Xanadu (film) - Production

Production

• Gene Kelly's role of Danny McGuire is revived from the film Cover Girl which co-stars Rita Hayworth. His reprisal of the character in 'Xanadu' was to be his final film appearance.
• As noted in the DVD extra, the film was originally conceived as a relatively low-budget roller disco picture. As "name" performers joined the production, it evolved into a much larger project, while retaining rollerskating as a recurring theme, especially in the final scenes of the club's opening night.
• The Pan-Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles was used only for exterior shots. Xanadu's nightclub interior was built on Stage 4 of the Hollywood Center Studios (1040 N. Las Palmas Avenue, Hollywood) beginning in 1979. Sonny refers to the Auditorium as "a dump", which was a fair characterization of the Pan-Pacific by then. Danny jokes that "they used to have wrestling here", which was a true statement about the Auditorium. The building would be consumed by fire a decade later.
• Earlier versions of the story established that Sonny was the artist who created the mural from which the nine goddess sisters emerge. This provided a much stronger explanation for the muses' interest in helping him achieve artistic success. Unfortunately, continual rewrites and editing during production caused this plot point to be lost, except for one line spoken by Sonny as he laments his failure as a freelance artist; "I paint his van...I paint somebody else's mural...". The 1980 Marvel Comics adaptation retained the more strongly emphasized connection between Sonny and the painting.
• Kenny Ortega and Jerry Trent served as choreographers. Roger Ebert criticized the choreography, saying "the dance numbers in this movie do not seem to have been conceived for film." He noted that mass dance scenes were not photographed well by cinematographer Victor J. Kemper, who shot at eye level and failed to pick up the larger patterns of dancers, with dancers in the background muddying the movement of the foreground.