All That Jazz (with Demi Adejuyigbe)

‘All That Jazz’ is a movie about what a brilliant jerk Bob Fosse is… and it was written and directed by Bob Fosse. Chaos ensued as the legendary choreographer attempted to confront his demons onscreen and off. Chris and Lizzie are joined by Demi Adejuyigbe as they discover just how insane Bob Fosse really was, and why Roy Scheider was not the first ‘Jaws’ star chosen to play Joe Gideon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Life can be a lot sometimes. Traffic, taxes, and that dreaded text that just says, "Call me." Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off all your day-to-day problems and turn on the movies and shows you already love. From Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to Dirty Dancing, from Alias to The X-Files. Channel Surf Live TV or browse the menu to find exactly what you're in the mood for. It's all free, no subscription, no credit card, no catch. The best things on TV are free, so escape to Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.

• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

  12 celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. In this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey, 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family. For two weeks in a lavish Italian villa, they'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a Don. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out, who makes money, and who walks away with nothing. In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency,

• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

  will the most powerful reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch The Mob, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a genre bending, mind bending LSD trip of a meta, meta, meta dance and music film. As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett and a special guest. Lizzie, I'm gonna kick it to you, though, so you can introduce our friend.

• 2:27Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. We have an extremely special guest today. It turns out that this movie we're talking about, All That Jazz, is, I believe, one of his favorite movies. He is a writer, comedian, podcaster, musician, just extremely funny and smart person. We are honored to have him on the show. We've got Demi Adjeibe here, and he's also currently touring with a live show. Demi Adjeibe is going to do one backflip. Sir, welcome.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

• 2:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I'm honored. This is, this is my favorite podcast. I love this movie so much. I, I know so little about it, but I'm also just excited. I'm excited to be a voice on the podcast, which is just going, what? That's crazy. And offer nothing else of worth.

• 3:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, we're extremely excited to have you here. And also, I was so excited to talk about this movie with you. I didn't know anything about it either. And then as I was getting into the research, I was like, oh, no, what am I gonna do to him?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't think you can ruin this movie for me anymore than Bob Fosse ruined it himself.

• 3:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I won't. I won't. Bob Fosse is both the best thing about this and the worst thing about it, as I think we will learn getting through it. All right. Well, let's get into it. Demi, had you seen this movie before? And what were your thoughts and feelings upon rewatching it?

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've seen this movie, I think, twice before, watching it again the other day with friends and prep for this. And I, I think the first time I saw it was shortly after, like, COVID broke out. And so it was very like, I'm home in a fugue state already a little depressed, and this movie didn't help. But it is the kind of movie that sticks with you and sort of like, leaves a sinking feeling in your gut for a while after it. And so I couldn't stop thinking about it. I watched it again with a friend years later. And I just, I think there's so much of the movie that like, the second time you watch it just feels even worse. And you're like, oh, this was happy and now it's sad. But I, both times, just blown away by the inventiveness and like, the sort of- The self-reflexiveness of it, just to make a movie about your own flaws and have it be

• 4:23Speaker 02

  a masterpiece and then also succumb to those flaws just feels a little like insane. It feels mythological in a way. I've always really admired this movie and I think it changed my life in many ways in that it inspired me to start dancing again and to quit smoking all at once. So huge influence on me.

• 4:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow. Amazing. Christopher?

• 4:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I love All That Jazz. My dad was a big fan of this movie. You know, the scene where all the sound drops out and it's just the Foley as they're doing the table read? He, for whatever reason, he would always talk about, oh, that scene's so inventive, blah, blah, blah. And so I watched it probably middle school, high school, did not fully appreciate it at all. And then have rewatched it a few times over the year. And now it's maybe my favorite movie about the like, the horror of the creative process. And one of my favorite scenes upon rewatching it is when he's watching the television critic of the stand-up, which is obviously like the Lenny Bruce corollary. And you can tell he agrees with everything she's saying. And that I relate to that very much now. Whenever I get negative reviews, those are the only ones that I know are right. And all the positive

• 5:28Chris Winterbauer?

  ones are written by idiots on anything. And yeah, and it now as a dad, the scenes with his daughter resonate in a way that they didn't before. And this movie, the influences are across, you know, television and film are so obvious. I mean, Demi, we saw that you had written a Letterboxd review of Malcolm X referencing our coverage of it. And there's a this, there's a Malcolm X connection here two ways. Marvin Wirth produced Lenny, which is Lenny Bruce's film directed by Bob Fosse, which is what this, the movie he's editing in All That Jazz is that movie. And Marvin Wirth would go on to produce Malcolm X. And then obviously you have the Dolly shot leading Joe Gideon.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't think about that.

• 6:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. Which is what Spike Lee does in Malcolm X 14 years later as he's approaching.

• 6:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it also looks very much like the famous Jaws shot, which of course is Roy Scheider in both shots.

• 6:22Chris Winterbauer?

  The Dolly zoom, yeah, that he does earlier. And then obviously like The Sopranos and the dream sequences of Tony matches.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Very much the hospital stuff here. So I love this movie. It's great. I loved it. Upon rewatching it, I agree. It's so bleak. It's like so upbeat and yet bleak at the end. So fantastic film.

• 6:40Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Well, I agree with both of you. I've never seen this before. I'm thrilled to have watched it. I watched it twice. And same thing, Demi, the first time I was like, whoa, where is this going? The second time I was like, oh, no, I know where it's going. And yeah, really blown away by it. I want to read something that I think really encapsulates what is so bizarre about this movie. Wild that someone could make a portrait of their own life that is so self reflexive that it feels unpretentious and wholly critical. While making decisions in the process of that project that suggest a total disconnect from the feeling your audience is going to leave with. It's as magnificent and fascinating as it is truly sociopathic. Demi, do you know where I got that?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  I do. Halfway through, I was like, wait a minute, did I, did I say this?

• 7:25Lizzie Bassett?

  You did. I'm, I am obsessed with your Letterboxd reviews.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 7:29Lizzie Bassett?

  And honestly, reading your Letterboxd review of this movie is what made me want to watch it. And then going back and reading that again, I just think you absolutely nailed what is so strange about this.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  It is magnificent. And I just, I think I, it's very fascinating to think about people who watch this movie without knowing anything of Bob Fosse. And they're just like, wow, what an interesting fictional story. And then to be told, no, this is him going, here's where I've been, here's where I'm going. And then just going, anyway, bye bye.

• 7:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, get ready for him to deny that.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Okay. Well.

• 7:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 7:59Lizzie Bassett?

  But yes, a hundred percent. This does, this is definitely autobiographical regardless of what Bob Fosse may say. All right. Before we get into it, I do just want to say, I think Bob Fosse is amazing. I think he is an unbelievable director, obviously. Unbelievable choreographer. Cabaret is one of my favorites, favorite movies ever made. The reason that I'm saying this as like a caveat at the top of this episode is because a lot of what we're going to talk about today is not going to paint Fosse in the most flattering light, but then neither does All That Jazz, and he made it. So let's get into it. The main sources for today are All His Jazz, The Life and Death of Bob Fosse by Martin Gottfried, and Fosse by Sam Wasson.

• 8:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I also have to give a huge shout out to our researcher, Jesse, who did a phenomenal job on this episode. She really waded through just so much information. And she's now a self-described Bob Fosse apologist.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Interesting for this movie to turn someone into an apologist to Bob Fosse.

• 8:59Lizzie Bassett?

  True, seriously, and especially the research, too. Jesse, what's wrong with you? All right, Basic Information, directed by, of course, Bob Fosse, written by Robert Allen Arthur and Bob Fosse, starring Roy Scheider, Anne Ryan King, Leland Palmer, Ben Vereen, Jessica Lange, and many more, produced by Dan Melnick and Robert Allen Arthur, among others. The IMDb logline is, "Director slash choreographer Bob Fosse tells his own life story as he details the sordid career of Joe Gideon, a womanizing, drug-using dancer." So, yeah, I mean, I guess everybody agrees this is autobiographical, except for Bob Fosse, as we will get to.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:39Lizzie Bassett?

  It was released December 20th, 1979, and it's rated R for, I think, obvious reasons. So many more boobs in this than I had anticipated. Boobs, drugs, everything.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  It's also, I think that's like the funniest use of nudity in a movie I've seen in a while, which is sort of like, of course, this would never get made. Why would you do that? There goes the family audience.

• 9:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Like Airplane, the orgy? I don't, I don't even understand what that show is supposed to be.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:04Lizzie Bassett?

  And you don't need to. All right. Since all that jazz is, as we are discussing, pretty much all about Bob Fosse, we're gonna spend some time going through his biography because it all ties back into what you see in the movie. So, Robert Louis Fosse was born June 23rd, 1929, in Chicago, named after Robert Louis Stevenson. He was the fifth out of six kids, and his father, Cyril Fosse, had attempted a career in vaudeville before becoming a Hershey chocolate salesman. His mother had been an extra in operas, she literally was like a spear carrier in the background, before settling down to sell magazines over the phone. Now, she and Cyril both had heart problems, both died of heart disease, I believe, which Bob and his siblings did all seem to inherit.

• 10:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Fossey later equated his father to Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, saying, "He was always a glad hand, always pretending to be up, but he was a very prejudiced man, and we never got along after I started asking questions that went beyond how to catch a ball." He also revealed later in 1960, when his mother died, that they found out his father had been secretly seeing another woman for many, many years. So hence the Willy Loman reference. His father was also hopeful that Fossey would go into show business. Cyril had briefly had a song and dance act with his own brother. His brother had died, and now he was kind of trying to replace his brother with a very young Bob Fossey. At nine years old, his parents offered Bob the chance to join a dance school. He took it, and by 13, he was professionally dancing on the vaudeville circuit.

• 11:33Lizzie Bassett?

  However, it was a lot more Gypsy Rose Lee than it was Shirley Temple. He found himself performing at some of the seedier clubs on the vaudeville and burlesque circuit, where strippers would, quote, "turn him on" right before he got onstage. Of course, we see a version of this in All That Jazz, and just a reminder, he's a child when this is happening. Just a warning, like, there is going to be more discussion of some of this across the episode. Sorry, Demi.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  No, it's to be expected. It's in the movie.

• 12:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, now that what you see in the movie really happened. Perhaps most disturbingly, at 15 years old, he, quote unquote, "dated" a 30-year-old woman. Of course, that is not dating. I think it's safe to say this lady was a sexual predator. When her husband filed for divorce, he cited four boys that she had slept with, including Bob Fossey. So even though he was earning money as a dancer, he also kept up his grades, had extracurricular activities, and was president of his class. He told Rolling Stone, "Once I'd established the standard, I couldn't get out of it. I was a good kid, so I had to be a good kid. You're trapped by your own publicity." I think it's wild that that's how he felt at, like, 15 years old.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I feel like it's that sort of, like, early set of expectations that pushes people to be, like, perfectionists when they decide to create. Like, they think creating starts to become this thing that's like, "I'm escaping from getting to do this thing. I'm getting to do it on my own terms, but because it's on my own terms, it's like, it's gotta be perfect." Like, they haven't gotten completely away from. The real problem.

• 13:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. Well, he also had a tap dance routine with another boy. And that boy was basically just like, he was a perfectionist at that point. Like, he would make them practice over and over and over again in the mirror until they were doing the exact same moves.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  So awful to have that curse so early.

• 13:23Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 13:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I also just say, did Matthew Weiner steal a little bit for Don Draper? Hershey Chocolate salesman, Hershey, Pennsylvania, lived in a whorehouse, raised in these seedy strip joints, goes on to have a womanizing career in a, you know, demanding industry. I don't know. Just throwing it out there.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  I'm like, it just feels like this movie is so influential to entire swaths of prestige TV that it's like, we'll just be like, wait a minute, that's from this, that's from this.

• 13:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I think you even called out Bojack Horseman in your review.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Which is just a straight up, like, they want you to know it's all that jazz.

• 13:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. So potentially more similarities to Don Draper, I think. In 1945, at seventeen, Fosse enlisted in the Navy. But before he made it to boot camp, World War II was over. He transferred to the Navy Special Services and Entertainment Division, where he stayed for about two years. Then he moves to New York City with dreams of becoming the next Fred Astaire. He meets and marries his first wife, Marian Niles, at this point, who was also his dance partner. However, as I'm sure you can tell from this movie, all of his relationships are short-lived.

• 14:27Chris Winterbauer?

  They don't seem healthy.

• 14:29Lizzie Bassett?

  The women are all very happy.

• 14:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Not, I shouldn't have slept with her. I should have called you first. That's always the line.

• 14:36Lizzie Bassett?

  In 1949, he and his wife were featured dancers in the Broadway musical Dance Me A Song. A woman named Joan McCracken was one of the stars, and she and Fosse began fooling around pretty much immediately. She was gorgeous, funny, very talented, and ten years Fosse's senior. Interesting, given the past history. She was also kind of a big shot. She had a contract with Warner Brothers and considered Truman Capote a personal friend. I saw somewhere that she was maybe one of the influences for Holly Go Lightly. So though they tried to keep it a secret, his wife found out pretty quickly and then had to spend the entire run of the show being upstaged by the woman her husband was cheating on her with. He and Niles eventually divorced, and he went on to marry Joan McCracken in 1952.

• 15:20Lizzie Bassett?

  She was an enormous artistic influence on him. She is the one who convinced him to take a year off from dancing, go study at the American Theater Wing, which I think really helped him open himself up to more directing and choreographing. He continued performing and even had a contract with MGM, which led him to a small role in Kiss Me Kate in 1953, but more importantly, a chance to choreograph a 45-second number. And this reportedly caught the eye of Jerome Robbins, of course, of West Side Story and New York City Ballet fame, who was co-directing a new musical called The Pajama Game. Fossey got the job as choreographer, his first for a full Broadway musical, and he ended up winning the Tony for it. However, there is another version of this story.

• 16:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Robbins' co-director was George Abbott, who had also been McCracken's director on Me and Juliet. He said she never stopped talking about Bob, and so he gave him the job because of her. Probably both and, but according to Hal Prince in Lisa Jo Segola's biography of Joan, he said she was single-handedly responsible for getting Bobby Fossey his first job. So who knows? He had a very signature style right away. And here is Bob Fossey himself explaining it to Dick Cavett in 1979.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  I started with hats because I began losing my hair very early. So I began wearing hats and began playing with them. So and I've always been slightly round-shouldered, and so I started to exaggerate that. And I don't have what the ballet dancers call a turnout. So I started turning my feet in, and I guess that's the style. It's all.

• 16:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it's so interesting that he just chose to accentuate all the things that were technically wrong with him.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:57Lizzie Bassett?

  And that became what he's most known for.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  I've also never seen Bob Fossey talk himself, I'm realizing now. And it like Sam Rockwell was a great casting in Fossey.

• 17:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh, that is, yeah, that's exactly what he looks like.

• 17:09Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like Sam Rockwell, Jim Henson.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Is one.

• 17:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So over the next two decades, Fossey would be nominated for nine more Tonys, taking home five, all for choreography. Also during this time, he would leave McCracken behind, both professionally and romantically, all while she secretly battled diabetes. He met and fell for another dancer, Gwen Verdon, played by, of course, Michelle Williams in Fosse Verdon, if anybody's watched it, who he was directing in Damn Yankees. They had an affair, most likely for years, before he and Joan finally divorced in 1959. Joan died of a heart attack in 1961, and Fosse never visited her while she was sick and didn't even attend her funeral. Instead, he waited across the street and watched as her coffin was carried out.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  That is literally what happens in every cliche funeral scene. I'm like, you can't do that for real. What do you mean?

• 18:02Lizzie Bassett?

  He's standing in the rain with a black umbrella, just watching her coffin.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Behind a tree. Yeah.

• 18:07Lizzie Bassett?

  He's really weird about sickness and death, which I think we'll see across this episode. And that's so strange because he's obviously fascinated by it. I mean, that's all this movie is about. Gwen Verdon would later say, "Years from now, you'll read how Bob enhanced so many lives," which he did. "But I'm going to tell you Bob's real tragedy. Nobody, not one of us, except Joan, was ever able to enhance his."

• 18:33Lizzie Bassett?

  A lot of people think The Angel of Death, played by Jessica Lange and All That Jazz, is a version of Joan McCracken.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  And is the enhancement just the idea that Joan is the only person who got him, like, what he loved, like a job or work?

• 18:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know. I mean, I think that she's one of the first people to really push him or to even make him understand that he could be something beyond just a dancer. I think she saw the potential in him to be much more of a creator and really pushed him to explore that. And then he ditched her.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:06Lizzie Bassett?

  So Fosse and Verdon married in 1960. They had their daughter, Fosse's only child, Nicole, in 1963. And though they remained married until Fosse's death, they formally separated in 1971 because it was reportedly during the filming of Cabaret when Verdon walked in on him with multiple German girls that she had had enough.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Well, that's research. It's Cabaret.

• 19:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Sorry, you're right.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  So Germans are coming.

• 19:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Cabaret.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Cabaret is fantastic.

• 19:33Lizzie Bassett?

  That's one of my favorite movies just ever made.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:36Lizzie Bassett?

  After separating from Verdon, a young dancer in the chorus of Pippin became his protege and his girlfriend. We will come back to Anne Rankin.

• 19:45Lizzie Bassett?

  So Fossey would later tell Rolling Stone, quote, "I like to think I was a pretty good-looking guy and I cared about the women and had a good sense of humor, but also I'd be a fool if I didn't recognize that I had a certain degree of power over them. Directors are never in short supply of girlfriends." I just think this touches on what you put in that Letterboxd review, Demi.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:04Lizzie Bassett?

  There's this weird level of awareness here.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  I would not be shocked to learn that some of the things that Joe Gideon says are straight up, like the moment where it's like, "I wish you weren't so generous with your cock." And he's like, "That's good. I should use that." I'm like, "There's no way that didn't happen for real in some fashion of this, like, show, or this movie."

• 20:23Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 20:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he wrote that down and tell, and then he's like, "Now I have the chance to use it in the screenplay as the exact scene that had already happened."

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the walk hard, like, "Wait, generous with your..." It's like, "Do not write a song about this right now."

• 20:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 20:36Lizzie Bassett?

  So in addition to cheating on every woman he ever dated, Fossey was known for being particularly mean and harsh on young, attractive dancers. It sounds like most people were willing to put up with this because they felt like the ends justified the means. But this is one thing that I think this movie shies away from a bit more than it could have, is that he could be really cruel. And maybe that's because of Roy Scheider, but I don't know. I think they, you know, obviously it's him making it, so I get it, but they don't show as much of that as I think was present.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  I wonder if they wanted it tempered a little bit so you kind of like Joe and feel bad at the end?

• 21:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Because it does feel like there's that one scene where it's like, "I can't make you a good dancer or a great dancer, but I can make you better." And then, like, "See, it was better." And it's like, that just feels like the lightest version of a critique that you could give, and you know that that's not what he was saying.

• 21:25Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 21:26Chris Winterbauer?

  It's whiplash light.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:27Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what I mean? Like, they pull back on that moment, for sure, with Victoria.

• 21:32Lizzie Bassett?

  So in 1973, he became the first person ever to win a Tony, two of them actually, for Pippin, an Oscar, Best Director for Cabaret, and an Emmy for Eliza with a Z, all in the same year.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Almost immediately, though, he had a nervous breakdown, checking himself into a psychiatric hospital. Anne Rankin was there for this episode, and she said that he also had a grand mal epileptic seizure. She told The New Yorker, "There was really a psychiatric issue with him. You get to a certain point in your life and you think you can do it all, and you do do it all, and then you have to top yourself."

• 22:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Doesn't help that his dance style looked a little grand molly as well.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Sorry. Is he seizing? No, he's just dancing.

• 22:15Lizzie Bassett?

  It does seem like even this early, he was expressing concerns about being left alone, feeling that that may be dangerous. And yet, just a few days later, he left the clinic to begin working on two massive projects, one of which Chris mentioned at the top of this: directing the Lenny Bruce biopic Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman, and choreography for the new Broadway musical Chicago, which Gwen Verdon was starring in. By summer of 1974, in the midst of both projects, he had a pretty fun routine to keep up with all the work. Here's what he told Rolling Stone: "I drank Scotch, I did cocaine and a lot of Dexedrine. I'd wake up in the morning, pop a pill. After lunch, when I couldn't get going, I'd pop another one. If I wanted to work all night, still another one."

• 22:56Speaker 02

  But it's not autobiographical.

• 22:58Lizzie Bassett?

  No, dummy.

• 22:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  It's different.

• 23:00Chris Winterbauer?

  No, even though Cliff Montgomery plays Lenny Bruce in the stage version before Dustin Hoffman did, and he plays the stand-up in All That Jazz.

• 23:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Cliff Gorman, by the way, Chris.

• 23:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Cliff Gorman, excuse me, Cliff Gorman.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  It's coincidence. It happens all the time. It's like when they do twin films, but one of the films is My Life.

• 23:19Chris Winterbauer?

  One thing I will mention is they never show him eat in the movie.

• 23:23Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. Unless he's like eating a cigarette butt, which is also an option for him.

• 23:27Chris Winterbauer?

  It's just cigarettes, even in the shower, Dexedrine, he's injected with a lot of morphine by the end, but he never does, he never eats, consumes water, he never does anything healthy throughout the entire movie. I think it's a very conscious choice.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 23:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, everything is a conscious choice in this movie.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course, Fossey was not indestructible. Apparently, he had a cough so bad that an assistant editor on Lenny thought his lungs were going to come out. He also would forget he had a lit cigarette in his mouth and had blisters on his lips from butts that had burned all the way down. People were like afraid he was burning himself all the time, so they would try to like swat the cigarettes out of his mouth, and sometimes they'd just hit him in the face.

• 24:05Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought we were gonna have a glitter, and he was gonna fall asleep on the couch and light the house on fire with his cigarette.

• 24:11Lizzie Bassett?

  That did happen in glitter. Forgot about that.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Do you think at a certain point, he was just so used to people hitting him that he was like, "I don't know what that one was for, but I probably did."

• 24:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, probably. Still, he thought this seemed like a good time to get going on his next film. And now, friends, we have finally arrived at All That Jazz, except it's not all that jazzy just yet.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Parents appreciate practical gifts, but giving one that instills confidence and life-saving skills, that's priceless. Goldfish Swim School's holiday packages wrap fun, confidence, and safety into one golden gift. Every lesson is the first step towards safer summers and happy memories. These limited-time holiday packages are one of the best deals of the year. Visit goldfishswimschool.com, where the gift is just the beginning.

• 25:09Speaker 05

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 25:45Lizzie Bassett?

  So, his agent Sam Cohn and producer Stuart Oslo pitched him on a novel called Ending, published just a few months earlier from first-time novelist Hilma Wolitzer. It's about a woman in her early 30s with two young kids whose husband is dying of cancer. Doesn't exactly scream musical film adaptation, especially when he seemed to have a strange relationship with death.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder why they were like, "This is your project."

• 26:09Lizzie Bassett?

  I still don't know. Like, I-

• 26:11Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm trying to think of like, any other movies around that time that were like, you know, successful, and they're like, "This is a comp for that." Nothing's coming to mind.

• 26:17Lizzie Bassett?

  No, for sure not. And it's a weird one for him, too, but anyway, they all read it and they were like, "This is yours." So, he was on board, and he chose screenwriter Robert Allen Arthur, or Bob Arthur, to write the script. Now, Arthur was best known for writing teleplays during the 50s, which of course is the golden age of television. He was a great writer, but not necessarily a big name, and I think that appealed to Fosse. I don't think he wanted somebody who could boss him around. It sounds like right away, they start deviating quite heavily from the novel, and they're already inventing their own character. Because you may have noticed, All That Jazz is not about a woman whose husband is dying of cancer, nor is that woman credited on the screenplay for this movie.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did think that was strange.

• 27:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So, fast forward to November of 1974, just a few days before Lenny's November 10 premiere, and Fosse was at a table read for Chicago. His teeth started aching and his chest felt tight, so during the lunch break, he went to see his doctor, who immediately sent him to the ER because he was having a massive heart attack. He would have to undergo cardiac bypass surgery. So, Chris, you kind of alluded to this. I had always thought that he decided to do All That Jazz while he was in the hospital from the heart attack. Not exactly true. They had started this project prior to him going in. However, it does sound like this solidified his desire to make this movie.

• 27:38Chris Winterbauer?

  I assumed it was from the heart attack, too, because I knew that he had had a big health event around Chicago and Lenny, and I assumed that was the inspiration for this movie.

• 27:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Sort of. Less than an hour before going into surgery, Fosse called Arthur to say, "We sure picked the right subject, didn't we? I'm getting a lot of material here."

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  So, everything you see Joe doing in the hospital in All That Jazz, Fosse was doing in real life. He was partying, eating, drinking, sexually harassing the nursing staff. He also managed to have another heart attack while hospitalized, which is not a surprise, I think. By March of 75, he was back at work on Chicago. Though, while he was out, it sounds like the producers did have conversations about whether the insurance policy would cover him dying, as you see them have in All That Jazz.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Which is one of the, like, that scene, this time it really stuck out, how much that scene, it's just like, the idea of you giving your life to something and then being like, "It's probably pretty good if he dies for us. Like, we want him to die."

• 28:36Chris Winterbauer?

  You can really see how Fosse feels about his financiers and collaborators in that moment.

• 28:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Chris Winterbauer?

  That he would hang them out to dry in that way. It's pretty funny.

• 28:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I didn't realize this when watching it, but as soon as you said that, they're totally, I think, ripping on that in Tropic Thunder, too, when they're like, discussing, you know, if he's gonna die, that it might be better for the production. Yeah.

• 28:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the insurance payout.

• 28:57Lizzie Bassett?

  So all through that year into the fall of 1975, he and Arthur would send pages back and forth of their adaptation. They started adding in elements of his own hospital stay, as well as interviews with healthcare professionals and doctors. But the big question was, how do they make this thing fun? Because it was reading very clinical. Later in the spring, while working on another film, he was spotted carrying around a book on Death and Dying by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, which of course

• 29:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 29:25Lizzie Bassett?

  features heavily in the film. Also, I didn't know that's where the five stages of grief comes from. So in March of 1976, he revealed that he and producer Stuart Ostrow had fronted the $50,000 for the script and book rights because they'd had a very hard time selling it. Again, not a surprise, but Paramount had finally agreed to produce it. He said the script was about, quote, "the observance of death, the acceptance of death, recognition of it, plus black humor. I've invented a character who wants to go out big, so he keeps inventing deathbed speeches. When he goes, it's without a word."

• 29:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 30:00Lizzie Bassett?

  By late spring of that year, on the advice of a friend, Fosse had decided to make the main character a choreographer, adding in fantastical musical numbers to represent the stages of grief and help them make the more documentary-style parts of their script a whole lot jazzier. So this is where it starts to become fully autobiographical, I think.

• 30:17Chris Winterbauer?

  And he suggested it was at the behest of a friend, that it's like, oh, I didn't even think about interviewing him.

• 30:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, good point. Good point. No, no, no, it wasn't me.

• 30:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, my friend Schmob Massey told me that I needed to make this a little more personal.

• 30:32Lizzie Bassett?

  So he and Bob Arthur start interviewing friends and family about the time when Fosse had had his heart attacks. And this is around the time they start calling it All That Jazz, which of course is a line from Chicago. However, as Fosse and Arthur were getting more jazzed on All That Jazz, Paramount was not. In 1976, they let their option lapse. So they brought it to Dan Melnick at Columbia Pictures. And the head of Columbia Pictures was Fosse's former agent, David Begelman. So this should be a slam dunk, right? No problems here.

• 31:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Depends on how they left that relationship.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  I don't think people leave relationships with Bob Fosse very well.

• 31:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Probably not.

• 31:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Begelman was painfully aware of what a pain in the ass Bob Fosse could be. We will cover Fosse's directorial debut, Sweet Charity, at some point. It was not a smooth production and they actually pulled him off of it and recut it without him. I think to the film's ultimate detriment. That was a different studio, but he had quite a reputation. I think he was in sort of director's jail after that and Cabaret kind of pulled him back out.

• 31:31Chris Winterbauer?

  And it kind of ties into the, he's recutting the stand up in the movie over and over again. And then the people in California say, all the overages were worth it. You're such a genius. You know, every extension was worth it. If he's, you know, relitigating that first film.

• 31:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, I think he definitely is. Also, as we discussed, this movie does not exactly scream blockbuster success. Regardless, I think Melnick was able to convince Begelman to go for it and so Columbia was on board. But it wasn't just the money people, as Fosse called them, who were nervous about the project. They were also having a really tough time attaching a leading man. Why do you think this was just really not appealing to so many big stars? Is it that it's not a likable character?

• 32:13Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know, because there are so many of those in the 60s and 70s. And these auteur driven prestige pictures that I don't fully buy that necessarily. I would imagine if you were to read it, it feels like two movies shoved together, right? The first hour, outside of the vignettes with Jessica Lange, feel like a pretty grounded 70s new wave sort of film. And then the back half is a total musical bonanza. And so maybe it was jarring, you know, upon reading it.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  I wonder also, it's like, he probably didn't have the best reputation as a guy to work with. And it's probably the kind of movie where you're like, so we're not going to have a good time working together. And I'm not going to have a good time living in this character. And it's maybe a little too close.

• 32:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And I'm playing him and he's the ultimate authority on him.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  So I gotta follow him and study him.

• 33:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, it would scare the hell out of me. I would not want to do this.

• 33:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Or there could be concerns that it was going to be like a hagiography. You know, am I going to join this and play a version of him that feels like? It's, he's telling the only version of, obviously it becomes warts and all, but you know what I'm saying? There could be concern that it would be viewed as some sort of puff piece or something like that.

• 33:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I also don't know how much the script changed between when these people were reading it and when it happened. But any guesses on who was considered for the part?

• 33:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Seventy-nine?

• 33:33Lizzie Bassett?

  We're in about like nineteen seventy-six, seventy-seven right now.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Robert De Niro?

• 33:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Demi, you got it.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  You gotta consider him for everything of this era.

• 33:41Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. That's right. However, he was unavailable. He'd just, of course, done Godfather Two and Taxi Driver. I think The Deer Hunter might have even been in production or on the horizon at this point. Other names, this one's fun, Warren Beatty.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Hmm. That's, he'd be a little like, wait a minute, am I, is this me also?

• 34:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Wait a minute. Well, here's the best part about this. He reportedly asked if it was possible for Joe Gideon to not die at the end.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 34:10Chris Winterbauer?

  That's good.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  It's very funny. And with tears, he's like, he can live, right? He can still change his ways.

• 34:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Like the ghost of Christmas futures.

• 34:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, they're like, don't worry, we steal the body bag, he's still alive.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  He, he winks at the end.

• 34:24Chris Winterbauer?

  He breathes.

• 34:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, great. Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, who really liked the script, but still turned down the role because according to Sam Wasson's biography, Once With Fosse Was Enough.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  I was gonna say.

• 34:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Also Keith Carradine, which is interesting. I guess he looks more like a dancer than some of the other ones, so I could sort of understand that.

• 34:43Chris Winterbauer?

  He's built more like Scheider. Like Scheider's really built for it, I feel.

• 34:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, he is. But, guys, by September of nineteen seventy-seven, they had cast the role. Joe Gideon would be played by, and I'll give you a hint, it's not Roy Scheider.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 34:57Lizzie Bassett?

  You're never gonna guess this because it makes absolutely no sense. Scheider's Jaws co-star, Richard Dreyfuss.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  I almost said Richard Dreyfuss as a joke. I swear to god. Wow.

• 35:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Can you imagine?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 35:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe he can move. I don't know.

• 35:12Lizzie Bassett?

  He can't.

• 35:13Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, yeah.

• 35:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Which will be his part of the problem.

• 35:17Chris Winterbauer?

  He's not live like Scheider or dancers are. I don't remember him at least being so.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  But he can get live.

• 35:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 35:24Lizzie Bassett?

  That's anyone can get live. That's right. I say again, as I refuse to do any kind of exercise.

• 35:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 35:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Demi, what's your take on this movie with Richard Dreyfuss as the lead?

• 35:33Speaker 02

  I don't see that. I don't see the Close Encounters, Richard Dreyfuss doing this at all. It's also like that's it's that era. I could see him like, I could see him looking the part. And again, he doesn't have to dance that much, but I think Joe Gideon is a guy that you look at and you're immediately like, I can see that people like him, but I can also see that he is a miserable and like depressed and like ill guy. Whereas I think Richard Dreyfuss is at this era, just I don't believe that of him. So I don't know.

• 36:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Well, so a couple of weird things. To your point, he's, he's young. Like a part of the reason why I think it wouldn't really sell is that he's only 30 years old and Fosse was 50 at this point. I think he was around 45, maybe when he had the heart attack. Also, he's best known for Jaws. Neither the Goodbye Girl nor Close Encounters had come out yet, but I think he had filmed both of them.

• 36:22Chris Winterbauer?

  And like American Rashidi even earlier, right?

• 36:25Lizzie Bassett?

  He admittedly did not have the body for it or the experience, but Fosse liked his spirit. Liked it.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Did Fosse like his spirit? Cause he was like, I can beat it out of this one.

• 36:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly.

• 36:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Other important casting, Leland Palmer as Audrey Paris. I think we can all agree, Gwen Verdon.

• 36:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Gwen Verdon?

• 36:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. What's your sort of, I mean, what was your reaction to her in this?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  I, she is unbelievable. To the point that I was like, what else has she been in? And it's this and like one other biopic. And I'm like, that's crazy. But I guess she's more of a stage actress, but she's such, her dancing is incredible. The way that she engages with Joe feels like it's so lived in and makes me just go a little like you can kind of get a little more of their relationship by the way that they interact and you're like, I understand why he, why she sticks around. I also understand why she's like, I fucking hate this man. But like,

• 37:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  I think my favorite scene, aside from when it's like, actually, no, my favorite scene with her is when she is, when we first meet her and she's arguing with Joe while dancing and still doing the routine.

• 37:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Is it's so good. But then the scene where he's in the hospital and they cross cut between like her crying and then telling the cast is like, he's doing fine. He was joking around in the hospital, like dancing with them. I'm like, that is someone who has had to parent a child with this person. It's just like, I know how to lie and keep spirits high. It felt, I was like, she's so unbelievable.

• 37:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. And she had worked with him quite a bit before. She'd been in Pippin. So she was familiar with, with Bob Fosse. She looks a little like Gwen Verdon also. She does. That moment at the end even, she does so much with her face when she doesn't have dialogue, so much with the connection she has to him. Like in that scene you referenced, Chris, where there's, you know, really no dialogue and everyone else is sort of like laughing and focused on the script and she is still so laser focused on him. Even throughout that sequence. And then at the very end where he says, at least I don't have to lie to you anymore. And she sticks her tongue out. It's just like, it breaks my heart. I think she's incredible in this. So we've also got Elizabeth, I'm probably mispronouncing that, Elizabeth Foldy as Gideon's daughter, Michelle.

• 38:31Lizzie Bassett?

  And to cast this role, he did cattle calls where he would tell all the dancers to run across the stage and jump into his arms. And only about two of the girls actually did it. She was one. Then it was down to her, who was, she was 12 at the time and a student at an American Ballet Theater and another girl. And he bent down and asked them each to light his cigarette. One girl flicked the match and lit the cig like it was no problem, which I love. Like, what has that girl been up to? Foldy took the cigarette out of his mouth, gently lit it and then put it back. And he hired her immediately after that. I feel like the other girl, he was like, you've seen too much.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:07Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, he's like, you're me back when I was in these cabaret shows.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  We need someone who hasn't been ruined by a Joe Gideon type to show them getting ruined by Joe Gideon.

• 39:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Ben Vereen as O'Connor Flood. I love him in this.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  He's so. Yeah.

• 39:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Dude, just his, like, him in that final number, I watched it like three times in a row. He's just so beautiful to watch.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  I was jealous of him. I was like, I want to be that guy. I was just like, I want to play that role. It's so fun and so like, like in this kind of, it's just showy and he gets to like, sort of have fun with it.

• 39:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's such smart casting too, because I think Fosse knew he would have to carry the, even though that last scene, right, is about.

• 39:48Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he does, he does carry it.

• 39:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Ben Vereen has to carry it musically and in terms of dance.

• 39:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 39:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Right? And, and Scheider just gets to kind of exist behind him and enjoy the osmosis of that performance.

• 40:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is such a smart move and it's such a great scene. It's so good.

• 40:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Love it.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  It's incredible.

• 40:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Cliff Gorman, you mentioned, as Davis Newman, who I think we can agree is Lenny Bruce. As you said, Chris, he actually had played the part of Lenny Bruce in the Broadway production, but he lost out to Dustin Hoffman for the film. So I can't tell if this is like a, an I'm sorry from Bob Fosse, or like a continued embarrassment of, you know, casting him here. I don't know. Jessica Lange as Angelique, the angel of death. This is only her second role after King Kong.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Really?

• 40:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I think so, yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 40:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Wasn't it the Dino De Laurentiis, King Kong?

• 40:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Two, from like 76?

• 40:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 40:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Lizzie Bassett?

  He told Life magazine about her, "When you think something's about to happen to you in a car or on an airplane coming close to the end, this is a flash I'll get. A woman dressed in various outfits, sometimes a nun's habit, that whole hallucinatory thing. It's like the final fuck."

• 40:55Chris Winterbauer?

  It is a different approach to the angel of death, you know, in an interesting way.

• 40:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Naturally, she had also had a bit of a fling with Bob Fosse prior to this, because who hadn't?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  It feels like hi- his casting of this was just going through his little black book and being like, I think she could do that, yeah.

• 41:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, literally, which brings me to Anne Rankin, who of course we mentioned. She was a Tony nominated actress and dancer who had obviously worked with Fosse quite a bit previously and had been his actual long-term partner for six years at this point. Their relationship had ended in 1978. I think they had kind of recently broken up when she was auditioning for the role, but they remained close and on good terms. Of course, even though she is playing a version of herself in this movie, he made her audition over and over and over again.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Oh my God, what an insane person.

• 41:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Say, I don't know, that's not how you would do it. Can you do it again?

• 41:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. To the point where Melnick actually pulled him aside and said, Bobby, you are torturing this girl. You and I know that she is going to end up doing the part. Stop doing this because it's very destructive to the character.

• 42:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Her take was it was just par for the course.

• 42:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm. Good for Melnick, though.

• 42:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Now, too many other people to name, but he had several of his actual collaborators genuinely play themselves, including Lenny and All That Jazz editor Allen Hyne. That is the real editor playing himself in this movie.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 42:25Lizzie Bassett?

  As well as stage manager Phil Friedman and several more. Now, to audition the strippers that molested young Joe in the movie, Fossey did something very strange. He had Bob Arthur stand in for him and he instructed the strippers to be more and more aggressive and sexually disturbing towards him. Of this moment, Anne Rankin said, he went back in time. It was like watching someone almost relive it and with a hard edge I had never seen before. Apparently Bob Arthur kind of tried to just take it in stride, but it was very weird. Now, because he's Fossey and he cannot help himself, he took on another Broadway gig, which pushed pre-production back. Now, why did he do this?

• 43:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Probably because his arch rival, Michael Bennett, had just done a chorus line, which was a huge success and he was determined to beat him. But shortly after that show opened, Fossey again checked himself into a psychiatric hospital and again, there was concern that he could hurt himself. But don't worry, guys, he checked out a few days later to start All That Jazz.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  God.

• 43:30Chris Winterbauer?

  We should also mention John Lithgow is very fun in

• 43:34Speaker 02

  He's so good.

• 43:34Chris Winterbauer?

  This as well, as I can't remember the character's name.

• 43:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Lucas Sargent, I think, is his name.

• 43:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Lucas Sargent.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  And he looks and kind of acts in a way that I'm like, oh, is this, is John Early doing this?

• 43:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yes, I wrote it down. It's John Early is, is John Lithgow. It's so good.

• 43:50Lizzie Bassett?

  I love him. He was not the first choice. We'll get to who was shortly.

• 43:59Speaker 05

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  Check engine, ABS, or maintenance light on? Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

• 45:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Early rehearsals started in April with a production start date of 1978. But there was just one problem. Richard Dreyfuss told his old buddy Roy Scheider over dinner one night, "I don't like Fosse and he does not like me." Why do you think these two characters were not clicking? I don't know. That's fair. You don't have to know a lot about Richard Dreyfuss. I actually, I'm like, I don't know a lot about Richard Dreyfuss. I didn't either. And I would like to know more because this is an interesting sort of moment in his career. He was having a terrible time convincing himself he could ever have been a dancer. To quote him, he said, "I can't get up there with my big Jewish ass and try to be a dancer." The second problem is Bob Fosse was mean. He was so mean. Richard Dreyfuss repeatedly was asking for a softer approach,

• 45:51Lizzie Bassett?

  not just for himself, but also for the other dancers. And Fosse's response to that was basically like, "So you think I don't know how to direct this movie?" And Richard Dreyfuss did have a pretty bad cocaine addiction at this point. He was kind of barreling towards a personal rock bottom, even as he was ascending to, you know, a professional high. And there wasn't enough for both of them, is the problem. Exactly. Yeah. But I just... I just wonder, like, shouldn't that have brought them closer?

• 46:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's like, we're not so different, you and I.

• 46:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 46:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I think, though, if you look at the successful directors that Dreyfus had worked with before this, specifically Spielberg and Lucas, right, between Jaws, Close Encounters, and American Graffiti, relatively gentle on actors, especially compared to someone like Bob Fosse. You know, I think Lucas especially was like, "A little faster, please." That was the extent of, you know, a directing note.

• 46:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I think they're, I think especially Spielberg, like, he's an actor's director, right? And Bob Fosse really is not, which is not to say that he's not an amazing director, I think he is. But I don't think he is trying to inspire you to bring out the best of yourself. I think he wants you to do exactly what he wants you to do.

• 47:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he is going to manipulate your body or line reading however needed, because that's what a choreographer does to get the result.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:12Lizzie Bassett?

  So Richard Dreyfus starts telling people that he wants out, and everybody is having a conniption fit, except for one person. Any guesses on who does not care that Richard Dreyfus wants to lead the production?

• 47:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Bob Fosse?

• 47:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Fosse.

• 47:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Lizzie Bassett?

  He's like, "Not a problem, I will just play Joe Gideon myself."

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 47:34Chris Winterbauer?

  There it is.

• 47:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Chris Winterbauer?

  That's probably why he cast him to begin with. He's like, "This guy will drop out, it'll be too late to replace him, and I can sloop in."

• 47:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, so Richard Dreyfus agreed with you. He wondered if maybe Bob Fosse had always been hoping to push him out in order to do the role himself.

• 47:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 47:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so, he's so weird, he's so crazy.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Is it like, he's the Lucas Sargent, where it's like, "You need a backup, you need an insurance person there, but really, we want to have Bob do this."

• 48:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, no one else wants Bob to do this, which we'll get to, but I want to point out, something similar did happen on Cabaret. He was adamant about wanting to play the role of the emcee, even though Joel Grey had originated it on Broadway, and the producers were like, "No, Joel Grey is doing this." And then he was a huge dick to Joel Grey for that whole production, which we will cover at some point, but this is not the first time that he has tried to do this.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  It feels like his approach to directing is, "I don't want to have to direct, so I can, I'll just do it so that I don't have to do..." It's like, I don't have to give instructions if I know it.

• 48:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Man, did you hit the nail on the head. Yeah, there's going to be more of that.

• 48:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It's easier for me to do it myself than try to explain it to somebody else, is the energy he has.

• 48:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. Now, obviously, everyone else, as I said, thinks this is a terrible, terrible plan. Even Bob Arthur was pretty unsure of it, but he does back Fosse up, though he was the only one, and he caught a bunch of shit for it. Everybody is like, no!

• 48:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's gonna kill himself. Like, like, just, he's gonna die.

• 49:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Physically, he can't do this.

• 49:01Chris Winterbauer?

  You can't do it physically.

• 49:02Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 49:03Chris Winterbauer?

  It's insane.

• 49:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh, not only is it creatively a very bad idea, it's also a monetary issue, because Richard Dreyfuss may not have been a huge name, but he was a box office draw. And, you know, they're losing that, but he could not put up with Bob Fosse, so he bailed. Production goes on hold again as they recast the role. This time, Alan Alda, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, Ryan O'Neal, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro again, James Caan, Warren Beatty again, Jack Lemmon, and John Voight were all considered for the role.

• 49:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Warren Beatty just flips to the very last page. No, he still dies. And he just passes again.

• 49:41Lizzie Bassett?

  There's some good ones in there. I particularly think Robert Redford or Gene Hackman could have been interesting.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Could Redford have been cruel enough? Hackman, I can see, off of like Hoosiers or something like that.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  I also think whoever Joe is spends like two thirds of the movie just looking iller and iller. So it's like, you get this like handsome person as a draw, and then it's like, you're not gonna see Redford the way you want to see Redford.

• 50:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. Put a lot of white paint on him and see if he looks worse. You can't. He's so handsome. So Sam Cohn, Fosse's agent, had one person in mind, though, Dreyfuss's Jaws co-star, Roy Scheider. Melnick, who at this point, I think had actually ascended to president of Columbia Pictures, felt that Roy Scheider was not lovable enough.

• 50:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I think this is kind of weird, because I, you know, they point out that, oh, he's best known for like Tough Guys and The French Connection and Klute. But you look at Jaws and to me, there's, I think, a lot of sweetness and humanity in that performance.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it does feel like it's on the back of like, he's playing a little bit of those personas as well there, where it's like, you kind of come to see him as a lovable guy, even though you're kind of like, ah, he's, I don't know if he's gonna get, if he's gonna be able to do this. I can see where they're coming from.

• 50:56Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  It is weird to me that they are like, we want a lovable guy. I'm like, Joe Gideon's not a lovable guy.

• 51:02Chris Winterbauer?

  But I wonder if they wanted to counter that. They're reading on the page how abusive this person is. And they think, well, if we can get somebody who endears themselves to the audience outside of the picture itself.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, someone immensely lovable like Jon Voight.

• 51:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Known man of the people.

• 51:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Famously lovable in Midnight Cowboy, Jon Voight. But Fosse liked Scheider. He thought he looked like a dancer, and he had years of theater experience. Also, he was 45, so much, much closer to Fosse's actual age. And Scheider loved the script. So Fosse told him to come to his house every night for a week, read the script, and he would consider him for the part. He did. They traded stories back and forth, infusing the character with some of Scheider as well as Fosse. So he got the part. But not everyone was convinced. Bob Arthur apparently had big doubts, and Scheider later told the LA Times, people thought Fosse was committing professional suicide by hiring him. I don't get this at all. He's Academy Award nominated at this point.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  What's the suicide of it? Like, is it just people didn't like him or had worked with him and?

• 52:06Lizzie Bassett?

  No, Roy Scheider is, by all accounts, a very nice guy. Like, I don't understand this at all. And I also think they are lucky to have gotten him because he's one of the only people who seems to be able to put up with Bob Fosse in a very specific way.

• 52:19Chris Winterbauer?

  To me, it has to be a box office thing. It has to be, Roy Scheider's name alone has not drawn people to the box office. I do think he was, he's a little bit more known as a character actor than the other folks being considered, if you think about like a Redford.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:33Lizzie Bassett?

  And he was supporting in both Connection and Clue.

• 52:36Chris Winterbauer?

  And Marathon Man, for example, you know, behind Hoffman.

• 52:39Lizzie Bassett?

  And then Jaws was really his first leading. Production finally began in October of 1978, and it did not sound chill. As you might imagine, Fosse was a perfectionist about every element of the production. Reportedly, he would never leave the set. They ran over budget and out of time, so much so that Sidney Lumet, who was originally supposed to play Lucas Sargent, dropped out and was replaced by John Lithgow.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 53:04Chris Winterbauer?

  That would have been so cool.

• 53:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 53:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, I love Lithgow and I'll never turn down a Lithgow villain turn.

• 53:10Lizzie Bassett?

  I love a bitchy Lithgow, which he is in this.

• 53:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Cliffhanger and this, just two great bitchy Lithgow performances.

• 53:17Lizzie Bassett?

  So Fossey also wasn't in the best health, but he reportedly wasn't concerned about that. If he had a chest pain, he would just pop a pill. And now, guys, I would actually like to ask you to act out a scene from Sam Wasson's biography for me between Bob Fossey and his sound mixer, Christopher Newman. So I'm going to show you this. Chris, please read Christopher, the sound mixer. Demi, obviously, I'm going to have to ask you to play Bob Fossey, so.

• 53:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Rude, but understood.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Okay, let me get my hat.

• 53:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, go ahead, get your jazz hands and your top hat. Ready? Let me set the scene for you. The crew has been working for hours and they just can't get the exact shot that Bob wants. So he asks Christopher Newman.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  What's going on here? Why can't we get this?

• 53:58Chris Winterbauer?

  The crew's tired.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Why are they so tired?

• 54:00Chris Winterbauer?

  They don't take the same kind of pills you do.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  How do you know about the pills?

• 54:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I've read the script.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Well, don't let it get around.

• 54:10Chris Winterbauer?

  The script?

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't, don't let people read this.

• 54:15Lizzie Bassett?

  That's my favorite. What does he think is happening?

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 54:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Like 10 minutes of the movie is close-ups of a Dexedrine bottle.

• 54:23Lizzie Bassett?

  By the way, with an address that is like three doors down from his actual address.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Oh, my.

• 54:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I know, I love it. I guarantee you that in the first draft, it was his real address. And they said, you cannot put your real address in. So he just changed the door, you know, three doors down.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Do you think there's a page in the script that accidentally says like, Bob Fossey and like the finding the place didn't work?

• 54:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Scheider was understandably nervous also. After all, he wasn't really a dancer or a singer. So for that opening scene, Fossey actually had Scheider wear an earpiece and he was dictating every single thing he wanted him to do.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 54:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it takes a really particular actor to be able to deal with that well, not go insane and still turn in what is, I think, a very. Generous performance. I don't know, that would drive me nuts.

• 55:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he had the confidence on the acting side, like he knew he he actually may be superior to Fosse on that side.

• 55:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 55:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Subvert his ego to him on the dancing side.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Also, if he's someone who is constantly like suggested that, oh, he's not a big enough self for a movie, then doing this, he's probably like, I need to get like, this is a great script. It's a great director. It's gonna be a huge movie. I need to put up with this. It'll be good for my career.

• 55:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I think that's true. And I like, one of the producers even said that he couldn't believe how much Scheider had kind of humbled himself for this. And it's like, what a sort of horror show to be an actor, to be as successful as he is, and to still feel like you have to kind of prostrate yourself in front of Bob Fosse to get this.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:49Lizzie Bassett?

  So that theater space that they shoot the opening sequence in, Fosse said they only had it for a couple of days. That was his excuse for why he needed to direct Scheider with the earpiece. I don't know if I buy it. They ended up shooting for, I think, over seven days. And he used five cameras on that to really capture the documentary style. I mean, it looks amazing. I think that opening sequence is incredible. He was also still obsessed with upstaging a chorus line with this sequence, saying, quote, "In this audition, I'm going to do in 15 minutes what it takes Michael Bennett two and a half hours to do every night and without dialogue."

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Who does he like? The way that he talks about everything is just like, I'm gonna be better than this. I'm gonna ruin this. I'm like.

• 56:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I know he's a womanizer. I think he really likes the women in his life. I think he really, he does. And I think one of the things I love about his relationship with Audrey is she is revealed as the first person in the movie who actually seems to know him.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  And the only one who challenges him, which I think is a little bit of why he's like, okay, I'll keep you around.

• 56:46Chris Winterbauer?

  And the moments of meaning in his life, I had written down, you know, how someone so rich and so poor at the same time, the scene with two scenes with his daughter and the second one with his daughter and Katie performing for him. He does not care about so many of the things being performed for him throughout the movie, and yet he cares about that dance being performed for him.

• 57:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  And also just the notion of them like rehearsing something like that, knowing that it's like, this is what.

• 57:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Meaningful, yeah. He's somebody who sees through everything as bullshit, and yet that is meaningful.

• 57:16Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he likes his daughter, and that's that may be about it. Well, no, he I mean, he likes, you know, in terms of the real woman in his life, he did stay very close to both Anne Reinking and Gwen Verdon all the way up until he died. So.

• 57:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 57:27Lizzie Bassett?

  There is something there, and they stuck with him, which is interesting. While filming the opening sequence, however, Bob Arthur started to have a terrible pain in his side. He told people that Fossey thought he was faking, that Fossey had said he didn't believe him. But he was very much not faking. He wound up in the hospital with two broken ribs due to how strong his cough was. And he continued to try and weigh in as a producer on the film from the hospital bed, but Fossey pretty callously disregarded his notes. He made no effort to visit him until Sam Cohn finally told him the news. Bob Arthur was dying of lung cancer.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 58:05Lizzie Bassett?

  On November 20, 1978, Bob Arthur died at 56 years old. Fossey heard the news and took a break to smoke a cigarette and then went right back to work.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. To smoke a cigarette while, after learning that your friend, yeah, I can't even call him cold. I think it's like, it's so different than that. It feels like he doesn't want, like, he feels like succumbing to emotion in some way would ruin him, or like, would, not is a weakness, but just is like, I can't do that. It's not going to be good for me to open that door.

• 58:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that might be exactly it. It's not going to be good for me to open that door. Like, when you think about the stuff that he went through as a kid, there's very real trauma there. And even though he is weirdly willing to show it, I don't know that he's actually willing to, like, tap into certain parts of himself that may be connected to that.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:00Chris Winterbauer?

  He also doesn't sanctify his own death. I know, the entire number at the end is entirely in his head. And then the actual last shot of Bob Fossey in actual life dying features nobody besides the mortician or coroner zipping up the body bag, you know, at the end. So.

• 59:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I mean, I mentioned this earlier, and Demi, I think you touched on this just now, but they do lack some of the coldness and cruelty of him in this movie. I think because it's Roy Scheider, because he's likable, because they really focused on having that. But let's talk about some of the stuff that happened during filming that really was not okay.

• 59:47Speaker 07

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet? No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 1:00:12Speaker 08

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 1:00:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's talk about some of the stuff that happened during filming that really was not okay. He told Keith Gordon, the 17-year-old playing young Joe Gideon, that it would be good if he could, quote, "get really hard during the scene because it would look more real."

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:01:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Obviously, this made Keith super uncomfortable, who then very astutely realized that the panic he was feeling was exactly what Fosse was trying to elicit. Also, despite having a non-nudity clause in her contract, Fosse pressured dancer Sheryl Clark to take her top off at the end of the erotica number. She walked, wouldn't do it, and was replaced by Sandal Bergman. Also, as you may have guessed, the open-heart surgery was completely real. They got permission from a patient to film it, but they actually viewed a bunch of different surgeries when they were scouting locations for hospitals. And the heart surgery was not Bob Fosse's favorite. His favorite was actually the hip surgery because that was the bloodiest.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  As in, like, he wanted to film a hip surgery or?

• 1:01:52Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he liked watching them. Someone said that his favorite thing was if he could see a hip surgery in the morning before going into rehearsals. Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  That's a whole other thing that I'm like, I didn't even think about that being part of his... It's not like a thing of his character, it's just a thing of Bob.

• 1:02:10Lizzie Bassett?

  He just liked it.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:02:12Lizzie Bassett?

  So over the course of filming, the budget crept up from 6 million to somewhere around 10 million, probably due to Fosse's meticulousness and propensity to reshoot scenes.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  And cocaine budget.

• 1:02:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep, and cocaine budget. About a week before filming was supposed to wrap, Columbia head of productions Frank Price was like, "You need to actually show me a budget for the last chunk of this movie." He said, "Stop shooting, see what you have, and then figure out what else you need and what it'll cost." At this point, they did not have Bye Bye Life. They didn't have the Angel of Death scenes, or the big premiere of New York to LA, which is Plane Orgy the Musical. The writing was on the wall, though. They did not have the money to finish the movie, and Columbia was not going to give it to them. So, poor editor Allenheim pulled together an hour-long reel of their best material in two days, and Dan Melnick drove around to all the other studios

• 1:03:07Lizzie Bassett?

  showing them the reel. Which is interesting, because he was the president at that point, or he may lead, this may be where he left and went to 20th Century Fox. But Warner Brothers liked it, they still passed. However, it was Alan Ladd Jr. at 20th Century Fox who saved the day, agreeing to co-distribute with Columbia.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  This guy's one of the most recurring characters in your stories, and I'm just like, "Alan Ladd, you're back."

• 1:03:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Laddie, Laddie's back. So they actually decided who got it, who got domestic and international rights by flipping a coin at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  I hate that. I don't, you want to make a movie and you learn some of it comes down to stuff like that.

• 1:03:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Alan Ladd won domestic. I think he had heads.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:03:50Lizzie Bassett?

  It still wasn't quite enough, so the New York to LA premiere, which was actually supposed to end the film, was cut. Bye Bye Life was going to be the second to last moment, and then it was going to show how Lucas Sargent was taking all the credit at the New York to LA premiere. To top it all off, Fosse was getting less and less precise about what he wanted, particularly when it came to Bye Bye Life, which now had to function as the grand finale. According to production designer Philip Rosenberg, quote, "It was getting quite frightening. We would bring in models and sketches time after time, and he wouldn't know what he wanted. And we were only about a week away from having to shoot the scene when he finally said, 'You know, I had a dream last night about cylinders, white cylinders.'" What?

• 1:04:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, there it is.

• 1:04:36Lizzie Bassett?

  So, production finally wrapped and the edit began. Any guesses on how post-production with Bob Fosse was?

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Smooth.

• 1:04:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Harder, harder than production would be my guess.

• 1:04:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, total nightmare. The edit took more than a year. Outside of the pirouette sequence from the opening scene, they did not start editing until they'd shot everything. Even then, Fosse wanted to cut in chronological order, which for this movie feels insane to me.

• 1:05:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, also, it, a lot of it plays nonlinear.

• 1:05:05Lizzie Bassett?

  That's, yes.

• 1:05:05Chris Winterbauer?

  So there are flashforwards and flashbacks and obviously the vignettes with the angel of death could theoretically go in a lot of places, so.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, chronological as in like in the way that we see it in the film?

• 1:05:16Lizzie Bassett?

  In the way that they shot it, I believe.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:05:19Lizzie Bassett?

  So he was like, I want to pull each reel down, like it, one after the other lined up on the shelf. His perfectionism was intensifying. He actually went so far as to record his own cough, tap dancing and finger snaps for the sound mix instead of using what the actors had done. So every time you hear Roy Scheider coughing, it is Bob Fosse. And to your point, Demi, of like, he's not letting them, like, he just wants to do it all himself. He's literally doing it.

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  You don't know a cough. Let me, I got.

• 1:05:49Lizzie Bassett?

  I have the lung cancer cough.

• 1:05:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Is it Fosse singing in lieu of Scheider at the end on Bye Bye Life? Because that, that cannot be Scheider's voice.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  It seems like ADR for sure.

• 1:05:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I don't know whose voice it is, but I don't think it's Scheider.

• 1:06:02Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I mean, Roy Scheider is listed on the soundtrack in Bye Bye Life, so I think that's him.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:06:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow, he sounds amazing. Uh, Roy Scheider, if you're listening from that next place, wherever it might be, my sincere apologies, I never should have doubted you.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  I know this isn't his intention, but like, I'm imagining the cough or like, just some of the sounds in the scenes where like, the, the audio drops out and it's just that. I'm like, it does feel like a really good artistic choice if you know it's Bob Fosse's cough, but like.

• 1:06:35Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  If you don't.

• 1:06:36Lizzie Bassett?

  But he doesn't want you to know, I don't think.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  No, yeah.

• 1:06:38Chris Winterbauer?

  But he knows, you know what I'm saying? That's the level of obsessiveness is he probably, he's thinking like, that's not what the cough sounds like, because I hear the cough every time I cough, so I might as well just use my cough.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  He is his only audience that he cares about.

• 1:06:49Lizzie Bassett?

  He was also particularly rough on editor Alan Hyne, especially since Hyne had played himself in the movie. Fossey was pissed at Hyne's performance. I think he's very funny in Deadpan. He kept asking to see take after take. Finally, he kicked a wastebasket across the room and asked how he could have let Hyne be so bad at acting, to which Hyne replied, "I'm not an actor." And Fossey said, "But you are a human being. I should be able to get a better performance out of a human being." And Hyne replied, "Bob, that's the nicest thing you've said to me in two weeks." This poor, poor man. Also, his mother had died during the edit process, and Bob Fossey is like, "But why are you bad at acting?"

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  Well, go smoke a cigarette about it and come back.

• 1:07:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, God.

• 1:07:31Chris Winterbauer?

  If only your mother had died during production, then we could have used that for the performance.

• 1:07:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I do think the editing in this movie is like mind blowing.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:07:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that the editing is what makes it feel timeless, even though I do think that the Angel of Death vignettes date it a little bit, for me personally. I just, there's something about the costuming there, even though I love the content of those scenes, the first hour of this movie feels extremely modern.

• 1:08:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. The way he described it is like it's rhythmic, the way that he's cutting, but he's not matching the cuts to the beat of the music. He's focusing on the dancer's bodies and like body parts and, and you know, like a flick of a hand or something, and it just, it's beautiful. I really, I'm so blown away by the editing in this. Also, Fossey was obsessed with tightening the movie. He wanted more and more cuts, but they finally got it done. Early screenings were understandably very awkward, since the material was so autobiographical and so many people were either playing themselves or playing very real people in Fossey's life. And Rankin was concerned that he portrayed himself too callously, and his daughter Nicole told him she felt the daughter was, quote, "The only one who cared whether he lived or died."

• 1:08:43Lizzie Bassett?

  But Fred Ebb of musical super duo Candor and Ebb said, "It gave him pleasure to feel he was being betrayed. He wanted to be the victim. It was all about Bobby pretending to be honest." I think that's a really interesting take, and I don't know if, I think I agree.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  I, I think that's like, one of the things where, like, when he has that conversation with the Angel of Death, where he kind of admits that saying, "I love you" was a lie, and he just kind of did it to hurt her, and it's like, yeah, you want, it's a control thing. You want to be like... You want to be in a position where you can forgive someone.

• 1:09:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Chris Winterbauer?

  He says it, you know, I don't know where the bullshit begins and it ends, you know, he's, I think he's expressed that he's almost like insulated himself against a lot of angles of criticism because he goes, you know, so hard and Lizzie, I think it's only by doing a really holistic look that you can say, maybe he didn't even go far enough, you know what I mean?

• 1:09:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Chris Winterbauer?

  And showing the warts.

• 1:09:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't think he could, like, I don't think there is a way to do that for yourself. Someone else would have had to have stepped in.

• 1:09:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Lizzie Bassett?

  All That Jazz released wide across the US on December 20th, 1979, and reviews were pretty mixed. Many said it was egomaniacal. Others said it had borrowed too heavily from Fellini's Eight and a Half. Most people seem to agree that the acting and choreography was phenomenal, but it seems people's issue may have been with Fosse himself. Variety said, quote, "The film's major flaw lies in its lack of real explanation of what beyond ego really motivates Gideon." I don't know.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it, yeah, yeah, I guess I don't have an answer for that. In my head, it's like greatness, but I think that's just me projecting like what any creator you assume wants, but it's not true.

• 1:10:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, and isn't, doesn't that tie into ego? I mean,

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Chris Winterbauer?

  It's the show must go on. Like, I just, that, to me, that is the whole, the fact they zip up his body bag and there's no business on that show. It's just, the show must go, he is a slave to the show. That's all he cares about. That's all that matters. That's why when somebody dies, they are no longer relevant.

• 1:10:52Lizzie Bassett?

  When they get sick even, he's just like,

• 1:10:54Chris Winterbauer?

  When they get sick, it doesn't matter.

• 1:10:55Lizzie Bassett?

  You can't perform, you're out.

• 1:10:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. So if he is sick and he is out, that means he is no longer relevant because he can no longer be part of the show. I do think it's, you know, in film, we all love movies, we work in movies, we love movies so much that it can seem as if there is no life outside of

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:11:12Chris Winterbauer?

  movies. And I think the same is true for people in musical theater and show business and the circus, you know, whatever type of performing arts you do. And If he's not in it or at the center of it, he may as well be dead.

• 1:11:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he says that in this. He's like, the work is all there is, basically, when he's talking to the angel of death.

• 1:11:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly. It's an addiction.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  Sometimes you you start running and you're just like, well, I have to keep running or else I'm not like, it's that first line where it's like, all there is is life on the wire. And it's like, living is just living on the wire. Anything else is just waiting.

• 1:11:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Also, this was a Christmas release? That's crazy.

• 1:11:49Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a holiday film, dummy.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:11:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a family holiday film.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess. Load up the van and take the kids out to all that jazz.

• 1:11:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, my God.

• 1:11:57Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like the reverse version of Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, he learns nothing from the angel of death.

• 1:12:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Chris Winterbauer?

  He dies at the end.

• 1:12:05Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. Well, Stanley Kubrick loved it.

• 1:12:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Of course he did.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:12:10Lizzie Bassett?

  He did. He said it was the best film he'd ever seen. Throughout the press for the film, I referenced this a couple of times, Fosse kept insisting it was not at all autobiographical. I think he was trying to mitigate some of the criticism that it was, you know, a massive ego trip. He's like, it can't be an ego trip if it's not me. It's clearly not me, guy.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  It also can't be an ego trip if I'm saying I'm a piece of shit.

• 1:12:33Lizzie Bassett?

  That's a better argument. Yeah. Gwen Verdon sort of backed him up, saying, I think it's a magnificent film. I think it has nothing to do with our life and his life. I guess the way I truly acted was not theatrically right for the story that Bob was telling, which is interesting. Still, the movie was a financial success. It grossed roughly 34.8 million on a budget of 12 to 20 million, depending on the source. Melnick said it wasn't Rambo, but both studios got their money back with some left over for the principals. Of course, it won the Palm Door at the Cannes Film Festival. It was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four, including a much deserved one for Alanheim's editing. It was nominated for art direction, costume design, film editing, original score.

• 1:13:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Actor in a leading role for Roy Scheider, who was, by the way, beaten by Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer, which swept the Oscars that year. Demi, you're shaking your head.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  I just, I think Scheider should have gotten it. And I know that it's like a heavy year, but I'm just, and this isn't even like shade against Kramer vs. Kramer. I'm just like, he's so good in this movie. It's unbelievable.

• 1:13:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I also like, this is, this was probably just a mistake, but I do think it's interesting. In Dustin Hoffman's speech, when he wins, he says he refuses to believe that he'd beaten all the other actors in the category. And then he names them all except for Roy Scheider.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:13:51Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm guessing mistake.

• 1:13:52Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm sure it was a mistake.

• 1:13:53Chris Winterbauer?

  But it also could have maybe been a shot at Fosse in a weird way if he still didn't like him, you know, all those years later after Lenny.

• 1:14:00Lizzie Bassett?

  I guess we'll never know unless Dustin Hoffman wants to call in and tell us.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  He's like, yes, that was on purpose.

• 1:14:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Also nominated for cinematography, was nominated for directing, but of course, he did not win Best Picture and Writing. And again, this is nominated for Original Screenplay. So I think they changed it so much that there was no need to even credit the original book.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  I feel like if you ask Bob Fosse about that book, he'd be like, what is that? Like, there's no way.

• 1:14:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Never heard of it. So on September 23rd, 1987, Bob Fosse was out walking with Gwen Verdon. They were on their way to see the premiere of the revival of Sweet Charity in Washington DC, which Fosse had directed. But Bob never made it to the theater. He collapsed and died of a massive heart attack at the age of 60. Just three years earlier, he told Rolling Stone, "What'll happen is I'll probably die in some hospital with no glory at all, no theatrics, a B death. But who's going to direct it? I don't trust any of them."

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  Wait, when did he say that? Because it's crazy to go, this isn't a biography, but it is what's gonna happen. He's like, it's not a biography because it hasn't happened yet.

• 1:15:06Lizzie Bassett?

  That was three years earlier. So that would have been in 1983. So only about, you know, four years after all that jazz. It's a hundred percent it's autobiographical.

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, like, there's no way it wasn't. I think he was just trying to mitigate some of the commentary that came out about the movie, you know?

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Which is so funny, because I do think, like, with hindsight now, I think if Bob Fosse lived a lot longer and saw, like, the legacy of his film, he'd be like, "Yeah, that was me! I did! It is me!"

• 1:15:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. Well, that's it.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:15:37Lizzie Bassett?

  What went right?

• 1:15:38Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, so much. Like, for me, this is probably a top-five movie about obsession, top-five movie about the creative process, about the agony and the ecstasy of show business. Another reference, Demi, I don't know if you agree with this, but Bye Bye Life always reminds me of Around the World by Daft Punk, just the way that they shoot the circular stage.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Oh, because of the music video.

• 1:15:58Chris Winterbauer?

  That music video. Yeah, I don't know why, it just always reminds me of that. I, I think this is an amazing movie. I think in the realm of self-referential meta-stories, this is about as good as you can, you can get personally. And, but I would like to give mine to Roy Scheider. I miss Roy Scheider.

• 1:16:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:20Chris Winterbauer?

  He is one of my favorites, and this is a career-defining performance. It's so vulnerable, it's so beautiful. I, I know there were other actors that could have done this. I cannot imagine any of them offering the heartbreak and the sardonic pleasure of him saying, "It's showtime," in the mirror every morning. So I would like to give mine to Roy Scheider, and I apologize for jumping in and stealing that.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  No, you had to, or else I absolutely would have said Roy Scheider.

• 1:16:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I know, I could see it. So I was like, "I'm gonna take it from him."

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, you know, I think it's crazy to say, but I'm gonna say what right is also what went wrong, which is Bob Fosse himself.

• 1:17:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  I think he is an insane man and a psychopath, and even to make a movie that says you don't get credit for acknowledging your flaws and not fixing them. It feels like this is what a man writes at the end of his life, knowing that he can't change, but wanting to acknowledge that he like, it's like saying, I know these problems with me. I cannot change them. And it's just so like, it's sad. It's, it's, it's an addictive tale. Like it is, there's so many things are wrong with it, but there's also like a passion and a like, a heart and a, a true artistry to this that I think is so of one man's mind in a way that I'm like, I hate all of the terrible things that had to happen

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  to make this movie as good as it is. And I hate the, the, the lesson that might come away from it that like this obsession and this, this focus and this passion will like sort of result in something powerful, but it also it's like it's, you cannot make this movie without being Bob Fosse. I think it's also, it is the kind of movie that people chase. Like when you try to make an artistic biopic, it's like, I do think this is the touchstone for all of it. And no one's, I don't think anyone's come close to it, but

• 1:18:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Not remotely.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  No, to the point that like Better Man came out last year and I was like, wow, a biopic where someone says they're a little, a little hard to deal with. I'm like, that's not even close to what Fosse's doing here. But like, I do think it is something that is built out of this man's life and the acknowledgement that he has lived a rough life, but that doesn't excuse anything he's done. So I gotta give it to Fosse for at least having the self-reflection to say like, I'm, I'm a piece of shit, but like I, I can't change.

• 1:18:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he literally, he says it to Leland Palmer's character at the very end when he looks at her, right? As he's about to sort of make his grand exit, he says, at least I don't have to lie to you anymore. And I think that's what this whole movie is. It's him being like, I want to expose myself, not necessarily because I want to change or, you know, because I want to apologize, but just because I don't want to hide, I don't want to lie. Like, I think it's such a-

• 1:19:10Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm sorry for everything I did to you. And if I live, I'm sorry for everything-

• 1:19:14Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I don't think he is, I'm sorry. I don't think he is sorry. I think it's like, that's the weird thing.

• 1:19:19Chris Winterbauer?

  No, but that's what he says, right? When he's on the, the gurney, he says, if I die, I'm sorry for everything I did to you. And if I live, I'm sorry for everything I'm going to do to you.

• 1:19:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's true. But I don't think Bob Fosse is sorry.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:19:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Who knows?

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  I don't think he has the capacity to express sorrow, just to know that he's like, I know I'm doing something wrong. I know that this is not how it should be.

• 1:19:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Amazing, man. I'm glad neither of you took my what went right. I have to give it to the editor, Alan Hyam. I just think the editing in this movie is stunning and it would not work as well as it does without him. Also, again, it takes a very particular person to be able to work with Bob Fosse and he did it for like over a year editing this thing. I cannot imagine how much of a nightmare that was. And he had worked with him previously. And I just, I also think he's great as himself in this. I know he doesn't say anything, but he's just so simple and like pure and he's just there. And he won the Oscar for this. Man, did he deserve it. So absolutely,

• 1:20:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Alan Hyam went right in this. It's amazing.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  It's one of the few movies where, because I feel like sometimes I'm just like, good editing sometimes feels invisible where it's like it works, but you weren't thinking about it. But this is a movie where it not only feels like I can see it, but it's like, thank God, I can see it because you want some of these things to stand out in the way that they do.

• 1:20:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Just the way, like, the timing of the cuts in that pirouette sequence in the opening, it's so, I don't even know how you figure that out. Like, it's just amazing. And also to be able to have that timing, working with Bob Fosse, who was like a human metronome. They said that in some of the mixes or when they were, when they were doing the orchestration, he could hear if something was like a tenth of a second off and he would flag the horn section. That's crazy to be able to do that. And then that Alan Hyam was able to match that is really remarkable. And with, not with nonlinear digital editing. Yeah. I mean, he's splicing by hand.

• 1:21:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. The, the final cut of this movie is also just one of the most brutal, like, things I've, it's just the hard cut from him like sort of floating towards angel of death to just him in the body bag.

• 1:21:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Silent. It hits in a way that I think it's like, it shouldn't feel, it shouldn't feel like, oh, this is just, yeah, that's how you gotta end the movie. It feels like something that you come up with in editing. And it's like, it's gotta be timed right. It's gotta be jarring. And it just, it works so well because of how empty it leaves you and just.

• 1:21:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, the timing of it is really incredible. Well. What a bummer. That's it. Thank you so much, Demi, for joining us.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:21:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm so happy to have you on.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  I'm so happy to be here and to talk about this movie. It's also, it's like, between every time I watch it, it's funny to be like, oh, I can see that this is what this movie was trying to do. Like, my ex-partner worked on Joker 2, and watching this, I was like, oh, my God, this is what he was trying to do. And it really, he really did not get it.

• 1:22:18Lizzie Bassett?

  You're right. Man, you're right. We just, we just talked about that on Sam Sanders' show. And so I watched that for that show. And yeah, you're totally right. Also, because like, we didn't really talk about this, but this is technically a musical, I think. But it, it feels like a musical that does not care about the music at all.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  I, I sort of got, I had a discussion with, I watched this with a few friends yesterday and had that exact discussion of like, some people wouldn't consider this a musical, and some of it is structured, and some of it is like, the only thing to me that is like strange musically is just the idea that like, there are four back-to-back scenes that are just songs. And in a musical, you space them out with story, and like, none of the songs are really like story songs. But I still, I heavily consider it a musical.

• 1:23:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, also, I could be wrong, but I think Cabaret was maybe the first time that anybody kind of took the musical numbers out of the context of people breaking into song. And, you know, he set them up in the Kit Kat Club, so they were like a separate entity that was sort of informing the story, but not part of it in the way that people were used to in musicals, and particularly movie musicals. So I think he had kind of already started exploring that.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:23:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, is there anything you'd like to plug before you leave us?

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  You can follow me everywhere online at Electro Lemon, and I'm doing a one-man show, comedy show called Demi to Jueve is going to do one backflip. I'm about to tour it. I don't know when this comes out, but I'm probably going to be in Australia touring it. And then, if I'm not tired, I will be elsewhere. And if I am tired, you can wait until I shoot it as a special or something. I don't know.

• 1:23:48Chris Winterbauer?

  I think we have a good number of fans in Australia.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  Please, Australia, come out.

• 1:23:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Guys, get out there.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  And I won't do the voice. That's how much I'm, I'm ready to, Chris, you can do the voice for me, please.

• 1:23:58Lizzie Bassett?

  No, this is actually going to come out in July.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  Well, in that case, thank you for coming out, Australia. I had a great time. And yeah, I think I'm actually shooting my show as a special right now. So I hope that you all get to see it. And if not, I can't wait to come back on here and talk about it.

• 1:24:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, please.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it all went wrong.

• 1:24:18Lizzie Bassett?

  No, it's gonna go great. A huge thanks to Demi at a Jewy Bay for joining us on this episode. You know, also a huge thanks to Demi for giving us a shout out on Instagram in the past. It actually really helped us. So thank you for your support, Demi. And listeners, if you would like to know how to support us, you can, just like Demi did, give us a shout out on Instagram. You can follow us there. You can give us a rating or review on whatever podcatcher you are listening to us on. You can, of course, follow us there as well. You can tell a friend or family member. And if you want to go to the next level, you can, of course, also join our Patreon. You can join for free. You can join for $1. You get the right to vote. You get some fun musings from Chris. For $5, you get an ad-free RSS

• 1:25:03Lizzie Bassett?

  feed and you also get at least one bonus episode a month. We've been doing some really fun reviews and we're going to have some mailbag episodes as well coming up. And of course, for $50, you get an extra special shout out just like this. Daniel Edwin Davies, Nathan Centenna, Slipknots9, Kay Kanaba, James McAvoy, Cameron Smith, Suzanne Johnson, Ben Schindelman, Scary Carrie, The Provost Family, The O's Sound Like O's,

• 1:25:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Zach Everton, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, David Friscalanti, Adam Moffett, Film It Yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Ellington, M Exodia, C Grace B, Jen Mastromarino, Christopher Elner, Blaze Ambrose, Jerome Wilkinson, Roja, Lance Stater, Nate the Ninth, Lena, Ramon Villanueva Jr., Half Gray Hound, Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Jake Killen,

• 1:26:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, Ellen Singleton, JJ Rapido, Jewy Sri Samant, Scott Gerwin, Sadie, Still Just Sadie.

• 1:26:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Brian Donahue, Adrian Pangkorea, Chris Leal, Kathleen Olson, Brooke, Leah Bowman, Steve Winterbauer, Don Scheible, George Kay, Rosemary Southward, Tom Kristin, Jason Frankel, Solman Chinani, Michael McGrath, Lan Relad, and Lydia Howes. Thank you so, so much. We really appreciate your support. Truly, you make it possible for us to do this podcast every week, and we really love making it for you all. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. We will see you back next week with The Shawshank Redemption.

• 1:27:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Until then, it's showtime, folks. Bye.

• 1:27:28Speaker 09

  Go to patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to support What Went Wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman. Research for this episode provided by Jesse Winterbauer.