Intrinsically, I know the things I write online are available to a worldwide audience, but I never suspected that someone outside of our little San Antonio bubble would pick up on a review I once wrote of the latest DVD release of the 1980 musical flop (and now cult classic) “Xanadu.” I was quite surprised and pleased when I received an email from Jerry Trent, who worked on the picture as a choreographer.
Trent was understandably a little testy in his original email to me, wanting to set the record straight that there were *two* choreographers on the project, despite co-choreographer Kenny Ortega getting on the special features section of the DVD. Ortega is part of the mega-successful “High School Musical” franchise, so I suspect that swayed the editors of the “Back to Xanadu” feature on the DVD.
I wrote Trent back immediately, asking if he’d be willing to talk to me, and he agreed. Before “Xanadu,” Trent worked as a dancer in the Mel Brooks film “Silent Movie,” and as a choreographer for “Pete’s Dragon” and Stanley Donen’s “Movie Movie.” Since “Xanadu,” most of Trent’s work has been in sound design and Foley.
Click the audio player under the headline to hear the interview, as Jerry Trent shares his memories of “Xanadu,” including working with Olivia Newton-John (“a real lady”) and Gene Kelly. Below is an edited transcript.
Nathan Cone: How did you get involved with “Xanadu,” originally?
Jerry Trent: First of all, for about five years, I assisted Michael Kidd. Do you know who Michael Kidd is?
Oh, yes. The great choreographer, "Seven Brides..."
I assisted Michael for five years, and his nephew was the director, Robert Greenwald. And they needed somebody to teach Olivia Newton-John how to tap dance. So they called me and I said, "Sure!" So we're tap dancing away, and after about a week, they acquired Gene Kelly to be in the movie. So the budget went up. Nobody had time to do anything. So they said, well, "Would you mind doing this number?" And I said, "Sure, fine." Well, it ended up I did six numbers in the movie. I was supposed to be on it five weeks, I was on it for five months, and I basically worked with Olivia on all her things, but I also did the number with the rain and the train and the flying and all that stuff, and also the end number with the girls and Olivia up on the stage.
Well, when you mentioned that you were on it for just a week before Gene Kelly signed on, did you know that they were negotiating with him when you signed on to the project, or was this something that was a surprise?
That was a surprise. I mean, I'd seen the [script] before… It was cute. It has some really nice songs. It was a nice little cute movie. And then it totally changed once they got Gene.
Were you intimidated by him when he came on board or…?
No, he was the director on “Hello, Dolly!” and Michael Kidd was the dance director. So I'd worked with him before, and no, I wasn't intimidated. I mean, you know his history. I mean, he is a Hollywood icon. And, things changed a lot, I'd say when he came on board! And, it was okay. I had basically had nothing to do with Gene. Kenny [Ortega] worked with Gene through the whole thing. I was kind of left on my own to do, "We need another number here." Like I said, at one point in the script, I was reading the script and I turned the page, and it said, "…and they dance." And I looked at everybody and said, "What do you mean, they dance?" First of all, they're not dancers, Michael Beck or Olivia, neither one, they're not true dancers. And they said, "We just thought this would be a nice place for a number." I said, "Well, what kind of number?" "Well, I don't know, you'll think of something!" Oh, good.
Did they have the songs chosen at this point? You know, because there was all the ELO and then all the other...
Well, first I worked with Olivia's guy, John Farrar, who was basically Olivia's song person for years, and god, what incredibly talented man. I mean, it was one night we were working at the Hollywood Bowl, which is not in the movie. We shot there for three nights, and they said, "We need a song for Olivia, kind of a ballad.” And John came to me and he said, "What do you think?" And we talked about it… maybe this, and maybe these kinds of lyrics… and the next thing, he came in with "Suddenly." I basically worked with John Farrar and Olivia. I mean, she was wonderful. There was never a complaint, “No, I can't do that. No, I won't do that,” she was a wonderful, wonderful lady.
So she was really game for the whole skating aspect!
They brought in a professional skater to teach her, but he was like, a race skater. He was teaching her how to skate, and I was looking at it and I thought, it's not very ladylike. She's all bent over, it looks like she's ready to take out 3 or 4 people in front of her.
Yeah, it's not a roller derby movie!
No, haha! So we graciously got rid of him. She didn't want to fire him. I said, "Olivia, you need to be a lady. You can't be Raquel Welch going to cream the rest of the team." [Ed. Raquel Welch starred in the 1972 roller derby film “Kansas City Bomber.”] So we worked on that, and it worked out fine. I mean, scary… because, you know, you can't wear elbow pads and knee pads and all those things when you're shooting. But she only fell down once, and we were lucky, but it was great. We went roller skating one day down in Venice Beach, just the two of us. And it was really fun. We had a great time. She was just a joy to work with.
Did you or Kenny Ortega have any pull with the director of photography, or Robert Greenwald, in terms of kind of the framing of the dancers? Because one of the one of the things that I find when I look at the movie is there's a lot of great stuff going on... but in some of the numbers, the framing of the dancers seems kind of questionable. Like, you wish you could see more of the action that was going on.
Yeah, it was difficult because in Kenny's stuff, it was, you know, full screen. And a lot of my stuff was kind of close up and a little more intimate and whatever. But basically there were two choreographers and Kenny was the producer's choreographer, Joel Silver, and I was the director's choreographer, Robert Greenwald. And Robert and I kind of knew each other through Michael Kidd. So I mean, basically I choreographed the shots. So I kind of know where the camera's going to be beforehand. And Robert and I agreed on it, you know? And once in a while he'd change things. And we could either agree or disagree but it worked out fine. It was really an interesting concept because basically there was very little script. They were writing it as they went along. They had this nice little movie, like I said before, Gene came on, and then suddenly it all changed and they were scrambling to get a script together. But, yeah, I was pleased with some of it. The tap thing, I was a little disappointed because it was out of sync when they came on screen. I was sitting there going, it's not really good. But, I mean, I prerecorded all the taps myself in the sound guy's house in his kitchen. He was in the basement, I was upstairs tap dancing in his kitchen, and his wife was cooking at the same time. And I'm thinking, this is a big Hollywood musical, and I'm tap dancing in his kitchen! And you can hear the pots and pans clattering ‘cause his wife's cooking in the back room.
Well, kitchens are good for audio resonance, I'll tell you that!
Well, yes, and it was a good floor.
Overall, what did you think of the film when it came out, when you saw the finished product?
You know, I never saw the whole movie until about five years ago!
Oh, goodness.
Yeah. There were parts that I thought were fine. Other parts I didn't like at all. And I just thought, “Okay, I'm going to hold off on this for a while.” But then it became a cult classic which surprised a lot of people. But the music is wonderful. And one of the reviews did say that the choreography carries the movie because it's wonderful. It's kind of timeless.
Where's your career taken you since “Xanadu?” I was looking you up on IMDb to see what you had done before, and what you had done since. So what's been happening for you?
I went into Foley, which is sound effects. You know, all the footsteps and all that type of thing. And, not too soon after that, I had a couple other things that I was going to do, and I decided my family came first, and it would have taken me away from them too much. I set up my life, kind of my family, myself, and my work, in that order. And I thought, you know, I really want to be home. My son was growing up, who is now 41. And I want to be there. And if you're out of town, on the road, you're not there for everybody. So I did that for a while, and then my wife and I became Foley partners, and then our son became our mixer. And he ended up winning two Emmys. And now I've gone back and I still do some Foley, but I've gone back into the acting thing and it's been commercials running for like Florence Henderson and for eBay and General Motors and all those things.
It seems like Foley has got to be one of the most fun jobs in the industry. Is it?
It can be. It used to be, when you had time to do stuff. And now, like everything else... you used to have three or 4 or 5 weeks to do a feature film. Now, if you get 4 or 5 days, you're lucky.
And let me explain for those that don’t know, that Foley, of course, is when you're basically creating sound effects to go with a scene using objects that aren't necessarily in that scene, I guess that's a pretty accurate way to describe it.
Yeah, and we redo all the footsteps mainly for foreign, because when they take out the dialog, there's nothing left. So we do everything basically 100% now. And with all, you know, the cup downs, the file folders, we don't do car crashes, we don't do sirens or gunshots. Those are hard-cut effects. But everything else… I did “U571” which won an Academy Award for sound, which was kind of cool! I mean, after you've done it for 25 years, a cup down is a cup down, but, it can still be exciting. I work with my son a lot. He does sound effects for animations and cartoons, and those can be creative. Those are fun. But, unfortunately a lot of the Foley is going to Canada. So, there's not that much left here to do. But it was a great time, and I loved working with my wife and my son, and that was. It was a cool thing. We used to do MacGyvers, and all those Power Rangers, and Baywatches and I don't know everything for about ten years.
Oh, what a wonderful, fun way to stay close together as well.
Yeah. And we still spoke at the end of the night, it was really cool! I mean, my son of course, he's my son. He's really incredible. Everybody in town loves him. They want him to do all their jobs. And he's busy and he lives across the street from us, which is even better.
Do you still stay in touch with anybody else from “Xanadu?”
No… I used I used to see Michael Beck for a while… who is a great guy. We had a good time with that movie and… it's just people kind of went their own way afterwards. It was a long epic to do.
I guess it's kind of the way it is on films. There's this intense period of creativity and then you split and do other things.
Yeah. And you know, once in a while you run into somebody I see, you know, a couple of the dancers once in a while. And, other than that, it's just, you know, on with living. You do what you got to do! Yeah, but, I haven't seen the new, DVD. I hear they've done 5.1 or something, and the whole sound system is. I mean, they've upgraded everything.
It does sound terrific.
Farrar's music is still my favorite. The ELO stuff was great. It fit the movie perfectly. But John's stuff… working with him was such a joy. I mean, nice, quiet, calm man. He would talk and he would come back in, like I said the next day with this incredible song. I mean, I don't think John was mentioned in the last DVD interview, which is too bad because he was a main source of a lot of the music.
But, the interview was interesting because I was one of the first people interviewed. I think between the time they interviewed me and everybody else, they changed their concept of what they wanted [for the DVD] because they were asking me what I did during the movie, you know, and afterwards, what I'm doing now and all that. Well, they didn't do that to anybody else. And the clip that they put of me on that [feature] was really rude and out of context. I mean, we were talking about criticisms and whatever, and I was laughing before, which they cut out, and the criticism that I read, I'm sure you saw on the thing it says, you know, “Where else can you have Olivia Newton-John as a roller-skating light bulb with rags around her ankles?” And that's all it was in my interview section. I thought, well, that was really nasty and mean, but if you've got it in context with everything else I'd said it was kind of funny. I don't know, I was very upset. My wife was yelling and screaming around the living room when we were watching the thing, and I just, you know, it is what it is. And, the movie is still there, my name is still on the credits, so I get over it.
Well, clearly, as I mentioned at the top here, there are a lot of people who really love this movie, despite its faults. I'm one of them. And, it's been a real treat to talk to you and just say, here's some of your memories of, working on that film. Thank you very much, Jerry, and you have a wonderful afternoon and a great summer.
You, too.
