All That Jazz

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


All That Jazz is Bob Fosse's 1979 gimlet-eyed take on an especially hectic moment in his creative life: directing and choreographing the Broadway musical Chicago while also directing the film version of Lenny. Fosse's Author Avatar, Joe Gideon, spends the film smoking, drinking, womanizing, and popping pills, all the while flirting with the Angel of Death. The various women in his life look on with love, helplessness, or just plain exasperation. Between bouts of indulgence, he tirelessly works on his film, The Stand-Up, and choreographs some brilliant musical numbers.

The opening audition sequence, set to George Benson's rendition of "On Broadway", has been endlessly imitated (Staying Alive, the film version of A Chorus Line, etc., etc., etc.). One of Paula Abdul's music videos paid homage to "Airotica", the second half of the "NY/LA" number.

Written by Fosse and Robert Alan Aurthur, directed and choreographed by Fosse. It won Academy Awards for Editing, Art Direction, Costume Design, and Score. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Director (Fosse), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, and Actor (Roy Scheider as Gideon).

Tropes used in All That Jazz include:
  • Angel of Death: Angelique.
  • As Himself: Lighting designer Jules Fisher.
    • Ann Reinking as Kate Jagger. [context?]
    • Fosse's regular assistant choreographer Kathryn Doby.
  • Author Avatar: Joe Gideon.
  • Bowdlerise: TV edits have to omit "Airotica," even though it's a key moment in the plot.
  • The Cameo: Wallace Shawn, Nicole Fosse.
  • Casting Couch: Gideon hires Victoria Porter out of lust, and winds up in bed with her shortly thereafter. Her attempts to use this to her advantage, however, don't go very well.
  • Creator Cameo: Editor Alan Heim appears briefly as the editor of The Stand-Up.
  • Death Is Dramatic: Joe Gideon goes out in a hallucinated production number, complete with mostly adoring audience.
  • Death Seeker: Gideon spends the entire film flirting with Angelique, the Angel of Death herself. Most of the plot revolves around the likelihood of him experiencing Author Existence Failure.
  • Dream Ballet: "Bye Bye Life" and the numbers leading up to it, sort of.
  • Dying Dream: The "Bye Bye Life" sequence.
  • Flatline: An electrocardiogram is built into "Bye Bye Life." We hear Gideon flatline at the end.
  • Hollywood Heart Attack: Averted, hard. Gideon's symptoms are extremely realistic.
  • Hopeless Auditionees: There are several in the chorus call sequence.
  • Informed Flaw: Victoria is supposed to be the weakest dancer in the cast, but doesn't always look like it (Victoria can't sing, either, but we only get to see the composer's agonized reaction).
  • Mating Dance: The "Airotica" ballet. "I think we just lost the family audience."
  • Muse Abuse: Joe Gideon is portrayed as blatantly using the suffering his inveterate womanizing and over-the-top lifestyle causes for his friends, family, and lovers as inspiration for his work. They react pretty much as expected.

Audrey Paris: "Well, I don't know about the others; but I think it's the best work you've ever done," [in tears] "you son of a bitch!"

  • The Musical Musical
  • Roman à Clef: Avowedly so.
    • Joe Gideon is Fosse.
    • Audrey Paris is his ex-wife, Gwen Verdon, and Michelle is their daughter, Nicole.
    • Kate Jagger is Ann Reinking.
    • Gideon's rival, Lucas Sergeant, is director-choreographer Michael Bennett.
    • The composer-lyricist Paul Dann is Fred Ebb.
    • NY/LA is Chicago, which Fosse was rehearsing at the time of his heart attack.
    • All That Jazz refers to the opening song of Chicago.
    • The Stand-Up is Lenny.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Especially at the end, with the one-two punch of "Bye Bye Life" and "There's No Business Like Show Business."
  • Take That: Davis Newman, played by Cliff Gorman, sends up Dustin Hoffman, who was Lenny Bruce in the film version of Lenny. On Broadway, Lenny had been played by...Cliff Gorman.
    • The opening is effectively Bob Fosse declaring that he can do A Chorus Line better than it can.
    • The entire film is essentially an exercise in Self-Deprecation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let me lay on you a so-so entertainer, not much of a humanitarian, and this cat was never *nobody's* friend. In his final appearance on the great stage of life - uh, you can applaud if you want to - Mr. Joe Gideon!"

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/All_That_Jazz?oldid=1994882"