FOSSE/VERDON (2019)

Channel surfing some years back, and hit Bob Fosse’s transparent self-portrait ALL THAT JAZZ/’79 somewhere toward the middle.  Not exactly high on my revisit list!  Yet, the scene I’d stumbled on knocked me sideways.  Real moviemaking!  Confident & compelling, stylish stuff.  But ten minutes later, I had to turn it off.  Self-justifying, self-centered, self-loathing, self-indulgent pretentious crap.  As with all Fosse films (he only made five), once is enough.  Which makes this fine duo-bio of Fosse & wife/muse/work partner/other-half Gwen Verdon a project that honors the brand since, while it's plenty good, you’d never want to go back to it.  Shitty to himself and everyone around him, Fosse as choreographer got more mileage out of fewer dance steps than anyone since Busby Berkeley. (Both also sexual predators and addicts.)  But Fosse knew enough to attach himself to Verdon, one of the greatest of B’way stars, then ride past her in Hollywood where she became one more B’way divinity unable to transfer her luster on screen.  (DAMN YANKEES/’58 her only starring role.)  This mini-series tries to add context, explanation and expiation to a very old story as Verdon enables ‘her man,’ not quite able to walk away even as she keeps getting walked over.  The filmmakers work hard to camouflage the cliché with non-linear continuity jumps, too clever-by-half ‘countdown’ calls, even a fresh title card for each episode.  Only one face-plants, a would-be Long Days Journey Into Night award-bait playlet with everyone working too hard to impress.  Meant as a showpiece episode, its an embarrassment of emotionally empty platitudes.  Elsewise, not too inaccurate as these things go*, the film ultimately sells itself thru remarkably strong casting.  Sam Rockwell makes a self-coruscating and utterly believable Fosse while Norbert Leo Butz is close behind as truth-telling windbag of a friend Paddy Chayefsky.  (Imagine going to a bar with the guy who wrote NETWORK.  Yikes!)  (Lin-Manuel Miranda is a stretch as Roy Scheider in ALL THAT JAZZ, but so darn pleased with himself, he makes you grin.)  And if Michelle Williams’ Verdon manages to get everything ‘right’ as Verdon, somehow (especially for those lucky enough to have seen Verdon on stage) she completely misses the most important element, preternatural yet unforced stagewise sexiness.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *A characteristic  inaccuracy has CABARET/’72 producer Cy Feuer out to deliver a carefree musical comedy and a ‘difficult’ Fosse demanding a dark redo.  Only Jay Presson Allen’s stage-to-screen adaptation (cute older couple out/non-diegetic musical numbers removed) written before Feuer’s surprise hiring of an ‘unemployable’ Fosse whose sole film directing credit was all-time bomb SWEET CHARITY/’69.  LINK: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/08/sweet-charity-1969.html   OR: See the real Bob Fosse in his brief, but spectacular turn as the ‘Snake In The Grass’ of THE LITTLE PRINCE/’74.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-little-prince-1974.html