Director Timothy Scott Bogart first watched Bob Fosse’s 1979 film “All That Jazz” while he was at NYU’s film school. He says seeing the musical about a charismatic, ruthless choreographer was one of the “most consequential creative experiences” of his life. Since then, Bogart revisits Fosse’s musical drama whenever he needs inspiration.
In his film “Spinning Gold,” Bogart pays tribute to his late father Neil, by chronicling the elder Bogart’s rise as a music executive and the founder of the independent Casablanca Records, which, coincidentally, released the soundtrack for “All That Jazz.” Bogart says the final portion of “Spinning Gold” was an homage to the musical fantasy death scene of Fosse’s semi-autobiographical film.
More: Director Timothy Scott Bogart on ‘Spinning Gold’
This segment has been edited for length and clarity.
I think one of the most consequential creative experiences of my life was seeing “All that Jazz” for the first time. It was in a retrospective theater, so it was years after it had come out. I'd always heard about it and thought, ‘Oh, that's that movie about Broadway.’ Interestingly, my father from Casablanca Records had actually released the soundtrack of “All That Jazz,” but for whatever reason, I had never seen it.
I was actually at NYU film school and I was living across the street from the Quad Cinema, and I saw “All That Jazz” one day. I was like, ‘Alright! I guess I'll check that out’ with the 10 o'clock in the morning showing. Two and a half hours later, I couldn't get out of my seat.
I had been so impacted in every way about the power of Bob Fosse’s treatment of every tool in the filmmaker’s toolbox. Every single frame I thought was a revelation, so I stayed for the next showing, and the next showing, and I stayed for five showings.
Now I was at NYU film school, and of course we really didn't have video access at that time, so I went and got a 60-millimeter camera - I know this is potentially controversial – but convinced the projectionist, who was a friend of mine, to let me film “All That Jazz” for my own personal homework assignment. I had a Steenbeck up in my apartment, and for the entire year that year at film school, my most important film class was analyzing every frame on my Steenbeck of Bob Fosse’s brilliant “All That Jazz.”
To this day, it's my go-to whenever I need inspiration. I go back and watch “All That Jazz” all the way to my film “Spinning Gold,” about my father, literally ripping off the final sequence of Roy Scheider singing his final moments of life. I had Jeremy Jordan playing my father, do the same, so I tried to tip my hat a little bit to the most inspirational, creative experience that I had the joy of happening accidentally back at film school.
If you're going to steal right, steal from the best. I steal often, from the best, but most importantly that movie just absolutely rocked my creative world. To this day, decades later, I still marvel at what he achieved in that film.