Trivia / Grease 2

---

• B-Team Sequel: Not only did John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John not return, but director Randal Kleiser and writer Bronte Woodard (who had died in 1980) had no involvement.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Christopher McDonald auditioned for the role of Johnny five times before being cast as Goose.
• Creator Backlash: Michelle Pfeiffer joked that she showed the film to her kids and they turned it off after twenty minutes. While filming Stardust, Matthew Vaughn told her that this was his favourite film of hers, her response was a Flat "What".
  I thought he was pulling my leg... It was my role in that that made him want to work with me.
• Deleted Scene: Several scenes were cut from the film, including:
  • Frenchy trying to help Michael become a "cool rider".
  • Michael talking to Stephanie and comforting her after the talent show.
  • Goose accidentally slamming a door into Rhonda's nose.
  • Davey helping Dolores stuff her bra at the luau so that she can be dating material for him.
  • A sequence at the very end where Michael and Stephanie fly off into the sunset on a motorcycle, similar to the ending of the first film, where Danny and Sandy fly off into the sunset in a car.
• Disowned Adaptation: Jim Jacobs, who created the original play, described this movie as "awful... the pits.".
• Franchise Killer: Paramount was envisioning up to three more sequels and possibly a TV series. Would Grease 3 have worked with the mid-Sixties and The British Invasion music as a backdrop? Would Grease 4 have dealt with hippies? Would there have been a Seventies version, sorta like Dazed and Confused with musical numbers? We'll never know.
• Hostility on the Set: Maxwell Caufield and Michelle Pfeiffer didn't get on at all. He found her stuck up, while she thought he was full of himself.
• Recursive Adaptation: Guy Unsworth adapted it into a stage musical titled, Cool Rider.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Maxwell Caulfield blamed this film for killing his budding Hollywood career. After the movie bombed, Paramount dropped his contract. In his own words, "It took me ten years to get over Grease 2."
  • Michelle Pfeiffer's career nearly suffered this because she was initially passed over for Scarface (1983).
• Troubled Production: While the film wasn't an outright disaster to make, it did have a ragged production, which had a lot to do with its poor critical and commercial performance.
  • For starters, no one involved in the original film had really expected there would be a sequel. The line "See you in summer school!" was added to the last scene just in case, but despite the hugely successful Broadway production and the '50s nostalgia that had made American Graffiti, Happy Days and Sha Na Na successful, in the years after the spectacular failure of the Lost Horizon musical Paramount saw the film as being a modest one-off hit, at best.
  • So, after it was one of the biggest hits of 1978, suddenly there was going to be a sequel. Initially it was to include all the characters in some post-high school capacity, with a younger crop of actors playing new students at Rydell, but while even John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John expressed interest at initial meetings, delays in getting a script together meant most of the original cast who had played students moved on to other projects save Didi Conn (Frenchy) and Eddie Deezen (Eugene). Paramount, meantime, thought big, envisioning a franchise to consist of, ultimately, four films, the latter two to take place in the mid- and late 1960s, and a TV series.
  • Original screenwriter Bronte Woodard died young in 1980, further slowing things down. Ultimately writing the first draft would fall on Canadian comedian Ken Finkleman, who had to find time to come up with characters and a story from scratch while writing and directing Airplane II: The Sequel. Patricia Birch, who had choreographed both the original and the stage show, was tapped to direct after Randall Kleiser took the helm of The Blue Lagoon.
  • The scramble for talent behind the camera was nothing compared to the movie's casting woes. For the male lead, the producers hoped to land Timothy Hutton, hot off his Oscar for Ordinary People, but failed. Next up was Andy Gibb, but he failed the screen test. Finally, after seeing him in a production of Entertaining Mr. Sloane on Broadway, the producers found an unknown, Maxwell Caulfield, seeing star potential in him.
  • Debbie Harry likewise turned down the female lead, as she felt she was too old to play a high school student.^note Given that Stephanie's hairstyle looks, in the early scenes, exactly like Harry's did at the time, it's clear that part of the reason Michelle Pfeiffer got the part was that they saw her as a Spiritual Substitute for the actress they had really wanted Other singers and actresses with musical experience, like Pat Benatar, Andrea McArdle and Kristy McNichol, were also considered or pursued before they finally settled on another young then-unknown, Michelle Pfeiffer, who had by her own admission little experience singing or dancing at the time and was surprised she got the part, for her "quirkiness".
  • Tom Cruise also auditioned for Nogerelli, but Birch thought him too young and short for the part. Cher backed out of playing one of the Pink Ladies over the delays in getting production going and what she considered to be too low a salary to justify the wait. Jennifer Beals left her part in that group to take the lead role in Flashdance. Annette Funicello couldn't find time away from her Skippy Peanut Butter commercials to play one of the teachers.
  • Principal photography finally got underway in front of a different Rydell, the same former high school used for Square Pegs, with the script still not finished. The two unknown leads didn't like each other—he thought she was "stuck up" and she saw him as overly self-absorbed. Midway through production, the final draft of the script was turned in ... without Frenchy. But after wrap, the producers decided to use some of the scenes with her anyway, explaining her disappearance mid-film.
  • The film's title evolved from More Grease to Son of Grease to, late in production, Grease 2. Caulfield thought the last was a horrible title and fought hard to go back to its predecessor.^note Perhaps, given the effect the film had on his career, he might have been better off changing his name.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tom Cruise auditioned for Johnny Nogerelli, but director Patricia Birch wanted someone older and taller.
  • Andy Gibb was initially going to play the male lead, but he failed his screen test. Timothy Hutton was also considered.
  • Cher initially signed on to play Paulette Rebchuck, but backed out, complaining of a low salary and not having a finished script.
  • Debbie Harry was initially asked to play Stephanie Zinone. She declined, saying she was too old to play a high school student. Kristy McNichol was also considered.
  • Jennifer Beals was offered the role of Sharon, but turned it down in favour of Flashdance.
  • John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were expected to reprise their roles as Danny and Sandy, now married and running a gas station, but nothing came of it. There were also plans for Jeff Conaway and Stockard Channing to have a cameo. According to Didi Conn in a May 2018 interview, a direct sequel was always intended and a line of dialogue about "see you in summer school" at the end of the first movie was intended to be the Sequel Hook, but the studio expected the film to be no more than a moderate one-off hit; by the time it became clear that the film more than justified a sequel, the original cast were not available to film a sequel.
• Working Title: Early title ideas considered were More Grease and Son Of Grease
• You Look Familiar: Johnny's actor, Adrian Zmed had previously played Danny in a stage production of Grease.

---