Blow Out
John Travolta suffered from insomnia during the shoot. His lack of sleep helped him create a very moody performance and is why his character seems so downtrodden throughout the movie.,The sound mixer for the slasher movie mutes all of the sounds except the scream of the girl in the shower, in order to prove that it's really her voice. In fact, what he proves is that she's been dubbed: if it were really sound from the location he would not have been able to eliminate the shower or its curtain being pulled aside, as the microphone would have picked them up too.,[last lines]
Jack Terry: It's a good scream. It's a good scream.,Featured in The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: John Travolta/Erma Bombeck (1981),John Travolta is a sound engineer out in the woods during the dead of night trying to record some woods type noises for the latest film he's working on when he sees an accident in which a state governor is killed, a potential presidential candidate. He also records the distinct sound of a gunshot before the car went off a bridge and into a creek at night. Travolta also dives into the creek and rescues Nancy Allen, but is unable to save the male in the car. He finds out later about his VIP status.

Director Brian DePalma obviously used a twist on the tragedy at Chappaquiddick as the basis for Blow Out. The title comes from the official police investigation where they say the car had a blowout which caused the accident, but Travolta insists on his version. And his sticking to the story is making a lot of people uncomfortable.

Travolta does a nice job in a film role that a generation or two earlier James Stewart might have done, the average every man who gets heroic status thrust upon him. He's an ordinary man, but he wants the truth to come out.

Look also for some good performances by Dennis Franz as a sleazy photographer and John Lithgow as a very thorough killer who really loves his job. He not only wants to hide his murder in a forest, he plants his own forest so to speak.

Brian DePalma keeps the tension moving at all times in a manner worthy of Hitchcock. It was a good part for John Travolta, one of the last he would get acclaim for for some time.,