Fosse/Verdon

Anyone excited about the series on FX?

It looks pretty good.

 

Saw Cabaret and All That Jazz on the big screen again recently, so will catch this later in the week.

 

The trailer looks terrific, but the reviews have been so-so...



Basically what I've been reading is that it's an attempt to take All That Jazz and turn it into a series. (Note the snazzy 1970s Avant-Garde Demibold graphics.) On the plus side, I really like that film and I think that could actually work as a TV show, so what the hell. I've set up the Tivo to grab it, and I'll get around to watching it when I can.

 

DVR-ed it. Really looking forward to the dance sequences & recreation of the style of that time, which look amazing from the trailers.

Not so "jazzed" re: the main characters/actors though. I'm guessing that Michelle Williams can't dance a lick. And, while Rockwell can move, recreating Fosse's iconic style is an uphill battle. All of which will likely take me out of the story. Will see...

 

Very decent first episode in my opinion. I'll keep watching.

 

Agreed. Watched it last night, all of my concerns have been assuaged. Looking forward to more.

 

Liked what I saw in the first episode.

 

Watched the first episode and it definitely has that All That Jazz vibe. The lead actors are good. I will keep watching.

 

I've watched the first 3 episodes, the history part of it is fascinating, but the acting is not very good. And the story telling is all over the place. Maybe the last 3 episodes will get better.

 

wow, they nailed the look and feel of Cabaret in this trailer.

Is it streaming anywhere?

 

I like lean, chain-smoking, coked-up Roy Scheider

 

I honestly don't know what FX's policies are on streaming. You could check with them here:

Watch Live TV | FX Networks

Yeah, it's amazing how much better Scheider looked than the "real life" Bob Fosse. I laugh at the hair changes in the show: when we go back in time, Fosse has (mostly) a full head of hair, and then towards the end, he's only got a few wisps left. He's a much more sympathetic character in All That Jazz, but you get the strong impression that the guy in Fosse/Verdon is a lot more closer to how he was in real life (particularly given that daughter Nicole Fosse is an executive producer of the show). Gwen Verdon comes across as a victimized person who's kind of cast aside in the Bob Fosse story, and yet -- if we believe this side of the story -- she was tremendously important in a lot of the creative decisions he made over the years.

Even though I'm at a hugely-lower rung in the showbiz ladder than Bob Fosse, there's been many a time I've taken a shower prior to a 16-hour day, glanced in the mirror, and thought, "it's showtime, folks!" Even worse throughout All That Jazz, when you see how many pills, cigarettes, and long days he went through. It's notable to me that in the show, you almost never see the guy without a cigarette in his mouth. I don't do cigarettes or pills or booze at all, but I'm guilty of consuming vast amounts of caffeine and aspirin, and I have 3 heart attacks to show for it. There's lots of stress in all parts of showbiz, and that includes the lighting people, electricians, camera people, sound mixers, editors, you name it. Very, very tough, this business we call "show."

 

Michelle Williams was absolutely phenomenal in the last episode.

 

Terrific show. My review:

Loved the final episode of Fosse/Verdon, which I thought was very sad and downbeat. It dealt with four damaged, broken people: Bob Fosse, wife Gwen Verdon, their friend Paddy Chayevsky, and Bob & Gwen's tormented daughter Nicole (who produced and co-created the series). I thought the old-age late 1980s makeup was dodgy, but the production was still very good and I think the (very flawed) characters were still fascinating and made for compelling television. But a tough watch. Funniest moments: Bob Fosse (the director) directing the faux Roy Scheider (played by show producer Lin-Manuel Miranda) in the film-within-the-show version of All That Jazz. They missed the bit where one of the audience people (Fosse's accountant) quips "This musta cost a FORTUNE!" in the middle of the musical climax. The whole thing makes me want to watch All That Jazz on Blu-ray. "It's showtime, folks!"

I did feel like the final moments were kind of Nicole Fosse's final **** you to her parents, because you can see they were so wrapped up in their own careers in the 1970s and 1980s -- even Gwen Verdon, who was often very caring and unselfish in the show -- that their daughter wound up with terrible problems with depression and drug addiction. But by god, she survived, eventually had a family of her own, and she got this show produced on FX. I don't think a lot of people saw it, but it was extremely well-made, and you got the impression a lot of it was very, very close to the truth (albeit dramatized and shortened for TV).

 

Thanks foe the reminder...gotta binge watch on-demand.

 

Well, I watched the entire series, and I thought it was sensational. And I'll
go out on a limb and predict Michelle Williams will win the Emmy. She
captured everything about Gwen Verdon that made her who she was. And
she nailed Gwen's voice perfectly, which isn't really all that important, but it
added an element of realism that made the entire characterization riveting.

 

Or as I like to call her, "just Michelle Williams on even her worst day".

 

After going through the final episode of Fosse/Verdon, I went out and bought the Criterion remaster of All That Jazz (since the movie is referenced in the show), and it was a lot of fun. It was hilarious to me how bad Fosse looked in real life, and how handsome and glamorous Roy Scheider looked in the movie -- and somebody calls him on it in the Fosse/Verdon show. On the Criterion disc, there's a terrific interview with editor Alan Heim who says that when they were working on All That Jazz, the editor occasionally would refer to character "Joe Gideon" as Fosse, and Fosse corrected him quite a few times, saying, "oh, no -- this is just a movie, it's not my life." But the editor has insisted for decades that not only is the character extremely similar to Fosse, but also that all of Fosse's movies have a lot of elements of his own life in them.

After I watched All That Jazz -- which was the first time I've seen the film in more than 25 years -- I thought, man, this is the first film I've seen in a long time where I absolutely have zero complaints about the editing. I checked the background on the film and found out that it won Oscars and a BAFTA award for Best Editing, and was voted the "4th best-edited film in cinema history" by the Editors Guild. I'm not surprised. This is a very, very, very good film that has some jaw-dropping shots and some phenomenal timing and dramatic moments all the way through. I don't even mind Scheider's casting -- I think he did a great job under the circumstances.



Two critiques of the Criterion Blu-ray: 1) some scenes are a little too yellow for me (particularly in the hospital), but I'm a stickler for white whites, and 2) the mix is annoyingly unbalanced and the music overwhelms the dialogue too many times. It's one of those "overly-dynamic" mixes where you turn up the dialogue for the quiet scenes, then you get blown out of the room when the music comes in. Not a good creative choice. But it's about the bet the film has ever looked.

Now I can't stop saying, "It's showtime, folks!"

 

I loved All That Jazz and I'm certainly not a huge nut about musicals. I saw it on the big screen
The dances were a little too risqué for my wife, but so many of the sequences mesmerized me.
The opening George Benson and the way Fosse spares the feelings of the guy. The dance done for the money people (flying bodies). Bye Bye Love
Lay Back. LAY BACK! Do you think you're at your senior prom???!!!
And that brutal exchange with that woman who asks if she'll ever be a great dancer and he says no. and she strips and goes to bed.
Oh yea, Fosse NEVER did that.........

 

Yeah, the "making of" documentary and interviews say that Fosse was one of the few Broadway directors who actually would tell dancers and cast members personally that they weren't being hired. One Broadway vet who was interviewed said she never did that, and she'd leave it to her assistants to pass along that message because she didn't have the heart. That "On Broadway" open is really, really brilliant, and the editing was spectacular -- I think that's what won the film the Oscar for Best Editing.

Biggest shock: none of those opening dances were done to "On Broadway." They were hearing "Tea for Two" or something like that played on set, so all those moves and the timing were created through editing. The decision to use "On Broadway" was after the fact.

 

Just like Once Upon a Time in America, there is no dialogue for many minutes (just occasional directions to the dancers). The morons pretending to watch (the guy sprays his breath), the daughter, the dancers watching each other from the wings, Fosse up front looking for that 'it', etc. He keeps shifting angles, focus on extras and people we will never see again. The expressions say everything. Just brilliant

 

I didn't think this show was phenomenal but it was pretty darned good. I can see the complaint about the acting above. . . something wasn't quite copacetic throughout for me. But I learned a lot and enjoyed it.

 

"Stop smiling, this isn't the goddamed high school play!" "Do you think I could make it in show business?" "No!"

 

FX has been on a roll; with this show, “Versace” & “Feud”, curse the naysayers who constantly say that there is nothing to watch on television.

 

Love All that jazz, I will give this series a try but it will be very diffult to replace Ann Reinking