Fosse (67 page)

No one, not even the film’s admirers, expected any Academy Award nominations for
All That Jazz,
let alone the nine it received, including best screenplay, best director, and best picture. Most would go to
Kramer vs. Kramer,
but Fosse’s team of Alan Heim, Albert Wolsky, and Ralph Burns, as well as his art directors Phil Rosenberg and Tony Walton (with set decorators Edward Stewart and Gary Brink) all won. If the academy gave Oscars for most defiant musical of the year,
All That Jazz,
enriched by avant-garde techniques and odious subjects uncommon to the form, would have been a sure thing. At a time when revisionist nostalgia and parody set the standard for musical innovation, Fosse imbued his film with the physical and ontological ordeals of contemporary
reality,
naturalizing the most unnatural of entertainment forms:
Meet Me in St. Louis
meets
Citizen Kane.

Soon thereafter Lansing, Melnick, Scheider, and Fosse took off for the Cannes Film Festival
.
Before the film premiered, Fosse met network news personality David Sheehan for a drink at the Carlton Hotel.

“Of all the shows you’ve done,”
Sheehan asked, “what’s the nearest and dearest to your heart?”

“My heart?” He laughed. It was such a reporter’s question. “I love them all, but
Pippin
’s in a coma.”

“A coma?”

“It only exists in the minds of people who saw it. It’s on life support.”

Dancin’
was running strong and
Chicago
was playing London’s West End, but
Pippin
had closed, after an incredible five-year run, in 1977.

“Well,” Sheehan said, “why don’t we put it on tape?”

These were the fledgling years of VHS. “You can’t do that,” Fosse said.

“I’ll talk to pay-TV.”

That was new too. “People aren’t going to put quarters in slots in their TVs . . .”

Familiar with the technology, Sheehan explained the details, and Fosse’s interest was piqued. Resistant to regression but interested in the investment, he could cast and rehearse the show himself, hand it over to Doby, and oversee the project from afar.

The Cannes screening of
All That Jazz
got a standing ovation,
but Lansing, Melnick, Scheider, and Fosse returned home before the awards presentation. Fosse knew he wouldn’t win and, after the Oscars, didn’t want to attend his second consecutive loss. And he caught flak for it too. Sore loser, they called him.

Back in New York, at two thirty in the morning, the phone rang in Sherry Lansing’s suite at the Carlyle Hotel.

“Hello?”

Fosse was screaming. “We won! We won! We won!”

“
What?
”

“The Palme d’Or!”

“Oh my God . . .”

“We tied! With Kurosawa, with
Kagemusha
! You’ve got to get up! We’ve got to celebrate!”

“Okay, okay, give me a second.”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

They went around the corner to 3 Guys Restaurant. Too happy to keep it to himself, Fosse told the waiter his terrific news. He left Lansing at the table so he could go tell the cashier. He came back and told the loner at the next booth. Lansing thought,
It’s like he’s never won anything before, like he isn’t Bob Fosse.
They celebrated for hours, until the sun came up over Madison Avenue.

“You know, I’ve got to get ready for my day,” she said.

“Just stay with me a little longer please, please, please.”

He was irresistible.

They paid the bill and Fosse led her to a building nearby. Inside, he opened a door to a psychiatrist’s foyer, where a patient waited to go in.

Dr. Clifford Sager was surprised to see him.

“I won,” Fosse said.

Sager beamed. “That’s really great. That’s really, really great.”

Sweet Charity,
Cabaret,
Pippin, Dancin’
—they won for Fosse the director, the entertainer, but
All That Jazz,
directed, choreographed, this time cowritten, and practically starring Bob Fosse represented at last a holistic triumph of authorship, innovation, and personal expression. This time, the success was authentic, undeniably his own.

After he walked Lansing back to the Carlyle, he appeared across town at Ann Reinking’s ballet class and strolled right in, unapologetic about the brazen interruption. He found her at the barre. He told her, and she danced all through their rejoicing.