Director Set: Fosse Bear

Perhaps my favourite podcast over the past few years is Blank Check with Griffin and David, which finds actor Griffin Newman and the Atlantic film critic David Sims covering the entire filmography of a director (one film per episode) specifically those who were given a blank check at some point in their career to make whatever passion project they want.  It's an entertaining, inviting, insightful, thoughtful and incredibly well researched podcast which goes into deep (and sometimes juvenile) conversations about the director and actors and productions of the films they cover, frequently to the point where the podcast episodes are longer than the films. 

The series they just concluded was covering the five films of Bob Fosse, the legendary broadway dance choreographer and director who waded into film with musicals, and tried to escape the ghetto of being seen only as a musical director.  Fosse was also the subject of the recent FX Fosse/Verdon in which Sam Rockwell portrays the director's many flaws, including womanized, chain smoking, and being an aggressive boor in all his endeavours.  Despite his incredible talent and successes (Oscar, Emmy and Tony all in one year) he was self-hating, self-conscious, insecure, and troubled man, obsessed with his own mortality as a subject.  The series co-stars Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon, a broadway superstar, Fosse's longtime collaborator and confidant, and for a time, wife, and it paints her as the underpraised ingredient in much of Fosse's success.  Gwen's cheerier, civilized demeanour was often weaponized as a counterstrike against Bob's more curmudgeonly attitudes, whether it was in the rehearsal space, on the film set, in the editing room or just in life, she was basically the "Bob whisperer" who knew how to temper his edges or get people to understand what he was asking of them.  On top of that, she would accentuate, embolden and enrich his productions with her own talented eye for movement and framing, she was a co-creator in many of his productions and many of his successes would have been much less without her direct involvement.

Cabaret - 1972, DVD

Lenny - 1975, Tubi

All That Jazz - 1979,  CTV

Fosse/Verdon - 2019, FX

Before the Blank Check mini-series on Fosse, I have to admit I only heard of him prior to that in relation to Fosse/Verdon, which from the ads for the show at the time I figured was a show only about dance.  I had no idea he was a filmmaker, nevermind a celebrated one at that.   Through the podcast, I watched some of his films, skipping his first - Sweet Charity, Fosse adapting his stage production to screen - which the Blank Check crew said is not great -- and Star-80, Fosse's final film which sounds to be a completely misguided attempt at understanding the real-life murder of a young starlet from the perspective of her murderer.  It sounds difficult and gross, and an easy pass.  I started watching Fosse/Verdon in the mix of watching Lenny and All That Jazz and listening to the podcast, and I have to say it becomes a bit of a blur.

Lenny is a biographical interpretation of the life of 60's shock-comic Lenny Bruce.  Lenny was known for pushing the boundaries of what could be said in polite society, talking bluntly about sex and race in his act and often getting arrested for it (once his profile reached a certain size).  Lenny was also a man who married a woman he loved and then cheated on her regularly, was addicted to his vices, and believed himself to be an artist that was carrying society on his back, progressing it forward, step by difficult step.  Watching Fosse/Verdon and All That Jazz, biographical representations of Fosse's personal history and journey through achieving success and fame, it becomes clear that, despite not caring about stand-up comedy, he related very personally to the Lenny Bruce story.  

All That Jazz is a masterpiece, as Fosse tells his own biographical story about working on both Lenny and a stage production of Chicago (pressured by Gwen as something he owed to her), following his heart attack.  It's a surreal musical drama that lays Fosse bare in front of the audience (via his surrogate played by Roy Scheider), telling of both his sexual abuse as a youth which informs (not excuses) his sexual abuses, and makes known just what a cad and a prick he can be, and how self-hating but also self-obsessed he is. It is not so much the ruminations of a "tortured artist" but rather the introspection of someone who suffers some serious mental health issues but in an era didn't have the insight or the language to talk about it.  In the end of All That Jazz Fosse kills off his fictional self after flirting with Death (literally) the whole time.   It bears a striking similarity to how he ended Lenny. Fosse really wondered how he was alive, and seemed to make overtures of being a changed man in All That Jazz but knew his predilections would overcome whatever changes he tried to enact.  It's also even more meta in that his then-girlfriend, actor/dancer Ann Reinking, plays his avatar's girlfriend in the film, so the lines between reality and fiction in this autobiography are very much blurred.

The distinction between what I've seen in Lenny, All That Jazz, and Fosse/Verdon are all a messy blur in my brain.  The latter two each feature semi-fictional interpretations of Fosse's time making Lenny which only makes the imagery of all these things a bigger jumble.  But through all these, one gets a pretty clear picture of the man, a complex person who battled demons, and was sometimes one himself (and sometimes he was his own demon). From what I hear of Star-80 it's almost as if Fosse were thinking what if he weren't so talented, would he have wound up an abusive, murdering womanizer.  It sounds like an extension of what Fosse was exploring in Lenny and All That Jazz but also a misguided film and perhaps ruminations that he should have kept to himself.

Where Sweet Charity was Fosse bringing something he did on stage to the screen, Cabaret was something vastly different for him.  He didn't want to just put the stage on screen, he wanted to make a proper (and precise) movie.  The musical sequences are clearly his forte, and certainly something he labored over to get just precise, but they're also my least favourite parts of the movie, and something Fosse took pains to disconnect from the narrative.  All the fakey-fakey accents and self-smug "cleverness" in the bawdy house lyrics are just eyerollingly droll to the point of nuisance.  The songs and performances are, however, cut into the production in very clever ways, which the Fosse/Verdon series provides background on, showing how much Fosse laboured over every single edit (with Gwen stepping in and being the co-conspirator not just in choreographing the stage dancing but choreographing the overall rhythm of the film).

In between the singing and dancing we get a very surprising mid-30's-set, 70's-shot LGBTQ-friendly love story set against the backdrop of the rise of Nazi party and anti-semitism in Germany.  It's disarmingly progressive how much Cabaret embraces its gay, bisexual, and trans characters, but it's also a virulently ugly setting to have it all in, and the 30's-set Germany seems to have a perpetual dark cloud over it (in colour tinting alone) that seems to just grow darker as the film wages on.

I definitely admire Cabaret for what it did, so boldly out of step with both the era it's story set in, and the era it was released in.  It's still disarmingly forthright today, and if not for a few touches, feels pretty modern still.  I get that in comparison to the majority of musicals that preceded it, this is vastly different in how it tells its story and incorporates its song and dance.  At the same time, I really couldn't fully enjoy it (I struggle with pre-Lucille 2 Liza Minelli as a performer), but I will settle for appreciating it. 

With Lenny, another intriguing but somewhat unsuccessful film, I think the documentary format is an amazing choice on Fosse's part and it makes it stand out, decades later, from most other biographical dramas, as does the jazz-riff camerawork and editing. It's not always successful at telling its story, and it's not entirely concrete on what that story is. It starts off as a love story but that falls to the side and becomes more about the career than the man. All told, we never really get to learn who Lenny Bruce was, so much as the highlights (and lowlighs) of what he did in his life.

If you didn't know who Lenny Bruce was going into the film, you'd almost think, at least for the first hour, that it was more a film about Honey (an outstanding performance from Valerie Perrine, needing to go absolutely everywhere emotionally and delivering on it). Despite being a bit of a stand-up comedy fan, I didn't know Lenny Bruce, well not his comedy. I knew *about* Lenny Bruce, the legend,  -court cases, pushing the boundaries of obscenity, and the drug use - all pretty much what the film is trying to teach you. If we're to learn anything about him, what he was like as a person, the film doesn't do a great job at it. It's just mythmaking, and not terribly humanizing.  I found it very hard to reconcile all the different sides of Lenny we're presented with because those dramatic scenes are so short and spread across quite a span of his life. It's not really until you see All That Jazz that you get the connections between Fosse and Bruce, and see where the two relate that Lenny feels properly contextualized.

Not knowing the routines, Dustin Hoffman seems to be keyed into those performances in his specifically Hoffman way. It's more like a cover band...no matter how good the emulation, it's never going to be the same because there's something individual in a performer that can't be fully replicated. It's maybe one of the better actors-doing-standup performances in a movie, but that's a low bar, and much of what I'm responding to is how Fosse shot it with real crowds and cutting to genuine reactions (which are sometimes laughs, but also sometimes offense, or boredom). I think Hoffman enjoyed the challenge. But, as with the film, Hoffman doesn't really find Lenny, the person, in any meaningful way. 

In the end, I would probably have preferred a real documentary about Lenny with real clips of his performances and excerpts from his many tape recordings (including his court trials) the film tells us he did. 

My relationship with Bob Fosse is now about a month old and I feel like I know him all too well. He borders on stereotype. The talented cad, the asshole auteur...but the question is why do I want to root for him so? Goddamit, Bob, everything's telling me I shouldn't like you, and yet the more I get to know you, the more fascinated I am with you, and I'll let you just have your way with my eye and ear holes.

All That Jazz, I'm sure, is an utter puzzle if you don't know anything about Bob Fosse's life or career, but a good film will make you want to know more and investigate and parse out the meaning. Knowing much (though far from all) about Fosse puts me on my first viewing, maybe, four rewatches of ATJ ahead of a Fosse newcomer. but there's still so much to puzzle out. The layers of meta commentary are so deep they caused me a delightful headache.  Ann Reinking's involvement and the dialogue between her and Scheider-as-Fosse feels like some highly dramatic form of role play therapy.

The recurring, flirtatious conversation between not-Fosse and Death (Jessica Lang) makes "Joe Gideon" the most death-obsessed cinematic character this side of Thanos. It all culminates in a heart-stopping show-stopper fever dream musical dance number that riffs on "Bye Bye Love" with a magnetic Ben Vereen and Reinking and Fosse's real life daughter (maybe...) in costume as the two halves of his heart (again, the meta layers).

If there's any drawback to All That Jazz, it's the limitations in editing techniques. Transitions between scenes could be terribly jarring and confusing. But boy, is it ever entertaining, and also really provocative and thoughful. Such a unique, personal piece.

I don't know dance, and watching Cabaret and All That Jazz (and even the Emmy winning special Liza with a Z) I didn't really find the dancing all that special (I found only the stand out to be where Reinking and Joe Gideon's preteen daughter put on an in-apartment dance number for him) but watching Fosse/Verdon and their distinctly not-Fosse Fosse-like dance sequences to be direly lacking.  Compare anything in Fosse/Verdon to All That Jazz and suddenly Fosse's genius as a choreographer (often with Verdon's direct input) comes to light.  Doubly so for Fosse's cinematic chops, which the TV series quite pales in comparison to.  

It's an engaging series in spite of its artistic deficits when compared to the subjects its studying, but then it's hard to replicate genius.  I don't know that Sam Rockwell can deliver a bad performance even if he tried but he captures Fosse in a way the feels symmetrical with how Roy Scheider played him, but never feels impressionistic.  Rockwell knows how to inhabit a role, to live it, and he provides Fosse, the caddish depressive he is, with a real soul.  Williams is doubly good.  Like Rockwell, Williams has never not delivered everything to a role.  She has such control over every aspect of performance that she makes Gwen Verdon live again.  Even though she's playing her across 20 + years of her life, most of which in a time where Verdon was much older than Williams was at the time of shooting, she manages through physical embodiment more than any makeup to represent a woman of her generation.  Watching Williams in certain scenes her body language reminds me so much of my grandmothers, and other women my grandmother's age.  There's a certain way certain women of that time carried themselves and responded to their environments that Williams absolutely nails, but  never calls attention to.

I feel tapped out on Fosse after all this, but, there's surprisingly little left to wade into.  Which means it's a pretty light chore to return to Fosse and look more deeply the next time.