The Anxiety of Watching John Travolta Eat Pizza in Saturday Night Fever

Has anyone ever noticed how John Travotla’s character, Tony Manero, in Saturday Night Fever eats pizza? It’s an odd question, I know, but as I sat down to watch Saturday Night Fever as the classic on the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast, I noticed that Tony stops for pizza on his way to work during the iconic Staying Alive credits sequence. He orders two slices of pizza, New York Style.

Side note, not important to the anecdote about pizza, the woman who works at the pizza place and effusively greets Tony is none other than John Travolta’s sister, Ann Travolta. John Travolta is one of six children including Ann, Joey, Margaret, Sam, Ellen and Joey Travolta. Again, I know this has nothing to do with the pizza story, you just never hear about John Travolta’s siblings or the fact that he has so many siblings.

Anyway, not important. So, Staying Alive is playing, John Travolta, strutting down the streets of New York City, paint can in hand, admiring a pair of shoes he’d like in a shoe store window, stops to get pizza. His sister Ann, playing the character credited very literally as Pizza Girl, greets Tony and asks him how many slices of pizza he’d like. He gets two and leaves quickly to return to his super cool strut to work at a paint store.

As Tony returns to his cool strut he has two slices of pizza in his hand. Now, as a pizza connoisseur this has my attention, he has a paint can in one hand and orders two slices of pizza. Pizza is not the cleanest of foods, it tends to be greasy, the sauce can drip after a bite or two, depending on toppings, the toppings can pop off dribble down the front of you, it’s a task just to keep pizza together on a good day and this guy is walking down the street carrying two slices of pizza on a small bed of napkins.

So, this whole scenario has me riddled with anxiety. Tony is a well dressed man, he’s wearing really nice clothes and now he’s carrying two slices of pizza and a paint can on his way to work. Now, being anxious about the potential cleanliness issue, I am deeply concerned about how he’s going to carry two, relatively large slices of pizza and a paint can all the way to work on just a bed of napkins.

Well, he’s not going to do that. Instead, Tony Manero, the King that he is, is going to eat these two slices of pizza while walking to work in New York City. As you can imagine, now my anxiety level is at a 10. He’s going to eat pizza and walk at the same time. For some of you, I like to call you the truly insane, this isn’t abnormal to you. But for me, a normal person who doesn’t like to spill pizza all over himself like some animal, this is unthinkable.

Truly, pizza is a table food. Pizza requires a plate, napkins, a little extra parmesan cheese, and a table at which to sit and eat like a civilized human being. But not Tony Manero, oh no, Tony Manero is going to eat pizza and walk at the same time like some kind of food wizard. And I haven’t even gotten to the weird part yet. Yeah, as if this all isn’t unfathomable already, walking down the street eating pizza with one hand while holding a paint can, Tony pulls out a life hack.

Now, the eagle-eyed among you has ascertained another logistical problem with this scenario: the paint can. How is Tony supposed to carry a paint can in one hand and two slices of pizza in the other and eat that pizza while walking down the street in New York City? Well let me tell you, Tony has stacked the two slices on top of each other. Logically, that makes sense, how else could he carry them. But then, life hack, he eats both slices at the same time like a pizza sandwich.

And yes, clean-freaks, it’s as disconcerting as it sounds. He’s got pizza sauce on his face, you can see the grease seeping through his modest bed of napkins, it’s a mess, just as I predicted. The way the scene is edited seems to protect Tony’s dignity, to a point, we don’t see what had to be a complete messy disaster in his hands due to an edit from him eating to a shot of his perfectly shined shoes and a skip ahead in time to him no longer eating.

One more detail however, will blow your mind. You see, this is clearly not the first time that Tony has done this. This is likely something that he does more than once a week, stopping for slices of pizza at this pizza joint. We know this because he is greeted by the Pizza Girl with great familiarity, aside from the fact that she’s the actor’s sister, it’s clear they are on familiar terms. Then it happens, prepare yourself, she asks how many slices Tony would like today…

2 or 3????

Two or Three???? The staggering implication here is that sometimes, Tony Manero, while walking to work at the paint store, will get THREE giant slices of pizza and eat them all at once while walking down the street in New York City, the single most crowded and busy streets on the planet. This is insanity. This is so insane to my Midwestern, Iowa soul that I had to write this down as some form of therapy before I could continue watching Saturday Night Fever.

By the way, if you’ve never seen Saturday Night Fever, this scene, the one with the pizza, is during the opening credits. This means, I watched just over two minutes of this movie and had to stop and have a therapy session with you, dear reader, before returning to complete the rest of the entire movie.

Don’t miss me and my co-host Bob talking about Saturday Night Fever and pizza on the next Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast. Subscribe to Everyone’s a Critic on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a 5 Star review and you could win a 4K Blu-Ray of a movie of my choice. It won’t be Saturday Night Fever.