Flasz On Film

Forty-five years ago, All That Jazz danced into theatres just days before the end of the 1970s. Audiences liked it, and over time the film became a decent-sized hit. However, not everyone was ready for Bob Fosse’s slightly morbid, musical retelling of his own life. Like most films of the day, All That Jazz had to run the gauntlet of predatory film critics—a group of opinion-piece writers who weren’t too dissimilar from the social media influencers of today. Going through this scrutiny was important, though, because the critics of the 1970s—particularly those with decent readerships—had notable sway over the PR campaigns of newly released films, and they knew it. A couple bad reviews could chop off a production’s financial potential at the knees. A couple good reviews could expand a film’s release to new markets. Critics were an important cog in the money-making wheels of the studio system.

Upon release, the unapologetically original All That Jazz partially paralyzed some film critics who didn’t quite know what to make of the former Broadway director’s unique film vision. As a result, rather than admitting they needed another viewing to process the thematically rich autobiography, critics served up critical hot takes labelling the film an egomaniacal and self-indulgent project from an arrogant song-and-dance man. After all, when critics have deadlines approaching, and they hold a film’s fate in their hands, they gotta write something. And how else to describe an autobiographical story with massive musical numbers, other than call it an expensive ego trip? All That Jazz was so different from anything else critics had seen, rather than viewing it as a rich commentary or a collection of important conversations that Fosse was dying to have (pun intended), many writers simply regarded his metaphysical pseudo-musical as what happens when a dude emerges from bypass surgery tooting his own horn.

However, there were some critics at the time who were on Fosse’s wavelength, and they praised All That Jazz. Vincent Canby saw it as “an uproarious display of brilliance.” Even others, like Roger Ebert, returned to the film years later with re-evaluations and tardy acclaim. More than critics though, the creative community adored the 1979 release. Filmmakers appreciated it right away. Stanley Kubrick declared it was the best film he’d ever seen. Kirk Douglas and his jury at Cannes voted All That Jazz as co-winner of the Palme d’Or (alongside Kurosawa’s Kagemusha). Plus, with Kramer Vs. Kramer, All That Jazz led the field at the Academy Awards in 1980 with nine Oscar nominations. These plaudits buoyed the film’s word of mouth more so than the oh-so powerful critics. The awards track was another significant promotional route for films of the 1970s with slow theatrical rollouts.

One of the many reasons All That Jazz drew considerable attention (positive and negative) to its own uniqueness was its story, or in a way, lack thereof. The film doesn’t really have a story in the traditional sense, not one with rising action from events or from the protagonist riding a character arc learning lessons about humanity. All That Jazz, more or less, finds Bob Fosse recreating vignettes from his own life, and pontificating on his own death. As much as he was looking backwards, Fosse was also perversely looking into his future, forecasting his own demise at the hands of a business and a lifestyle that were killing him. Art imitating life, he felt.

However, when viewed now decades later, All That Jazz presciently pulls back the curtain to reveal a life-imitating-art piece that may not have been wholly obvious at the time. Bob Fosse’s 1979 film offers a glimpse at how the Hollywood business model of the 1980s was set to unfurl in new ways. While the film’s narrative tells the tale of the slow death of an artist and the pains associated with creating, the script also warns of profiteers readily (and literally) lurking in the wings of theatres, waiting to photocopy lucrative shows, reinvent accounting principles, or otherwise fill their pocketbooks on the backs of creatives. As it turns out, All That Jazz is the definitive end-of-an-era film, marking the end of the 1970s’ wave of creativity and Hollywood’s return to more formulaic revenue-minded, cookie-cutter movies. The Fosse musical is arguably the very highway signpost at which New Hollywood’s artful storytellers of the 1970s pull over and are forced to hand the wheel over to the studio heads’ accounting departments for the next, shiny, bombastic new decade of feature films.

The late 1960s and 1970s Hollywood was a golden era of innovation in American cinema. Following industry turmoil and a recession in the 60s, the major studios were at a loss on how to remain profitable. Further complicating the film business, cinemas found themselves competing with nightly TV programming while more-educated filmgoers were demanding serious, socially aware, and increasingly verité movies. Studios were slowly transitioning away from westerns like Rio Bravo and into disaster films like The Towering Inferno. This was one transition, which Hollywood studios could sort of understand unlike some of the New Hollywood films that were finding audiences. Hollywood power brokers couldn’t as easily grasp the idea behind something like Rocky, for example—the story of a boxer who loses—or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a modern-era cowboy movie where the cowboys apparently die. Hollywood had never made movies like this. In the good ole’ days, scripts weren’t challenging, but set pieces were. Good was good, and evil was obviously evil (or communist). However, by the late 60s and early 70s, demand for Hollywood’s uncomplicated films from yesteryear was scaling down. No one wanted traditional westerns, musicals, screwball comedies, or Red-scare science-fictions.

While Hollywood was channeling money into productions they knew how to do, like Rat Pack movies, Herbie family comedies, and detective films where the men always wore single-breasted, wool suits, films such as The Graduate, The French Connection, The Godfather, and Rocky began making money. Big money. They captured the attention of a younger, trendier audience who craved serious fare, character studies, and status-quo-challenging storylines. Because films like this were making serious coin, and most were often produced on the cheap, studios started loosening the purse strings to younger filmmakers and even some of the experienced ones like Don Siegel and Sidney Lumet—guys who’d been working in the business for years but looked to free themselves from their ‘old Hollywood’ patterns. Creativity, freshness, and hip stories were all the rage. Studios may not have understood how this new generation of auteurs was turning a profit with films like Midnight Cowboy, M*A*S*H, and Easy Rider, but they watched intently as a youth movement was delivering the studio system from the brink of receivership.

To exemplify the turnaround in styles, Fosse’s first film, Sweet Charity (1969), was the epitome of a 1960s musical—a straight-up, big-budget musical romp remade from a Broadway show more or less made in the style of the many, many others that were produced previously. The normal world of the story stopped for the big song-and-dance numbers where folks sang about their feelings. However, following his experience filming Sweet Charity, Fosse could suddenly see the potential of the film medium. His second film, Cabaret, became the epitome of a 1970s film. It reimagined the musical form, used diegetic musical numbers, and presented serious themes about political evil, a complicit public, and taboo sexual behaviour—not your traditional Hollywood fare whatsoever. However, it hit with audiences and critics alike, making ten-times its budget and nabbing major Academy Awards (for director Fosse and star Liza Minnelli).

So, still in the throes of a creativity renaissance a few years later in 1978, Columbia had no troubles granting Fosse a $6.5 million budget up front for All That Jazz, even though it was three times his previous budget on Lenny (which was also profitable). Columbia greenlit the project largely based on their trust in Fosse as one of these ‘hot shot’ money-making auteurs—even though they hadn’t the foggiest notion what kind of film they were getting. However, when Fosse ran out of money after finishing most of the movie—except the monumental final musical sequence—Columbia began getting cold feet and refused extra financing. Rather than compromising his grand vision, Fosse shopped a working cut of his incomplete film to other studios in search of completion funds. Over at Fox, Alan Ladd Jr.’s studio had more cash than they knew what to do with after the release of a little film called Star Wars. Alan Ladd Jr. was more than happy to throw money at Fosse to shoot his “Bye Bye Life” number in exchange for North American distribution rights (reports vary as to how much Fox gave, but stories range anywhere from $750,000 to almost another $6 million).

Even though Star Wars’ profits were invested in Fosse’s creative vision to allow All That Jazz to be completed, George Lucas’ successful space opera had become a seismic force within the industry, changing business practices away from what had become normal in the 1970s. And these new practices would be deeply rooted in excising creativity from filmmakers in favour of familiar, watered-down templates of previous successful films. Truly artistic ventures would increasingly be thrown to the curb. It was as if after fifteen years of watching creatives do their thing, studio executives finally said to themselves, “Oh. I see what they’re doing. We can do that too, so we don’t need auteurs anymore.” For example, after seeing Kramer Vs. Kramer, studios apparently determined they now knew how to do touching drama so invested in schmaltzy, overly melodramatic films such as Terms of Endearment. Try as it might to be a relatable drama, Terms of Endearment was an entirely manufactured film whose emotional highs are delivered ‘by the numbers’ by characters who are more quirky than genuine. As much as it may have hit with mainstream audiences, it doesn’t have anywhere near the authenticity of All That Jazz, Rocky, A Woman Under the Influence, or any one of a number of other 1970s auteur-driven dramas.

Courtesy of the new culturally significant blockbusters that started popping up in the 70s, studios came up with new marching orders. They were to decode the formulas and recreate notable hits (i.e. the likes of Star Wars, Superman, Rocky, Animal House, Halloween), apply a glossy sheen of production value (nicer, more polished cinematography using better cameras–no more of that depressing, ‘mean streets’-looking stuff). And when action tropes apply, make those car chases and explosions even bigger and louder. When melodrama crescendos, that music should swell enough to actively draws tears from viewers’ faces. Drama that sincerely touched, horrors that truly unnerved, and action that legitimately thrilled were being whittled down to their underpinning mathematical codes.

This new business side of filmmaking also came with some new marketing innovation. Double feature presentations faded away from common practice. Advertising campaigns for films grew to be grander and more complicated. In short, studios began figuring out how to build hype with or without the positive reviews from critics. Hollywood was figuring out there were more sales to be made in selling the ‘sizzle’ than in selling the hamburger. Films with blockbuster potential began opening nationwide on hundreds of screens rather than caravanning across North America a few dozen screens at a time for months or years. Collecting profit became a sprint rather than a marathon. Hollywood films were released in international markets sooner than they had before. And all this also coincided with emerging VHS rental and cable markets pining for more and more content. More demand was generated for the relatively new, repetitious, and formulaic genres and sub-genres of the 1970s: space operas, animal-attack features, maudlin dramas, slasher-horrors, and sketch comedy foolishness.

After being shown the way by filmmakers like Carpenter, Spielberg, and Lucas, producers felt it was time to pry power back from the youngsters. Spielberg and Lucas were somewhat the exception, retaining a lot of autonomy so long as their adventures continued making megabucks (which they did for a while). However, in the 1980s guys like Fosse had serious difficulty trying to assemble serious material AND a studio’s backing. Fosse made one more film in the 1980s, the much-maligned Star 80, and it was not a hit. The landscape of the business had changed quickly.

Fosse was not alone. So many of those great filmmakers known for their 1970s output—Altman, Coppola, Friedkin, Avildsen, Forman, De Palma, Hill (both Walter and George Roy), and many others—took a step down in either the quality and gravity of their work (or both). This is not to say these folks didn’t do quality work in the 1980s, but their work is decidedly less trailblazing and more watered down in shallower entertainment than in it was in the previous decade. It’s as if studios told these auteurs to do buddy comedies. What else could explain DePalma going from Body Double to Wise Guys, Friedkin going from Cruising to Deal of the Century, or George Roy Hill following up The Little Drummer Girl with Funny Farm? Clearly the 80s were no longer the 70s.

And it’s all foretold in All That Jazz. Roy Scheider plays Joe Gideon, a blatant avatar for Fosse himself. However, Gideon can also bee seen as a stand-in for the New Hollywood creative. Gideon is in almost every scene of All That Jazz. The only moments Fosse takes the camera from Gideon’s shoulder and into scenes without him are telling moments which follow around the business managers who encircle Gideon’s projects like well-dressed buzzards. While Gideon—i.e. the artist—lies dying in the hospital, Fosse has the audience attend a couple of business meetings. One is to recruit Lucas Sergeant—another Broadway director—to replace Gideon on his show should he not recover. Sergeant, played by John Lithgow, is the company man. A highly competent, seasoned professional, and good at what he does. But he’s not a visionary, at least not in the same way Gideon is. He doesn’t pain himself over the minutiae of the art for hours on end as we see Gideon doing on stage and in the editing suite. We see Sergeant conducting a tech rehearsal dictating colour lighting cues to his backstage crew. He’s leading what will be the wave of studio-funded filmmaking in the 1980s. Brighter, louder, more colourful fare. Is ‘Lucas’ Sergeant a nod to George ‘Lucas’? Maybe. The real-life George and fictional Sergeant are both undeniable professionals whose swagger focuses on colour, spectacle, and the profitability of escapism. In contrast to Gideon—who stares, struggles, and pains over each decision which could make his art better—Sergeant barks orders about what colour lights to use when and where. He knows exactly what stage lighting to use on what scene according to the ‘rules’ of Broadway. He knows how to direct a show, but not how to create a story with a soul. Yet, Lucas Sergeant is the executives’ choice to replace the fallen Gideon.

The other telling scene in which Scheider doesn’t appear features a corporate meeting in a large conference room. At this point, Gideon has an increasingly poor health prognosis and lies in his bed at the hospital, so the meeting’s agenda revolves around Gideon’s unfinished musical’s insurance policy. An accounting clerk furiously clacks the keys of a calculator as the production manager dictates the show’s expenses to date. The scene concludes with the revelation that the producers would recoup more money from the insurance policy if Gideon died and the show never opens than if the show resumed rehearsals and opened a bit behind schedule. From a financial perspective, it makes sense producers would secretly root for Gideon’s demise (or, as some theories suggest, hire the mysterious nurse character played by CCH Pounder to speed along his death) especially in these circumstances. A Broadway show is, after all, a business venture, and part of the point of All That Jazz is to highlight how interwoven commerce and the arts really are—sometimes these forces work together, and sometimes they repel.

Formulaic storytelling guided the studios through their first 50 years of existence; then the 1970s produced a reprieve, a brief reset which opened the door to a wave of new voices to take a crack at making commercial films. Then with the onset of the 1980s, assembly line cinema overwhelmingly returned to be the guiding light again. In All That Jazz, as Joe Gideon, a stand-in for the New Hollywood creative, lies in a hospital bed, the board room scene foreshadows the return of corporate culture to Hollywood. In the film, the Board figures out auteurs probably aren’t the key to profit, so they look beyond Gideon and the quality of his output. Paperwork, creative accounting, and new marketing ploys have potential for the bottom line—originality, much less so. Such would be the returning attitude to studio leadership in the 1980s.

The board room scene foretells the creative accounting scandals of the 1980s. At the studios, greenlighting projects in the 1970s based on artistic merit and reasonable budgets becomes more of a ‘greedlighting’ of projects based on prospective earnings. ‘Is this a film worth making?’ in the 70s becomes ‘Is this a film that can maximize profit?’ How much will it make in cinemas? Internationally? In the rentals market? Can we sell it to play on cable later?’ Not to mention the money to be made in using your film brands to sell Happy Meals.

Just as the fictional producers’ eyes widened with the prospects of making an easy $500,000 from a show if Joe Gideon dies (and his art along with it), executives in Hollywood similarly became wide-eyed with the profit potential of the 1980s. It simply meant letting the type of creativity that emerged in the 1970s perish while investing in templates made from that creativity—stuff like Jaws, Halloween, and Star Wars. As a result, ‘Hollywood accounting’ scandals revolving around shady creative bookkeeping practices began popping in Hollywood trade papers. Money was to be made from cinema again, and executives saw fit to distribute the wealth unequally—as often happens in corporate culture. In one example of greedy, manipulative bookkeeping practices, Darth Vader—the dark Sith lord himself—got screwed over. According to Lucasfilm and its publicly shared numbers, Return of the Jedi never made a profit. Despite making $480 million from theatres when it was released, plus another $64 million from subsequent North American rereleases, plus video rentals, plus video sales, plus TV, plus merchandise, plus, plus, plus… and on a reasonable $35 million budget, Lucasfilm books never admitted to making a profit. David Prowse, who played Darth Vader, was apparently contracted to participate in the third Star Wars film in exchange for a percentage of profit, and until his death in 2020, Prowse would never receive a dime, instead getting occasional letters saying, “Regrettably Jedi has still not gone into profit, so we have nothing to give you.”

In another example that doubly exemplifies the unscrupulous behaviours of 1980s studio execs once they got wide-eyed with greed, writer Art Buchwald found himself suing Paramount pictures for stealing his script treatment and turning it into the highly successful comedy Coming to America. Firstly, Paramount was found guilty of stealing someone else’s ideas. And then, upon losing the plagiarism suit, the studio claimed Coming to America made no profit and, therefore, couldn’t pay Buchwald. Coming to America reportedly had a budget less than $30 million. Under Eddie Murphy’s increasing star power of the time, the film earned some $280 million worldwide, yet Paramount declared it made no money, citing vague ‘distribution fees’ for the film’s shortfall. However, rather than having the courts open their bookkeeping practices to an audit, Paramount suddenly found $900,000 in the office sofa cushions to settle with Buchwald on the matter.

At that point, the business of Hollywood had never been so singularly focused on making money as it was in the 1980s. The influence of the critics had decreased as the pop-culture power of the wide opening and merchandising spoke louder than Siskel’s and Ebert’s thumbs. The art, originality, and social awareness of the 1960s and 1970s were no more. Even during Hollywood’s Golden Era, the studios felt they had a mandate to speak to the social and political climate of their time. If you were looking for themes and substance in films after All That Jazz, it was largely absent from bigger Hollywood films except possibly for conversations about bloat and excess. It was a golden era of entertainment, not films with voice. After Gideon’s death in All That Jazz, Ronald Reagan’s deregulated corporate America opened the doors for the ‘greedlighting’ of blockbusters and franchise hopefuls, while simultaneously encouraging an accounting creativity to both make and hide profit all at once. Hollywood’s business shenanigans would make Gideon’s producers—with their cute, little half-a-million-dollar insurance scam—absolutely blush.

And where did this leave Fosse? His influence was undeniable, especially looking back from this vantagepoint forty-five years later. As a creative himself, rather than hip and cool, he became an old-school artist in a new economy who would struggle to pull together the budget for his last film. All That Jazz was an end-of-an-era film, and it turned Fosse into an unfortunate soothsayer. Money would win over art. Accountants and executives would become more powerful than actors, writers, and directors. Art, entertainment, and commerce are all intertwined. Fosse understood and believed in all three, but Hollywood had the least use for art, which they’d ultimately deemphasize in the 1980s. And when you watch All That Jazz, you gotta believe Fosse saw the whole thing coming.