{"id":574,"date":"2026-05-30T14:42:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/2026\/05\/30\/saturday-night-fever-director-says-films-iconic-disco-set-was-incredibly-low-budget-and-looked-dreadful-with-the-lights-on\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T14:42:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:42:52","slug":"saturday-night-fever-director-says-films-iconic-disco-set-was-incredibly-low-budget-and-looked-dreadful-with-the-lights-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/2026\/05\/30\/saturday-night-fever-director-says-films-iconic-disco-set-was-incredibly-low-budget-and-looked-dreadful-with-the-lights-on\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSaturday Night Fever \u201dDirector Says Film&#8217;s Iconic Disco Set Was Incredibly &#8216;Low Budget&#8217; and Looked &#8216;Dreadful&#8217; with the Lights on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The disco&#8217;s reflective atmosphere was largely achieved through aluminum foil and Christmas lights, John Badham said<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/F5ORNExXZddcrw8HV05KYf9szy8=\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)\/John-Travolta-Karen-Lynn-Gorney-Saturday-Night-Fever-052926-tout-9a60c2954e614fdab15a3dd86e5efba1.jpg\" alt=\"John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney in 'Saturday Night Fever'Credit: Screen Archives\/Getty (2)\" title=\"John Travolta in his white suit strikes a pose on the dance floor with Karen Lynn Gorney from the 1977 Disco era film 'Saturday Night Fever'. \" \/><figcaption><i>John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney in &#8216;Saturday Night Fever&#8217;<br \/>Credit: Screen Archives\/Getty (2)<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3>NEED TO KNOW<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Saturday Night Fever <\/em>director John Badham revealed the film&#8217;s disco set looked &#8220;dreadful&#8221; in the light of day<\/li>\n<li>\u201cBut when you had the night, it was a fantasy wet dream,&#8221; he said of the iconic club setting<\/li>\n<li>The disco&#8217;s technicolor dance floor cost $15,000 and was inspired by a design Badham admired in his youth, he said<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The iconic disco set in <em>Saturday Night Fever <\/em>brought vibrant nights to life \u2014 but by day, it was far less glamorous, director John Badham revealed.<\/p>\n<p>Badham reflected on the lively, funky nightclub at the center of the classic disco drama, which was carefully pieced together to create that quintessentially hip atmosphere the film is so widely known for, while speaking with <a class=\"null\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-features\/john-badham-saturday-night-fever-john-travolta-podcast-1236607538\/\" data-component=\"link\" data-source=\"inlineLink\" data-type=\"externalLink\" data-ordinal=\"1\" rel=\"null\"><em>The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Badham shared that despite all its glory on screen, the <em>Saturday Night Fever <\/em>disco set left much to be desired in the light of day.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/t6oPoIhj1w-DtqYirhiwoM8CbBs=\/fit-in\/640x480\/John-Travolta-Karen-Lynn-Gorney-Saturday-Night-Fever-052926-02-bf7b2e909578448583acfb5f4f908e02.jpg\" alt=\"John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney in 'Saturday Night Fever'Credit: Screen Archives\/Getty\" title=\"John Travolta in his white suit strikes a pose on the dance floor with Karen Lynn Gorney from the 1977 Disco era film 'Saturday Night Fever'. \" \/><figcaption><i>John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney in &#8216;Saturday Night Fever&#8217;<br \/>Credit: Screen Archives\/Getty<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cYou turned the lights on, the place looked dreadful,\u201d he told the outlet. \u201cBut when you had the night, it was a fantasy wet dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The walls of the club \u2014 a rundown Brooklyn disco called 2001 Odyssey \u2014 were painted black for the film, Badham said. Then came the aluminum foil and Christmas tree lights, which together created that reflective, psychedelic vibe.<\/p>\n<p>The whole set was exceptionally &#8220;low budget,&#8221; Badham noted \u2014 except the disco&#8217;s technicolor floor, which cost a &#8220;great price&#8221; of $15,000. The floor was actually modeled after one Badham had seen in his youth. &#8220;I always love[d] the colors coming from underneath,&#8221; Badham said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The whole floor was plugged into the music system so that it would vibrate and change colors depending on what the music was doing,&#8221; Badham said.<\/p>\n<p><em>Saturday Night Fever, <\/em>which made its debut in 1977, follows a 19-year-old Italian-American boy who, amidst his anxieties about post-high school life, &#8220;tries to escape the harsh reality of his bleak family life by dominating the dance floor at the local disco,&#8221; per the film&#8217;s synopsis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for <\/strong><a class=\"null\" href=\"https:\/\/forms.dotdashmeredith.com\/people-news-inline\" data-component=\"link\" data-source=\"inlineLink\" data-type=\"externalLink\" data-ordinal=\"1\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><strong>PEOPLE&#8217;s free daily newsletter<\/strong><\/a><strong> to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The classic film starred John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Donna Pescow and Fran Drescher, to name a few.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The disco&#8217;s reflective atmosphere was largely achieved through aluminum foil and Christmas lights, John Badham said John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney in &#8216;Saturday Night Fever&#8217;Credit: Screen Archives\/Getty (2) NEED TO KNOW Saturday Night Fever director John Badham revealed the film&#8217;s disco set looked &#8220;dreadful&#8221; in the light of day \u201cBut when you had the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-else"],"wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"1":{"name":"Everything Else","link":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/category\/everything-else\/"}},"tags_names":[],"comments_number":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adsandthings.com\/winews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}