Released in 1989, the film was a box-office success. To her, he launched her to stardom; to him, she consolidated it. And when they were together, everything seemed possible, both on-screen and off. For something, the actress would define as "the greatest love" of her life
This December 5, the news of the death of Kirstie Alley came out. Her departure shocked many: it was not known that the actress was battling cancer that she could not beat. Among the messages, one drew attention because of the importance of its author and how moving it was.
“Kirstie was one of the most special relationships I've ever had. I love you, Kirstie. I know we will see each other again, ”John Travolta wrote on his Instagram. He accompanied the post with a video of the two dancing romantically.
The actors met when they starred in the romantic comedy Look Who's Talking, back in 1989 and which, due to its success, had two sequels: Look Who's Talking Too and Look Who's Talking Now. The first was a great success and a round business. It cost seven million dollars and grossed nearly $300, beating out Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman, and Back to the Future II.
For its protagonists, it was also a bump. Travolta returned to star in a movie after a four-year hiatus and Alley managed to stop being "the Cheers actress" -the series in which she was acting at the time- to enter the big leagues of cinema. However, both would remember the film not only for what it meant for their careers but, above all, for what it implied in their personal lives: a love that could not be.
Look Who's Talking was directed and written by Amy Heckerling. It tells the story (spoiler alert) of Molly (Kirstie Alley), a successful professional who becomes pregnant by Albert (George Segal) one of her clients. But her lord is married and does not wish to accompany her. Mollie meets James (John Travolta) a taxi driver. The interesting twist is that we will hear the point of view of what happens to adults according to the baby's thoughts, and from the womb.
What seems like a crazy idea is not so much. What adult, upon seeing a pouting baby, didn't wonder 'What's going on in that little head!' And the same thing happened to Heckerling. According to her, when her daughter Mollie was a baby, they noticed that she looked everywhere carefully. She and her husband started a game that consisted of putting words in her mouth according to what they believed she might be thinking of the baby based on her expressions. When the baby in the movie looks at the woman's breasts and says, 'Lunch!' ”, she simply reproduced dialogue from her own family.
Three studios were interested in his script, but Tri-Star kept the production. The first thing they did was cut the initial budget in half. For that, they did not lower salaries or special effects. They just decided to shoot in Canada. Filming in that country was much cheaper than doing it where the story seems to take place: New York.
For the role of Molley's mother, they called on actress Olympia Dukakis, offered her a starting salary, and she asked for twice as much. She was assured more jokingly than truthfully that she would double it if she won the Oscar for Moonstruck. She won it and her share went on to cost $50,000.
Heckerling had no hesitation in accepting Alley as her lead, but she was more hesitant with Travolta. It seemed to her that the actor was too associated with his Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever. Jonathan Krane, the actor's representative, managed to convince her that he was the one, but for that, they reached an agreement. Krane managed to make the character more likable and fatherly, and in return, Heckerling asked to include dance scenes. If Lady Di herself longed to dance with Travolta, how would a director miss such a moment?
The script indicated that Mickey, the baby, spoke from his conception of him. At the time some controversy arose as to whether this meant a statement by Heckerling against abortion. She took it upon herself to clarify the point. “I didn't want to make a pro-life movie but something that was a fantasy and so I did,” she explained. "Several of my friends said, 'Why don't you wait until the fetus is three months old before it starts talking?' But I felt that if you're setting up a stunt, you have to do it right away. And then I decided that I could avoid the whole problem if I made the sperm talk too."
Filming an embryo in times when special effects were in an embryonic state was not easy. Five puppets manipulated by 12 puppeteers were used to recreate the baby's evolution during pregnancy. A shot where Mickey played with his afterbirth took 115 takes. The worst thing is that he didn't even make it into the final edition.
Although babies look adorable on screen, they are not easy to deal with. If it is complex to sleep them, change them, and make a little profit; Imagine the reader how difficult it is to get them to do it when the cameras are on and the script commands it. To ensure the right shots with the perfect expressions, several babies were hired. So if you needed someone awake, you didn't have to disturb the one who was asleep, and if someone was crying, you didn't need to wait for them to calm down because you were looking for the one who was already crying.
Another of the great successes of the film was the actor chosen to perform the voice of Mickey: Bruce Willis, yes the same man known for his roles as a rude and tough man. His talent managed to coordinate the expressions and actions of the baby with his voice credibly and incredibly. His participation was so notorious that the catchphrase to promote the film was: "He has the smile of John Travolta, the eyes of Kirstie Alley, and the voice of Bruce Willis... Now all he has to do is find the perfect father."
Look who's talking has discriminatory phrases that at that time went unnoticed. When Molley lies to her mother assuring her that the child she is expecting is not from a lover but from an insemination and she replies that "only ugly women do those things." The same when she gets into James' taxi and explains that her husband is not with him because she was artificially inseminated.
The approach of the professional, successful, and autonomous woman who does or does need a father to raise her child today is anachronistic in the face of so many happy single-parent families and so many traditional families torn apart. However, despite the criticism that in the twelfth century can be made of a writer and director of the twentieth century, no one can take away her greatest achievement: she made the highest-grossing film directed by a woman in history.
At the end of this chronicle, we leave the great story of love and respect that was lived on that set. If something is noticeable on the screen, it is the chemistry that existed between its protagonists. The sparks that flew between them were not the product of their trade as actors but the product of a mistimed Cupid.
Alley herself acknowledged on the Howard Stern show that it took her years "to stop seeing John as a romantic interest" and she added that he was "the greatest love of my life." She said that she was madly in love with Travolta, that the moments they spent together were hilarious, and that those feelings were mutual.
If she loved him, if they loved each other, why didn't anything happen between them? Alley was married to actor Parker Stevenson and Travolta was in a relationship with Kelly Preston, whom he would marry in 1991. In the Dan Wootton Interview podcast, the actress acknowledged that "not sleeping with Travolta was one of the most difficult things." If the reader wonders why she did not dare, it was the same actress who answered it in People: "We did not have S because I was not going to cheat on my husband."
Although they did not have S, the actress reflected on the strong and unmanageable attraction she felt for her partner: "I think what I did is even worse because I actually let myself fall in love with him and I stayed in love with him for a long time."
Given the success of Look Who's Talking, its two sequels followed, in 1990 and 1993. The attraction between the protagonists continued. Alley acknowledged that although Travolta married Preston on September 12, 1991, she continued to flirt with him. It was Preston herself who had to take the bull by the horns so that she would not wear horns. To put an end to what was and wasn't happening between her husband and his co-star, “Kelly came up to me, already married at the time, and said, 'Why are you flirting with my husband?' And that's when I had to make a decision and that was practically the end," recalled the actress. "Believe me, she took everything I had, inside, out, whatever, not to run away and marry John, and be with John for the rest of my life." Travolta never revealed if Kelly also took it upon himself to set a line for him.
Life went on. Travolta became a superstar who can even afford to collect planes that he flies himself. Fame did not make him immune to life's slaps. In 2009 his son Jett died and in 2020 his wife, Kelly. Kirstie didn't have it easy either. She separated from Stevenson in 1997. At that time, she was also dealing with an early menopause that changed her body. He came to weigh 110 kilos and withdrew from public life. Getting an image of her became a target for harassment by photographers and images of the actress answering them with her raised index finger became common.
