John Travolta's Forgotten Contemporary Western On Paramount+ Is An '80s Gem

John Travolta is one of the pre-eminent craftsmen of the flop, amassing an incredible seven movies with 0% Rotten Tomatoes scores in his career. How does he do it? Only the master knows for sure, but it surely has something to do with frequently going full tilt on patently shaky and misguided premises, such as the time he made a sci-fi box office flop based on a book by the Scientology founder that haunted its writer for years. Then there was 1996's "Michael," which saw Travolta play a literal angel in a movie whose tagline was "He's an angel, not a saint..." It's just glorious stuff.

But what fans of Travolta's many duds may not realize is that the man also showcased a real talent for making the kinds of movies that should have been complete flops but which somehow managed to etch out a significant place in mass culture. Take the 1980 romantic Western "Urban Cowboy," for example, which is basically the exact point at which country turned pop.

Directed by James Bridges, the film is loosely based on a 1978 Esquire article titled "The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America's Search for 'True Grit'," which chronicled a real-life love affair that flourished in a legendary Texas bar. The movie version stars Travolta and Debra Winger as the fictionalized version of the couple, who eventually get married only to break up before a dramatic mechanical bull-riding competition ties things up in a neat little bow. Intrigued? Read on for all the details on this gem of a Travolta movie, which was surprisingly influential in its time but which has been largely forgotten today. As such, now's the time to stream the movie on Paramount+, where it's available at no extra cost for subscribers.

"Urban Cowboy" is actually one of John Travolta's better films. He plays Buford "Bud" Davis, an oil worker who moves to Pasadena, Texas, to work on an oil refinery. The ambitious youngster is set on saving enough money to buy land near his hometown, but doesn't let his dedication to frugality stop him from enjoying the local nightlife, the pinnacle of which is local honkey tonk Gilley's — a real-life bar that remains legendary to this day, partly due to "Urban Cowboy," which brought the beloved local into the mainstream.

It's at this popular bar that Bud meets and falls in love with cowgirl Sissy (Debra Winger). This being 1980, Sissy's quirkiness is exemplified by her belief that — get this — the sexes are equal, a view that the more traditional Bud simply can't abide. Despite this apparent deal-breaker, the couple eventually marries, but the mismatch of perspective leads to trouble, and by trouble, I mean Bud is a downright misogynist who eventually hits his wife. Not exactly the charming union you might expect from a romantic movie about lovebirds who meet at a vibrant honkey tonk, but there you go.

Unfortunately, Bud and Sissy's troubles are exacerbated by Bud's jealousy over rival suitor Wes (Scott Glenn). The pair eventually split, but Bud becomes determined to win Sissy back. How? By heading down to Gilley's and winning a mechanical bull-riding competition, of course. Sound sort of insane? Well, it is, but only in a charming '80s sort of way (minus the whole domestic violence thing). It also has a certain authenticity to it, and Travolta and Winger's chemistry is undeniable. But the lasting legacy of Urban Cowboy is that it kicked off a pop country trend that persists to this day.

"Urban Cowboy" isn't remembered as one of the best 80s romantic comedies, but it was well-received at the time, and still has its fans today, as evidenced but its Letterboxd page. What's more, it was surprisingly influential in terms of its cultural impact. For one thing, that bull Travolta rides? It's the very first mechanical bull ever made. Created by the real-life Gilly's owner, Sherwood Cryer, the bull was installed in his club and had become a hit with locals before being featured throughout "Urban Cowboy." After Travolta, Debra Winger, and Scott Glenn all tested their riding skills, the bull gained much more recognition as a sort of cultural artifact of the late-20th Century that maintains a significant presence to this day. If you saw Netflix's rom-com "The Wrong Paris" in 2025, for example, you can at least partly thank/blame Travolta and his cowboy movie for the scene in which the ladies ride a mechanical bull to win the heart of Pierson Fodé's Trey McAllen.

"Urban Cowboy" was also credited with bringing country and western music to the mainstream in the 1980s. In fact, as Rolling Stone put it during a 40th anniversary retrospective, the film's "Wranglers, cowboy boots, and leather accessories of Urban Cowboy provided an authentic and all-American alternative" to the widespread disco culture of the time. As such, "Urban Cowboy" is one of the chief architects of the kind of pop-country culture that still pervades the zeitgeist to this day, so you can also thank/blame Travolta for Machine Gun Kelly and Jelly Roll desecrating John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads." Still, "Urban Cowboy" does have a solid 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it an odd entry in the already surreal world of forgotten Travolta projects.