Cannes Boss Thierry Frémaux presented 2x Oscar nominee John Travolta with a surprise honorary Palme d’or before the world premiere of the actor’s feature directorial debut Propeller One-Way Night Coach.
Frémaux makes this kind of magic happen for legends at the Cannes Film Festival. Sometimes –surprise– there’s a Palme d’or that’s handed out. Frémaux did this before the Cannes premiere of Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, bestowing a Palme to Tom Cruise.
Travolta bowing to a standing ovation, called the prize “an honour beyond the Oscars.”
Before the film hit the screen and before handing Travolta his award, Frémaux said “we think that you’re one of the greatest actors…when I say that what do you think you are inside the story of cinema?”
“Oh, that’s a loaded question,” said Travolta, “I’m just a voyeur of observation of life. That’s what I’ve done since I was a little boy. What you’ll see in the movie is completely my perspective on what I witnessed. People go through what they look like, what they sounded like, what they felt, and then I put music to these images, and it’s the most personal thing I’ve ever done, this movie you’re about to see.”
After a sizzle reel of Travolta’s career was shown, Frémaux asked the Pulp Fiction actor about life intervening in his career, to which he responded, “I was thinking how wonderful you are to have done that for me. I know you don’t have time, and you took the time to put that together for me.”
Tearing, Travolta added about the reel, “You see your whole life before you like I did in this. I feel a mixture of things, every image has memory and it’s very emotional. And the soundtrack that goes with all those memories. I’ve been doing film most of my life. Eighty-five percent of my life, so it was really nice to see that.”
Propeller One-Way Night Coach is an Apple TV production.
