Name: Chris Messina Was Full Travolta Early On
Uploaded: 2026-01-19T16:59:33.000Z
Duration: 5 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

So my mom was a dancer and she became a dance teacher.

She stopped when she had kids, but her love of dance became mine.

I don't think you can just call this a love of dance, Chris.

I don't think you get away with this that easily.

I wanted to be John Travolta, you know, I saw Grease and I was like, oh, that's John Travolta.

When you went and did that, did they say, now hold your legs like this, and

I danced a Greased Lightning when I was in the.

by the time you hit junior high in Long island, wearing tights and doing ballet, wasn't it sort of an equivalent of the Great Santini?

Just like the Karate Kid forced into this without any karate, or Billy Elliot without any talent.

It is my favorite film I've watched in so long.

The reviews all say how brilliantly refreshing.

Ben, explain what it is about the film, this story that you wanted to tell and who you both play in the movie.

Yeah, well, there was a lot of it that I was really interested in, including when we were starting this new company.

And it's a story about, in a way, about people asking to be treated and valued in a way that reflects their own self worth and the way they contribute in fairness and equity and the way kind of capitalism, companies can kind of grind people on the people's relationship to their job.

But one of the things that I really liked about it, broadly speaking, was that it was a movie that was going to depend on the performances and the writing.

And I know a lot of actors who I love and can rely on.

And I really wanted to say, look, you can make a movie.

And I say that as a former covering cape wearer.

And I feel like you want to see about people and what they care about.

And that can be surprising and funny and smart and that people will go in the theater.

I loved it because they're the kind of movies that I like and I want to make it so I don't want them to go away.

I mean, can I ask you, is there ever a point when you get the script and I'm sure you were working on the script and all those things that you think, is there anyone else that should play Phil Knight?

Or do you immediately think, I'm playing Phil Knight?

I have to be on the set anyway if I'm directing and they pay me more if I'm also in one of the.

Well, the one time I wasn't in the movie I directed, I kept thinking like, this guy's eating my lunch here.

Everyone wants to make fun of the boss, right?

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Chris Messina Was Full Travolta Early On

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