All That Jazz (film)
All That Jazz is a 1979 American musical drama film directed by Bob Fosse. The screenplay, by Robert Alan Aurthur and Fosse, is a semi-autobiographical fantasy based on aspects of Fosse's life and career as a dancer, choreographer and director. The film was inspired by Fosse's manic effort to edit his film Lenny while simultaneously staging the 1975 Broadway musical Chicago. It borrows its title from the Kander and Ebb tune "All That Jazz" in that production.
The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival (tied with Kagemusha). At the 52nd Academy Awards it was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four: Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Film Editing.
In 2001, All That Jazz was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Plot
Joe Gideon is a theater director and choreographer trying to balance staging his latest Broadway musical, NY/LA, while editing a Hollywood film he has directed, The Stand-Up. He is an alcoholic, a driven workaholic who chain-smokes cigarettes, and a womanizer who constantly flirts and has sex with a stream of women. Each morning, he starts his day by playing a tape of Vivaldi while taking doses of Visine, Alka-Seltzer, and Dexedrine, always finishing by looking at himself in the mirror and telling himself "It's showtime, folks!" Joe's ex-wife, Audrey Paris, is involved with the production of the show, but disapproves of his womanizing ways. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Katie Jagger and daughter Michelle keep him company. In his imagination, he flirts with an angel of death called Angelique in a nightclub setting, chatting with her about his life.
As Joe continues to be dissatisfied with his editing job, repeatedly making minor changes to a single monologue, he takes his anger out on the dancers and in his choreography, putting on a highly sexualized number with topless women during one rehearsal and frustrating both Audrey and the show's penny-pinching backers. The only moment of joy in his life occurs when Katie and Michelle perform a Fosse-style number for Joe as an homage to the upcoming release of The Stand-Up, moving him to tears. During a particularly stressful table-read of NY/LA, Joe experiences severe chest pains and is admitted to the hospital with severe angina. Joe brushes off his symptoms and attempts to leave to go back to rehearsal, but he collapses in the doctor's office and is ordered to stay in the hospital for several weeks to rest his heart and recover from his exhaustion. NY/LA is postponed, but Gideon continues his antics from the hospital bed, continuing to smoke and drink while having endless strings of women come through his room; as he does, his condition continues to deteriorate, despite Audrey and Katie both remaining by his side for support. A negative review for The Stand-Up — which has been released during Joe's time in the hospital — comes in despite the film's monetary success, and Gideon has a massive coronary event.
As Joe undergoes coronary artery bypass surgery, the producers of NY/LA realize that the best way to recoup their money and make a profit is to bet on Gideon's dying: the insurance proceeds would result in a profit of over half a million dollars. As Gideon goes on life support, he directs extravagant musical dream sequences in his head starring his daughter, wife, and girlfriend, who all criticize him for his behavior; he realizes he cannot avoid his own death and has another heart attack. As the doctors try to save him, Joe runs away from his hospital bed behind their backs and explores the basement of the hospital and the autopsy ward before he allows himself to be taken back. He goes through the five stages of grief — anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — featured in the stand-up routine he had been editing. As he gets closer to death, his dream sequences become more and more hallucinatory. As the doctors try one more time to save him, Joe imagines a monumental variety show featuring everyone from his past where he takes center stage in an extensive musical number ("Bye Bye Life", a whimsical parody of "Bye Bye Love"). In his dying dream, Joe can thank his family and acquaintances as he cannot from his hospital bed, and his performance receives a massive standing ovation. Joe finally dreams of himself traveling down a hallway to meet Angelique at the end, as the film abruptly cuts to his corpse being zipped up in a body bag.
Production
While trying to edit Lenny and choreograph Chicago in 1974, Fosse suffered a massive heart attack and underwent open heart surgery. After recovering, Fosse became interested in the subject of life and death and hospital behavior. Alongside his friend Robert Alan Aurthur, they set out to make a film adaption of Ending by Hilma Wolitzer, which had similar themes of death and marital problems. However, after completing the screenplay, Fosse decided against making it a film as he found the material too depressing and felt he wasn't strong enough to stick with it for over a year. Still wanting to stick with the subject matter of death and wanting to use what he felt were his best tools of song and dance, he instead decided to make a film based on his own experiences with making Lenny and Chicago. The story's structure closely mirrors Fosse's own health issues at the time and is often compared to Federico Fellini's 8½, another thinly veiled autobiographical film with fantastic elements.
The part of Audrey Paris—Joe's ex-wife and continuing muse, played by Leland Palmer—closely reflects that of Fosse's wife, the dancer and actress Gwen Verdon, who continued working with him on projects including Chicago and All That Jazz.
Gideon's rough handling of chorus girl Victoria Porter closely resembles Bob Fosse's treatment of Jennifer Nairn-Smith during rehearsals for Pippin. Nairn-Smith herself appears in the film as Jennifer, one of the NY/LA dancers.
Ann Reinking was one of Fosse's sexual partners at the time and was more or less playing herself in the film, but nonetheless, she was required to audition for the role of Gideon's girlfriend, Kate Jagger.
Cliff Gorman was cast in the titular role of The Stand-Up—the film-within-a-film version of Lenny—after having played the role of Lenny Bruce in the original theatrical production of the show (for which he won a Tony Award), but was passed over for Fosse's film version of the production in favor of Dustin Hoffman.
With increasing production costs and a loss of enthusiasm for the film, Columbia brought in Fox to finance completion, and the latter studio acquired domestic distribution rights in return.
Wikipedia article: All That Jazz (film) ↗
Notes
- This film has themes.
External links
- All That Jazz (film) at the American Film Institute Catalog
- Review All That Jazz (film) at the Internet Movie Database
- Review All That Jazz (film) at the Turner Classic Movie Database
- All That Jazz (film) at All Movie Guide
- Rotten Tomatoes review
- All That Jazz: Stardust an essay by Hilton Als at the Criterion Collection
- All That Jazz essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 < ISBN:0826429777 >, pages 759-761 [1]
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