Director Joe Gideon has a lot on his plate: editing a feature film under the critical eyes of its producers; casting, staging, and choreographing a new Broadway musical; attending to the needs of his daughter, girlfriend, and ex-wife. A steady diet of drugs, sex, and cigarettes keeps him moving, but leads to serious medical issues and fantasies about his own death.
Bob Fosse was a legend of musical theatre before getting behind a movie camera, and became the first director to win an Academy Award, Tony Award, and Emmy Award for his work, all in the same year, no less. Here, in his fourth effort as a film director, he made his most autobiographical work to date. Based on the period in which Fosse was simultaneously editing his film Lenny (a biopic of comedian Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman) and staging his landmark production of Chicago, he paints a bleak portrait of himself as an overworked, oversexed taskmaster filled with equal parts egotism and self-loathing.
Fosse's approach here combines the influence of Federico Fellini's equally autobiographical 8 1/2 with his own unique approach to shooting and cutting song and dance numbers, and the result is a frenetic but extremely dark neo-musical where all the numbers are either performed on stage (as in his earlier film Cabaret) or as the main character's delirious fantasies.
Roy Scheider (known to most from his lead role in Jaws) stars as Gideon, and is joined by Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking (Fosse's real-life former partner), John Lithgow and Ben Vereen. Film was photographed by Italian cinematographer Guiseppe Rotunno (who also shot the aforementioned 8 1/2).
The film was a critical and commercical success, and earned nine Academy Award nominations, including ones for Best Picture, Scheider's performance, Fosse's direction and screenplay, and won Oscars for its editing, score, and costume design. It would also go on to share the Palme d'Or (Best Picture) at the Cannes Film Festival the following year.
Running time is 2 hours.
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