John Travolta on shepherding ‘The Shepherd’ to the screen: ‘It was important to me to come full circle’

Jacob Sarkisian
·9 min read
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The path to getting a movie from script to screen can be a long one even for short films. That was certainly the case for the latest Disney+ short “The Shepherd,” which stars Ben Radcliffe and John Travolta as two fighter pilots in the 1950s. The story, adapted from Frederick Forsyth’s novella, follows Radcliffe as a young pilot who, on Christmas Eve, flies home to England. However, mid-way through the flight, his plane malfunctions and the electrics fail, leaving Radcliffe lost and stranded. What happens next makes for a heartwarming Christmas tale akin to “A Christmas Carol” and the like. I attended a special Q&A screening in London with director Iain Softley and John Travolta with critic Mark Kermode moderating.

“I don’t have many projects I’ve ever invested my heart and soul into and this is one of the only ones,” explained Travolta. The actor seemed to grow emotional at various points while discussing this film, which is eligible for Best Live Action Short Film at this year’s coming Oscars. And it’s no wonder why Travolta cherishes this film so much. It has been a long road indeed for this short and he was at the centre of it. Because the events that we see in this film — a pilot who suffers a near-death experience when his plane loses all functions — happened to Travolta himself.

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“In 1989, I owned a vampire jet just like the one in the film. And then I bought a corporate jet, a larger one, and I lost all my electricity in this plane over Washington DC. And I had exactly what this young man’s experience was in the cockpit. Exactly. I knew exactly what it felt like. I thought I was going to lose my life. My family was onboard and I thought ‘this is it, I can’t believe it’s over.’ Needless to say, I safely landed the plane,” Travolta said.

“Shortly after that, I was in a bookstore in Canada and I saw this book with a vampire jet on the front of it and I said ‘oh, I’ve got to read this.’ And it was exactly what I experienced. I said ‘One day, I have to make a film of this.’ A few years go by and I buy the rights to the film but because ‘Pulp Fiction’ and other films happened, there was no time to fit this in, so after 10 years of owning the rights, I let the rights go,” Travolta explained.

Another 10 years passed, by which time “Inkheart” and “The Wings of the Dove” director Softley had reignited the project as writer, director, and producer. He invited Travolta back on board as a producer but also offered him the part of the titular Shepherd, the older savior pilot who helps out Radcliffe’s pilot. Bill Kenwright, the recently deceased film producer and chairman of Everton Football Club, joined the team.

Kenwright wanted to make it as a feature film but then COVID struck and the Oscar-winning Alfonso Cuarón joined the film as a producer. He convinced them to make it a short and, shortly after that, it was agreed that Travolta would bring his charisma, charm, and presence to the film as the shepherd when he was originally meant to play the younger pilot all those years ago.

“At first it was just to hop on as a producer and I was definitely interested in that but then, as [Iain] very well articulated earlier, sometimes a stronger presence will give a gravitas to an important moment and scenario. So maybe that would work for us as opposed to against us as I’m really the real deal as far as pilots go. When I took that view point, I thought it might really work. And I did want to be onscreen on it. It was important to me to come full circle,” Travolta said.

Travolta’s involvement brought about several changes to minor details in the script. New lines of dialogue were added to make both pilots sound more convincing; hand gesture routines, which pilots would use in such situations, were also worked in. “I said basically, let’s do exactly what I would do if it really were to be. I said ‘what would I really do?’ And everything that we did was accurate and authentic. When you watch aviation movies, it’s often cringey because they’re doing things they would never do. And you’re rolling your eyes and I just said ‘I will not be in an aviation movie where we’re lying,’” Travolta explained.

Travolta’s involvement, then, lead to a level of authenticity that may not have been attainable had he not been involved in the project Softley said. Travolta’s performance is a gentle but affecting one and the actor, who was nominated for Best Actor for “Pulp Fiction” and “Saturday Night Fever,” said he knew he was able to give a convincing performance in the role thanks to his expertise as a pilot. But the film’s central character was played by Radcliffe, who was only found after Softley auditioned 150 actors over zoom.

“I was doing most of it on Zoom, which I really didn’t like. So I was being more thorough and calling people back a lot. And Ben was the one that just kept coming through. I wanted somebody who could start out looking very self-confident. Flying is all about ego, basically. But the seance thing is that he was young enough so that we believed he was less epexerienced than he thought he was. Therefore, we felt more sympathy for him because he was vulnerable,” Softley said.

“He did a performance, Ben, that was so accurate,” Travolta said. “Because I had been there, I knew exactly what it felt like to think that your life was about to be over, losing all your instruments and you’re flying on a hope and a prayer. And he did it without a false note. I was astonished by it. It really resonated with me, him not being a pilot, how he captured that fear yet still with the knowledge that he had to be in control of the plane. It was a tricky balance. Any other actor might have misinterpreted that.”

But while the performances were nailed on from the off thanks to two superb actors, Softley said that finding the balance for the short version, when he was attached to the longer version or the anticipated feature film, took a little longer. Softley explained that when he send his short script to Cuarón, he still wanted to show the “Gravity” Oscar winner the feature length script. But Cuarón insisted it would work as a short and so, too, did Softley’s friend, filmmaker Hossein Amini, who worked with Softley on “The Wings of the Dove.”

“Interestingly, in trying to tell the story in a way that I couldn’t do what the book did [the novella is written as one lengthy internal monologue], which was explain everything. When he’s flying in the book, he’s foreseeing the future, he’s talking about what happened before. I put some really concentrated elements from the longer scripts into the shorter one that helped me make it work, I felt. I think it’s a better film for me having written the longer version and then compressed it,” Softley said.

Travolta added: “This film is more like a full-length film. I’ve never seen a short that feels like you’ve watched a whole movie. That’s what it felt like to me. You’ve hit the notes, the emotional curves, in a 38-minute movie.”

The movie certainly hits all the emotional beats you would expect in what both filmmakers described as a classic “Dickensian-like” tale — and it even features some Christmas movie standards. This, of course, includes some Christmas tunes. One key sequence, which details Radcliffe’s pilot taking off as he begins his journey home, is played out to “Carol of the Bells.” This musical idea came from none other than the star of musical hits such as “Grease,” “Saturday Night Fever,” and “Hairspray:” Travolta.

“When you’re an executive producer, you don’t have really a lot of control or say. You’re kind of there in case you have a good idea. You might suggest and it may or may not be accepted. I said to Iain: ‘I beg of you, do only one thing for me if I ever request anything, is that when that jet takes off — because in the book it explains it beautifully — and the runway lights go off and the tower goes off and all you see is the stars and the snowcap mountains, I would love ‘Carol of the Bells’ to play. If you could just do that to me, it would make it worth the whole ride. And when I saw it, I just balled. Because it was exactly what I was hoping it would be,” Travolta said.

Softley said that they originally weren’t allowed to use this song but after Softley cut the film with the version of the song recorded for “Home Alone,” they managed to convince Disney to put their hands “even deeper into their pockets” and acquire the rights to the song for the short. As Kermode said: “If John Travolta has a musical idea for cinema, listen to him. He might know what he’s talking about.”

That expertise and presence could lead to a third Oscar nomination for Travolta after he was nominated for Best Actor in 1978 for “Saturday Night Fever” and 1995 for “Pulp Fiction.” Could the third time be the charm for Travolta?

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