Kelly Preston RIP
Since I began Travolta/Cage and the Travolta/Cage podcast I have wondered occasionally why John Travolta has essentially been MIA from movies since the disastrous release of his all-time stinkeroo The Fanatic in August of last year..
According to IMDB, Nicolas Cage starred in six movies in 2019 and is on track to star in six more in 2020, not including his starring role in an eight-part Joe Exotic mini-series. The only credit Travolta has for 2020, however, is a supporting role in Die Hart, a Quibi series starring Kevin Hart.
Yesterday I got my answer. It could not be more heartbreaking. The usually ubiquitous and wildly prolific Travolta spent the last two years with Kelly Preston, his wife of twenty-nine years, as she fought a private, ultimately losing battle with breast cancer.
In a tragic coincidence, breast cancer has previously taken the life of Diana Hyland, a much older actress Travolta fell hopelessly in love with during the filming of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, where she played his mother, only to watch her die young and dramatically in 1977 at the age of 41.
Travolta’s life is full of secrets, death and tragedy. In 2009, Travolta’s 16 year old son Jett died of a fatal seizure. I can’t imagine how agonizing it must be to watch so many people you love die dramatically and prematurely. My heart goes out to Travolta. He must be in so much pain right now. We should give him the space to deal with this in his own way, in his own time.
I, along with the rest of the world, had no idea that anything was wrong with Preston, let alone that she was fighting a private war with breast cancer and I have committed the next three or four years of my life to watching and writing about every movie her husband and his Face/Off costar Nicolas Cage made.
I don’t blame Travolta and his wife of nearly three decades for wanting to handle her illness and death their own way, quietly and with dignity. I don’t blame them for not wanting to go on Dr. Phil together and have Travolta tearfully describe what it will be like to greet the first sunset after the death of his young, beautiful soulmate.
In keeping their battle from the public Travolta and Preston were following in the footsteps of giants like Gene Wilder and David Bowie, who similarly chose not to bum out the world with news of their fatal illnesses and impending deaths.
At the same time, learning that a celebrity is seriously ill gives us time and space to come to terms with the news. It allows us to process our grief and our sadness, to prepare to mourn.
I was gob-smacked by the news of Preston’s death. It seems both redundant and unnecessary to call successful actresses gorgeous. We assume that actresses will be uncommonly beautiful. After all, we don’t suggest that someone should get into acting because they have a dynamic personality or interesting understanding of the human condition. No, we tell people they should get into acting because they’re beautiful and the silver screen has always been, and always will be, a playground for the uncommonly attractive.
Even by Hollywood standards, Preston was gorgeous. She was more than gorgeous. She was a natural born movie star. The camera loved her. She had the quality of being at once wholesome and clean-cut, the idealized girl next door, and a ferociously sexy bombshell.
This video box MAY have made a big effect on me.
That’s why she was perfect in the cult classic Sky High; she was ideally cast as a sunny, supportive mom who also happens to be a sexy super-hero. Preston was a terrific, fearless physical comedienne, as evidenced by her scene-stealing turn in Jerry McGuire but she was so goddamn gorgeous and radiant that she didn’t need decent material to make an indelible impression.
Battlefield Earth, The Cat in the Hat and The Experts have almost nothing to recommend them beyond Preston being so scorchingly hot that it felt screamingly inappropriate. If I remember correctly, when the chapeau-wearing feline of The Cat in the Hat sees Preston in tight-fitting garb he gets a raging cat-boner, which is unspeakably vulgar and gross but also speaks to just what a striking presence Preston was in even the most regrettable garbage.
When we covered The Experts for Travolta/Cage, we had absolutely nothing nice to say about it beyond a wonderful dance sequence where Kelly Preston’s savvy, sexy spy introduces the backward small town she lives in to sex, dancing and romance when she and Travolta set the dance floor on fire with their phosphorescent lust for each other and steamy moves.
It’s a standout sequence in a staggeringly dumb movie that illustrates what made Preston such a dynamic movie star and why she will be missed.
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