LA Times reporter Hugh Hart went along with Kalban has his toured the just completed building in April 2002. While going towards the entrance and the lobby with pictures of LA's Art Deco past lined along it's green, white and red walls like bricks, Kalban remarked, "Look at this curve going one way, the other curve going back the other way, the [white] strips, the green walls, the straight walls, the rhythm. And then you have the palm trees and the shadows working with the adulations of this sidewalk, so this walk through here between the trees and undulating walls-it's going to be a California experience. They built it! We drew it and they built it!" I'm sure Sonny Malone couldn't said it better himself, if he weren't so fictional. In our increasingly aggressive culture, anything and everything is susceptible to being deemed outdated overnight and thrown away, written off and left for dead in the unrecyclable cultural trash bin...until it can be sold to cover the collectors Starbuck Crack Coffee (habit without any forethought. Xanadu, in it's current stubborn survival mode, manages to live on in those who refuse to see this tarnished gem to be totally entombed to the bottom off the bin. The harder you try to ignore something like Xanadu, the more it will come back with vengeance and beg for another chance (how can you ignore those radiant eyes of Olivia, you swine?!). The only rule for enjoying Xanadu are the same for high camp..or life itself, sit back and enjoy and/or laugh your ass off. Lighten up, folks. Life is too short and idiotic to take some goofy little musical THAT critically seriously. It's only a movie.....NOT Star Trek.... It may be a mess, but to Xanaduians (or whatever label that's being tossed around), it their mess. Just remember to clean up after yourself.
			RESEARCH NOTES:
	The following material were used as references and sources for this 'Story': Various articles and clippings from Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, LA Times, Variety, People Magazine, Only Olivia (ONJ fanzine), Face The Music (ELO fanzine) and Record World; various published (print and TV) interviews of Olivia Newton-John, Jeff Lynne, Gene Kelly, Michael Beck, Bev Beven, etc., American Cinematographer (August '80), The Billboard Book Of Number One Hits (1985), Mediascene Preview (Sept.-Oct. '80), Millimeter (Sept. '80), The Billboard Book Of Top 40 Hits,... Top 40 Albums, Record Collector (? '95), 'Xanadu' Marvel Movie Magazine, Billboard's Movers and Shakers, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone (Oct. 4, '90), Tower Pulse! (? '86), ELO Showdown internet list, and the actual 'Xanadu' script.
				HOME BACK FOOTNOTES!