 Starring: Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, Jessica Lange, Leland Palmer
Director: Bob Fosse
Year Of Release: 1979
Plot: Musical theatre director Joe Gideon is about to start work on a new show. While loved by the theatre world, behind-the-scenes Joe is a workaholic who drinks heavily and will screw anything that moves, no matter who he’s dating or who he’ll hurt in the process. However a heart attack causes him to re-evaluate life, but is it too late for that? |
Although Bob Fosse’s work on Broadway made him a musical theatre legend, he’ll always be best remembered in Hollywood for Cabaret. However it’s not the only movie he directed, as he was also behind the camera for the likes of Sweet Charity and Lenny, although probably his most interesting film is All That Jazz.
While not a perfect movie, and probably too dark and depressing for many people’s taste, it’s an absolutely fascinating film because it’s basically a director taking a raw look at his own life and imagining his own death. Although the film’s main character is called Joe Gideon, it is basically a movie about Fosse, with most of the main characters based on real people.
This is certainly not a sentimental look at what a great guy he is. Fosse uses All That Jazz to rip out his own heart and present a picture of a shallow, self-centred man, who leaves a trail of wreckage behind him, and whose demise is almost preordained because of his refusal to change his ways (even though he’s well aware or what the problems are). It’s a brave and surprisingly raw film, which suggests that at that point in his life, Fosse didn’t like himself as awful lot.
The idea for the movie came after the Fosse had a heart attack while directing the original 1975 Broadway version of Chicago (the film’s title comes from a song in that show), and he decided to make a movie that looked at his own death, but rather than sugar-coating it, he ensured that film showed audiences what a complete asshole he could be. He even got actress Ann Reinking to basically play herself (although the character is called Kate Jagger), as she had been in a relationship with the much older Fosse that was ripped apart by his constant philandering. Even if she was playing herself, Fosse’s perfectionist streak ensured he still made Reinking audition for the role several times.
Presumably the names of all the characters were changed for legal reasons and also because the end of the film somewhat departs from reality, but other than that, All That Jazz is very much based on real life. From his heart attack to his relationship with his ex-wife to the way he directs both films and theatre shows to his reckless womanising, the film sees an extremely talented director taking a long, hard look into his soul and not liking what he sees.
It’s an incredibly unusual thing to do and sees one of the few times a director has been brave enough to make a real movie autobiography. It probably doesn’t happen very much partly because there’s always the danger it will seem arrogant, and it’s also true that most directors don’t have a story that’s worth telling on the screen, but even so it’s still odd so few have been made.
For example director Roman Polanski revisited his childhood as a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto, but he did it through somebody else’s story when he made The Pianist, based on Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir of life under the Nazis. Or there’s Brad Silberling, who wrote and directed Moonlight Mile, which was inspired by his own experience of his girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, getting murdered by an obsessed fan. However it’s not a retelling of this incident, and instead creates the fictional story of a man whose fiancée dies accidentally, and he hangs around her parents’ home, trying to come to terms with his loss.
There are plenty more semi-autobiographical films, such as Fellini’s 8 1/2 , Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, but it’s incredibly unusual for a filmmaker to make a movie about themselves without clouding it with endless amounts of fiction.
The reason is partly because of the different relationship creators have between books and films. Even though you might print thousands of copies of a book version of an autobiography, each one of those copies is read by one person at a time, so it’s almost like whatever you write is being told to each reader individually by the author. However mentally a film is a very different proposition. Once you unleash a movie it becomes everybody’s, and the idea of authorship tends to be diluted and lost. It may just be in people’s heads, but there is a feeling that what you write in a book remains yours but is shared with other people, but what you put in a movie to be consumed by the masses, you essentially give away to other people.
There’s also the fact that you have complete control over a book and exactly what it says and how it depicts events, but on screen you have the very difficult proposition of having to rely on actors, cinematographers, editors, sound technicians and all sorts of other people to tell the story (as evidenced by the fact All That Jazz won four Oscars, but Fosse himself lost out on the directing and writing awards). You don’t have 100% control over recreating the truth of your own personal experience, and you have to rely on hundreds of other people to help you bare your soul, making it a very public way of telling your tale. It’s also true that watching other people recreating difficult moments in your life would probably be tougher to film than it would to write about.
It’s perhaps not surprising then that few filmmakers want to so completely expose themselves and their stories on the screen, as while they can talk about the things that are important to them through the filter of fictional stories, it takes a rare kind of boldness, arrogance and preparedness to give your naked self to the masses to create a movie autobiography.
Although Bob Fosse changed the names of the characters in All That Jazz, it’s one of the few films I can think of where a director really looks so closely at themselves, with only a thin veil to separate the real them from the person on screen. It also took a lot of guts to stand behind the camera while such a flawed and dark portrait of himself was created.
The film is worth watching just for that, to see someone at the crossroads of their life (following Fosse’s heart attack) trying to work out where things have gone wrong. Genuinely autobiographical films are likely to remain rare, but All That Jazz shows that occasionally it can be more than worthwhile for a director to make one.
TIM ISAAC
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