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All That Jazz
All That Jazz film poster
Directed by	Bob Fosse
Produced by	Robert Alan Aurthur
Written by	Robert Alan Aurthur Bob Fosse
Starring	Roy Scheider Jessica Lange Leland Palmer Ann Reinking
Music by	Ralph Burns
Cinematography	Giuseppe Rotunno
Editing by	Alan Heim
Distributed by	20th Century Fox Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	December 20, 1979 17 July 1980
Running time	123 min.
Country	United States
Language	English/Spanish
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

All That Jazz is a 1979 musical film directed by Bob Fosse. It is a semi-autobiographical fantasy based on aspects of Fosse's life. The screenplay is by Robert Alan Aurthur.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Casting and autobiographical elements 3 Responses 4 Main cast 5 DVD availability 6 References 7 External links

Choreographing and picking dancers for his new show while editing his feature film about a standup comic is getting to Joe Gideon. He is a workaholic who also chain smokes, sleeps with various women and neglects his daughter Michelle. Without the chemical substances he wouldn't have the energy to keep up with his girlfriend Kate Jagger, his ex-wife Audrey Paris, and Michelle. Everything around him is causing tremendous stress to his already fatigued body and in his imagination he flirts with an angel of death named Angelique.

Gideon's condition gets worse as he checks himself out at the hospital and learns that he has two clogged arteries and needs heart surgery. The backers for the Broadway show must decide now if they should delay the opening or replace Gideon as the director. Scenes from his past life start to encroach on the present as he becomes increasingly aware of his mortality.

The film's structure is often compared to Federico Fellini's 8½, another thinly-veiled autobiographical film with fantastical elements.^[1][2]

Roy Scheider plays Joe Gideon, a chain-smoking, pill-popping, womanizing, workaholic, alcoholic, choreographer and director. The film was inspired by Fosse's own manic effort to edit his film Lenny (about Lenny Bruce) while simultaneously staging his musical Chicago (although the show and issues depicted are more in line with Fosse's experiences with Pippin).^{[citation needed]} The ending of the film essentially predicts Fosse's own real-life fate.

Besides Scheider, the film stars Leland Palmer as Gideon's ex-wife (based on Fosse's real-life wife Gwen Verdon); Ann Reinking as Gideon's girlfriend; Cliff Gorman as a comedian in a film Gideon is editing (based on Lenny Bruce); Ben Vereen (who had played the starring role in Fosse's Pippin); and Jessica Lange as Angelique, a Felliniesque personification of Death. . Cliff Gorman's character is "Davis Newman," roughly based on Dustin Hoffman, who starred in Fosse's 1974 film Lenny. Gorman had played the title role in the original production of "Lenny".

Gorman's role as a difficult and self-obsessed actor playing a notorious stand-up was seen by many as a personal rebuke to Dustin Hoffman, the star of Lenny. Gorman had originally played Lenny Bruce, winning a Tony Award in the Broadway play that inspired the film, and had been considered favourite to take the lead role but was instead passed over for a "name" actor, Hoffman. However, that theory is undercut by the fact that Fosse also directed Lenny.^{[citation needed]}

Gideon's rough handling of chorus girl Victoria Porter closely resembles Fosse's own treatment of Jennifer Nairn-Smith during rehearsals for Pippin.^[3] Nairn-Smith herself appears in the film as Jennifer, one of the NY/LA dancers.

Julie Hagerty had a small role in the film, but her scenes were cut from the final version; the role would have represented her film debut. She was dating Fosse around this time and accompanied him to the 1980 Academy Awards. She would subsequently make her film debut in the 1980 farce Airplane!.

Reviewer Leonard Maltin called the film "self indulgent"^[4] (Maltin also compared it at the same time to Fellini's 8½).

All That Jazz was nominated for several Oscars, winning for Art Direction, stage direction, best costume, Best Editing (Alan Heim) and original score. It shared the 1980 Palme d'Or with Kagemusha at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In 2006 this film ranked #14 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.

Actor	Role
Roy Scheider	Joe Gideon
Jessica Lange	Angelique
Leland Palmer	Audrey Paris
Ann Reinking	Kate Jagger
Cliff Gorman	Davis Newman
Ben Vereen	O'Connor Flood
Erzsebet Foldi	Michelle Gideon
Michael Tolan	Dr. Ballinger
Max Wright	Joshua Penn
William LeMassena	Jonesy Hecht
Deborah Geffner	Victoria Porter
John Lithgow	Lucas Sergeant

The film is available on a DVD edition released in both Region 1 and Region 2. The DVD features a scene-specific commentary by Roy Scheider, and interviews with Scheider and Fosse.^[4]

• All That Jazz at the Internet Movie Database
• All That Jazz at Rotten Tomatoes

Preceded by Apocalypse Now tied with The Tin Drum

Palme d'Or 1980 tied with Kagemusha

Succeeded by Man of Iron