Fosse’s Reckoning: Wrestling With Demons, Death, Cinema, and Broadway

| Dan Howard |

Artistic shot of Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider)

All That Jazz plays on glorious 35mm from Sunday, January 26th, through Tuesday, January 28th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information.


Bob Fosse. His name alone is engraved into the history of dance, Broadway, and cinema in works from Chicago to Cabaret. Even Michael Jackson saw him as one of his heroes. The reputation that bestowed Fosse as one of the greats was as well-known as how difficult he was to work with, often clashing with collaborators and producers. So, when it came time to make his follow-up to his feature film Lenny, Bob Fosse decided to tackle perhaps the most personal subject of his career: Himself.

Fosse takes an honest look into his own life and identity in All That Jazz, with Roy Scheider portraying the fictional version of Fosse, Joe Gideon. We see Gideon moving through his average day-to-day life with choreographing a new Broadway musical, NY/LA, editing his new feature film The Stand-Up, and attempting to juggle his many lovers and maintain what’s left of his family life. As he moves through his ever-busy life, he toggles back and forth between reality and a fictional theater-like atmosphere where he discusses his life and flirts with Angelique (Jessica Lange), an angel of death dressed in white. When Gideon’s health begins to catch up with him, he contemplates his life and what his legacy will mean when his time comes.

Gideon on stage in the process of an audition with a group of dancers.

Fosse’s lesser opinions of himself are made apparent from the get-go, and All That Jazz gives him the perfect stage to express these insecurities. Mirroring Fosse’s actual life, Gideon continues to fall behind on finishing his film and experiencing a creative block with the choreography for NY/LA. We witness Gideon treading the path of self-sabotage as he can’t help but clash with his collaborators, dancers, and, most of all, his producers. Wanting to break boundaries, he and his dancers showcase a number titled “Take Off With Us” to the show’s producers, where the performers express deep, sexual desires with their fellow passengers on their flight. While the number is stunning, the producers is only concern is “losing the family audience,” never acknowledging the beauty of the number.  These criticisms seem to awaken that creative drive within Gideon. While everyone was showing him all the raving reviews of The Stand-Up, Gideon’s attention peaked at the one negative response he heard from a reviewer on TV.  Despite his success, Gideon only seems to pay attention to the naysayers. The same as the film, where others see Fosse’s creative brilliance and are desperate to work with him, Fosse’s faults are only magnified and reside at the forefront of his own mind as he continues to flesh out his own personality into Joe Gideon.

Gideon being presented a dance by his lover and his daughter.

Through Gideon, Fosse channels the faults that he finds in his professional life and demonstrate how they spill over into his personal life, like the type of father he attempts to be for his daughter, Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi), based on Fosse’s actual daughter, Nicole. The sad case of the entertainment industry is that success nearly always equates to the struggle to make time for one’s family. Fosse isn’t afraid to show his remorse for how he’s treated his daughter, his ex-wife, Audrey Paris (Leland Palmer) – who is based in Fosse’s real ex-wife, Gwen Verdon – or any one of his lovers. Is it really all that surprising, though? He was notoriously known as a womanizer in his time. We see how various women in his life are hurt by his dishonestly, lack of faithfulness towards them, his constantly preoccupation with his work and what he can use in his work from his actual life—even during any serious conversations with his loved ones. Thus, we get deeper into the apprehensive psyche of Fosse/Gideon, particularly in his imaginary conversations with Angelique, where he vents about how “nothing I ever do is good enough.” Fosse/Gideon seems to suffer the conflict of both striving for perfection and being unable to ignore his faults, all the while not paying close enough attention to or particularly caring about his health. This eventually caught up with Fosse/Gideon at the height of his career.

While rehearsing for his new musical Chicago in 1974, Fosse suffered a heart attack and underwent open heart surgery. After the operation, he had taken an interest in death, which resulted in Fosse collaborating with his co-writer, Robert Alan Arthur, to pen the new psychologically driven musical film. I always found it fascinating the way that Fosse chose to depict death as a stunning blonde woman in white. Considering Fosse had always been drawn to women, depicting Gideon being drawn to death in the form of a woman perfectly serves as a means to Gideon’s end. Fosse’s own near-death experience seems to have given him some clarity. One doesn’t necessarily get the impression Fosse wants to die as All That Jazz unfolds, but rather that any death in the film can be seen as a symbol of Fosse killing off any former toxic traits such as the self-doubt and self-sabotage within himself that are embodied within Gideon. A quote that is heard by Gideon at the very beginning of the film perfectly showcases how he has been unconsciously bringing himself closer and closer to death: “To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting.”

Gideon with a microphone, singing

All That Jazz ended up being a huge hit, winning four Academy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival’s Palm d’Or. Roger Ebert had described All That Jazz as Fosse’s version of Federico Fellini’s , which Fellini made as an examination on his own life when he thought his creativity was at an end, but with not as high enthusiasm for All That Jazz itself. Which brings up the question: Why hasn’t All That Jazz hit the stage? The biggest argument is that it simply wouldn’t transfer well to the stage because of the film’s non-linear, cinematic structure, but there have been quite a few shows executed in a non-linear fashion. Stephen Sondheim’s musicals Company, Assassins, and Merrily We Roll Along are perfect examples. Is it a matter of how it would sell? There are times where someone mentions that they stumbled upon All That Jazz out in the world. Anna Kendrick even admitted this while she spoke about the film in the Criterion closet. (https://youtu.be/CuZo__82POU?si=YK865EIVshNSd0IS) It is a Bob Fosse production, though. Wouldn’t that be enough? Would Fosse want it to be told in that medium or would he want it to remain an experience only for the movies? Either way, I believe it’s a story that’s worth bringing to life on stage, and if it ever does debut on Broadway, I’ll be first in line. Until then, All That Jazz remains a masterpiece made solely and outstandingly for the silver screen. 


Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon

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