natives Anthony and Joe Russo have done with their piece of Marvel's universe, it's time to sign up for Hulu Plus and binge on Community.

That's because, while the duo was in postproduction for the first blockbuster of 2014, Joe directed two episodes of the show they got off the ground.

And you don't need Superman's X-ray vision to see the big screen's influence on the quirky NBC cult-comedy.



“His directors’ eye is even keener,” says Yvette Nicole Brown, the Cleveland native who plays Shirley Bennett. In “Geothermal Escapism,” the Community students play a schoolwide game of hot lava (you remember that kids game, right? You must walk on chairs, tables or whatever to avoid the floor, which is deadly) to win Abed’s (Danny Pudi) prized $50,000 comic.

“We don’t have a huge budget on Community, but Joe made that episode look like a movie,” she says.

The action-packed episode was loaded with special effects, stunts, laughs and even LeVar Burton. It echoed the premise of the paintball saga the brothers directed to conclude season two, which put them on Marvel’s radar and got them their career-changing gig.

“He’s learned how to make it even bigger with even less,” Brown says.

“Geothermal” also marked the final episode for Donald Glover, who plays Troy Barnes. “Most of us were blubbering messes,” recalls Brown. But Joe kept the set light and loose, which allowed the actors to stay composed long enough to pull off the scene’s “heartstring moments.”

And for a look at how proudly geeky the brothers really are, queue up “Advanced Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.” Anthony read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy three times each by the end of high school and Joe collected comics for 20 years.

"I was a big fan of Marvel growing up, a big fan of X-Men, Wolverine and Spider-Man," Joe says. That should make it a fun summer of movies for the Russos. Besides their own Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sony's Amazing Spider-Man 2 debuts May 2 and Fox's X-Men: Days of Future Past opens May 23.