Deep Dive: ALL THAT JAZZ w/ Ali Gordon

Summary

Broadway Breakdown – Deep Dive: ALL THAT JAZZ w/ Ali Gordon

Host: Matt Koplik
Guest: Ali Gordon
Date: April 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Broadway Breakdown dives deep into Bob Fosse’s legendary autobiographical film, All That Jazz (1979). Host Matt Koplik is joined by friend and recurring guest Ali Gordon in a discussion that’s equal parts reverent, analytical, irreverent, and foul-mouthed, tackling the film’s artistry, legacy, and Fosse’s own messy legend. The pair also spiral into commentary on theater history, personal anecdotes, and the nature of genius and self-loathing in show business.

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Key Discussion Points

1. All That Jazz as Cult/Canonical Object

[03:19–16:50]

• Ali declares it “one of my favorite movies of all time” and praises its enduring impact on her.
• Both Matt and Ali agree that while the film is about Fosse, its storytelling and technical bravura make it universal, not just a self-indulgent director’s project.
• They note the film’s subtitle could be “lots of boob but no bush” – emblematic of its 1970s boundary-pushing style but precise aesthetic choices. (03:00)
• Discussion of Criterion Collection’s plot summary leads to an appreciation of the movie’s innovation in capturing dance on film:

  “It is such an incredible capture of dance...Thank god someone got that dance on camera. It's beautiful. It's so good. And everybody's sweaty. It's great.” (Ali, 16:08)

• The movie is a reference point for how later musicals (Chicago film, etc.) would come to use fantasy/reality splits.

2. Personal Histories with the Film

[17:08–22:43]

• Ali first saw the film in college, with theater friends in silence after the final credits—rare among musical theater students.
• Matt saw it as a 13-year-old on cable with his dad – and recalls the difference in parental censorship then.
• Both emphasize the necessity of owning hard copies of one’s favorite works with the rise/fall of streaming (20:24–21:45).

3. Fosse’s Legend & the Movie’s Raw Honesty

[13:14–16:50, 33:55–38:23]

• Matt reads from Bob Fosse's biography, connecting All That Jazz directly to Fosse's own heart attack during Chicago's development and the pivotal year between Lenny and Chicago’s debut.
• Ali argues the film is bold for not just parading Fosse’s genius, but asking, “Am I a good person? Have I left a good legacy for my daughter? …Is it more important to me that I left behind a legacy of fantastic work…and I died in an interesting way, or that I fucked up my daughter forever?” (Ali, 33:25)
• They agree that Fosse’s ego was not merely hubristic—he was as brilliant as he thought—but that the film is actually more about self-critique and artistic doubt.

Notable Quote:

“There’s almost a more interesting read of the movie if you’re able to get rid of the ‘he made a movie about himself’ and be like, ‘yes, he made a movie about himself...Let’s get to the important stuff…Am I a good person?’” (Ali, 33:34)

4. Blurring Fact and Fiction: Real-Life Counterparts

[29:42–32:23, 40:49–47:47]

• All That Jazz is a thinly veiled account of Fosse’s creative and personal chaos in 1974-75.
• Characters directly mirror real people:
  • Audrey Paris = Gwen Verdon
  • Katie (Ann Reinking) = Ann Reinking
  • The composer is a mashup of Stephen Schwartz and Fred Ebb.
  • Lucas Sargent (John Lithgow) amalgamates Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, and Gower Champion.
• Many Pippin references: “There’s a lot more Pippin overlap in this movie than people realize.” (Matt, 09:04)
• Ali notes how Fosse’s fictionalization allowed him to be funnier/meaner, particularly about composer characters.

5. Fosse’s Creative Process, Ego & Insecurity

[38:23–49:08]

• Fosse, despite unrivaled success, always felt like he was failing as a performer—his “taste exceeded his ability.”
• The biography recounts how Fosse’s achievements never quite satisfied him; he envied contemporaries like Robbins or Bennett for their apparent ease.
• Fosse’s legendarily hard self-critique: the writing process included interviews with every important figure in his life (Gwen, Ann, Kander & Ebb, Hal Prince, etc.).
• Fun anecdote: Fosse wrote the John Lithgow “Lucas Sargent” scene out of his complicated feelings toward Hal Prince (“always felt like Hal Prince had it out for him…”).

Notable Quote:

“Every idea is a bad idea unless you make it good.” (Matt & Ali, 37:29) “His taste most likely exceeded his ability.” (Matt, 40:12)

6. Artistic Rivalries & Broadway Lore

[43:40–48:48]

• Sondheim’s jab at Fosse: “Bob came to see Follies and he’s been making a career out of the last 20 minutes of Follies ever since.” (Matt, 46:04)
• Sondheim and Prince, Fosse’s complicated relationship with Hal Prince and Michael Bennett, and the competitive, sometimes petty gossip of 1970s Broadway.
• The creation of Chicago post-heart attack is contextualized as Gwen Verdon’s dream vehicle and Fosse’s atonement.

7. The Dance: Humor, Sex, and Style

[77:53–83:31]

• Both hosts lavish praise on Fosse’s ability to combine sex and humor in choreography; even numbers as “titillating” as “Erotica” gradually become spooky, not just titillating.
• They dissect the Pippin orgy scene, contrasting stylized choreography with broader sexual commentary.
• Fosse’s choreography as both celebration and critique of the human body.

Notable Quote:

“He choreographs in a way that makes bodies look so phenomenal—not even in a sexy way…You just are like, wow, the body is an incredible tool and I’m, like, so blessed to have one.” (Ali, 81:20)

8. The Performances & Structure

[50:05–54:35]

• Both single out Ann Reinking (“There’ll Be Some Changes Made”) and Roy Scheider’s subtle acting, especially in the home movie sequence.
• Emotional gut punches: Ali discusses unexpectedly crying at the daughter’s fantasy song (“One of These Days”) and the Bye Bye Life confrontation.
• They praise the film’s naturalistic, sometimes cruel, depiction of Joe Gideon (Scheider), but argue it’s this lack of sentimentality that makes its emotions so rawly earned.

Notable Quote:

“It's also one of the few times you see him willingly able to accept the love that's being thrown at him.” (Matt, 51:15)

9. Fosse’s Trauma & Messy Humanity

[84:45–86:39]

• The discussion turns to the roots of Fosse’s damaged relationships with women and sex:
  • Fosse was sexually assaulted as a teenager on the burlesque circuit, shaping both his sexual compulsions and his persistent loneliness.
• The episode draws parallels between Fosse and fictional tortured creatives like Don Draper (Mad Men).

10. Legacy, Reception, and Enduring Impact

[87:05–119:26]

• Despite mixed initial reviews, the film won four Oscars, surprised its own creators with its box office, and was immediately championed by Stanley Kubrick.
• Ali underscores that, “I think even if you don't love the film, it would be hard not to feel like you didn't...You didn’t waste your time. It is just. It is an insane achievement.” (Ali, 116:08)
• They position All That Jazz as the gateway film for skeptics of musicals, as it explores the artificiality and authenticity of showbiz head-on.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On The Film’s Purpose/Reception

• “It's so fantastically parodied in All That Jazz...She rips it to shreds...and that's why I give this on my classic rating of 4 balloons, half a balloon.” (Ali, 90:18)
• “How dare you use my phone to call someone who isn’t gay?” (Ali, 66:03)
• “I just wish you weren't so generous with your cock.” (Ann Reinking, quoted, 66:45)

On Showbiz & Artistry

• “It's a horrible business. People backstab you…It's a miserable business. Also, where else can you see art like this?” (Ali paraphrasing film, 66:02)
• “I hate show business.” “Joe, you love show business.” “Yeah, I love show business. I’ll go either way.” (66:02)

On Fosse/Verdon Collaboration

• “Gwen was sort of the Fosse whisperer, and I think she gave him a lot of humanity as well as insight into women that he did not have.” (Matt, 108:34)
• Discussion of Fosse/Verdon miniseries and its oversimplification:

  “If ‘All That Jazz’ went hard on Fosse, Fosse/Verdon went harder...I was like, oh, Nicole, your father and mother messed you up more than you will ever admit.” (Matt, 113:13)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Intro Banter / Guest Welcome: 00:45–03:19
• Movie Intro & Plot Summary: 13:14–16:50
• Pippin, Fosse, and Casting Discussion: 04:26–12:54
• Personal Experiences / First Encounters with the Film: 17:08–22:43
• Fosse’s Creative Life, Ego, and Process: 33:55–46:08
• Fosse’s Relationships / Real-to-Screen Counterparts: 29:42–32:23, 40:49–47:47
• Dance on Camera & Choreography Analysis: 77:53–83:31
• Performance and Scene Highlights: 50:05–54:35
• Bye Bye Life / Climax & Emotional Impact: 73:38–101:36
• Artistic Legacy, Popular Reception: 87:05–119:26
• Final Thoughts / Legacy: 116:08–119:26

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Takeaways and Conclusion

• All That Jazz remains a masterclass in merging raw autobiography with innovative musical narrative, unafraid of exposing ego, imposter syndrome, creative despair, and the cost of genius.
• Fosse’s film is the rare “musical for people who think they hate musicals”—its skepticism about theatrical artifice and romantic failure is cathartic and bracing for newcomers and theater geeks alike.
• The episode closes on Matt and Ali brainstorming an all-friends gender-bent sit-through of Pippin and celebrating theater’s messy, joyful, self-mocking community:

  “Where else can you make stuff like this? Where else can you have people like this?” (Ali, 66:03)

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Listen to the episode for Broadway lore, bawdy banter, and the ultimate tribute to Fosse’s messy, magical genius.

Transcript

[A]

Sam.

[B]

Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history and legacy of American theater's most exclusive address. Broadway series is called Matt's Picks, and it is covering shows that I did not pick out of Sally Bowell, but I wanted to cover anyway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And guess who's back in the house? Guess who's back in the house.

[A]

Back in the house. Shoes click clacking about thank you. Heels clacking about I don't know.

[B]

I didn't remember the next lyric. But I needed you to.

[A]

It's something. Click clacking about yeah. Who's click clacking about? All I horses click clacking about I

[B]

think it's heels click clacking Find fresh

[A]

feminine, you know, and so on and so forth.

[B]

Anyway, it's Podmother Ali Gordon. Hello, Ally.

[A]

Hello. I like that the UNT of your thing has gotten more and more. It's sort of like late in the run and you're having fun with the character choices now. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

1,000. 1,000%.

[A]

Like, and you were already having fun. Like, it's like Annalee Ashford where it was like you didn't need to get bigger. But it has, I suppose. I guess those choices have gotten longer and bigger.

[B]

I don't. We're not in a relationship. I don't know why you feel the need to neg me, but. Okay, pop off, sis.

[A]

I do kind of need a little.

[B]

You need what? To neg me a little.

[A]

Just like a little, little bit.

[B]

Because my. My self esteem is just so confident that I know.

[A]

Because we have like a sexy. A sexy Will. They won't Fae.

[B]

Oh, that is true. We really do.

[A]

Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm assuming that people aren't tuning in to hear what we have to say, but to imagine what we might be doing when cameras go down.

[B]

This is very true.

[A]

You.

[B]

And once or twice in our very, very distant youth of like the alternate universe where I am straight and we are together and like the madness that that would be.

[A]

It would not be good. I think it would sort of be like Bob Fossey in Gwenford kind of a little bit. Except that neither of us are dancers.

[B]

Well, there's. There's photographic proof of you doing a ballet.

[A]

Yes. I mean that's not. I mean that is true.

[B]

But Alessandra Gourdan. Yeah, we are beating around the bush, so to speak. Because what are we here to discuss for the foreseeable future?

[A]

We're here to discuss a movie with lots of boob but no bush at all.

[B]

That's true. Everyone. For a 70s movie, everyone is pretty razored.

[A]

Yeah. And nothing below the belt. Nobody. Nobody. Sorry. Well, but there's butt.

[B]

Being a butt. Yeah, there's a lot of butt. But also, even, like, the men, it's hairy chests and, like, a little bit of the back of the neck, but, like, correct. Nothing below the belt.

[A]

Nothing below the belt, really. We're here to talk about one of my favorite movies of all time. So, again, I don't know how I keep guys sort of lucking out into, like, talking about these things I really love on your podcast. So thanks. But we're talking about all that jazz, which is an amazing movie.

[B]

It is. I mean, it's because I like you, and I like talking about things we love together. I am waiting for the thing you and I both dislike, or one of us dislikes, to have a kind of combative episode.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Cause also, the things that you've loved, that you've come on for also are things that I've loved. So we haven't discussed anything where it's

[A]

like, you've had things, even things that are, like, a little, like, not contentious, I suppose, but just, like, not, like, easy wins. Like, it's so, like, for me to be like, well, I think the best musical of all time is Sweeney Todd. It's very easy for you to be like, great choice.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, you don't have to share that opinion.

[B]

You have a lot of evidence to back that up.

[A]

Correct. But then even when I come on and I'm like, I love Kiss of the Spider Woman. I know it's not perfect, but I think it's, like, a great show with, like, a lot of merit and, like, a lot of heart, and it really impacts me. And you're like, yeah, sure, I agree with that. Like, you know what I mean? Even the things are. Well, okay, so actually, I have a question that this movie. This movie made me think about.

[B]

Go for it.

[A]

Do you know how much I love Pippin?

[B]

I mean,

[A]

I love.

[B]

No, that's right. That's a very loaded question for me. For you. Because you're asking me, in the last 20 years of our friendship.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Have we discussed your love of this show? The short answer is most likely. The longer answer is, I can't remember. I'm sure. But I am sure we have talked about it.

[A]

Sure. I was just going to say, I wonder when I'm thinking about shows that I'm like, wow, that show is like everything to me. But I don't know if everybody feels that way. I was thinking about that last night when we were watching the movie, and I was like, God damn it, I love Pippin. I would give anything to go see a great production of Pippin right now.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

If you share that, maybe we can fight about that later.

[B]

No, I felt as a teen that I. Maybe we never discussed it because as teens, we talked about our mutual love of Amadeus and Angels in America, and we felt very alone in that, as teenagers, of the plots.

[A]

And we were correct to be ostracized for those opinions

[B]

at that age. Yes. But I also. I just always stuck to my guns, that I always thought that Pippin was actually a great musical.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think it's amazing that just often never gets done well, because, you know, it tends to be high schools or regional theaters that, like, think it's just an easy ticket seller, which it is. Gore is so much fun. But I always said, like, that book is not flimsy. The book is very much a concept book a la Follies or company. But there are lines in that show that get a laugh no matter who says it.

[A]

I agree with that.

[B]

And I think it is another great addition to the anti Hero musical, because with Pippin, he sucks.

[A]

He sucks. He really sucks.

[B]

And the show knows that he sucks.

[A]

And the show has a whole song about how he kind of sucks.

[B]

Yeah. And I think he's actually one of the hardest roles in musical theater. And I think my issue with how Pippin tends to be done, and this is also a Fosse thing, and I sort of felt this way about the revival is, yes, it would be lovely to have a very hot, beautiful young man play Pippin who looks great with his shirt off. I think that there's something to an everyman playing Pippin who can really. And, like. Who's also, like, genuinely an actor who can make you not necessarily root for him, but want to keep watching him fail. And then that watershed moment he has at the end, that breakthrough of, like, oh, I'm not special. I just need to. I don't need to, like, change the world. I just need to be. Be of the world.

[A]

Yes. Very, very nice way to put that.

[B]

Thank you. It's almost like I do this from time to time.

[A]

From time to time. But you know what? I just. You. I say this every time I'm on the Podcast Because I think I sometimes take for granted how great you've gotten at, like, putting complicated thoughts into easily understandable and digestible statements. I don't know what the word is I'm looking for here.

[B]

You're complimenting me about my statements by making a terrible statement. I understand.

[A]

Correct? Yeah. I mean, like, what am I, a writer? Shut up.

[B]

Do you have a post published or something? My God.

[A]

Yeah. Don't fucking look that up. I just. I just feel like you've always been very smart and you've always had great opinions, or at the very least, very defined opinions. Do you know what I mean? You are not somebody who's easily swayed. You're like, this is my opinion and I have it. You've just gotten so good at just putting it into words in, like, a way that a person could. Like a good lyric. You could listen to it once and understand it. You know what I mean? You don't have to really dig deep into parsing what you're trying to say. Thank you. You're like, I get it. I understand. So that was a really good.

[B]

You don't help much when you're on the podcast.

[A]

No, I don't help at all. So you're actually to distract.

[B]

Yeah, you distract me with your ginormous titties and your eloquence is that of brain dead cactus. But I keep you on anyway because I just love you.

[A]

Tall cactuses can often be quite tal.

[B]

You are. I find you a very lanky gal.

[A]

That's so untrue that I. I mean, I like. I love you for saying that. I have a short torso, short arms, short legs.

[B]

Let me be clear.

[A]

You're.

[B]

No, you're not. You're not six feet tall, but I don't know, I always found you proportionally, like, lanky and limber, but thank you so much.

[A]

I mean, like. But then you see Ann ranking and all that Jazz, but those legs that go forever and you're like, what's up?

[B]

You look at Ann ranking and all that Jazz and you want to kill yourself.

[A]

But absolutely.

[B]

Yeah. But you love Pippin. Speaking of Ann ranking. Who was in Pippin.

[A]

Who was in Pippin. And also Leland Palmer, who famously was in Pippin.

[B]

She sure was. There's a lot more Pippin overlap in this movie than I think people realize. And we'll get to what those details are in a second. But you were talking about Pippin and all that Jazz.

[A]

Oh, honestly. I was just saying I wonder if that's one of those musicals that we wouldn't share that opinion on just because, like, I don't know. I think it's in, like, my top five favorite musicals of all time. Like, I love Pippin so much.

[B]

It's on my top five.

[A]

I only like it more and more as I get older.

[B]

I was. I. I think my, My opinion on how to cast Pippen for me stems from my days as wanting to be an actor. When, you know, you know, when you're an actor and you're watching stuff, you're like, what part can I play? Or like, what part should I be playing? But no one will be brave enough to cast me. That is how I envisioned myself playing Pippin was like, oh, I'm not John Rubenstein circa 1972. I'm more of an everyman. So, like, I. That was. I was like, if someone was brave enough to let, like, a little old Twiggy gay me do it, I think that would be really nice.

[A]

I think you could also, if somebody was brave enough, really kill it as Pastrada.

[B]

Oh, my God. So that is. That is my.

[A]

If someone was brave enough.

[B]

If someone was brave enough. My God. Yeah, let me play Fostrada.

[A]

I think you'd be really good.

[B]

I'd kill it as the son of

[A]

a. I really think you would.

[B]

I need to get back into dancery shape because I am also not a dancer. But there was a time when we were teens where I was pursuing more dance than I have since then. So I need to do more of that again.

[A]

But did you see. I'm gonna say one insane thing that's not actually off tangent. Did you see Bad Cinderella?

[B]

Yes, I saw Bad Cinderella.

[A]

Okay, thank God. Bad Cinderella. That whole subplot with her wanting to fuck her stepson or whatever, that couldn't have flown. Pippin walked so that Bad Cinderella could soar.

[B]

Same theater too, by the way.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

It all ties together.

[A]

It's all connected.

[B]

It's all connected.

[A]

See, that's why I talk to you, so that you can put these things into perspective.

[B]

For someone as pretty as I am and as charming as I am, it's important to remember that I have the most stupid brain and that this is just what I bring to the table. This is why I'm single. I meet beautiful boys and. And, sorry, men. Beautiful men. They're all of age men.

[A]

Beautiful men.

[B]

You go get a drink and they look at me and they go, how can you be single? And I go, well, did you know that Bad Cinderella and Pippin are in the same theater? And they go, uh huh? Or Would you look at that? I have. I have to go.

[A]

That sounds like. Did you know that Idina Menzel fell through the same trapdoor that Len Cariou once rose out of his Sweeney Todd? And they're like, I have diarrhea. I have to go home now.

[B]

Did you know that Liza Minnelli went into Chicago for five weeks because Gwen Vernon swallowed either a piece of Pete or a feather?

[A]

Nobody knows.

[B]

Nobody knows. Different accounts.

[A]

Wait, I. Okay, we gotta talk about all that jazz. But this is gonna help.

[B]

But this is gonna help prepare anymore. Keep calling.

[A]

You sent some helpful links or things to read, watch, whatever, to sort of like, as primer. Before this, I did not have to engage with it in a huge way because this is a movie I've seen probably like 50 times. So I was like, I got this. And I also. Spoiler alert for later, saw it in a theater for the first time ever. Like, I've seen it many times, but never in a theater. I saw it in a theater for the first time last night, so it's fresh in the bright.

[B]

We're gonna talk about that. I watched it last night again to refresh, but not in a theater.

[A]

But one of the only things I did not know that was in one of those little documentaries that you sent me was that that rising platform that they use in the Bye Bye Life sequence at the end is from the act.

[B]

Oh, I know.

[A]

Because they were running out of money. And the guy who was the scenic designer was like, well, I made this for Liza Minnelli for the act. And obviously they had a relationship from Liza with a Z. And they're like, can we use this thing from the act? And Eliza was like, sure. And so that platform's from. That felt like seeing a celeb. I was like, oh, my God. The platform from the act.

[B]

The platform from the act. I love your work.

[A]

You really do love your work. The platform from the act.

[B]

The designer, Ali Gordon is Tony Walton, who won a Tony for Pippin. All connects. And more importantly, was the first Mr. Julie Andrews.

[A]

Oh, my God, you're so right. And what theater did that take place in? I'm just kidding. That's so. There you go. But, yeah, anyway, so that was my sort of celeb sighting of the evening was being like, that's the platform from the act.

[B]

That is indeed the platform from the act. I did do a little extra reading this past past week of the Bob Fosse bio again, because we're going to connect all this in addition to the movie as well as like the aftermath of this movie and then sort of where. What works it has given us since then. And sort of how. I feel like this movie crystallized the Fosse legend and then. And the Fosse reputation. And, I mean, without this movie, I don't think we would have Fosse Verdon totally. Which is a mixed blessing for me.

[A]

Oh, I think a blessing simply in that. How do I phrase this in a way that doesn't sound so stupid? I just like. I like when people know that theater is complicated. Like, I think there is a large portion of people who are not theater lovers or fans who think of theater as being quite fluffy and sort of like, yeah, you write a show and you put a show up and, like, don't think of, like, complicated legacies and personalities. Do you know what I mean? Which I'm sure that if they thought about it a little harder, they'd be like, well, Picasso is a complicated man. I'm sure there are Picassos in theater, too. But, like, I think they don't because they think of musical theater as being sort of like sunshine and rainbows.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Or, like, kind of corny. And so I am happy for the Fosse Verdon of it all. Because I just like when people know that, like, theater is a lot of things. And theater can be. Sweet Charity. But also theater can be. Sweetie Todd. But also theater can be a womanizer. Genius. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Like, I. I'm happy when people sort of cross into the public knowledge sphere.

[B]

Put a pin in that. Because I have a lot to say about all of that regarding to Fusse. But before we do any of that, we have a brief summary of the plot of all that Jazz as per the Criterion Collection. The pre. Natural. Is it pre. Natural. Preternaturally. How do you say it?

[A]

Preternaturally?

[B]

Yes, preternaturally. See, you're the smart one. The preternaturally gifted director and choreographer Bob Fosse turned the camera on his own life for this madly imaginative, self exorciating.

[A]

Excoriating. Because that means like. Like. Like being really hard on yourself.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Excoriating musical masterpiece. I really can be quite dumb sometimes, Roy. I knew what this word was. I just never had said it out loud in my life before. Roy Scheider gives the performance of his career as Joe Gideon, whose exhausting work schedule mounting a Broadway production by day, editing his latest movie by night and routine of amphetamines, booze and sex are Putting his health at serious risk, Fosse burrows into Gideon's and his own mind, rendering his interior world as a phantasmagoric spectacle. Assembled with visionary editing that makes dance come alive on screen as never before. And overflowing with sublime footwork by the likes of Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer, and Ben Vereen. All that jazz pushes the musical genre to personal depths and virtuosic aesthetic heights. I would say that is a pretty accurate.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

Yeah, I agree with all of those.

[A]

It's one of the dance has maybe never looked better on camera. Like, it is such an incredible capture of dance. From rehearsal room dance to audition dance to big, gorgeous fantasy musical numbers, it captures dance in a way that I think is probably good for the history of dance for the next 400 years. Thank God someone got that dance on camera. It's beautiful. It's so good. And everybody's sweaty. It's great. Honestly, I say that with love. I think it is amazing to see the effort that good dance takes.

[B]

When they do the erotica scene. I do get very uncomfortable for the men in suits there, not because of the content, but because everyone else is so sweaty. I'm like, oh, God, it must be stifling there.

[A]

So hot in that room. And the guy going back and forth going, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke.

[B]

Love it.

[A]

So it's hot and smoky in there.

[B]

But do you remember when this movie came into your life, when it entered your chat?

[A]

Yes, I actually do. I watched it for the first time my sophomore year of college. Not even as part of a class, but because a friend of mine was like, have you ever seen all that jazz? And I was like, no, actually, it was my friend Carlos. Carlos Valdez. Do you know Carlos? Have you met Carlos?

[B]

I have met Carlos, actually. Yeah.

[A]

Carlos is the best. So Carlos was like, we should watch this movie.

[B]

Wasn't Carlos at your wedding?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

[B]

Maybe I should reiterate this. We know each other.

[A]

Yeah, There we go.

[B]

We have a history.

[A]

Cool, cool, cool. Great. But yes. So he was like, I just saw this movie. Maybe he watched it in film class. I don't know. But he was like, this movie just fucking blew my mind. Let's have a movie night. Rented it from the library, took the DVD back. It was like four or five of us watching it in a living room on a college tv. So I'm sure it wasn't like the way Bob Flossy intended it to be watched, but whatever. And I remember that Final Image Hits and the song, which I feel like I don't know why I'm, like, talking about it like there's spoilers, but it has such an impactful final moment. We sat through the entirety of the credits in silence, which for let's say five or six opinionated musical theater students, is basically a miracle.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can you imagine ever having five musical theater students having just watched a musical sit in silence to think about it? To think for a second.

[B]

I was about to say, the only time that happened to me in college, it wasn't a musical. It was four of us in my apartment having just watched Schindler's List.

[A]

So we had a similar experience.

[B]

We did. I mean, in a lot of ways, Schindler's List is a ballet. There's a great deal of dance in that.

[A]

And Ethel Merman sings the final song.

[B]

She do. She says, he's got a list. It's Schindler's List.

[A]

Holy shit. Did Spielberg ever consider that getting the audience out tapping?

[B]

I think he regretted not making it a musical, and that's why he gave us the 2022 west side Story.

[A]

Exactly. Anyway, so we watched the film and were stunned to silence. And I still feel that way. I, last night, like, felt exhausted. By the end of the movie, despite having seen it so many times, I was still like, I can't believe it ends this way. It just hits you like a ton of bricks. It's so fantastic. So, yeah, I saw that and then immediately was like, that's the best movie I've ever seen. And then spent years tracking it down because it's, like, available nowhere. Then, like, maybe my senior year, just out of college, somebody told me what the Criterion Collection was, and I was like, great. And so then I bought the DVD off the Criterion Collection and then have shown it to every other human I've ever met.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you know what I mean? Anytime anybody comes into my life, I'm always like, have you seen all that jazz? Like, do you need to. Do you need to see this? We should see this.

[B]

I'm not sure why it's so difficult to obtain online when people were more into physical media, which apparently is making a comeback. I didn't know. Which. I love that in the same way, like, our generation started buying vinyl records and playing them in earnest. Gen z is buying DVDs and playing them in earnest, as well they should

[A]

with all these mergers and everything. Sorry. Not to be, like, on a soapbox, but, like, with all of the. The news currently about, like, all the mergers and the billionaires who can buy each other's companies, and how people say they're in a deal, but it's all a lie and a facade. So this other person, it's like, if you like something and you think it's important to you, you should buy it in physical media immediately, because you never know when those things could be gone forever. So just because some asshole idiot billionaire was like, what's all that jazz? And just, like, wipes it. So go buy DVDs.

[B]

Yeah, it's. I feel like people are starting to remember all of a sudden that despite everything, this is a capitalist society. And if you want to make a statement, you make it with your money, and you do it in person. You don't put a tweet out or a reel out and hope that it changes the world. It rarely does. You. You go and you buy the thing, and you. And you have the thing.

[A]

So also, like, if it matters to you, if it's something that you feel is reflective of a taste, something you'd want to show other people, something you'd want to revisit someday if you have even this tiniest inkling of, like, it would really bum me out if this disappeared from the Internet forever. You should go get it. Bummer to say, because we've been conditioned to think over the last decade of life that things will be online forever. And things will in some ways, but, like, other things won't, and other people get to make those decisions. You have no say on it. So go buy all that jazz.

[B]

Yeah, go buy it. I cannot endorse that more. I'm. I think I've had my DVD of it for 16 years now, something like that. Because I discovered this movie, I want to say, in middle school. It was playing.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Yeah. Well, you and I were.

[A]

Well, I mean. Yeah, I'm saying that, like, we weren't reading Angels in America when we were in high school.

[B]

I was gonna say, like, I don't know if we had similar upbringings in terms of, like, media censorship. I feel like we kind of did it where my parents were.

[A]

That our parents were like, you should watch anything you want. I don't really give a shit.

[B]

Kind of. Yeah, I said it before. My parents were more sort of like, when I was really little, when I was, like, 8 or 9, and I'd want to see something that was inappropriate. They would basically say, like, can you tell me what this is and why you want to see it? Because usually I couldn't.

[A]

I was just like, I heard about it.

[B]

Yeah, I want to see American Beauty. And they're like, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. But then as I got older, you know, 12, 13, you're like, yeah, no, read, watch whatever you want. But, you know, don't make it a secret and we'll talk about it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I feel like I was channel surfing with my dad one night when I was like, 13, and all that Jazz was on Showtime and we watched it and I was obsessed with it because even as a kid, the movie of Cabaret didn't totally grab me.

[A]

Totally. And I have come to like the movie of Cabaret more as I get older. Didn't as much when I was like a young, hungry theater teen who was like, fierce. I want to watch Cabaret now. I'm like, oh, I think this movie is incredible.

[B]

Yeah, Cabaret is objectively a great movie. I still don't fully love it. Not because I think it's bad, just I get it a little bit of an ice coldiness from it.

[A]

I feel the same. I think that was intentional, but I agree with you.

[B]

Yeah, but I mean, it's ironic because that's sort of one of the things that Fosse was always sort of dinged for in his career was his remove and his distance and his cynicism and whatnot. And Cabaret is a piece that actually has a lot of messy heart to it. And so the movie. The movie does have heart. I mean, the final scene with Liza before, when she and Michael York kind of call it quits or whatever, right before she has the abortion, that's a very emotional scene. But still, I'll watch it and I'll go, I'll appreciate it more than I fangirl over it. But Cabaret really was a groundbreaking movie musical for its time. And so it's hard for, I think, a lot of theater fans to look at it for the first time now and not sort of see the watershed moment that it was.

[A]

I feel that way with all that Jazz. Well, all that, I think, because the fantasy of it all has become so commonplace now when people are like, it's a musical, but don't worry, the music's just in their head. I think that's become almost like a trope. But, like, I don't think people realize, like, how much we wouldn't have, like, the great Chicago movie of the 2000s without all that Jazz.

[B]

I agree, But I also think. I mean, all that Jazz, even when it came out, it was not critically, rapturously received. I think the only review I could find that was really like, no, this is a phenomenal film was The New York Times of all papers, no less. But like, most of the reviews, if they liked it, they sort of begrudgingly liked it. And if they were mixed negative on it, they were like, this is so derivative of Fellini. Who does Fosse think he is? Like, why should we care?

[A]

It's funny because it's like, have you seen it? I'm sorry if I'm. This is like an insane question. Like, have you seen Eight and a Half? Not Nine, but Eight and a Half?

[B]

Yes, I have.

[A]

It's an amazing movie. But I don't feel like it is similar at all to all that Jazz. Well, it's, I guess at the center it's about a guy and his women. But, like, sure. But like, the styles are not at all the same.

[B]

No, the concept seat is the same of a thinly veiled autobiographical film that play that about a director going through a challenging moment in their creativity, looking back on their past and their present and their very unclear future. So in that respect, like, the log lines very much are the same.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And I do think there is a bit of. I mean, you can't just say Italian cinema. You kind of have to say fellini, because by 79, Fellini just was Italian cinema. So there is some of that. There is some of that aesthetic in the fantasy sequences, in Jessica Lange's aesthetic, in all of the stuff that's sort of in Joe's mind. Like in the all. Like the backstage situations where he's talking with Lang, AKA Angelique. There's. There's some of that and some of the makeup and hair. But the. The bulk of the movie in the real world is not Fellini at all. Anything that's sort of like William Friedkin, in a sense.

[A]

I fully feel that and I love and I fully agree. Also, I think it's hard not to with like, Rose Scheider being like William Friedkin.

[B]

Oh, that was. I didn't even make that connection.

[A]

But still. I actually still agree with you. Regardless, I think there's only one scene in all that Jazz that. Oopsie, I just knocked my camera. I think there's only one scene in all that Jazz that I think is really good that I think is like basically directly a Fellini ripoff. Which is when they're doing the read through of the show and the show is bad and hokey and it's just the sound effects of him, like, walking around the room and breaking the pencil and deep breathing. That's basically like the opening from eight and a Half where he's like having the panic attack in the car.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's it, though. Like, to me, that is the only thing where I'm like, you probably saw that in that movie and were like, that's really effective. I'm gonna use that. Everything else feels so inherently Bob Fosse to me.

[B]

Yeah. But there's. I mean, there are other movies that did it as well that nobody cared about. Mike Nichol, that same effect in the Graduate when Ben comes out in, like, the scuba suit of just sort of.

[A]

What year is the graduate?

[B]

Graduate is 60.

[A]

Wow. That's earlier than I thought.

[B]

67. 67, maybe.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's. And eight and a half, I think. Is 61. 60 or 61.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But so, like, I mean, with Fellini, Fellini broke the rules in so many ways and did it with such style and such, like, effervescence in this. The thing about Fellini films and the same thing with Fosse is like. And there's. I think there's a reason why Fosse adapted a Fellini film to stage. And Knights and Silveria, turning it into Sweet Charity. They both had this sense of style that was. It's not that it was accidental, but, like, that wasn't what they cared about. Aesthetic was not the thing that they were like, I need everyone to wait.

[A]

Aesthetic is not king. Yes.

[B]

Yeah. They were not. Like, I want everyone to look like a model. I want everyone want to be picture perfect. They had a feeling and a melancholy and a message messiness within them that always translated to this really chic aesthetic. But people would just focus on the aesthetic and not the what was going on inside. It's like, the one thing in the movie version of Nine that they actually get right is Kate Hudson is, like, so obsessed with the aesthetic of Guido Continui's films, and he's basically like, I'm go. Like, I'm going through a mental crisis on every film, and all you can pay attention to is Nicole's makeup.

[A]

Yeah, I also. Okay. This is another thing that I just like, was something I was thinking about after seeing the film last night, which is also because I was doing a little bit of research on, like, just, like, the public opinion and the jokes and the things like that. Because, like, you know, it's a thinly veiled autobiography to the point where the original drafts of the script of which much changed. Said Kander and Ebb said Hal Prince said people's, like, exact names, his real friends. Like, it would be like, Patty. Like, Patty Chayefsky and so then obviously it changed a lot and probably for the better. And also I think because he was able to get away from Truth, he was able to like make better characters. Like, my guess is that probably if he had committed to calling them Candor and Ebb, the portrayal of the songwriters wouldn't have been so cruel. Like. Cause like, he did have a good relationship with Candor and EB and probably was not out to like, embarrass them. So the minute it becomes not them, he's able to be like, oh, now I get to make fun of everybody I've ever worked with, including like Stephen

[B]

Schwartz for being, I was about to

[A]

say, yeah, like being like a prude. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, it's help helpful to go away from reality because it allows you to like, make. Make a better statement about like what it's like to work with people like Blank, as opposed to being like, I'm working exactly with Fred Ebb, who probably wasn't like that at all. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

Well, so for people who don't know, although you should, because this movie is so incredible, you should just fucking watch it. But it is thinly veiled account of Fosse's year from like the fall of 74 to the summer of 75 of when he's ed Movie Lenny and preparing the musical Chicago for rehearsals, has a heart attack. Has to. They have to shut down the show for four months while he recovers. And in real life, Fosse came back from open heart surgery, you know, definitely weaker, more cynical and, and got Chicago back up on its feet. They open in the summer of 75, right after a Chorus Line moves from Off Broadway to Broadway. So. But it is ultimately the that time and everyone in it is either exactly a counterpart to his real life. So like Audrey Paris is Gwen Vernon.

[A]

Gwen Verdon. Yeah.

[B]

Katie, played by Anne Ranking is Anne Ran Ranking.

[A]

How about that?

[B]

And there are even people in the movie who kind of play themselves, like Mary McCarthy or McCarry or whatever her name is. The original Mama Morton is in all that jazz. She's at that table read. She's the actor who won't stop laughing. She's like howling with laughs.

[A]

She has a very funny like 45 seconds on screen, but she is very funny.

[B]

Yeah. In the scene that Ally was talking about where they're doing the first table read and it's all silent, all you see. You only hear the ASMR of Joe's pencil of his fingernails. But you're watching everyone Lose their minds from the script. She's in it, and she's losing her mind. The set model they do is a version of Tony Walton's set model for Chicago. And even the movie that he's editing is called the Standup. And, you know, Lenny is basically.

[A]

Lenny is basically Bruce.

[B]

Yeah, it's all.

[A]

And, like, Joe Gideon sound. You know, it's like. It's like, what's a Bill Schwinn? Or whatever they called him Gordon Schwinn. You know what I mean? It's like. It's like. It's like when you're like, look, I know it's me. I'm gonna try to hide it. But then a lot of the reviews and a lot of the, like, jokes and stuff. Like, I was watching one of those documentaries that you listed that was like. I think it was like, Bob Newhart or something. Something. Making a joke at the Tonys or that year, the Oscars. Thank you. I don't know where I got Bob Newhart from being like, oh, boy. If his ego gets any bigger, doo, doo, doo. And it's like, sure, okay. I understand that the idea of making, financing, producing a movie that is just about yourself for the first draft literally uses your own name. It takes a good amount of ego to even consider that as an idea. But there was a thing I was thinking about last night. Not to, like, defend Bob Fosse in a world that doesn't need. He doesn't need any defense. Like, everyone knows he's a genius, but, like. Like Matt was saying, this was coming off the heels of an amazing year for him where he was the first person to. And I think maybe the only person since to win an Emmy, a Tony, and an Oscar in the same year. The same year. Like, we talk about that as being a lifetime achievement. Like, he came close in the same year. And so there's a funny feeling that I felt last night when I was watching this and sort of, like, doing some research on it, where people were like, who does this guy think he is? And I was like, one of the greatest of all time. That's who he thinks he is. Like, Like. Like, I. I think that there's almost a more interesting read of the movie if you're able to sort of, like, get rid of the fucking. He made a movie about himself and be like, yes, he made a movie about himself. We all know he's talented. He knows he's talented. What's he gonna do? Act. Act all fucking humble that he said that he's talented. He knows he's talented. Let's get to the important stuff is which. Which is, am I a good person? Where will I go when I die? Have I left a good legacy for the people I care about? Certainly I left a good legacy of the things I've made. Is it more important to me, like, he doesn't answer that question. It's just simply a question that is asked, which is like, what's more important to me that I left behind a legacy of fantastic work and I died in an interesting way where I was not ordinary or that I fucked up my daughter forever. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's almost bolder that he does not answer that question, but dares to ask it, because I don't think there is an answer to that question. And I think that he is actually in some ways humble enough to say, I don't know the answer to that question. I am simply aware that I have done that. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

I think so. It's important to note, first of all, that the idea for this movie did not come from Bob Fosse going, you know, who has an amazing story to tell me. That was not what happened. He and the co screenwriter, whose name is Robert Allen Arthur, they were going to adapt a book together that dealt with very similar themes of death.

[A]

A man on his dead. The deathbed. Yeah, totally.

[B]

Exactly. And they fully came up with the screenplay, I think, around the time that Chicago was in rehearsals, I think, and the screenplay was finished and it was good. But basically what Fosse says in the biography is like, basically that the screenplay was great. It was too smart and complicated for him to tackle. He's like, I'm not a good enough. Enough film dramatic director to tackle this. So, you know, let's put that one aside and let's think of something else. And so they start to look at that time of Fosse's life where he almost died and comes out at the other end with, you know, ultimately a creative achievement that wasn't really appreciated when it opened. But then people kind of appreciated it, but then they kind of didn't. And what was going on with his wife because there was a whole dynamic with him and Gwen Verdon of. He was doing the show show for her. And that was a. And as part sort of like, as an apology to her, then he has his heart attack. And he kind of resents the fact that he's doing this for her.

[A]

And we're talking about Chicago, by the way.

[B]

Yes, we're talking about Chicago. And So, but. So all this is to say he comes out the other end of that. But then there's this idea that Fosse starts having a death wish because once he finishes Chicago, he kind of goes harder on himself. And he then does dancing, which is two and a half hours of pure dance. And.

[A]

And as it promises in the title.

[B]

As it promises in the title, which was another one. When that show came out, all of Broadway had the reaction to that, that Hollywood had to all that jazz, which was like, who the does Bob Fosse think he is just creating a show with no book, no original songs? Like, it's just his choreography. What the fuck? And then the show runs for five years and.

[A]

Right. But it's also like, look, I think that if. If he wasn't aware that he was not a good guy, it would be harder to be like, like, guys, shut the fuck up about it. Look how good he is as a. As a creative person. But I think this movie, in a way, in a complicated way, shows that he's aware of his complicated legacy and how bad of a dude he was to many people in his life. And now we're supposed to be like, so he's aware, so should we forgive him? Should we be kinder to him? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, when we get to the. The conversation to me of like, ugh, he's got so much ego. Is almost like, so baseline, where it's like, of course he does. He actually is kind of right to feel that way. Like, I'm not sure if that means his actions were correct, but his ego was not baseless. His ego was completely based on all of his achievements and all of the great sort of groundbreaking, yet to be topped things that he did in his. In a short period of time. So anyway, that's what I was thinking about. Just because, like, I feel like you can't read a review of this movie or a critical essay or something that doesn't start with something like a guy making a movie of his own life. Who does he think he is? And I'm like, okay, shut up. Let's get to the next part, which is the good part and the interesting part. Let's sort of get over the fact that, like, this is about his life. And also to be like, what if I died? And let me put it on film and let me make it disgusting and gruesome and I fuck up in every turn. I don't do anything right? Like, I don't even die right. I fuck up there, too.

[B]

I'LL also say, every idea is a bad idea unless you make it good. You know, like, every idea is a

[A]

bad idea unless you make it good. That is actually what they were saying at the end of Sunday park with George.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That is what. That was a cut line from Playwrights Horizons. It was Celeste number two came out of the painting and said, every idea. Every idea is a bad idea until you.

[A]

Unless you make it good.

[B]

No, it's until you make it.

[A]

Until you make it good.

[B]

Not unless you make it good. No, but you know what I mean? Like every other.

[A]

That was a pre draft for Let it come from you, then it will be true. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

That's exactly what it was. No, but that was. When I do my. My workshops at Florida Thespian, talking to kids about analyzing musicals, I go, every musical sounds like a stupid idea if you say it a certain kind of way. And it's ultimately just, you know, are you going to do a good job with it? With all that jazz? He ultimately makes a good work of it. Have you read the biography, the Fosse biography?

[A]

Yes, I read it. I've revisited parts of it. I probably only read it in its entirety because that's a big old volume, I think I probably read it in, like, 2011. Do you know what I mean? I think it's been, like, a while.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's. I think I read it cover to cover 14 years ago. I have recently picked it up again, just like little pieces here and there.

[A]

Yeah, I'll come back and revisit parts of it. Just to be like, oh, yeah, I remember that anecdote or whatever, but I haven't read it before because the thing

[B]

about Fosse that everyone talks about is that he, his ego was not him walking around going, look how great I am. That was actually kind of what Michael Bennett was like. That's what sort of Jerome Robbins was like. Fosse was. Had such insecurity, and it stems from first the fact that he wanted to be a star performer. That was what he wanted to be.

[A]

And didn't have the juice to be

[B]

a star performer exactly. And, like, fell into becoming a star choreographer and then eventually director. And in fact, like, he. There's a. There's an anecdote of when he wins his Tony for Pajama Game, which really like, catapults his career. He tells his second wife, John McCra McCraken. He's like, it's so weird. I got into this business to be an Actor. He's like, and now I have my pick of the litter as a choreographer. And it's. You know, so many people could only wish to have that kind of success. But he. He was just so thrown by it. He's like, I've been banging my head against the wall for years trying to get noticed, and now I'm getting all these offers, but it's not for what I set out to do. Yeah. What I wanted. And so that's also. And that insecurity kind of always fueled him. And it's ultimately, he. He was the kind of genius that came with fear because he didn't really know where it came from. He knew when it was good, but he didn't really have, in his opinion, the instincts to make it good on the spot. He would watch someone like Jerome Robbins, and he would watch Jerome Robbins just, like, know instinctively how to make something work. And. And he always aspired to be that. But Fosse, I feel like, for me, is the genius that I relate to, not because I'm a genius, but because his taste most likely exceeded his ability.

[A]

Yes. Which is actually a great problem to have.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When you are a person whose taste exceeds your ability, you are constantly striving to be better. And you are pretty humble about. Not humble necessarily, but you are more open to throwing things away because you are like, this has not met my taste level yet.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I trust my taste, but I just don't think this is at my taste level.

[B]

But so with the movie. The movie as well, the thing that he did was first, he and Robert Allen, Arthur, they went around and they interviewed everyone in Fosse's life. They interviewed Gwen Verdon and Anne Ranking Kanter and ebb. They even interviewed, I think, Hal Prince and Marty Richards, like, all these people. And Fosse, people who are in the movie, essentially. And Fosse had grudges against a lot of people who had no grudges against him. So the John Lithgow character, Sergeant. What's his first name?

[A]

No, it's like George or God. What is it?

[B]

I'll find it. John Lithgow plays Lucas Sargent.

[A]

Lucas Sargent.

[B]

Lucas Sargent.

[A]

I love when ladies like, you're my second favorite director.

[B]

Can we talk about that scene for a quick second? And then I'll get to that. There's a scene. So in the movie, Joe Gideon, they are rehearsing the beginning of this show, New York to la, which is essentially Chicago, and. And with a little bit of Pippin as well. And we'll get to that. In a second. But the producer of the show is having lunch with John Lithgow, AKA Lucas Sargent, and they're talking about how good the show is. And. Oh, I guess. Oh, it's. It's.

[A]

Joe's already in the hospital, so they're

[B]

already in the hospital. But I. But I believe he's. I. He's either about to go in for open heart surgery or he's come out of the open heart surgery. But, like, they're. Things are. Things are starting to look good, they say. So they're thinking that Joe's gonna be able to come back to do the show because they reached out to John Lithgow, Luc.

[A]

Just in case.

[B]

Just in case. Yes. When he went into the hospital, like, oh, in case he doesn't make it out, we need the show to go up again. Would you be willing to do it? Oh, let me look at the script. I'll take some notes.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

And so they're at the diner talking, and they say, oh, Joe's gonna make it. I think it'll be good. And John Lithico's like, oh, by the way, here's your script back. I gave you a couple of notes. It's like full. Three full.

[A]

Yeah. Yellow pages all poking out.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Problems they have. And as this is happening, this woman who, by the way, reminds me of the Native American woman who accepted Marlon Brando's Oscar for the Godf. That's what she looks like to me. Am I wrong? I don't know, like the long, straight black hair and like the very.

[A]

What's her name? Littlefeather something?

[B]

Little Feather. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Littlefeather is a very striking woman. It's the only reason why I make the connection because, like, that's a face that I won't forget. So I watch her in this movie. I'm like, you look a lot like her. But I digress. She goes up to John Luthko. She's like, I'm so sorry to bother you. Are you Lucas Sargent? Would you sign my napkin? I'm an aspiring actress, and next to Joe Gideon, you are my favorite director. And I'm so sorry your last show was a flop.

[A]

I'm so sorry your last show was a flop. Wait, by the way, I was gonna ask you this because it last night, and I was like, what show is he teching? Is it based on anything? Is it. Totally.

[B]

Here's the thing.

[A]

Here's.

[B]

Here's the thing. First of all, that woman. I'm like, good luck trying to Have a career in New York now, Honey, you just insulted the second most powerful director in New York to his face. Second of all, Lucas Sargent is not solely Hal Prince. He's.

[A]

He's also Michael Bennett.

[B]

He's also a. Yeah, and he's also a Gower champion. He's. He is those three combined. He, aesthetically and personality wise is most like Hal Prince. And allegedly Hal Prince was who they reached out to in case Fosse died and couldn't continue with Chicago.

[A]

Also, like in the original version of the script, his character is named Hal Prince.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Well, like. Like I said, this movie is better for the fact that they moved away from it being biography and sort of being like, this is what Hal Prince was like. It's more fun to watch this kind of like amalgam of directors. It's also more fun to watch this amalgam of directors through the eye of insecure Fosse, as opposed to. As a true biography of being like, Hal Prince is actually a pretty nice guy. It's like, who gives a sh.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what I mean? If I want to know that, I'll read a book about him. I really want to know what Fosse thinks about him, which is that he thinks he's this like, slimy little pretentious, whatever.

[B]

But it all comes back to personal stuff that's not rooted in reality. What it is is that Hal Prince was one of the co producers of Pajama Game, which launched Fosse's career. But Fosse also, like, didn't do all the choreography on Pajama Game. Jerome Robbins kind of came in and show doctor a little bit because it was Fosse's first musical. He was in over his head. So, like, Steam Heat is pure Fosse, Hernando's hideaways per Fosse. But like, Once A Year Day is kind of Jerome Robbins and things like that. So. But so as Fosse got to do more in the shows, he would still kind of have a vendetta against anybody who was going. Who was. Who knew more than him and was going against him. So, like, they're doing Damn Yankees, they're out of town, and there's this big Act 2 number that Fosse's created that they get to Philadelphia and Hal Prince is like, we gotta cut. You know, it's 12 minutes long, the show is running too long, and Bob Fosse is like, you're out to get me, blah, blah, blah. And just like, always had this thing against Hal Prince and I Think after New Girl in Town, they never worked together again.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And that. And part of the reason why he wanted to do the cabaret movie was he wanted to take it from Hal Prince. Meanwhile, Hal Prince is like, fosse is great. He's very talented. I've got.

[A]

Yeah. He's like, good guy.

[B]

The only thing he ever said against Fosse is when he saw Chicago on Broadway and he said to Kandernet, please tell Bob Fosse that Chicago in the 1920s is not the Weimar Republic at the same time, like, it's. They're very different aesthetics. Sondheim actually had a nastier thing to say about him in the Fosse bio, which was he said, oh, Bob came to see Follies, and he's been making a career out of the last 20 minutes of follies ever since.

[A]

That's delightful. That's so mean. I love that he's not wrong, you

[B]

know, so that's things like, he's not wrong.

[A]

He's not wrong.

[B]

But Fosse saw all the things they were trying to do in the last 20 minutes of Loveland and all that with.

[A]

And has done it more successfully, which is why Sondheim, I'm sure he's a

[B]

little bit more sense to a larger mass of people, for sure.

[A]

Love that. I mean, we now. That we now. I don't know if it's maybe that, like, we can now hold him as a legend, a deceased legend, and also sort of like, be more like. Be more like. Yeah, he was also a real guy now that Sondheim is dead. Mm. Did, like, when they. Young Sheldon ified him in. In Blue Moon. Did you see Blue Moon yet?

[B]

I. I saw Blue Moon.

[A]

You didn't like Blue Moon?

[B]

I liked it fine. We can talk about that more as we talk about.

[A]

Anyway, I like that they were like, here's a little boy, and he's very smart and he's so mean. And I was like, yeah, I, like, enjoyed that.

[B]

Sondheim could be a raging bitch sometimes. But also, like, I'm glad that I. In the end, I'm glad I didn't meet him, because if I tried to be a raging bitch back to him, he was.

[A]

He would have killed you. He would have ripped your head off.

[B]

I would have been like. He would have said something mean to me, and I would have said right back to him. Well, you ran out of musical ideas after 1995. But the other thing in all that Jazz is the composer, songwriter Fred Ebb in particular, took a lot of grievances against that character because he was like, I thought we were friends. Why do you hate me?

[A]

And that character's like a buffoon. But that's why also, I'm like. I'm saying it's better that this character is not really.

[B]

But also. Yeah, that's why I'm glad that he didn't say Fred either, because he is a buffoon. And also, the character isn't Fred. The character is actually Stephen Schwartz.

[A]

That's what I think more and more when I watch it, I'm like, this is Stephen Schwartz.

[B]

Because there's a lot of Pippin in all that Jazz. In the creating of New York to la. The.

[A]

The erotica sequence.

[B]

Erotica sequence is basically what Santa. What Fosse did to. With you. Yeah.

[A]

But also, Stephen Schwartz threatened to walk off the project. Like, he didn't get to keep it because they were like, you're a genius. It was like a huge source of confusion.

[B]

Well, it was a standoff between. Fosse had just lost the battle in the movie of Cabaret of He wanted to fire Joel Gray. And he said to the producers, you either fire. Either I walk or Joel Gray walks. And they go, you can walk. We're keeping Joel Gray.

[A]

Wait, why did he hate Joel Gray so much?

[B]

Because he wanted to play vmc didn't know that. Yeah.

[A]

This is still fun of juicy.

[B]

That's Joel Gray's theory, because he said he basically was like, I was the only one who didn't have good time on that movie because Bob Fosse treated me so terribly. Everyone else, he was, like, really lovely, too. And his theory is that it's because Fosse wanted to play the mc. But also, I think Fosse kind of wanted. The other thing is, Fosse didn't want any semblance of Hell Prince's Cabaret in the movie. He wanted to make it his own.

[A]

His own thing.

[B]

But then with Pippin, you know, Stephen Schwartz, who at that point only had Godspell to his name, was like, I will walk from this thing. And Bob Fosse is like, I'll walk from this thing. I have more clout than you. Than you, kid. So, like, he got his way. But also the character of Victoria and all that Jazz, the ensemble dancer who he beds and then berates constantly throughout

[A]

rehearsals, makes her a better dancer, so to speak. Yeah, he.

[B]

Well, yes, he does make her a better dancer. That's what everyone agrees on. But that character is based off of a woman in the chorus of Pippin who he had hired. And the line about hiring her when she can't sing, or rather, the composer not wanting her because she's not a good enough singer.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That was based off of a conversation that. A fight that Schwartz and Fosse had had about Anne Ranking for Pippin.

[A]

That's funny.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Ann Ranking's a much better singer than people sort of give credit for, but whatever.

[B]

Well, especially if you listen to her in the 70s, she's. She's not bad at all. Things get a lot riskier in the 80s, and especially by the time she does the Chicago revival.

[A]

I agree with that. But even then. But, like, like, in the. In this period, in this era.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Yeah, listen to her. I think she sounds great.

[B]

Listen to her. In good time, Charlie. She's belting her face off, and it's, like, the only thing I've listened to. I went, oh, I can hear how you were as Cassie in A Chorus Line now.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

Yeah, totally. What's your favorite number? And all that Jazz, by the way.

[A]

Oh, my God, that's impossible. I mean, I think my favorite number is There'll be some changes made. Honestly, like, it's the thing that I. When I'm, like, thinking about all that Jazz and, like, have to go watch something on YouTube, like, that is the one that I watch. I think Ann Rankine's performance in it is so incredible. I just love it. I mean, it's really hard not to love everything old is new again. Because it's just, like, so unbelievably charming. It's got amazing choreography, and just, like, it's just joy. But also, like, I honestly really have never fully appreciated how good Roy Scheider is in that moment, too. In not pulling too much focus, like it's truly about them, but just, like, watching a new kind of love shine out of his face. Like, you see him in such an unguarded moment where you're like, wow. I don't know if we ever see Joe Gideon like this ever again. In the film, he says, I love you a lot, as he admits, it's me. The only time you actually see, like, real love on his face.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like. It's like some of the most truthful stuff you learn about him. Even though he doesn't say anything, it's really amazing.

[B]

It's also one of the few times you see him willingly able to accept the love that's being thrown at him.

[A]

Yes. Because it's so innocent and, like, as. As he is so clear about and in such a honesty, like, brave. I Don't know what the word is I'm looking for, you know, Fosse is very honest about being like, I can't tell love from sex. I can't tell sex from love. I can't tell hate from sex. I can't tell hate from love from sex. Like, he's like, just. He's like, I'm fucked up about sex. I need to win in every interaction. I kind of need to own women. I don't really know what love is. Ah, I'm fucked up. Like, he's very honest about it. And it's like one of the few times you see him. Them, like, accepting love and also, like, reflecting love in a way that is not completely mired in. Like, I had too many sexual experiences too young, and I'm kind of fucked up about this. Do you know what I mean? It's great. I mean, like, that's amazing. I mean, it's all amazing. It's all so good. Honestly, last night I cried watching the movie a lot. I watched. I cried, like, a lot. Which is strange because I'm not sure if that's, like, a reaction many people have to the movie, whatever. But also, like, it's strange to have seen a movie so many times and suddenly had this reaction. I don't think I've ever cried before watching the mov. And I really cried a lot in the number that the daughter does in the fantasy sequence where she's, like, all dressed up like an older woman and kind of like, you know, like a tart with her makeup and the heels. She can't walk in the heels.

[B]

One of these days. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God. That really fucked me up last night. Bad. That really fucked me up.

[B]

Cause you also can't walk in heels.

[A]

Because I also can't walk in heels. No, it just was so. Just. It's so sad.

[B]

It's a very sad song. It does have one of my favorite shots in the movie, which is the slow motion shot of Anne Rankin jumping in the air and kissing at the camera.

[A]

Oh, so cunt.

[B]

It really is.

[A]

But also just, like, when they all get down to, like, that, like, white hearse and drive away into, like, nothingness. And they're like, you're gonna leave the little girl without a father. It really, like, got me. I was like, this is so sad. This is, like, really devastating.

[B]

The beginning of that song is serving Bugsy Malone cunty realness. And.

[A]

But then it gets hate Bugsy Malone.

[B]

But whatever. Oh, so do I.

[A]

But.

[B]

But it does remind you that even at that age Jodie Foster was that girl.

[A]

Yeah, that is true.

[B]

She is the only. She is serving Kieran and Shipka in a movie where everyone else is serving rugrats. And. And it's, It's. You watch her on another planet. Yeah, yeah, totally on another planet. But that's sort of what young little Michelle is serving of like all dolled up. And also has those creepy, creepy shots of the doctors and surgeons with the equipment. Love that.

[A]

It's so. That is so good.

[B]

It is. But I love, so I love that whole fantasy sequence of while he's in surgery, while he's under and imagining Leland Palmer singing to him and then Ann Reinking singing to him and then daughter Michelle singing to him and the women that he's used and abused singing to him. Right.

[A]

Singing who's sorry now? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And something that a lot of people in Fosse's life, everyone in his life who saw the movie, agreed that he was extraordinarily hard on himself, himself. They were like. Because the conversation of. Is that you? Is that Joe Gideon? He would always say, like, it's. It's not me, it's Joe Gideon. I swear, it's Joe Goody. And then everyone's like, bob, sure, yeah, sure.

[A]

We saw your first draft.

[B]

Sure, yeah, but. And not even that. He was like, no, because, you know, we adapted him. And then when Roy Scheider came on, because Roy Scheider was a replacement for Richard Dreyfus, which I'm so glad that was the case because Dreyfus would have ruined this movie.

[A]

You really think so?

[B]

I really do.

[A]

I'm not sure if I feel the same way, but I'm just. I am still so happy as Roy.

[B]

I think. I think Dreyfus, his charm comes from a manic energy which Fosse does not have. And I think if you make Joe Gideon a manic individual, he becomes insufferable as. Whereas with Scheider, it's the laid back reserve and almost like calm in the face of. Of a storm that makes him so.

[A]

And just like his, like his, the. His dark eyes sort of nothing. Or like when he's in the hospital, everyone's lecturing in him. He's like, yeah, sure, yeah.

[B]

When Cliff Garman's like, I'm not saying you're a quia, but you do have tendencies. And he's like, right.

[A]

Like, I feel like he, like, sells that in a way. I don't know how many other actors could really sell that.

[B]

Well, so do you know the other actors that were. They were to trying to have. Consider for this in general.

[A]

Yeah, I know they were looking at Shirley MacLaine again.

[B]

Shirley MacLaine. They really wanted for.

[A]

For Leland Palmer.

[B]

For Gwen Vernon. Yeah. And she. But she was doing the Turning Point, I believe, at that moment. No, no, the turning Point was over. I think she just had reservations about doing another Gwen Vernon role.

[A]

As well. She should. As well. They all should have. It's sort of crazy. It's like, hey, we all learned our lesson.

[B]

Let's not do that. And it's unclear why he went with Leland Palmer, because from my research, she did not audition. He fully sought her out. And she was like, I haven't seen you in five years. Like, not since p. I don't know, like, why you want me. Also, I found God now, so I don't know if I should do this movie. He's like, you're gonna do it. And the thinking is that if Gwen had been working at the time of Pippin, Fastrada would have been her role.

[A]

Yes, right. Gwen Verdon probably would have been in Pippin, but she was doing something else, so she couldn't have been in Pippin.

[B]

She wasn't really working at that point. She was. She. She had retired after Redhead to have their daughter. What's her face?

[A]

Nicole.

[B]

Nicole, Yes. I was gonna say Nina, but I'm like, no, that's Al Hirschfeld. Nicole. They had to have their daughter Nicole. And once Nicole was like three or four is when Gwen went back to do Sweet Charity. And then she kind of went back to being a mom again. And part of the reason why Chicago Happened was a Roxie Hart was a dream role for Gwen. And it took them forever to get the rights. Cause Maureen Watts just wouldn't die. But then she was like, oh, this time I don't want it to just be a star vehicle for me. She's like, I want this to be a show that I develop. I want to produce it.

[A]

I want to have a nest egg for the rest of my life.

[B]

Yes, yes. And I want royalties for my daughter and things like that. Um, and so that was. That was that. But, yeah, I don't think Gwen was really performing at the time that Pippin was happening. Plus, she and Fosse, they had officially separated, even though they were still very.

[A]

Never divorced.

[B]

Yeah, totally never divorced. Still in each other's lives. Their. Their relationship was far less contentious than the relationship of Audrey and Joe Gideon in the movie. Even like. Even though they. The movie kind of portrays them as sort of like, contentious buddies who have a Past. And the, the story goes that Verdon and Fosse, even when they were like at their most, like at each other's throats, it was still very much like if someone would maybe say something negative about them to them. Like if someone was going to Gwen and they're like, well, you know, Bobby's a dick, she'd be like, you don't get to say that exactly.

[A]

But I do. I feel that that is present in the movie in a way. It is.

[B]

It's just a little more biting in the movie.

[A]

It's a little more biting. But again, if he's being more hard on himself, more self excoriating than, than in reality, then I, then I, I can see how he's like, well, this is what Gwen's really thinking, even though she'd never say it. You know what I mean? Like being harder on himself than is true. But like her being like, it's the best thing you've ever made, you asshole. Is such a great line. Because it's like she can't. She is one of the people who understands him the best. Not just as a person, but as a performer and as a creator. And so when he makes this erotica sequence that like threatens to basically tank the show. Cause it's like, who's gonna walk? Who's gonna say no? Are they gonna pull money, pull funding? It's her dream show, her dream vehicle, a la Chicago. She's playing a role that she's maybe not right for. A 24 year old woman. Again, kind of Roxie Hart esque, like this is all sort of Chicago adjacent. And then she's like, yeah, well the number that you made is impeccable. Incredible. Going to ruin the show. I hate you for doing. It's incredible. You're one of a kind talent. No one could have done that but you. Why did you do that to me? Why are you putting me in this position? I hate you and I love you. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's like. It feels so real to me. It feels so realistic.

[B]

I never got the like. Like she had her producer hat on for that moment. I always got it as. It's like Kathy in last five years when she sings like, yes, he's insane, but look what he can do. It's that line, but with so much more like actual pain about it of like you, like you.

[A]

I also see the thing you're just talking about with Gwen Verdon being like, this is not just a music, this is not just a star vehicle. I'M not just trying to, like, get a Tony. I want to make a thing that lasts forever. I want something that makes me money, for my kid, for my family, for my life. And it's like, if you put this number in this show, all the producers are being like, there goes the family audience now. Frank Sinatra will never record it. And it's like, I think she is thinking about that. And I think that she's the only person who has good enough taste whose first reaction isn't, fuck you for doing it. It's incredible. And fuck you for doing it. Yeah, like, you know what I mean? Like, she's the only person who can have that be her first reaction.

[B]

Does the movie imply that Audrey is on the producing team for this?

[A]

Okay, so I think so. I think so simply because, like, it seems to me it's a script she kind of circled. So maybe she's not a producer, she's a creative.

[B]

Whatever they do say, what is actually my favorite dramatic scene of her, her rehearsing, warming up alone in the studio. And they're having that argument while she's dancing. He says, I'm only doing this because you want to play that goddamn 24 year old. So they do say it is her desire for the show.

[A]

Also. I always interpreted her as being on the leadership end of it when they're talking to the cast saying, we're going to have to postpone the show for four months because Joe Gideon's in the hospital and everybody's mood is so sour and the producers don't quite know how to lighten the mood. They're trying to be nice, but. But, like, they can't stop talking money and everybody's mood is bad. And then she gets up and starts being like, it's gonna be huge, it's gonna be great. And she starts quite literally tap dancing, like, to cheer people up. Like, to me, that doesn't read as lead actress. That. To me, that reads as like something between the two. Like, I get the sense that she has her fingers in more pies than just being like, on the lead. Sure.

[B]

I think I'm trying to think of this as somebody who maybe doesn't know the lore of Gwen Verdon and Bob Bossing in Chicago. And I think that there's a world someone could see this and think to themselves, that is her just trying to be a group leader as well as everyone knowing her, loving her, whatever, knowing that she's been to the hospital and all this other stuff. But also, who's to say? I think it also just is a great opportunity for Leland Palmer to be a great dramatic actress.

[A]

Yeah. Also, like, something I learned from doing some research for this was that, like, her performance wasn't really very warmly received.

[B]

I mean, nothing was really warmly received in this movie.

[A]

I sort of shot because I think she's so fucking great in the movie.

[B]

Everyone's great in this movie. Roy Scheider. From what I could read, Roy Scheider was the only thing that was consistently singled out in all of.

[A]

Didn't he get an Oscar nomination? He did, rightfully so.

[B]

Yeah. And the Oscars, also, according to the Fosse biography, the Oscar nominations took everyone by surprise as well as the wins because again, the. The critical reception was sort of mixed, leaning toward. Leaning towards negative. But what. And it like, Scheider got a Golden Globe nomination, which even then, like, the Golden Globes weren't super influential, but they were like the really first big award show pre Oscars. So if you weren't nominated for stuff, you weren't in the.

[A]

You kind of out of. Yeah, you weren't in the conversation.

[B]

And so he was nominated. And I think everyone just sort of assumed, oh, he'll probably get nominated. But like, I don't know about all that Jazz. And what happened was that all that Jazz actually ended up being a surprise box office hit. And like, like the, the. The world, not just America, like, the world really liked it and kind of rebelled, rebuffed the critics, which is a common trend in the late 70s, early 80s of movies and. And Broadway shows, that the prestigious critics, like, this is not the real thing.

[A]

Right. And people being like, well, I think it is, so fuck you.

[B]

Yeah. Like, I mean, that's the story of Evita. Right? Of Evita kind of got dismissed by American critics and audiences were like, well, fuck you. I like it. Same thing with Pippin. I think Jaws kind of got sort of mediocre reviews. The Exorcist got mediocre reviews. And America is a whole was like, no, this is amazing and you're all idiots. But so because of that, there became a lot of buzz about it. So the movie got a bunch of nominations. It ultimately lost best picture, director and actor to Kramer vs Kramer, which is

[A]

a really good movie.

[B]

It's a really good movie. It's the difference for me. And Kramer vs Kramer also was like, that was the big hit of the year.

[A]

She was that girl.

[B]

She. She really was that girl. And the one thing that I can't deny, Kramer versus Kramer is. Is like, it is. It is a. It's a strong film. It holds up in a lot of ways. All that Jazz excites me more. But also, all that Jazz is about something that's far more stylized and just weird and messy.

[A]

But, like, I think Kramer versus Kramer is an amazing movie. I like all that Jazz better. It's in my top five movies. Kramer versus Kramer is on my top five movies. But, like, it'd be hard to say that it's not like, sort of an American classic film.

[B]

We're not taking away Meryl's first Oscar for that movie. She's wonderful. I would maybe take away Jane Alexander's nomination for Kramer vs Kramer and give that to Leland Palmer.

[A]

Yeah, she's.

[B]

She's just. She's just so good. I think, again, that the thing about this movie also is that it is such an acerbic take on everyone. And so even the people in Fosse's life who sought it were very thrown by it. And there was a divide in terms of how to respond about it. Like Gwen Verdon, Anne Ranking, Ben Vereen. They were all like, I have no words. Like, it's similar to. To Leland Palmer in the movie of. It's the best thing you've ever made. And you. It was. It was a lot of like, I can't talk to you for a week, and when I talk to you in a week, we'll talk about the movie. But, like, right now.

[A]

Right now, I just need to take a second.

[B]

Right? Yeah, right now. Don't talk to me. And. But then when they all came back, what they said to him was like, you're. Why were you so mean to yourself? Like, yeah, yeah. Like, you're a son of a. But you're not that kind of a son of a bitch. I am. I am still in your life for a reason. And people like Fred Ebb said, no, no, no. And I think Paddy Chayefsky said the same thing too, of, like, no, no, no, no. This is his ultimate con of. He beats himself up and goes, like, I'm such a terrible person. Why would you stake sick around?

[A]

Right? So you can forgive him.

[B]

Yes, it's to absolve him, but he doesn't actually grow from it.

[A]

And it's funny because I think the more and more I watch it and the more and more time goes on. I actually don't think that was his long con. Like, I really don't.

[B]

I don't think so either.

[A]

Like. Like, I'm gonna make this movie so people feel sorry for me. So people go, oh, he had a hard past. He has to. He has to fuck women. He had a hard life. Like, I don't think he made that as a kid. I don't think he made it for that reason. I think he made it because he hated himself like many great artists do. They're like, I'm a piece of shit. I'm a nobody. I got nothing underneath here. It's all tap dancing on top. He has the best line in the movie. Well, the best line in the movie is, how dare you use my phone to call someone who isn't gay? But the second best line is when he goes. Is when he goes, I hate show. You see, this is it. I hate show business.

[B]

Joe, you love show business.

[A]

He goes, yeah, I love show business. I'll go either way. Like, to me, that. That is like the. To me, that is like, the backbone of the movie, which is like, it's a horrible business. People backstab you. It's. It's. They don't give a about you. You could be lying dead in the hospital and already talking to replacement. Also, where else can you see art like this? Where else can you make stuff like this? Where else can you have people like this? Yeah, you know, I'll go. Yeah. And every day I feel differently about it. Like, I'll go either way. Like. Like, that's how I feel today. I'll feel differently tomorrow. Do you have to take. I have to. Wait. I have to ask you a question. Yes. Do you have to take an ad break?

[B]

Do you think I have to pee? Okay, well, take an ad break in one second. Before we take an ad break and you pee, I need to say this one last thing, please. The other great line of this movie belongs to Ann Reinking, and you gotta know what I'm talking about.

[A]

I just wish you weren't so generous with your cock.

[B]

There we go.

[A]

Because it's such a good line that he has to write it down.

[B]

He's like, that's good. Yeah, I think there's. There's. I have. Okay, so I've yet to actually see the Fabelmans, but Blank Check won't shut. I know Blank Check won't shut up. I don't care. Spielberg does not mean that much to me as it does to straight men. And you.

[A]

I don't care. It's just a good movie.

[B]

Sure, I'll watch it eventually. But, like, here's my thing. I listen to movie podcasts like Blank Check and this Head Oscar Buzz and Big Picture a lot, which is frustrating because for every episode I love, they'll Talk about stuff. I'm like, I want to just get in there and strangle you all. Which is I'm sure how a lot of people feel when they listen to this podcast.

[A]

Totally. And we're talking about heels click clacking about. And they're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Or.

[B]

Or when I say things like, I don't know, I've got issues with the libretto of Ragtime and just like the whole tone of. And people being like, God, it's a masterpiece. But so the. There's that. Apparently there's a scene in Fabelman's when Michelle Williams and what's his face from There'll Be Blood. Tell the one that Paul Dano. Yes, I was going to say the one that Tarantino hates Paul Dano. They're telling the kids we're getting a divorce. And the Spielberg avatar starts imagining how he would film this scene while he's like living it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is straight out of that one moment of all that jazz. Jody Gideon is talking to Katie. He. She's walked in on him with another woman and she. They're having like a conversation about this stuff and she calls a boy in her ballet class who's not gay. That's the line Ally was talking about. How dare you use my phone to call someone who's not gay. And she was like, well, you can go out with any woman you want. He's like, yeah, any woman. But like, I stay in with you. And it gets very real for a second. And she's like, I know who you are. I. I love you for a very specific reason. And what we have. And then she says, I just wish you weren't so generous with your cock. And rather than that actually sink in as a human, it hits him as an artist and he's like, fuck, I gotta write that line down.

[A]

He's like, that's good. I gotta write that. I gotta write that down.

[B]

Yeah. And then he like leaves the room to go do that basically. And then they end up resolving their argument. But like that is who he is in a nutshell of. In this very real moment. He's like, that's a really good one liner. I gotta write that down.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And on that note, Ali Gordon, let's take a quick break.

[A]

I'm free to pee. Really? I beg to differ with you.

[B]

How do you mean? You're the top.

[A]

Yeah, you're an arrow caller.

[B]

You're the top.

[A]

You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet

[B]

of Fred Astaire and Or Bick.

[A]

I also was remembering while I was peeing that I asked a question that we have not answered, which is, do you think it's a specific show they're sort of making fun of when they go see the Hal Prince type director directing something that is a flop? Like, would you. Is there a show that. That's supposed to be, do you think?

[B]

I don't think it's meant to be a specific show. If I may, I want to now tie this into the blue moon of it all, the Fosse verdant of it all, the tick, tick, boom of it all, which is that it looks to me like it is Fosse making fun of the Hal Prince aesthetic because it's. It's this very avant garde, esoteric fuck kind of a set of just like. It's a bed on a platform with a floating window. Floating window, window. And. And white curtains. And he keeps telling Jules Fisher, literally, the famous line designer, Jules Fisher is like, more shadowy. More shadowy, darker. It's a seduction scene. And. Which is Prince. It took critics a while to start digging on Prince, what they were digging Fosse on, which was like, oh, a black box with, like dark lighting and. And Mylar, you know, black paneling on the end. Like how. How hell Prince of you. Yeah, it took them until the 80s to that with Prince. They were doing that with Fosse pretty much right after Pippin. And I think Fosse was doing it as a way of like, can no one else see that? Hal has the same style for all right.

[A]

Like, he's like, it's a fucking bed on a platform. Yeah, yeah. Which is really funny. That scene is just so funny.

[B]

Actually, the interesting thing is that. So Fosse was very spiteful towards Hal Prince because he always felt like Hal Prince had it out for him over the years. And anything Hal did, as far as Phosi was aware of, was a slight Gower Champion. I think Fosse was jealous of, because Champion always got the kind of success and reviews that Fosse never got from shows that were not nearly as boundary pushing as what Fosse was doing. But, like, you know, because. I'll get to that in a second. And then Bennett is sort of this wunderkind who gets to come up and like, kind of have none of Fosse's problems. You know, he. He comes up through the ranks and has all of the. The innate instincts that Robbins had that Fosse kind of had to work to learn and. And gets all of the Accolades and all of the money and all of the prestige and notoriety for A Chorus Line, a show. That, to be clear, Fosse wasn't alone in this. All of Michael Bennett's contemporaries thought very little of A Chorus Line. Sondheim, Prince, really. They all thought it was sentimental and kind of cheap. And it was. I mean, we're talking like a very elite circle of people. But, yeah, I think also, if A Chorus Line ran for two years, no one would have. They would have not bothered. They were like, chorus Line's cute. She's a cute show. But it became what it became.

[A]

And then they were like, it wasn't even that good in the first place. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. It's sort of how I am with certain shows right now, where it's like, the fan base is so loud that I'm like, I liked it fine. I thought it was okay. But now you're being so annoying that you're making me hate it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're making me wonder what you guys are seeing in it now.

[B]

Yeah. And making me kind of resentful that I, A, that I can't feel this way. And B, I'm sort of like, what. What is going on here? It's. But so with Bennett, Fosse was really kind of. Also kind of spiteful on. Which is ironic because Bennett idolized Fosse and wanted to be him so badly. And in fact, when he was making all that jazz for the audition sequence on the palace stage, Fosse said, I'm going to do in eight minutes what it takes Michael Bennet two hours to do every night.

[A]

That's crazy. I mean, look. And can I be honest? Yeah, he does now. It's missing all the joy and whimsy and love of A Chorus Line. So not to. Not to. Not to bash on A Chorus Line, but he does do that. He does do the last 20 minutes of follies and the first. And the first hour and 45 minutes of a Chorus Line pretty effectively in a shorter amount of time in this movie. Movie.

[B]

There's a couple. No, no. The. The hospital dream sequence is a far creepier. And I would say. I mean, I know you cried. I don't find the last 20 minutes quite as heartbreaking as I find parts of Loveland and Follies.

[A]

Yeah. I also don't know if I cried because I found it heartbreaking. I think I cried because I was, like, moved, disturbed.

[B]

I didn't mean to put words. I don't mean to put words in your mouth. I like to put other things in there. But the. Hey, hey. The moment in, in the, in the ending of the movie that gets me is it is ultimately the bye Bye life sequence. A. It's just, it's astonishingly executed. Even more astonishing when you learn, as you were saying earlier, is that that sequence was supposed to be entirely different. It became this sequence at the.

[A]

They ran out of money, essentially.

[B]

Yeah. They. A second studio had to take it on because the studio they were with wouldn't give them any more money. And so, so they cut a deal I think with Fox maybe. And they're like, hey, if you give us an extra million, can you work a deal with the other studio about who gets domestic and international distribution? And we won't make the finale we planned on making. We'll make a cheaper one. But we still need to make the finale. Because originally it was going to be the opening night of New York, NY

[A]

LA, interspersed with something like this, which was also supposed to be a fantasy sequence, but not this full fantasy sequence.

[B]

Yes. And they were going to. They were also going to. They were going to end it with not him in the body bag, but with like the, the response to New York la, which was. It becomes a hit and Lucas Sargent gets all of the credit because Lucas Sargent's the one who takes it on. And Lucas Sargent does his own thing with it. Like a lot of Joe Gideon stuff gets sort of thrown out, which might have been for the better. Because if you look at the way Audrey Paris is in that table read, she's not happy with how that script is.

[A]

No, she thinks it's bad and it is bad. Like, like they pretty unequivocally say about four lines of dialogue and they're all bad. You're like so bad.

[B]

So you see, Sandy, everyone in LA has a car. I had a girlfriend who bought one just to get to the bathroom.

[A]

The last line of the show being, only in America can a 24 year old girl like me own a house like this in Beverly Hills. Then the lights go down and the show's over.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

That fucking rocks. That's the funniest line of dialogue ever written for anything.

[B]

Not since Christine Baranski. Don't even start. Because even though we're friends who grew up here together.

[A]

Exactly. It had big Cher show energy. Oh my God, the Cher show's like, second line of dialogue was her dad being like, Honey, it's 1953. Women can be anything. It was like one of my favorite lines of dialogue I've ever seen. Like, I would do anything in My life to have a time traveling apparatus and go back to see Cherishow again. I would do anything to see Cherishow again.

[B]

I would. Here lies Ali Gordon. She would have done anything to see Cher show again.

[A]

It was such a night of my life. It was like one of the definitive nights of my life.

[B]

And see, I have forgotten more about the Cher show than Cher herself has done in her own life.

[A]

I wrote down everything. The lights came down at intermission, and I was with my friend, and we were like, we have to write down everything that just happened so we don't forget. I wrote down every line of dialogue that, like, blew my mind. He loves you. Like, I love this bong. I wrote down every line of dialogue. I'm not wrong. I'm Robert Altman.

[B]

Can you. Can you. I'm not wrong about Robert Altman.

[A]

It's. I'm not wrong, comma, I'm Robert Altman.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

And it was something, a twist. Like, you weren't supposed to know who it was. You're like, who's this guy? Who's this guy gonna. Who is this guy talking to Cher? And she was like. He was like, you're a star. You're right to be in this movie. And she was like, what if you're wrong? And he said, I'm not wrong. I'm Robert Altman.

[B]

All I remember about the Cher show was. I remember Emily Skinner was there, Michael Baress was there, and was not nearly naked enough, in my opinion.

[A]

No. He also played Robert Altman.

[B]

Okay. Could he not have played a naked Robert Altman? Like, come on. Sure.

[A]

I'm not wrong. I'm naked, comma, and I'm Robert Altman.

[B]

And I'm Robert. Is the Cher show for you what Diana the musical is to me?

[A]

I think so.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I think so. Because, like, I also, like, enjoyed watching Diana. But I don't. I don't think that I was, like, on my. I, like, I wasn't like, if I could have watched the Cher show standing. You know, like, when a guy's watching football. You know, like, when a guy's watching football and they get real close. They get real close to the screen. Not because they need to see better, but because the intensity of it. They're like, I have to be as close as possible. That is how I wish I could have watched the. Share show. I wish I could have been standing at the lip of the stage, just sort of like. Like, just like, sort of like taking it all in.

[B]

Yeah. No, that was. That was me both times. I Saw Diana on Broadway. I was basically on my knees, mouth open, and I was like, please, Daddy, all of it all over me.

[A]

And, like, I really. I really enjoyed watching Diana. But, like, I don't think I felt that way. Like, I think that for me, that is your show.

[B]

You know, what movie Michael Buress would have been so phenomenal in? All that jazz.

[A]

So true.

[B]

Yeah. Here's the thing. Bob Fosse choreography, yes, it is sexy. Erotica is very titillating. But what I've always found about Bob Fosse to be true is he has such a sense of humor with his choreography. He makes funny choreography. You look at rich man's frug, you look at the rich kid rag in Little Me, you even look at Big Spender's actually really fucking funny.

[A]

Big Spender's hilarious. Honestly, even things that are not meant to be funny, he finds moments of comedy or of, like, dark comedy. Like the glory sequence in Pippin.

[B]

The Manson Trio.

[A]

Yeah, the Manson Trio. But even, like, the Manson Trio has, like, a sense of humor, but also just, like, the staging behind it of the ways people are dying being like, ha, ha. It's comedic. It's cartoonish. Violence is basically the lesson that Pippin learns from it is that he cannot handle violence. Violence is very real, but it's in a sort of ironic way. They. They present it in a bloodless kind of cartoonish way. And we see him go, I can't see that ever again. Which I actually think is more effective than, like, Game of Thrones seeing it and being like, this is real. Like. Like, we get to see the stylized version. He sees the real version, and there's comedy in it, even though that moment is not funny. Like, it's really clever.

[B]

Well, I mean, and you even look at the with youh Orgy sequence, The. The. The male ensemble grabbing Pippin by every limb and lifting him up in the air and lowering him down. And each time he gets lowered, a different woman of the ensemble rolls in front underneath him. That's funny. So it becomes. It becomes an assembly line of sex. And it. It takes what is ultimately a salacious activity for a lot of audiences and makes it palatable by having an attitude about it and a commentary about it. And ultimately, it is that, like, yes, you know, free love is great. And. And sex can make you feel good. When you're doing it to prove something, to get away from something, it becomes mechanical. And it doesn't matter how many people you bed, ultimately, you just become like, it's the. I imagine those guys On Jersey Shore being like, I'm a fuck machine. And Bob Foxy's like, right, Isn't that terrible? Here's what a fuck machine does.

[A]

Yeah, this is what it looks like. Fucking be a fuck machine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It's all great. It also is such an incredible celebration of the human body. Like, he choreographs in a way that makes bodies look so phenomenal. And not even in a sexy way. In that way that, like, almost when you see, like, a great piece of, like, visual art, that you're like, wow, this person managed to capture a body. Like, they made it out of st. They made it out of stone. How'd they make this muscle look so real? Or, like. Like, oh, my God. This real life is so. It's like. It feels like a photograph. It's like she's hunched over that desk in a way that's so real. Like, his choreography makes the body look so strong and athletic and funny and powerful and muscular and. And sexy. And, like, he just. Like. He just makes the body look so good. And sometimes he looks. Makes it. Makes it look good, like, in a sexy way where you're like, jesus Christ. Like, look at her. Look at her gorgeous legs. But sometimes he just, like, you just are like, wow. Like, the body is an incredible tool, and I'm, like, so blessed to have one. Like, he makes me go like, wow. Human bodies are phenomenal. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

I mean, this is where Sandal Bergman, as the. Basically the cheater of Erin for takeoff with us, what he does on her body. And granted, he did not choreograph this on her. He choreographed this on a different woman who, a week before they shot it, quit because he was like, okay, so for the erotica thing, I think Cheryl's gonna go topless. And she was like, no, that was not in my contract. And you're not gonna get me to do nudity.

[A]

Is that the blonde woman who's at the top? Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. That was supposed to be a woman by, I believe, by the name of Cheryl Clark. And she quit a few days before they were due to film it because he announced at the last second he wanted her topless, and she said no. So he called Sandal Bergman, who he had worked with, I believe, on Pippin. He definitely had worked with her. I can't remember if it was Pippen or other stuff, but calls her up last second, he's like, hey, can you learn two numbers in a weekend and film it for me? But also, you gotta be topless at the end and she was like, oh, okay, fine. But what he does with her for the first section of the takeoff with us is seductive, playful, cheeky. Very. Like, whatever Lola wants. Right?

[A]

It's.

[B]

It's. Yes, she's gorgeous. He's not what's I'm looking for. He's not exploiting that for any kind of sensuality. Rather, he is using her as a secret weapon to entice the audience. And then when they get to erewhile erotica, it becomes a much more forceful weapon of sensuality. And even though she looks stunning, it stops turning us on.

[A]

Yes. It gets spooky.

[B]

Yeah. Which is intense.

[A]

It gets real spooky, which is. Yeah. It's amazing, actually. He is so incredible. He is such a hand on the dial of this, like, fine, fine line where it, like, it kind of goes. It kind of slips from sexy to creepy in a way, and you're like. Sort of like, whoa, when did we get here? Like, there's not like, a hard line or a funny moment or, like, it just, like, suddenly you're like, oh, I'm uncomfortable. And you don't kind of remember when you got there. Yeah, it's really amazing.

[B]

It's also the kind of vulnerability of a human being where the mystery becomes gone, and thus they become a little less sexy. It's the. Once you know what somebody looks like when they come,

[A]

you either have to be in love with them or you have to never see them again.

[B]

1,000%. As John Mulaney said, anyone who's seen my dick and met my parents needs to die. But yet, like, it's every person who I have been with, Ms. Ali Gordon, who has sort of been in my life. Either. It's either, like, we did. We did that once or twice. It was nice. But now, like, we've learned to become, like, just really good friends. The very Gwen Fosse of it all.

[A]

Or.

[B]

Or it's like, I can't be your friend. I know you look like when you've gone to. When you've gone to that moment. And I think that because Fosse really only Fosse mentality has always been like, once I've seen you climax, I can't ever see you again. With the exceptions of Gwen ANN ranking. John McCraken. McCraken. McLachlachlan. McCraken. And then his first wife, because Fosse had a wife who he cheated on with Joan. And then he cheated on. And Mary. Joan. Then he cheated on Joan with Gwen.

[A]

Gwen.

[B]

And then Joan died, and then.

[A]

And so on and so forth.

[B]

Yes. And then cheated on Gwen with everyone.

[A]

Everyone. Yeah.

[B]

Then he and Gwen split. He got with Anne ranking, then cheated on Anne with everybody. He and Anne split. It's like he also was Julie Haggerty for a while, like, and Jessica Lang for a while.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Yeah. Craziness. But I do think that, like, because of how Bob Fosse was introduced to, which is ultimately that he was assaulted as a 13 year old. And that moment is shown in the movie a little differently, but not that differently.

[A]

I think it's most close to life in Fosse Verdon. I think I get the sense from reading stuff that what happens in Fosse Verdon is pretty. Pretty accurate.

[B]

Pretty accurate, yeah.

[A]

Which is less that it's one individual moment and more like a series of moments, which is just like, he was a kid who shouldn't have been around sex and was not just around, quote, unquote, adult things, but, like, literally sex, like, witnessing it and having it done to him. And, like, just like things that, like, shouldn't have happened to somebody that young.

[B]

Yeah. Without getting too far into it, Fosse allegedly lost his virginity by sex happening to him, not by having sex with somebody. And it happened more than once with women who are much older than he was and with multiple women around him. So it wasn't. It a. Wasn't even. Even private. It was like a very public spectacle. And his youth and his inexperience kind of made him easy prey to these older burlesque women. So that for that to be your introduction, it's actually, maybe it's because I'm on a Mad Men deep dive right now. Or we walk right now. There's so much Don Draper. There's so much Bob Fosse in Don Draper.

[A]

Oh, absolutely.

[B]

To the point where you're like, did Matt Weiner watch All that Jazz and kind of take notes on what to give Donfer's origins?

[A]

I think in some ways maybe, like, I think it's funny that, like, all that Jazz wasn't so warmly received because, like, to me, when I talk. When I hear film directors and things, talk about things, they're always like, well, and of course, we watched all that Jazz. Like, to me, it seems to be like this sort of, like, foundational text. So, like, I would be shocked, shocked if Matt Weiner wasn't like, oh, yeah, I mean, we watched all that Jazz. Yeah, we watched that.

[B]

Well, ultimately, that comes down to what I've spoken about a lot on the this pod lately, which is that There is no deciding factor on the quality of a work except for time. Time is what decides if what you made was good or not. Because critics can give you all the praise in the world. And then in 10 years, everyone turns around and denies it or vice versa. Nobody likes it, and then 10 years later, everybody loves it. You can win all the Oscars when all the Tonys and people look back and go, what were we doing?

[A]

Yeah. Or being like, what show was. I don't even remember that show. Yeah.

[B]

And it's. And it doesn't matter if you're a passionate fan now, 20 years from now, everyone would be like, that show doesn't exist. And all that Jazz is a movie where, again, like, the critics denied it, the public liked it. Not to the extent that they liked Kramer vs Kramer, but enough to make it profitable enough to buck the critics. It goes on to win four Oscars. Art direction, costume design, editing, and, I think, score. Yeah, four. Four Oscars should have won cinematography. But I think they lost to Apocalypse. They lost to Apocalypse Now. Whatever, Coppola. Whatever, man. But.

[A]

But also, at the time, this is something I learned yesterday from reading stuff about it. After the movie, they name dropped Stanley Kubrick in the film. Which is so funny because Bob Fosse also thought he was great. But Stanley Kubrick, when he saw the film, did not take him 10 years to say this. He said, I think it's the best film I've ever seen.

[B]

Yep. So he did say it up.

[A]

Some people were on it. And some people knew.

[B]

Joe Gideon is watching the latest cut of the standup and he says something about Kubrick, like.

[A]

Yeah, he, like, has his hands. His head in his hands. And he's like, do you think Stanley Kubrick ever gets depressed?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Such a funny line.

[B]

Yeah. It's so great. It must feel great. I think. I think that's actually the ultimate validation for someone like Fosse who clearly thinks highly of Kubrick.

[A]

Yeah, maybe.

[B]

Except for Kubrick to say, like, I just watched your movie. I think it's incredible.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's like, well, you know what you're talking about. And I think you're amazing. So because it's for someone like Fosse and it's not just their work, but it's them as a person. It's like. I think part of the reason why Fosse starts to, like, sour in his relationships is the moment someone like Gwen Verdon or Ann Ranking says, like, no, I choose you. It becomes, well, what's wrong with you that you Chose me.

[A]

Right? Exactly. But. But then it's that same. I mean, it's. It's so great because it's so truthful where like everybody or most people have sort of a streak of self loathing. And most people or the average person can like, keep it at bay. Some people can't. But, like, almost everyone in the world is a little bit like, I'm a hack, I'm a loser. What's wrong with me at some point? You know what I mean? And then like, many people who are great have this like, you know, two sides of a coin where one of it is like, there's something wrong with you for trusting me because I know I'm garbage and I've got nothing to give you. So if you. What's wrong with you that you think there's something here when there isn't? And then the other side of it is like, it's so fantastically parodied in all that jazz. When they're watching like the, you know, like, local New York TV review of the Lenny movie, which I forget what it's called. The standup.

[B]

The stand up. Yeah.

[A]

And she's like, ripping it to shreds. Has not a nice thing to say about it. The only time she says anything nice, she, like, gives the credit to the actor and not the director. And then she's like, and that's why I give this on my classic rating of 4 balloons. Half a balloon. And you're like, making fun of these critics who not only don't have good opinions but also have, like, dumb, gimmicky bullshit where, like, you'd watch your thing and go, like, why should I ever trust your opinions? Even if I agree with you, You've framed it around this, like, hacky bullshit daytime TV balloon regard. It's like, like you. So it's like he's both saying, like, I'm nothing. I've got nothing. Don't look too hard because you'll see my nothing at the, at the core of me. And also, like. And you also. If I'm nothing, you're dirt. What the fuck's wrong with you? Like, lady who thinks she can critique me, like, you know what I mean? It's like, it's such a.

[B]

But then he takes it super to heart is the thing, right? It's the. And everyone's telling him, like, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Oh, she's so stupid.

[A]

But it's funny because I think Joe Gideon takes it to heart, but I think Bob Fosse is overtly making fun of.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, critics in general. But that's so funny. Like, everybody knows what that feels like to. To be like, what's wrong with me? I can't go out there. I can't show myself. And then the minute somebody says something against you, you're like, why would I ever listen to you? You're wearing pleated khakis and loafers with no socks.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I couldn't possibly. I couldn't possibly take your opinion to heart. You look like a. You look a garbage nightmare. Like, get the fuck out of my face. And you're like, oh, I guess I actually do have an ego. You know what I mean?

[B]

It's the stories of Fosse battling with Hal Prince, not wanting to cut the ballet. It's him battling with Stephen Schwartz about the orgy stuff of like. Like, no, no, what I say is gonna go. And ultimately, I think it's sort of. Yeah, it reveals the confidence and the ego that you do have. But I also think, again, with someone like Fosse, and I think this is true of a lot of people. And I want to ask you about this, because you've created a lot of stuff. There's the imposter syndrome is one thing, but then it's, God forbid you make something that people really like, and you look back and you're not entirely sure how you did it.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I feel that way almost every single time I make something, but I actually weirdly think that's kind of healthy, where you're sort of like, the project is the project and it's not the next project. Certainly you can take some lessons or whatever, but, like, the next project is not the last project. So you kind of have to. You do kind of have to just be like, oh, boy, I can't believe I don't know how the fuck that one came all together. There were multiple times when I was editing my book, because I've talked about this before already, but, like, publishing takes such a time. Long, long time. And for me, I finished a draft of this book that I started, like, sending to agents and editors and publishing houses, and it wasn't accepted for another two years. And then it took a couple months for them to get notes back to me. So I was editing a real draft of my novel about two and a half years after writing it, and there were multiple moments where I was like, who wrote this? Both in good ways and bad ways. There were some moments where I was like, this sentence is incomprehensible. Like, who the Fuck. Wrote this. And then there were moments where I was like, oh, my God. Like, I was really on one that day. Like, I don't know what I was feeling. I don't know what I was thinking about. I don't know where I was mentally, but I sat down and wrote this. And, like, that. That paragraph is impregnable. Don't change it. Like, I captured something in that moment that I don't know if I could sit down and recapture right now. Like, I don't know if I'm even close to feeling what I was feeling in that moment. And so, like, there is sort of a healthy thing of just being like, well, thank God that worked, but hands off. Like, I. You can't make that happen in this next one. The next one's. The next one. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, but it's. But it's that scene where Jo is talking to Angelique. Let's just call her Jessica Lange. That's who she is. Let's just call her Jessica Lang, which is. She's. She's the angel of Death, essentially, is that Jo is constantly having these conversations with a beautiful woman in white, and then the more intimate they become, the closer he gets to death in real life.

[A]

And then she eventually, like, takes off for, like, veil. And, like, literally, like, the veil of death is, like, parting to, like, let him through, you know?

[B]

Yep. Oh, I mean. I mean, the shot where she takes off the veil and the hat for the first time, too, and lets her hair fall down, that's when he goes into, I guess, cardiac arrest or something like that. Yeah. So it's. It's. It's. Yeah, it's really beautifully done. But he's talking to her about, you know, nothing I do is ever beautiful enough. It's never right enough. I look at a rose and I go, God damn it, that's perfect. And I asked God, like, how the hell did you make that? Why can't I make something.

[A]

Why can't I make something like that? Yeah.

[B]

And it's the. By the time this comes out, my. My Sondheim Weber show will have already happened. But something that's interesting about both Sondheim and Webber is that neither one of them ever really had a show that got all of the acceptance from every nook and cranny. When it came out, every show they've ever done, there was always something. So, like, yes, Sondheim had success with west side Story, but none of the critics mentioned him had success with Gypsy. But, like, the. The. The lyrics, while they Got praised. Were, like, the fourth thing praised.

[A]

Correct. Correct.

[B]

Forum was a hit, but no one cared about the score. Company was sort of a hit. It won Tonys, but everyone was sort of off on it. Follies. He won a Tony, but people didn't really like it. Night Music was a hit, but also, that even that wasn't, like, universally praised. We Need Todd wasn't universally praised.

[A]

I mean, like, he. He gained a reputation for things that are hard to like, essentially, which, like, becomes a badge of honor for people who love him. People like ourselves. People like middle school, us being like, fuck you. I like passion. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that was you. Okay, fine. I mean, this is a compliment. But, like, you know, by the time of things like, of Night Music and Pacific Overtures and Sweeney Todd, it was like, look, you either like it or you hate it. Do you know what I mean? Like, this is incredible. You're going to love it or you're going to hate it. You might just be one. You must be one of those people who hate Sondheim, but, like, he always had this sort of, like, albatross of, like, his stuff is, quote, unquote, hard to like. It's for a specific kind of audience. There's always going to be a kind of theatergoer who will never get what he does. And so for people who love him, it became a badge of honor, which was like, well, I like the thing that you don't like, you swine.

[B]

Well, yeah, well, I get it. It's exactly. It's not even that I like it. It's that I get it and you don't get it. And the thing about, like, even Webber, who deservedly has gotten dogged for a lot of the stuff he's done because he's done some garbage, but he's all, like. There was a time when he was a lot more adventurous and more. And like him or not, he has contributed some major contributions to musical theater. But things like Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar were not respected when they came out. It took audiences to say, we like this. And even then, it, like, was only really considered a populist state only until, like, I would say, like, the late 90s, early 2000s, was Evita finally deemed, like, a great musical. Right? Totally. And my thing about Evita is, I think it's not a good musical. It's a great musical, but not a good one. But that's a whole other story for another day. Nevermind. Anyway, but Eva. Even Fosse, like, for the success and the fame that he got. There was always something that would go against it, being, like, this whole big hit in the Fosse bio they talk about, Sweet Charity was, like, the biggest hit he had had as a director up until that point. It was, like, a genuine success, was well received. It was a big comeback for Gwen. It was a huge get for him. Everyone's like, oh, my God, Fosse, like, truly is a director. But then they would go, but the book is just sort of kind of okay. And he's like, God damn it. Like, I fucked that part up. And then Pippen. It's like, Fosse's got all this style, and he whips up a frenzy on a show that. To be on Broadway, and he's like, I worked really hard to try to make this show get whipped into shape. God damn it. Yes.

[A]

I mean, like, and the more you watch things, like all that jazz and the more sort of, like, time goes by, the more you're like, right, Pippin is good because Bob Fosse was part of it. It's kind of the only reason it's as lasting as it is. Especially the fact that there was no ending to Pippin until Bob was like, what if it's about wanting to die in a blaze of glory and realizing that you have to be part of the world first? And you're like, oh, well, they also weren't.

[B]

They weren't quite sure how they were gonna end it. End. Like, the last page of that show has changed so much over the years, and I think the ending that it became now is not the ending that Fosse wanted. Like, Fosse wanted the one of, like, not too bad for musical comedy. Ta da.

[A]

And that was the end. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

And that was the end of the show. And I think Schwartz wanted the whole, like, what if little stupid Lewis, like, gets entrapped by the.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Theo.

[B]

Theo. Theo Lewis is the gay half brother. Right.

[A]

So it would be fun, though, if they were like, let's start the show over. But this time, let's have it be the gay half brother.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Sort of a better one. Yeah. No, I. It's. It's complicated and it's still not perfect, which is partly also, again, why I love Pippen, because I'm sort of like, this show's so flawed. Like, there's something kind of inherently fucked up here.

[B]

So few musicals are perfect, and even then, like, someone's going to come along and, like, find a flaw that you never thought of before.

[A]

Yeah. Except for Sweeney Todd.

[B]

Yeah. There is really no flaw in Sweeney Todd.

[A]

I mean, I think you really couldn't convince me there's. There's flaws there.

[B]

I think the only thing, the only flaw I would say about Sweeney Todd is that for all of the plot that hinges on Joanna's life and safety, we don't actually care about her as a character.

[A]

We don't know or care about her that much. But they do try. They do try.

[B]

I argue. I've always felt that the movie does a better job of fleshing her out by honestly making her genuinely damaged by the shit that's happened to her.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like, she becomes a shell of a girl by the end of the movie. And I'm like, I want that Joanna in the musical. But that's like every. Every great artist does have a blind spot. And I think Sondheim and Fosse, actually, their blind spot is like, genuine passion and emotion. Like, of the. Of the. Sondheim always had a really hard time writing earnest love songs. It's not like, I love you and you don't love me, and I cry in my bed at night. Like, it's, I love you, you love me, and isn't this exciting? Isn't this exhilarating? He's like, the do I do with that? That becomes Kiss me. Fosse's like, I don't know. Fosse's like, I can put sex on stage. I don't know how to put lovemaking on stage. I don't know how to put vulnerability on stage. Anytime someone's vulnerable, it needs to be done with a wink. There was a quote in the book. I'm so glad that I was reading very specific sections of this book so recently, because it's all. It's all useful right now. But when Cary Grant saw Sweet Charity on Broadway, he said to Gwen Verdon, it's so weird watching you on stage because every. Every time you cry, I laugh, and every time you laugh, I cry. And it's like, it's the finding the humor and the pain that makes an audience laugh and then finding the innocence and joy that makes us want to be a part of it. I think, as you were saying in the latter half of this movie, what makes you cry is like just a. The craftsmanship of it all, but also then, like, the exuberance that comes with it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, the part that got me emotionally is in the Bye Bye life when he's going around the audience and saying. And it's that shot of him hugging Michelle goodbye. Because, like, it's the. It's the last person he gets to say goodbye to. And it's just a genuine pure, like, it's the Ariel of Triton, Little Mermaid, I love you, daddy moment.

[A]

But also like, she won't let go of him again. Which is like in the beginning of the show when she has to like, return her. It's like, oh, our weekend's over. You gotta get back to mom. She's waiting in comments the car. And she, like, won't stop.

[B]

She won't take her legs off of him.

[A]

Yeah, she's like doing it again. It's like. It's like it. It shows that even in his subconscious, he, like. He's so flippant about his life and cigarettes and drugs and he's like, I'll say goodbye to anything. I don't give a. But then when push comes to shove, he's like, I up and I. I losing my daughter. Like, oh, my God.

[B]

And it's that with the music happening of the. Give it to me. Like, it's. It's that whole thing of just like the mu. The musical theater. Rasmund has no how of. Of. I've said this before. Musical theater. Creating musical theater in a lot of ways is psychotic. And you have to be a little bit of. You have to be a little bit of a sociopath.

[A]

I agree. I think you have to be a bit of a sociopath to like it.

[B]

Well, I. I think you have to be. I think you have to be emotionally open to like it. I think you have to be a bit of a sociopath to make it great. Love that. In a way that. In a way that. I don't always subscribe to straight plays because with musicals, it's a Spielberg of it all where, like music ultimately has to guide you in certain directions and you are creating the human experience in a very tight amount of time and in some ways, shallow medium. And you have to find a way to get an audience to buy it as well as well as slightly manipulating them into being on board with like this emotion here. And like this. This music makes sense right now for this emotion and not making it seem like it's all calculated at the time. Same. Same time. And Fosse was so fascinated by the machinations of creating that stuff that in a weird way, by not being able to connect to Earnesty in. In film and theater by sh. By revealing the shallowness of making it all, he actually did reveal a great deal of emotion within himself. Of like.

[A]

Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

[B]

No, no, like his, like, sort of like his. My lack of connecting My flaws ultimately reveals a lot of pain. And. And. And he gets to have his cake and eat it too, in that moment in the movie, because it gets that moment of the. It's. It's exciting. Musically. The shot is gorgeous. So there's already the just the know how of making it. The emotion of Michelle adds a level of authenticity that doesn't make it feel. Feel shallow. And then the shot of Leland Palmer watching them with tears in her eyes. And when he says, at least I don't have to lie to you anymore. And then she gives him a little, like, stick. And then she gives him, like, little stick out the. The mouth, tongue move of like, oh, he got to have his, like, final one liner with a little bit of a joke in there. And so it's still exciting. Musical theater and emotional catharsis at the same time.

[A]

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, what you're reminding me is like that thing we were talking about of like, did Fosse and Sanaim have a similar problem? Which is like, always needing to have another little, like, layer. Like, nothing truly earnest. But it's funny because, like, in those moments, sometimes what is revealed is a really truthful thing, even if it wasn't intended with, like, emotional earnestness. Like, Sweet Charity is not my favorite show of all time. I don't think there's anything wrong with Sweet Charity, but I'm not. Like, I'm not like, I'm riding hard for Sweet Charity. But what I think is kind of amazing about Sweet Charity, where I'm sort of like, I wonder if any other team could have pulled off this specific facet of it is the weird dichotomy of that life, which is that, like in hey, Big Spender, the women are all fucking lying. They're like, oh, you're so tall, right? And you're like, oh, they're in control. They're sexy. They're lying to you. These pathetic men come to them for help, but then they're also, like, they're also victims. These are women who have no other prospects in life. They're uneducated, they don't have family. Like. Like, these are women who are selling their bodies because there's nothing else for. For them to do. So it's like, you're like, okay, they're in control. They're sexy, they're powerful. These men are pathetic for wanting them and they deserve a better life. And then you get that. That unbelievably, in my opinion, earnest sequence of something better than this, where they have such simple wants and dreams, and you want them to have it so bad, and nobody gets that. And like. Like, the show is full of those contradictions in that way where you. You're like, these women are in control. They're not in control. They have a dirty job. They're the most pure people you've ever met. Do you know what I mean? The show does not make a definitive statement on any of those things. It holds all of those truths at the same time, which is why Charity is such a good and complex character and why you feel for her so badly. And then also why people are ultimately dissatisfied with the show, which is that she doesn't win and we're so sad for her. Do you know what I mean? That is, I think, ultimately why people don't like Charity. They're like, what the fuck is that ending? It's like, it's nothing. Like, this is a play. It's a fucking musical. So I don't know, like, I don't know if somebody not like Bob Fosse, who had these complicated feelings about sex and power and women and vulnerability and being a victim and sex as an act of power and sex as an act of taking away your power and. Right. Like, he had all these complicated feelings, and I think they're all in Sweet Charity Tuning mean, like, not to, like, take away, like, the contribute contributions of people like Cy Coleman. But, like, if we can say, sure, he's not an emotionally earnest guy. He doesn't just have. He's not the kind of person who's gonna stage a love song. He sure does put a lot of really, like, really truthful, earnest stuff up, which is, I think, ultimately why he and Sondheim both have that measure of success and adoration where people are like, okay, well, if you don't get it, that's fine, because I get it. Because you see something in it that speaks to you that just hits a vein where you're like. This earnest love song was beautiful and emotional, but it did not hit the vein. This hit the vein. Do you know what I mean?

[B]

Yeah. I think with Fosse and with Sondheim. Sondheim's. One could argue Sondheim's greatest contributions to musical theater came with his collaboration with Hal Prince. There's. That is an argument. It's the one that's most commonly made. And I think that there's a debate about all of that, because I think where I think this. I think that the Sondheim score that bleeds the most is Sunday. I think that of all of it, Shows. Whereas Passion is. Has a lot of love in there, it's also just quite so distant. I think Sunday is the only genuinely earnest, emotional show. At least the first act anyway, is. Uh. And I think part of that comes from his work with Lapine, who is also very esoteric. But I would argue Lapine is a more emotional creative than Prince ever really was. Prince was really intellectual director. He. He saw things in tableaus and he came up with themes he wasn't really about. Like, let's really sit and talk about your first heartbreak. You know, even something like Losing My Mind, which is a gorgeous song and really can make you feel something is done under the guise of a show, of a performance. Not A Day Goes by is a beautiful song that has never worked for me in context of Merrily Ever. It only works for me in a concert setting. But that's also a merrily problem. But Fosse's greatest collaborations came with Gwen Vernon, mostly because Fosse himself was not really a collaborator. He was a talent who did not know how to play well with other. Because he was often a terrible. The only people he really could communicate with were dancers.

[A]

Right?

[B]

He treated dancers like actors and they understood him and that's why they always wanted to work with him. And then he had certain designers who understood him, certain writers who understood him. But there was a lot of turnover with him because he ultimately just always wanted control. And if he didn't know how to express what he wanted, he would get furious. Gwen was sort of the Fosse whisperer, and I think she gave him a lot of humanity as well as insight into women that he didn't not have. And I. And I think that helps a lot. Which brings us to Legacy and Fosse Verdon for a second. If there's one thing that Fosse Verdon, as a miniseries pissed me off about was it was its oversimplification of their relationship and their professional relationship, basically saying Verdon was the genius. She came up with all the ideas, but Fosse got all the credit, which is just simply not true.

[A]

Sure. And I mean, I think it's. I think we know it's not true because of the way she and everybody else in their lives speak about them. Do you know what I mean? Like. Like, if you talk to. If you. If you watch the interviews on the Fosse DVD with Ann Ranking, she's certainly not sitting there being like, thank God for Gwen, because she was the only one who knew shit. But also everybody on that. That DVD is like, oh, My God. Well, I'm not sure if we'd be here without Gwen. Like, I don't. I don't know if we could have had success without, like, do you mean, like I said, everybody else seems so much more fair.

[B]

And the retelling of it, the part of all that Jazz that I wish if we were granted, like, 10 more minutes of screen time for all that Jazz, which I do not want to change anything about this movie. I think this movie is perfect. But if you were to say, like, okay, Matt, if you could change one thing, I would say I want 10 more minutes of screen time. And I would love to show Leland Palmer being a bit more to the cast as Gwen was two companies a la the Fosse Whisperer, which is that Gwen was known for having an encyclopedic knowledge of dance of. An encyclopedic knowledge of everything she and Bob Fosse ever did. So, like, there was. She took over the Broadway company of Danson or another. The road company of Danson, and sort of became the person to sort of check in on it, whatever. And she would alter things to help the dancers, to make it less of a struggle, but also keeping Fosse stuff in there. But then she would also, like, watch dances that Fosse had recreated with another assistant. And she'd be like, that's not what we did in 1952.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

At this point, she's like, no, no, this was the move. But so it was that. And she also. She and Fosse both had vocabulary that they understood, and sometimes one of them would be able to describe it better than the others. So, like, Fosse would tell the women in Big Spender, you're tired, but you need to be sexy in order to make the money. Like, you want to go home, but you need to make money tonight. And the only way to make money is to be sexy. So you have to be sexy from here up, but from here down, you're exhausted. And, like, when that didn't work, Gwen Verdon would come up and say, you're broken dolls. You're very pretty, but you've been played with all day long. And. And that was the way to kind of make that. And she would come up with ideas, but it was. And she has said herself because she. There's an interview. I think it's on Aurora. Spider Woman's channel. Huh? We brought her up again.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

It's backstage at Sweet Charity for the revival with Debbie Allen. And the interviewers actually asking Gwen, like, why don't you Choreograph. Why don't you direct like, you're. You help Bob with all of this stuff, like, you know what to do. And she was like, I. She's like, no. She goes, I've tried that. I literally did a show out in Paris. She goes, I. She goes, the problem with my time with Bob is like, dancing. And now I'm also conflating with another interview with Broadway. The golden age. Dancing made the most sense to her when it became Bob Fosse's choreography. Like, there was who she was pre him with Jack Cole and Michael. Kidding. And then with Phosi, it was like, oh, no, this makes sense to me. And this is its most fulfilling. And once she did that, she was like, I can't really go back to other people. And everything she did just sort of felt derivative of her work with Bob. And she doesn't have a director mentality. She was like. I feel like Gwen Verdon's role was like. She was the ultimate legendary dramaturg. She could come in and she could help every department with something. Not by, like, having it fully formed, but seeing what was there, seeing what wasn't working, and having, like, two ideas that ultimately fix everything. Exactly.

[A]

I mean, and that's like. That is like such an insane superpower.

[B]

Yeah, but. But it's. But it's a specific superpower that you don't often get the chance to show if you don't get to that level of being in the room. You know, like, God forbid, Gwen Vernon didn't have her cancan breakthrough and didn't become the woman she did. She could still have those instincts, but she would be like the third chorus girl to the left in Damn Yankees,

[A]

and nobody would have been really listening.

[B]

Exactly. And it's fortunate in kismet that it happened that way. Fosse Verdon did not do that. Fosseverdon made it very much the over side. And then also kind of made it a point to really, like, if all that jazz went hard on Fosse, Fosse Verdon went harder on him to the point where I was like. I was like, oh, Nicole Fosse, your father and mother messed you up more than you will ever admit to letting on. It's also my issue with that movie, with that miniseries, is a. That she was the only one person they consulted on it. They used the bio as their source, and then she was their only consultant. The other thing about Fosse Verdon, that annoys me, and we've talked about this before, maybe not on mic, but definitely in person. It's my issue with Tick Tick Boom. It's my issue with Blue Moon. I am the person from theater who doesn't like movies and TV shows about theater that often. All that jazz works for me. All of that Eve works for me. I don't like watching the Sunday diner scene in Tick Tick Boom and seeing Cheetah and Patty and Brian Stokes Mitchell. That to me feels like I'm being to other people. Look at that as, like, loving fan service. I look at that as force feeding. A little picky.

[A]

Yeah. You're like, look at these jingling keys. And you're like, I'm not a baby. I don't need to look at jingling.

[B]

You love that, don't you?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

It's like in Fosse Verde. And when it's. When it's, you know, oh, well, we're thinking of doing this thing with, oh, you know, Liza Minnelli. Don't know her that well, but maybe she'll be good.

[A]

It's like, yeah, who knows? You're like, well, I know. Yeah.

[B]

It's when Andrew Scott says in Blue Moon to Ethan Hawke, well, Oscar and I are looking adapting Lilium. I'm like, no, you're not. No one gave you Lilium for another year and a half. Shut the fuck up. But, and, but and just shit like that, that stuff pisses me off. I. What I like in all that jazz is if you're in the know, you know that that set design for New York LA is based off of the Chicago set.

[A]

Chicago. Yeah.

[B]

But they don't draw attention to it. It's just like.

[A]

And if you don't know, you don't know. Like, nobody, Nobody in my screening last night was like, I can't believe I didn't get the movie. I mean, like, what were they doing Chicago? Like, nobody gives a shit. No, they're just watching the movies. It's a good movie.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's a. It's a great movie. But also, like, all those Easter eggs are genuine Easter eggs. They don't call attention to themselves. I feel like now the. Because of the Marvel Universe, Easter eggs for theater people in this shit has to be like, so.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. It's schmigadoon. It's schmicago. And I just, I get. I get a little annoyed. But that I. That's. But that's honestly also the legacy of all that jazz is the legend of Fosse, which leads us to Fosse Vernon. Things like Fosse, Verdon, 100% things like the Fosse Dance Review and whatnot. I feel like we've spoken so much about so many things.

[A]

I unfortunately have to ratchet that this afternoon.

[B]

I know. So with that said, Ali Gordon, where do you think all that jazz leaves us as a society, as an entertainment industry, as artists?

[A]

I mean, I think it is an incredible movie. I think it is, from a purely technical standpoint, an incredible movie. Like, you know how sometimes you see a movie that leaves you cold? Or you're like. You're like, I'm not sure if I loved that movie, but, like, that. That was clearly like, I'm so glad I saw that movie. I think even if you don't love the film, I feel like it would be hard not to feel like you. You didn't. I can't imagine seeing this film and feeling like you wasted your time. Do you know what I mean? Like, it is just. It is an insane achievement. And then when you add. On top of it being like, the premise of this movie was, I almost died and I got real close to death. Why don't I show you what that was like? There's sort of like an insane, voyeuristic sort of feeling there where you're like, how right is he? What did he see? Do you know what I mean? Like, it's so great. And, of course, the fact that it's not just that some. Somebody got close to death and got a chance to make a movie about it, it's that one of the premier makers of anything ever got so close to death and they got to make a movie about it. And so then, of course, how he chooses to frame his existence is through song and dance. How lucky are we? You know what I mean? It could have been that a neuroscientist got this close to death and then wrote an amazing but very technical book about it. How about if one of the foremost directors and choreographers of our time got this close to death and then got to make a movie and you're like, great. Let's see some fucking dance. So it's just an amazing achievement in a lot of ways. I think the performances are incredible. I think the dance is amazing. I don't think you have to like musicals at all to like all that jazz. In fact, I think if you kind of hate them or find them a little corny, you might even like this movie more because it speaks to an element that you feel about musicals where you're sort of like, but it's all fake. And it's like he's essentially going like, yes, of course it is. And so you might actually feel seen and respected as opposed to like, well, no, you don't get it. You know, if I can get it. So you don't get it. Like, like, I mean, like, I think it's actually kind of a great movie for people who say that they have never seen a musical they like, do you know what I mean? I would show them all that jazz. Be like, I know it's not technically a musical, but I think you'll like it.

[B]

I'm saying it's not really that much of a musical. It's for a two hour movie. I think there are like seven numbers.

[A]

Yeah, there's not a ton and there's nothing. There's nothing where like a person's like, I'm walking down the street and I'm. It's. It's all, it's all.

[B]

It's all sequences.

[A]

Diegetic sequences. So, like, that's also I more palatable for those who maybe like, don't get musicals.

[B]

I also think that this is a great movie to watch. There. There's like five or six movie musicals or musical sequences I tell people to watch if they want to look at how to like, film a number or like just film a movie musical and all that Jazz is definitely one of them. Especially now as we're like sort of back in the era of like gritty realism and people trying to make Les Mis a documentary and then, yeah, all that shit. So I think with all that Jazz, Fosse has a way of having the realism and the stuff stylization combined so that it all works out beautifully. And it's choreographed editing. Vossi was kind of the original choreographed editor of it.

[A]

I feel that too. Yeah, yeah. It's just. It's so good. It's one of those movies that, like, I'm sure there are people out there who hate it. I have yet to meet one.

[B]

You definitely have yet to respect one.

[A]

And I. And I never will. But again, it's just great. It's just, it's. And it's such a great portrayal of the 70s. Just like the costumes, the music, the everything. Like, I just think it's like just a great film.

[B]

Yeah. And everyone's sweaty, everyone's dirty all the time.

[A]

All the men are hairy. It's great.

[B]

Yeah. There is a lot of body hair in all the right places. It's great.

[A]

Oh, yes. It's hot. It's wonderful.

[B]

Yeah. Guys, if you forget anything about Ali Gordon, just remember, she loves body hair and she wrote a book about a protagonist who's a dying bottom.

[A]

Yeah, that's true. That is also true. Yeah. You don't know how much body hair is in places.

[B]

Well, first of all, let's be clear. Allie did not write Kiss of the Spider Woman. She wrote a different book about her time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Anyway, okay, so Ms. Gordon, this has been lovely. Where can people find you if you want them to find you?

[A]

Sure, you can find me on Instagram. Missalice Nutting M S A L I C E N U T T I N G Also, my book, which is about a dying bottom, is called we have Reached the End of Our show, which is available basically anywhere that you want to buy books. If you're like, oh, cool, I'll order that, you can order it from Amazon, that's totally fine. But if you have a local bookstore in your area that you know you like, that is like an independent book, there's a great website called bookshop.org where you can order the book to that store. So if you're like, I'm going to walk over to Books or Magic in Greenpoint, you can be like, I'm going to order the book to pick it up there. And that way, not the website gets a profit, but so does that bookstore. So you're helping keep indie bookstores in business, which is great. Also, it's very possible that your independent bookstore already carries it, but if you don't want to take that risk or call and ask. You can just like pop a copy over there and pick it up and add. Everybody wins.

[B]

You heard it from the lady herself. If you guys wanna follow me on Instagram only right now. Matt Koplik. Usual spelling. If you like the podcast, Nice. Five star rating or review really helps us out. Either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I don't think you can do a review on Spotify, but you can always rate it. Uh, yeah. And I think that the next official B way breakdown episode will be my birthday. Ask me anything.

[A]

How fun. Oh my God, it's so close to your B day. And it's so close to your concert. What a fun, an exciting time.

[B]

Yeah. By the time this comes out, the concert will have already happened. So everyone will be singing its praises, I'm sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And then there's another one in May. May 3, reviewing the 2025, 2026 season. Reviewing is written R E V U E I n g. And then June 1st is our Tony episode. Sorry, our Tony show and Tony episodes. But yeah, I think that's it. Ali, what diva do you want to close us out with? Do we do Ms. Palmer? Do we do Ms. Ranking? Who do we do?

[A]

I. I know. I mean, that's so. I mean, like, one of my favorite performances is Anne Ranking. Dewey. I'm a brass band. That's one of my very favorite, favorite favorites of all time.

[B]

Where does she do that?

[A]

I don't know. There's a concert of her doing it and her legs are so long. But I also love Leland Palmer doing spread a little sunshine. I feel like that is iconic.

[B]

I say, can we do Palmer? She's never done it before.

[A]

I know. Let's do Leland Palmer spread a little sunshine. And let's all imagine Matt and his star turn as Pastrada. I'm here for it.

[B]

Oh, my God. Next time you're in the city, I'm going to gather a bunch of our friends together and we're going to like a drunk sit through of Pippin and we're gonna gender bend everything.

[A]

Ugh. I love Pippin.

[B]

You wanna be Pippin or Lewis or Theo or the leading player?

[A]

Oh, my God. I don't know. I actually think as. As boring. Izzle's answer is I actually think I'd be amazing as Katherine. I'd like, really love to play that role. I think I'd be really good as Katherine. I know that that role is not exciting, but I think I'd be great in that role. And I never say that about anything. I never say I'm good at anything.

[B]

Can I p. Can I pitch something to you?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. Can we do one night as Pippin and Catherine and then another night as Charlemagne and Pastrata?

[A]

That's really fun. I actually really, really like that. I think that's really fun.

[B]

Yeah, I'm really excited for that. We're gonna figure that out.

[A]

Oh, my God. Okay, great. I'll get off. Book for war as a science.

[B]

Yeah. Depending on what side of the coast one of us is back on. We'll make it happen. We'll make it happen. Yeah.

[A]

Love that. Love it, love it, love it.

[B]

All right, this is. Guys, this is our confirmation. You have to hold us to this. All right. All right. So take it away, Ms. Leland. Bye.

[A]

Bye. Helping hand forward. Be a little closer, Sam.