Provenance Of

The influences behind The Last Days of Disco

31 works across 28 centuries, back to Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Psalms) and Iliad.

  1. 1976

    Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night

    Nik Cohn

    New Journalism. United States. Written in English.

    New York magazine article on Brooklyn disco-goers, later admitted by Cohn to be largely invented.

    What it handed down

    To Saturday Night Fever (1977)

    Direct source, well documented.

    Producer Robert Stigwood bought the rights to Cohn's New York magazine article, and the film's Tony Manero is based on its central figure, Vincent, a Bay Ridge youth who lives for Saturday nights at the disco. The article's portrait of dead-end jobs redeemed by the dance floor became the film's premise.

    Where it came from

    The line stops here: cohn said he based the central figure on a London mod he had known, not on a literary source.

    Find “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” on Amazon

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Preview card: the tree of influence behind The Last Days of Disco