The letter X …
This is where the honesty comes out. This is when you find out what kind of a person I really am. I admit it. I have a guilty pleasure most people roll their eyes at. The year was 1980 and I was in junior high school. A friend from across the street and I were over the moon for the movie Grease… the only movie (well, besides Rocky Horror Picture Show) that I have paid to see multiple times in a theater. So, for two years we had been memorizing the soundtrack and recreating scenes from the movie when it hit. Olivia Newton-John had a new movie.
Yes, with Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelley how could Xanadu go wrong. Well, it kind of did. It got bad reviews and was out of the theaters fairly quickly, but… I liked it. I loved the music – ONJ, ELO and Cliff Richards. I still need (Ok, want) the DVD but, every once in a while, it shows up on TV and I step back into my youth.
I loved watching Gene Kelley dancing; he just glides and makes it look so easy. The roller skating was not the best part of the movie, but at the time roller skating was big so I put up with that to get to the music.
It is not a great movie, but it is my guilty pleasure. I own the soundtrack for Xanadu and for that I am grateful!
(Here is a video of a mash up of music styles from the visions the characters have of the bar they are creating)
