Countless times I have seen those first six minutes of All That Jazz, the surreal 1979 Bob Fosse masterpiece film. Most of the opening shows more than a hundred dancers auditioning for a Broadway musical accompanied by George Benson's version of "On Broadway," yet so much happens in the first 80 seconds preceding the audition scene.
The first 22 seconds displays a multi-angle view of the film title formed in stage lights with a jazzy orchestra setting up what would seem to be a traditional, glitzy tribute to the Broadway musical.
The next 38 seconds shows something entirely different, alerting the audience that this will not be a typical paean to the intersection of Broadway and Hollywood. We see musical director Joe Gideon, the central character amazingly performed by Roy Scheider, turn on his tape player to hear Vivaldi's "Concerto alla rustica" as he showers and ingests Dexedrine to start his day.
The next 20 seconds features the first line uttered by Gideon to his angel of death played by Jessica Lange. As we watch an acrobat on a wire, perhaps Gideon himself, Gideon says, "To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting," before the acrobat falls from the wire. We are now prepared for a drug-fueled artist about to expose his life. We then return to Gideon's bathroom, where, well supplied by his amphetamines, he looks in the mirror and matter-of-factly says, "It's showtime folks," offering a sharp contrast between musical comedy and personal tragedy that Fosse explores throughout the next two hours.
The next four-plus minutes shows what Fosse himself in an interview called a "cattle call" in documentary style" to"show an audience exactly what happens" during auditions and in Gideon's life as a Broadway power broker. The Benson song is a natural accompaniment to the work and drive and disappointment that come with the curse of wanting to be a dancer/singer/actor. Those rejected fail at achieving their goal, at least temporarily. And those selected are in for more painstaking, physically demanding work than they can possibly expect.
