All That Jazz (1979)

Director/choreographer Bob Fosse tells his own life story as he details the sordid career of Joe Gideon, a womanizing, drug-using dancer.

Director:

Bob Fosse

Writers:

Robert Alan Aurthur, Bob Fosse

Stars:

Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking

Won 4 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 14 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Roy Scheider	...	Joe Gideon
Jessica Lange	...	Angelique
Ann Reinking	...	Kate Jagger
Leland Palmer	...	Audrey Paris
Cliff Gorman	...	Davis Newman
Ben Vereen	...	O'Connor Flood
Erzsebet Foldi	...	Michelle
Michael Tolan	...	Dr. Ballinger
Max Wright	...	Joshua Penn
William LeMassena	...	Jonesy Hecht
Irene Kane	...	Leslie Perry (as Chris Chase)
Deborah Geffner	...	Victoria
Kathryn Doby	...	Kathryn
Anthony Holland	...	Paul Dann
Robert Hitt	...	Ted Christopher

Storyline

Joe Gideon is a Broadway director, choreographer and filmmaker, he in the process of casting the chorus and staging the dance numbers for his latest Broadway show, starring his ex-wife Audrey Paris in what is largely a vanity project for her in playing a role several years younger than her real age, and editing a film he directed on the life of stand-up comic Davis Newman. Joe's professional and personal lives are intertwined, he a chronic philanderer, having slept with and had relationships with a series of dancers in his shows, Victoria Porter, who he hired for the current show despite she not being the best dancer, in the former category, and Kate Jagger, his current girlfriend, in the latter category. That philandering has led to relationship problems, with Audrey during their marriage, and potentially now with Kate who wants a committed relationship with Joe largely in not wanting the alternative of entering the dating world again. Joe also lives a hard and fast life, he chain ...

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Plot Keywords:

dancer | cigarette smoking | price of fame | prescription drug abuse | workaholic | 

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Taglines:

All that work. All that glitter. All that pain. All that love. All that crazy rhythm. All that jazz.

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Genres:

Drama | Music | Musical

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Certificate:

R

Did You Know?

Trivia

Roy Scheider and Keith Gordon previously worked together on Jaws 2 (1978).

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Goofs

Towards the end of the table read of the script, while all voices are silenced and you only hear the sounds Joe is making, Paul gives Joe a victory sign by shaking his two hands together. Moments later, you see Joe's watch and it's 3:05pm. When the reading is over, the producer says "Take an hour and a half for lunch. Back at 3:00."

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Quotes

[first lines]
Joe Gideon: To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting.
Angelique: That's very theatrical, Joe
Joe Gideon: Yeah, I know.
Angelique: Did you make that up?
Joe Gideon: I wish I had. Do you like it?
Angelique: Eh, it's all right.

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Crazy Credits

There are no opening credits, only the company credits and the title, which resembles revolving Broadway lights.

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Connections

Referenced in BoJack Horseman: The Showstopper (2018)

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Soundtracks

Take Off With Us (Reprise)
(uncredited)
Music by Stanley Lebowsky
Lyrics by Fred Tobias
Performed by Deborah Geffner, Sandahl Bergman, Eileen Casey, Bruce Anthony Davis,
Gary Flannery, Jennifer Nairn-Smith, Danny Ruvolo, Leland Schwantes, John Sowinski, Candace Tovar and Rima Vetter

User Reviews

Brilliant summary of director/Co-writer Fosse's decent into show biz madness and death

Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ has been mistaken for a rip-off of Fellini's 8 1/2 for some time. But that is giving it short shrift as an illuminating, sobering account of one man's burnout in the face of enormous pressure from the elements of the entertainment industry which he's involved himself in, namely Broadway and the film industry. Based on Fosse's experiences directing CHICAGO on Broadway and LENNY for United Artists, it stars Roy Scheider as Fosse's always black-dressed alter ego Joe Gideon, who's long road to success has been dotted with drug addictions, one-night stands, betrayals, and show biz phoniness.

Particularly of interest in this film is the strong autobiographical quality of it. Fosse did, indeed, suffer his first heart attack during this 1973/74 period of his life. The film-within-the-film, "The Stand Up," is an interesting variation on LENNY (1974, with Dustin Hoffman and Valerie Perrine)---much more irritating than that movie. LENNY ended up getting great reviews, for the most part, but it must have been a tough movie for Fosse to get his hands around, especially while dealing with his failed marriage to Broadway star Gwen Verdon (portrayed here by Leland Palmer). It's certainly portrayed as such in this film. And Chicago seems to have been a challenge for him, too. He obviously thought the original script for that show was lacking (as he actually went on record as saying) and that he had to spice it up for him to become interested in it. (How fascinating would a Fosse film version of CHICAGO have been? As it was, it looks as if eventual CHICAGO director Rob Marshall screened ALL THAT JAZZ many times in order to mine its many storytelling treasures, including the main conceit that most of the film's musical numbers appear in the minds of the main characters.)

Scheider has never been better and deserved real consideration as that year's Best Actor Oscar-winner (he lost, ironically, to Dustin Hoffman who won for KRAMER VS. KRAMER). He is positively channeling his director's personality, down to his constant cigarette smoking and his artsy goatee (not to mention his snaky, rakish attitudes towards personality responsibility). The fine cast also includes: John Lithgow as a rival Broadway director who may or may not take over Joe's show if he dies on the operating table; Max Wright (the dad on ALF) as the producer of Gideon's film; Sandahl Bergman (from CONAN and RED SONJA) as the lead dancer in the "Take Off With Us" musical number that disappoints the stage show's backers; longtime Fosse girlfriend and dancer Ann Reinking as Gideon's other serious bedmate; Cliff Gorman as Davis Newman, the lead actor in "The Stand Up"; the lovely Erezebet Foldi as Gideon's precocious daughter (Fosse's real daughter, Nicole, later appeared in the film version of A CHORUS LINE); Jessica Lange in her first serious role as the Angel of Death; Keith Gordon (an actor in CHRISTINE and BACK TO SCHOOL, who's now an acclaimed director of films like MOTHER NIGHT and the 2003 film adaptation of THE SINGING DETECTIVE) as the young Joe Gideon; Ben Vereen, energetic as a show-biz veteran who "hosts" Gideon's final decent into death. The list goes on and on....

And the tech credits are superb. The film won Oscars for its Tony Walton sets (Tony Walton has been married to Julie Andrews for years, and is an acclaimed stage and film set designer), its Alan Heim editing (Heim worked on NETWORK, among other things), its Ralph Burns scoring (which includes old jazz, classical, pop, and Broadway standards), and its Albert Wolsky costumes. Its photography, by Giuseppe Rotunno, is also great (Rotunno phtographed many Fellini films and probably had much to do with the lumping of Fosse's film in with Fellini's work).

Tying in 1979 with APOCOLYPSE NOW for Cannes Palme D'Or, this is one of the greatest movies ever made, I think, and you'll know that once the first moments--a mass stage audition unbelievably well-edited to the tune of George Benson's version of "On Broadway"--unreel in front of you. It's an unflinching look into the madness of one artist that, eventually, became his undoing (Fosse died in 1986, in his early 60s, of another heart attack, after completing only one more movie, STAR 80, and one more stage show, BIG DEAL). See it and prepare to be moved in strange ways.

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

20 December 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

All That Jazz

Filming Locations:

150 55th Street, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$12,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$86,229, 25 December 1979

Gross USA:

$37,823,676

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$37,823,676

Company Credits

Production Co:

Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox

Technical Specs

Runtime:

123 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1