LOS ANGELES – John Travolta had his strut back. In 1994, the once-white-hot actor was one more bomb away from manning a booth at "Welcome Back, Kotter" conventions when "Pulp Fiction" hit the film-festival circuit and sparked a career comeback tailor-made for Hollywood.
If only Dad hadn't been so distracted.
"I was in the middle of this resurrection and my dad, who was a football coach and had worked with Vince Lombardi, was obsessed with the O.J. case," Travolta said last month. "So I'm sort of in my glory about this new, hopeful part of my career, and my dad was on the sofa watching every second of it, from the car chase on."
Travolta is once again attempting to reinsert his relevance, but this time he's on Team O.J.
In his first major TV role since his Sweathog days, the actor plays attorney Robert Shapiro in "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story," an all-star re-creation of the most famous event in U.S. history that hadn't been dramatized on screen.
That's a bit surprising when you consider just how much the case inundated most adult lives in the mid-'90s, from pint-clattering arguments in every barroom to the Dancing Itos on "The Tonight Show."
According to a 2012 poll conducted by Nielsen and Sony Electronics, the Bronco chase and the verdict were ranked Nos. 3 and 6, respectively, among the top 25 memorable TV moments in history. The assassination of John F. Kennedy, which once topped similar lists, fell to No. 15. Man walking on the moon didn't even make the cut.
So why the long gap between the courtroom and a back-lot studio?