Travolta Gives Thumbs Up to Ventura

Here is the inside scoop on John Travolta:

Up close, he looks orange--but only, presumably, because he is in makeup.

His new streaky Euro hairstyle is really a movie wig, the one that “tested” the best on film. He gets the world’s news typed up for him on a daily fact sheet. While in Ventura to shoot the movie “Swordfish,” he has eaten at El Torito and China Dynasty. He hasn’t bought any antiques downtown.

The ever-cool star--cool even when buried under a massive wig as in “Battlefield Earth” or in spandex in “Staying Alive”--gave a glimpse of his recent life at a 10-minute press conference held in less than movie star grandeur on folding chairs in a blue and white striped tent at Ventura’s Seaside Park.

There, Travolta, dressed in a dark suit and looking mellow but a bit dazed by the attention, fielded questions from a small pack of reporters. “How do you like Ventura?” “Are your kids coming up to visit?”

So now you know: He has felt very welcome in Ventura--despite a handful of anti-”Swordfish” posters in some downtown Main Street shops and an attempt to shut down his production before it even started.

The posters spring from some merchants’ belief that the crowds, equipment and blocked streets are keeping shoppers away and costing them more in lost business than Warner Bros. will be willing to pay them.

But Travolta brushes off the negative vibes. “I go by the majority of reactions,” he said. “I feel 90% of it has been fabulous.”

He was allowed to help choose where the movie was shot, he said, and told the producers he would “be happy with Ventura.” He even stays here some nights. And, as a big-time movie star, he is accustomed to the flocks of fans.

“They’re so enthusiastic and loving,” he said.

And that appears to be the case, at least among the adoring masses.

“I’ve loved him since seventh grade,” said Laura Mendoza of Oxnard, who made her third visit to the downtown Ventura set Friday to get a peek at one of her favorite stars.

It’s a fate Travolta says he accepts.

“If I see people near me, yearning for me, I can’t help it,” he said. “It feels like a magnet.”

In the action thriller filming downtown--one that he likens as most similar in tone to his earlier film “Face/Off”--Travolta plays the world’s most dangerous spy, a charismatic man who persuades a computer hacker to help steal $6 billion in government funds.

“That’s the character,” Travolta said. “He’s both a good guy and a bad guy.”

On the set, hopping into a military-style Hummer or just talking through a scene with the director, he cuts a dapper figure in his dark suit and sophisticated slicked-back hair.

That is by design, he said. He tried a couple of shorter hair styles, but once he went for this one--a blunt, nearly Dutch-boy look--everyone knew that was the character.

Travolta is expected to be around town through next week. The production’s filming permit runs weekdays through Nov. 10. By the time it’s over, the film studio is expected to have paid about $40,000 to cover permit fees, traffic control, police protection and other services.

While some merchants are still grumbling, and Councilman Jim Monahan has vowed to ask the city to pay back Ventura merchants out of its own pocket for lost money, spectators are focusing on Travolta, the movie star. Well, at least a lot of them are.

“I think he’s OK,” said Cori Wright of Ventura. “But my mom really loves him.”