Jim Jacobs, the man who co-wrote the musical Grease with Warren Casey 45 years ago, is today denying rumors that their play—and, by extension, its film adaptation—takes place in a character’s head as her brain is slowly robbed of oxygen moments just before her death, TMZ reports.
The remarkably well-founded theory was originally posited in an Imgur post three years ago—and popularized by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar in a recent Facebook post—which correctly pointed out that Sandy and Danny’s car flying off into the sky at the end of the movie defies the laws of physics. The post also notes that Danny (played by John Travolta in the 1978 film) brags to his friends that while vacationing at the beach he rescued Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) from a watery death, singing “I saved her life, she nearly drowned.”
According to the Imgur theory:
Sandy actually did drown on the beach that day. As she drowned, her brain deprived of oxygen, she had a vivid coma fantasy involving her summer fling Danny, where they shared a magical year of high school together. The visions get increasingly outlandish as time passes, until finally, as Danny desperately tries to resuscitate her on the beach, she sees herself flying into Heaven in her dying moments. The entire movie was a drowning woman’s coma fantasy.
The 73-year-old Grease creator told TMZ that whomever came up with that idea “must have been on acid,” and claimed that Sandy is “very much alive” at the end of the movie. He did not, however, comment on whether Jan and Putzie’s eventual child would grow up to be Keith Olbermann, or at what temperature hair grease actually burns.