The comeback king lays some moves on the media, McDonald's and President Clinton

by Bob Strauss

When John Travolta first hit it big 20 years ago in the musicals Saturday Night Fever and Grease, millions dared exhaustion trying to copy his sexy moves.

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Now, after a long, slow stretch that would have discouraged Job, one gets exhausted just trying to keep up with Travolta's voracious work schedule. Since his Pulp Fiction comeback late in 1994, the dimpled Jersey Everyguy has headlined Get Shorty, White Man's Burden, Broken Arrow, Phenomenon, Michael, Face/Off, She's So Lovely and now Mad City.

And there's no rest in sight. The 43-year-old star recently completed a turn as a Clinton-esque presidential candidate in Mike Nichols' adaptation of the bestselling political roman à clef Primary Colors, did a stint in Terrence Malick's star-studded war epic The Thin Red Line and currently portrays a hotshot lawyer in the legal drama A Civil Action.

Pretty good for a guy who started life as a lowly Sweathog on the classroom sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter and who, just half decade ago, could only get work with talking babies.

Mad City finds Travolta in the company of some of filmdom's most admired talents. He plays schlubby Sam Baily, a dim, downsized museum guard who tries to get his job back at gunpoint, only to unintentionally take hostage a class of schoolkids and an exploitative TV reporter--Dustin Hoffman's Max Brackett. The situation escalates into a media circus, which the director, social-issue specialist Costa-Gavras (Missing, Music Box), plays for all the venality, absurdity and tragic inevitability it's worth.

Through good times and bad--and amazing weight fluctuations--Travolta has remained the same, sweet charmer. He attributes part of that to his faith in Scientology and part to his love for his wife, actress Kelly Preston (Jerry Maguire), and their five-year-old son, Jett.

But it becomes clear in talking to Travolta that, if you liked your work as much as he does, you'd be a happy dancer, too.