All That Jazz

Another pass at director Bob Fosse's "It's Showtime" montage with dexedrine leads to a rehearsal where the Fosse figure Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) shreds dancer Victoria (Deborah Geffner), whom he hired in exchange for sex, who then earns some redemption, in All That Jazz, 1979.

Sandahl Bergman, already a Broadway regular for director Bob Fosse, is a principal along with Eileen Casey, Bruce Davis, Gary Flannery, many others, with Fosse's own staging, and Roy Scheider the Fosse-based character Joe Gideon, in the tame opening section of the number, the original tune by Stanley Lebowsky and Fred Tobias, leading into the sensational

Joe Gideon is a hedonistic workaholic who knocks back a daily dose of amphetamines to juggle a new Broadway production while editing his new movie, not to mention ex-wife Audrey, steady girlfriend Kate, a young daughter, and various conquests. Joe cannot, however, avoid intimations of mortality from white-clad vision Angelique that lead him to look back at his life as he heads for a near-inevitable coronary.

Director Bob Fosse gives us Roy Scheider as Fosse-based director Joe Gideon, after a grueling dance rehearsal, editing his film about a dead comic, with Cliff Gorman as Davis Newman, based on Dustin Hoffman, who played the real Lenny Bruce, in Fosse's film Lenny, focused on the famous Bruce routine about death, with Sue Paul and his actual editor, Alan Heim, in the cutting room, in All That Jazz, 1979.