All That Jazz - 1979 (starring Roy Scheider, dir. by Bob Fosse)

just re-screened this and decided its one of my favorite movies of all time

owns

love how the opening scene is shot in a very documentary style

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz-tWu9VpWg

and then by the end its full-on glam psychedelic fantasy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h90ltvBKCTQ

i love how the musical numbers go from a casual atmosphere and then kinda click in but without being so overly polished that they lose that spontaneous living feel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVasewV7OpA

Duh.

When I saw it a few years ago I was almost shocked how good Scheider was, after thinking for years his Oscar nod just rode the movie's momentum (he's also kinda hot).

Boots, beard, cigarettes and rolled up skinny jeans. Nope, not seeing how anyone could find that hot c. 2014.

i was thinking how stressful and weird it would be delivering a performance like that with full knowledge that its your director's life you're acting out

This movie is fantastic- it just builds and builds. Love love love Scheider in this.

clearly I need to see this

Boots, beard, cigarettes and rolled up skinny jeans. Nope, not seeing how anyone could find that hot c. 2014.

― Alfre, Lord Woodard (Eric H.), Wednesday, January 15, 2014 12:24 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cross post trenchant commentary thread

anyway ive loved this movie since before skinny jeans even, one of my alltimes

how much shit would a director in 2014 get for a self-portrait like this that climaxes in a celebration of his own death

i wonder if kanye likes it

how many directors have Jessica Lange playing of Angel of Hotness or whatever?

saw it in high school when it opened.

first scene is great. some of the rest ain't bad. might strike you as classic if you haven't seen Fellini.

ive seen fellini

yeah i'm an 8 1/2 defender (one of the few left) and this is easily the best film of that kind

is fellini just totally out of fashion now

i should probably see two weeks in another town again though

The Great Beauty suggests Freddie still has traction.

I like the idea that when you die you glide down a shiny black and silver hallway filled with fluorescent lights and electric fans to the embrace of a young Jessica Lange
― cinniblount (James Blount), Friday, October 3, 2003 12:03 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its true

phenomenal movie. i keep wondering when other millenials will discover and embrace it.

Yeah, this movie blows 8 1/2 out of the water.

one of the best movies ever about death

xp Fellini was OK c. Nights of Cabiria, tho.

xp one of the best my favorite movies ever about death

i wonder if kanye likes it

― lag∞n, Wednesday, January 15, 2014 12:29 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like yeah i can totally see drake eating this shit up

Same cinematographer as 8-1/2, Giuseppe Rotunno.

Surgery footage is self-indulgent crap.

But it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.

self-indulgent?

Yeah. It'd make more sense if the film was trying to be transgressive throughout, but all the stuff with, say, the ex-wife and the daughter is standard pain-of-showbiz tapioca.

youre standard pain-of-showbiz tapioca

And that's material the Fellini film doesn't have?

i am totally not surprised that morbs prefers the forced transgression and fascination with the grotesque of fellini to the living intensity of fosse tho

I like a half dozen Fellini films but 8 1/2 drives me crazy for the same reasons Morbs sayd: the tapioca of relationships. I can't get past the weirdness of the idea: a director doesn't get "blocked" the way a novelist does.

a director "blocks" shots, a writer gets "blocked", haha writers u suk

a director doesn't get "blocked" the way a novelist does.

Serious question: How would you know?

Fosse clearly modeled much if not all of his filmography on Fellini, and not just cuz his first film was a musical remake of Nights of Cabiria. Pauline Kael really hated his post-Cabaret stuff.

most pains of life are pretty standard tapioca

i need to see this, i've loved all the fosse i've seen (cabaret and lenny iirc)

also the interpersonal relations in Fellini are far more unconventional than Fosse's regurgitation of suffering, philandering, heartbroken troupers.

xps True. Kael also hated a bunch of Fellini.

art = beyond tapioca

zzzzz

Man with power thinks all women want to sleep with him. How unconventional.

this is very tangential but i have never understood "self indulgent" as a criticism of art.

feel like you guys shd be a lil more thorough w yr critical scoresheets maybe make a google doc or something

I've never liked tapioca.

tapioca is dope as hell f the h8rs

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/tapioca-pudding-b.jpg

NYC Super Bowl counterprogramming

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/all-that-jazz

There's a little bit in that scene with the dance routine in Joe's apartment, near the end, in a gap in the music, Ann Reinking says 'pretty pictures' in a sing-song voice, does anybody know what the significance of this is?

It's been a number of years since I've seen the film so I could be missing something, but it's always kinda bugged me.

http://i.imgur.com/kYM5QCx.jpg

whoa this is the best movie ever

Roy Schneider = rowr

Scheider

as our erstwhile KJB said on FB recently, it kinda sucks

Oh you

kid

awful morbsian opinion

like the direction, choreography, and performances alone would constitute a great movie

There may be something off-putting about the self-indulgent self-pity in this movie. Although there is some good dancing.

the bits of this movie i've seen, they creep me out

i luv self indulgence

plus I feel like it's tempered by the movie's v self-conscious construction

I don't think it's a particularly good movie but it's got marvelous bits, and Scheider holds it together.

imp life ends with a glam disco cover of an every brothers song

imo*

and everly* lol thank u phone

scheider's hotness def holds a lot of things together

he's not wearing nail polish but I can imagine him wearing nail polish.

agreed

and those jeans

i agree there are great bits! but "self-pity stinks" as my mom said

just re-screened saw this for the first time and decided its one of my favorite movies of all time

― |$̲̅(̲̅ιοο̲̅)̲̅$̲̅| (gr8080), Wednesday, January 15, 2014 12:10 PM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I happened on this on the Movies! digital subchannel one day. The obscenities were bleeped and the bare breasts blurred, which I assume is an aesthetic desecration of the director's intent? Maybe I'll try watching it as a double feature with Footlight Parade.

MUBI have it on at the mo..

xp jesus i can't imagine watching this movie without all the fucking and cursing. I really loved it though, the cutup/collage style of editing jumping back and forth in time reminded me very much of Nicolas Roeg, particularly Bad Timing. and holy fuck what an incredible performance by Roy Scheider

Michael Koresky launched his new column on queer(ish) cinema with a partial evaluation of ATJ (tho i prefer the first half, before he gets to it).

The overt gayness of the Broadway scene, of the dancers, of the composers and lyricists, of the other directors and producers, is a given, never made outré or kinky. It likely functions this way to make Fosse/Gideon stand out and sparkle all the more (his straightness is his queerness); yet it’s also the kind of casual depiction of a milieu that could only have been made by a filmmaker who so deeply knows it. “I wouldn’t say you’re a faggot, but you do have a lot of feminine characteristics, right?” an actor acquaintance says to Gideon while he’s in the hospital after his first heart attack; Gideon has no response to speak of.

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/queer-now-introduction-1979/

A brilliant piece tbh.

"Drop your diet, have a ball."

Bye bye happiness, I think I’m gonna die

KJB rewatched and wants you all to know this is still "awful"

He can save your breath, because that's something I will never "know."

he also can't stand Pennies from Heaven.

no one gives a shit morbs

cool

this holiday season be italian

― slam dunk

― balls, Wednesday, January 15, 2014 3:15 PM

Not sure KJB would appreciate you turning him into your new Dennis Perrin either.

I haven't even quoted his "You can't block assholes on that board"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HETgexi3aWI

Almost posted this in the “movies where you disagree w/ the screenwriters on who the 'good guys' are” thread but thought it didn’t exactly fit there…

I saw this for the first time recently & liked it a lot but thought of that thread bc for a while I was hung up by wondering if the film thought Gideon was actually talented or not. Like he’s obviously presented as v successful and respected, but the actual creative work that we are shown in the film (editing the fake Lenny Bruce movie and the porno dance scene he choreographs) were both howlingly silly and bad imo, to the point where I wondered if Fosse was being parodic or laceratingly self-critical.

In the end i had to admit that the movie seems to think he is talented, but idk I feel like I almost like it better thinking about it the other way, where he’s a has-been coasting on fame despite having completely squandered his gifts

Screened tonight in Chicago:

The ticket line went out the door past multiple neighboring buildings, and the conversations I overheard in line were all “are we all here for All That Jazz???” just glorious collective bewilderment that YES we ARE all here for All That Jazz!!!!!

— James Allen (@jallencomposer) July 19, 2022

imo the erotic airlines routine is supposed to be (and is) good

the lenny bruce doc within all that jazz is clearly one of those artistic pursuits that’s totally its plot and purpose

also i think regardless of how good either project is, the movie views them both as acts of self-sabotage

lost its plot and purpose*

I saw this for the first time recently & liked it a lot but thought of that thread bc for a while I was hung up by wondering if the film thought Gideon was actually talented or not. Like he’s obviously presented as v successful and respected, but the actual creative work that we are shown in the film (editing the fake Lenny Bruce movie and the porno dance scene he choreographs) were both howlingly silly and bad imo, to the point where I wondered if Fosse was being parodic or laceratingly self-critical.

tbh this is the usual failing of Films About Artists, so I don't get hung up on it.

also i think regardless of how good either project is, the movie views them both as acts of self-sabotage

yeah thats why those scenes still worked for me (& why whether or not i think the works are "good" is irrelevant), they both served plot & character functions beyond just "lookit what a genius this person is", which is the default reflex of most Great Artist bios. i like Fosse fine but i appreciated not having that be a requirement for enjoying it as character study.

Back when I was working in a Turkish Nightclub...

My sister had an idea she wanted to add "All that jazz" to one of the shows, and got somebody to bring out this movie's soundtrack.

When it got here, guess what?

Yep. It's not in this movie. It's "Chicago"

Never mind, we did mine it for other tracks, and "It's showtime folks" did get used as a blip intro...

Blank Check recently did a series unpacking all of Fosse's films.

Lin Manuel-Miranda guests on the ATJ one, some great moments are drawn from Fosse's first draft of the script that Sam Rockwell sent to Miranda, w/ no name changes and some juicy details.

https://soundcloud.com/griffin-and-david-present/all-that-jazz-with-lin-manuel-miranda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLp73y_KsKQ