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Tavis: It's a pleasure to welcome John Travolta to this program. The 2-time Oscar nominee's been a household name in American popular culture since his early 20s. His string of sensational films includes 'Saturday Night Fever,' 'Grease,' 'Pulp Fiction,' 'Get Shorty,' last year's 'Ladder 49.' His latest movie, though, is called 'A Love Song for Bobby Long.' The film also stars Scarlett Johansson. Here now a scene from 'A Love Song for Bobby Long.'

Bobby Long: No, no. Now look, look, you said something to me recently. It got me thinkin'. You said, "I'm just a girl." Now, maybe I've grown too calloused over the years, but you are just a girl, not unlike the students that flowed through my classes years ago. And I know that we must seem horrible to you, but we still got somethin' to offer. We must. And besides, I think we owe it to your mother.

Tavis: John Travolta, nice to meet you.

John Travolta: Nice to meet you, too.

Tavis: I feel like Jesse Jackson saying that 3 times--'A Love Song for Bobby Long,' 'A Love Song for Bobby Long.' Anyway, nice to have you here, man.

John: It's a pleasure to be here.

Tavis: Um, I guess this is a credit. It's not to demonize you or cast aspersion on you. I guess this is a funny way of giving credit to the make-up artist, but I've seen you look better. You didn't look so good in this film.

John: And thank god. You know, every actor that loves acting can't wait till they can mess it all up, do you know what I mean? And what I mean by that is--if you're established on film, you want the opportunity to be the character and not have any vanity and not have anyone edit how you're going to look, a studio head or a director that's worried or a producer that's worried. You want to just be able to be free to act, and that's what happened with this role. I was free to be completely that character.

Tavis: Tell me more about the character, for those who I know are gonna wanna run out and see this. Tell me about the character Bobby Long.

John: Well, he's a broken man, for sure. He's an ex-literary professor, he's alcoholic, he is not well. Physically, he's got some health issues. And he's still got something to offer, though, and that's the beauty of this piece. It's all about broken people that have something to offer still.

Tavis: In that scene, he was trying--he was convincing Scarlett Johansson's character to try to go back to school.

John: Yes. And he knows that he could help her arrive at a place that she has never thought possible before, and he sees it in her, and that's--the film is filled with wonderful inspiration like that as well as very truthful evidence of people that have taken the wrong path and the wrong road.

Tavis: You're an icon in this business. As I mentioned a moment ago, running down a list of films that you've been in, you've done your thing, you've put it down here in Hollywood. You represented. Now that you are 50, as I mentioned in the introduction of the show, I assume that there are different types of--I don't wanna make an assumption here, but I'm assuming that there are different types of roles that you wanna play now. Certainly aging, or as my grandmother would say, "being chronologically gifted" allows you to have different kinds of choices, but what's John Travolta interested in these days?

John: Certainly I could've never played this part 20 years ago because one needs life, livingness, and age to portray this. I think the wonderful thing about where I am today is that I have the luxury of doing the films without any other consideration than the art form. And I like that. I think that's a place that I've always wanted to be. So I could do a small movie, and I balance it with a studio picture, but more often than not, do a small movie, an independent movie, and it'd be something that I really want to do and explore without any interruption. I love that possibility.

Tavis: What's the attraction specifically to independent films, small film, when clearly you can have your pick of choices of stuff that's much bigger and bigger budgets and all that.

John: Sure. Well, you do them for nothing, basically. Sometimes it costs you. But, on the other hand, the exchange you get back is the opportunity to be free as an artist and to explore without doubt or reservation other considerations that have nothing to do with the art itself, but have maybe to do with something that could be inapplicable. So that's the gift back. Now, there's a lot of risks with it because unless you get the support of critics, journalists, and awards, you kind of die a short death, a quick death, rather. So it's complicated, but ultimately, it's worth it, and I wouldn't have traded--I think I waited my whole career to do Bobby Long, you know, and there's so many parts of this film where I get to exercise all the experiences I've had through one character.

Tavis: You did it well. I'm fascinated, John, to hear you talk about how you do this for the love of the art and how now, at 50, you can choose projects that are really about the art for you. And I'm just trying to get inside your head here. I wonder, when I saw you as Vinnie Barbarino back in the day on 'Welcome Back, Kotter,' whether or not you really, at that point and time in your career, were concerned, were considering the art form, or were you just trying to find your way? Where did you get to this place where it really was about the art? Or was it always about the art?

John: Always about the art.

Tavis: Even with Vinnie Barbarino?

John: Before Vinnie Barbarino. Vinnie Barbarino was a stepping-stone and a wonderful one. I don't ever deny that tie. It allowed me to forward into other projects. However, you'd have to understand my background, which is purely theatrical. My mother was a director, a drama teacher, a speech teacher, an English teacher...

Tavis: Poor John.

John: Yes. Believe me.

Tavis: You got straightened up and cracked a few times, I guess.

John: Yes. Over things like accents. So, you know, we were always about the performance and the performance quality in our house. The rooting in which your career takes--unfortunately, there's only so many opportunities. So prior to 'Welcome Back, Kotter,' I was on Broadway, I was off-Broadway, I was in summer theater doing a myriad of types of theater, and then I was offered 2 very important movies that were art films. One was 'The Last Detail' with Jack Nicholson that Randy Quaid got. But the second one was 'Days of Heaven,' and that was a pure art film, and so I started there, and then through wonderful but more commercial ventures, I was able to expand and explore, but it's always been there for me and never any different. And I've always tried to approach everything I've done with a kind of integrity that was allowed in a collaborative forum, meaning, you know, you have to agree with someone else sometimes, too. It's not a self-serving or self-determined process--filmmaking--it's a collaborative effort, so you can't always just do your own thing, do you know what I mean?

Tavis: You can't always do your own thing. I suspect you're right about that. You would know much better than I do, but I'm fascinated by your use of the word "integrity." If, in fact, your career has been one built around trying to make choices that had integrity in them, what sacrifices have you had to make along the way, to pass up things that you found lacking integrity? What sacrifices did you make?

John: Well, uh...

Tavis: You've done well, but I assume that--

John: Well, they're not sacrifices, really, because that's how you feel at the moment, so you're not particularly suffering over something that feels wrong. You know, uh, and even if they move to be a success, at that moment, that was what was real for you. You know, not to be an existentialist over this, but I'm, you know--

Tavis: I'm trying to hang with you.

John: You know what I mean. It's kind of a--it's that was correct at the moment for whatever reasons it was correct, so not to regret, you know, uh, um...I don't--I'm very proud of everything that's happened, really.

Tavis: You mentioned your mother and the household that you grew up in 50 years ago--45 years ago. You are the youngest of 6 kids. I'm the eldest of 10.

John: Are you?

Tavis: So I'm at the top, you're at the--I'm not at the top, but I'm the eldest.

John: This is why we get along. The oldest and the youngest always get along.

Tavis: I'm glad you said that, Mr. Travolta, because I'm curious as to what you think in retrospect. Now, you've got 50 years under your belt now, and you've got to some rear view mirror now. You've got somethin' behind. You can look back now. What do you think being the youngest did for you or did to work against you?

John: Not much to work against me, other than being a little naive to the world outside because I was somewhat protected by my elders. But I think the positive is I learned, especially from my mother and the oldest sibling, my sister Ellen. I mean, they were the trendsetters. They were the people that were making it possible for us. They were pushing through and opening the waters for us to know that we could survive as artists in the world and only that. I mean, not having to do other things but what we had a passion to do. So I learned that from the eldest.

Tavis: I don't want to use the word "encouraged." I'm not gonna say were you "encouraged" to drop out of school, but certainly you weren't fought on your decision to drop out of school.

John: Father did fight me on that.

Tavis: Father fought you on it.

John: Mother didn't, and she was the teacher. Isn't that interesting?

Tavis: That is very fascinating. Why do you think your mother didn't fight your wanting to drop out of school to pursue your art form?

John: She understood that I was rarin' to go and that probably nothing was gonna stop me at that point, and she sensed it, and we were very well educated in art. I mean, she wasn't worried about me finding my way or making my way because she knew I had enough education to make my way through the initial stages, and she knew that I was very big on self-education. I mean, I had a passion for language, and I had passion for history and geography, and I had a passion for aviation. So she knew that--she made sure we were well read, and she made sure that we were above average in a lot of ways. So I think letting me go was not to worry her. It was much more important for her to see--I think she may have, even in her early years, been oppressed a little bit about being in show business. Her father kind of clipped her wings when she had an opportunity to be in a studio contract once on a radio show in New York, and I think that she didn't want that to happen to me on any level. We always want for the next generation for them not to suffer what we suffered. So I think in the thirties, show business was looked at differently than it was by the time I started as a child.

Tavis: To your point about generations, you now have kids. So if one of your kids came to you and said a few years from now, "Daddy, I want to drop out of school and pursue my art form." What do you say to your kid?

John: Well, you know, our kids are home-schooled right now. I mean, that may change. But I would again estimate how much education I felt that they had and--you see, technically, there's not a limiter there, meaning, if someone's motivated to be educated, they can do it in many forms. I mean, all I've done is gone to school since I left school. I've studied--

Tavis: Point well taken, yeah.

John: I've studied music. I've studied languages. I've studied Scientology. I've studied aviation. I'm a 747 and 707 pilot, meaning I have 8 jet licenses. I mean, all I've done, it was more schooling than I ever did in school, but that's self-motivated schooling, meaning I sought out teachers. And being an artist, you have an innate attachment to literature because you can't help but study the things you need to study in order to do a role. I mean, in Bobby Long--I mean, I was familiar with most of the writers, but some of the literary references were obscure, and I had to go back to the library and get online and--"Well, I know that's T.S. Eliot, but I don't remember that quote. I know that's Robert Frost, but--what did Steinbeck--" I mean, it was not immediately, even to the more advanced educators--had to be refamiliarized with those quotes, so, again, it's always a movement forward in education, and I--still I go to school a lot--still.

Tavis: So you raise a fascinating point here, and I don't want to presuppose your answer, although I think I can. I want to give you a chance to express yourself. But I think that, to your point, so much of educating children today or in any generation is really about exposing them. I was speaking to an audience of black students the other day--black parents, as a matter of fact--and I was saying to them that black kids specifically, are like Kodak film: all they need is a little exposure. You just got to expose these kids. So when it comes to your point, your notion of education being gleaned from a number of different sources in a variety of ways, what ways do you think that we, as just human beings, can best educate ourselves, beyond sitting in the classroom? Reading, traveling--what, for you, has worked to educate yourself beyond that classroom setting?

John: Well, obviously, living is, itself, traveling, rubbing elbows with all sorts of people. You can't limit your experiences. You stay out of trouble, but, I mean, uh, I think all that contributes to education. And finding a passion, an innate passion, that you have toward any subject matter and actually pursuing it to a moment of knowledge, a moment where you say, "You know what? I know something about that." You know, actors you have to do that all the time because they're continually do--they do diligence in discovery over their parts--opens a wide variety of subject matters for them, so we have the built-in gift. But if one didn't have that, I would say, you know, do take up areas that one is interested in. Now, speaking of education, you know, in Scientology, the first thing you're taught is the barriers to study, and it's a misunderstood word, basically. So dictionaries are very important in one's education. If you hear someone speak to you, and you don't understand a word, write it down, look it up later, remember what context it was said in. When you're reading a newspaper article or a magazine or--remember that if you have a misunderstood word, even if it's nomenclature, you will not grasp that subject matter. The other one is gradient. That's usually in the field of doing this--too steep a gradient. You know, if you're learning a dance step, you have to learn how to do this before you can do the next one--in sports, the same thing. You learn things on a physical gradient. The third would be the lack of mass itself on the subject matter. If you're studying--let's say jet engines--you must see a jet engine to understand the technicalities of how it works. So the misunderstood word, the gradients, and the lack of mass are the 3 barriers to study. If you just knew that, every area of knowledge would become much more interesting to you. And that's the gift that I had, soon after I got into Scientology, was the gift of any area was possible for me because I had a dictionary. Now, you have to take your time. Dictionaries are not a glib thing. There's derivations, and there's the basic, and there's the multi-definitions to any given word. I mean, most people don't know there's, like, 21 definitions of "the."

Tavis: So was Clinton right when he said, "It depends on what ‘is' is"?

John: Yes.

Tavis: OK. I just love talkin' to John Travolta.

John: What's the 16th definition of "is"?

Tavis: Of "is," yeah.

John: You know what I mean?

Tavis: I would not have gone here, John Travolta, had you not raised it because I try to respect people's personal and spiritual space. But I won't surprise you when I say to you that there are critics of Scientology. I don't want to get into a debate about that, but I want to ask you, though, because when I listen to you talk about this and explain it, it makes perfect sense to me. What, then, do you think is most misunderstood about what you believe--Scientology?

John: Well, you know, if there is anything. I mean, lately, I think it's being much more understood because of the evolution of the reading on the subject matter, which is what I've always insisted on: read a book. But, moreover, I'm getting opportunities to give specific examples, like I just gave you with the misunderstood word, a very basic thing in Scientology. So if I ever get the opportunity to give examples, it's much better than not giving an example. But, at any rate, I don't know, it's going very well.

Tavis: You mention aviation, by my count now, 5 times in this conversation, something else, I know, you've talked about a thousand times. I try to avoid that terrain and raise issues that I find fascinating that you might not talk about as often. I think most of us know, if we read any magazines, that John Travolta loves planes and flies his own planes and owns his own planes and parks those planes in the backyard of his house. We know that part of the story. What I'm not so sure is--so sure of, rather--is how you fell in love with aviation. Where did that come from?

John: Very simple. My love of aviation was simultaneous with show business, and I'll tell you exactly how it worked. When I was a kid, my mother and my sister were starting to do productions of theater--summer theater and nightclub work--whatever--off-Broadway--and they were off at airports. And the excitement of show business and theater that ran in the family suddenly was matched with the images and the illusions of travel. So airplanes and theater and movies became suddenly intertwined. And in my backyard, in New Jersey, the La Guardia air path was right over our backyard, and suddenly that became, you know, "Where is that plane going?" And "Who is on that plane?" And "What are they thinking?" In other words, the whole art of flying became matched simultaneously with the art of theater and show business. So that's the initial moment of collapse-together, and then I realized that, on its very own, it had a very--without show business connected to it at all--had this wonderful adventure that I could go on, in learning how to do it to the adventure of where one was to go. And then I got interested in geography from that. And I got interested in history from that. So it was a kind of juggernaut that, uh...

Tavis: You're a fascinating guy. Let me take this back to the movie, 'A Love Song for Bobby Long.' Unless I've missed something, speaking of show business--unless I missed something because you have such varied interests, this is the first movie--unless I've missed something--first movie since 'Grease' that I actually see you singing in.

John: Yes, yes. Well, uh, it's only because I sing in character as well, meaning, you know, I dance if a character dances, and I sing if a character sings, and although I did a couple of albums to establish that possibility in the very beginning of my career, I was so busy trying to just keep an acting career together that to delve off into singing alone or dancing alone was not--there was not time--it was not possible. So I thought, well, I'll just keep a simple integrity about it. If the character has these abilities or needs to express oneself in those ways, I'll do it. And so this character, whether I did Bobby Long or not, still would have had to sing those English folk songs.

Tavis: Exit question here--what do you think the lesson is--I'm not suggesting that you're preaching in this movie--what's the lesson, what's the legacy, the message of this movie?

John: Well, for me, it was just broken people can contribute something. They're valuable still. You have to be interested enough in them to find out what it is, and if you stir up the right inspiration in those broken people, you can get something from them, and I think that's the beauty of this film and this kind of movie.

Tavis: So broken or not, we all have something to contribute, something to offer.

John: Yes. Yeah.

Tavis: That's a nice name for a movie.

John: I think so. Very few movies have a message, and I think this movie has a message and many sub-messages as well.

Tavis: The movie is 'A Love Song for Bobby Long,' starring the one and only John Travolta. What's next on the docket for you?

John: Well, I've got the sequel to 'Get Shorty, which is called 'Be Cool.'

Tavis: 'Be Cool.' It's gonna be a great movie.

John: Yeah, thank you.

Tavis: I'm lookin' forward to that one. It's nice to have you on the program. It's an honor to meet you.

John: Thank you.

Tavis: You're welcome back here anytime. You're one of those guests you can come and just talk about anything. You ain't gotta have a movie project, just come talk.

John: That's true.

Tavis: So come back whenever you want to.

John: I will.

Tavis: Fly back here sometime.

John: I actually will take advantage of that.

Tavis: You do that.

John: I think this kind of outlet is so much more interesting because there's really no limits on what one can communicate.

Tavis: You come back anytime, John Travolta.

John: Thanks.

Tavis: Nice to see you. That's our show for tonight. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Thanks for watching. Good night from L.A. and keep the faith.