It's late night/early morning and I'm in downtown Los Angeles underneath the 6th street bridge. I don't know too many people that can say that without having some explaining to do, but I'm here to visit the set of Be Cool. Production has taken over underneath the bridge with an elaborate stage set up. There are long steps leading up to a red back dropped stage. Covering the back drop is a large Japanese (might be Chinese) character which I never found out meant. Along the sides of every other step are fire breathing fish statues. Yes, three words you'll never hear in that order again. Along side of the stage, I'm witnessing something that I'll be telling my kids about. John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Vince Vaughn and The Rock are filming the finale of the movie. Everyone has a lines and all are interacting. It is simply one of those things that keeps you from complaing about it being 3:00 AM and you have to be up for a wedding at 8:00 AM.

But anyway here we go with Part 1 of a 4 part series of interviews conducted on the set of Be Cool. First up is Chili Palmer himself, John Travolta.

Can you tell me a little bit about the scene?

John: This is the first scene where we’re all together in one scene. You’ve got Vince [Vaughn], Uma [Thurman], Harvey [Keitel], Dwayne [The Rock Johnson] and myself. The five leads in the movie are all together in the same scene. We didn’t even have that in rehearsal. So this is the first time we’re all together in the same space. It’s fun.

How do you keep the energy level up?

John: It helps by having these situations, with people you have fun acting with. Like, all these people are so great in their own right, for Chili Palmer to respond to each of them. Whatever they give to him, it’s cool. It’s new and fresh.

What’s different for Chili this time?

John: He’s a little more comfortable in the music industry because it’s more gangster like, which he’s used to. The angle on this movie is that they’re art/gangsters, so he can talk to them as musicians and artists, then if they move over into the gangster world he can talk to them that way too. So he’s a little more comfortable where in the movie industry he probably had a little difficulty figuring out because he didn’t know where they were coming from. In this world he knows more about them.

Can you talk about filming in Los Angeles?

John: What’s interesting is that this is the first movie I’ve done in Los Angeles in about 5 or 6 years. So all of them have been out of the country or in other states in this country. It’s fun to be here. Also, the Get Shorty movies have to have L.A. as the atmosphere, it’s part of the humor.

How do you keep it happy on these long over night shoots?

John: Well Vince and I, we can barely hold it together. If I look at him a certain way, he laughs and vice versa. We’re not good with each other as far as keeping our control. We did another movie together where we were trying to make each other laugh. We don’t even try, we just do. Everyone else is just good conversation. Harvey will talk about cigars, wine and our history. People we knew. Uma we have a lot of history because of Pulp [Fiction]. Dwayne is new so that’s kind of a discovery.

Even with an ensemble cast as talented as this, did you have any trepidation coming back to a serial without some of the principles from the first film so many years after the first one?

John: Well, I did a movie with every single one of the principles before, so I had no trepidations about working with the new people cause I love them. It was a really good script and that was part of it.

What music are you listening to these days?

John: Black Eyed Peas mainly because they have a couple songs in the movie and I’m dancing to one Joe Beam song that they’ve re-invented, which I’m very excited about and Uma and I are gonna dance to that.

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