"Bob Fosse is one of my favorite choreographers. This book is a dark and fascinating biography of the man who gave us Cabaret, Sweet Charity, and Chicago, among others."

"A kinetic masterpiece by Bob Fosse. One of the best-edited films of all time. Roy Scheider deserves more recognition for his work. First saw this in a double feature with Lenny, which every art-house theater programmer should schedule."

"Straight up Bob Fosse goodness. Roy Scheider is amazing in this movie. (It’s my favorite performance of his though I have many a good friend who would argue it’s in Jaws, but check it out and I think you’ll agree with me.)”"

"This is a movie about showbiz, musicals, death, Bob Fosse, his love life: it’s all over the map. I can’t tell you what it’s about, but I love it. It’s so sexy. The first ten minutes are a feat of editing and music. One of the great openings of a musical. “It’s showtime,” says Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon, a thinly veiled portrait of Fosse himself. Little echoes of Joel Grey singing “Willkommen” in Cabaret. Gideon is our master of ceremonies, warning us to get ready to see some blood, sweat, and tears. I love movie musicals about showbiz—The Band Wagon, A Star Is Born, Singin’ in the Rain—and this really fits in that genre, with the dark edge of The Bad and the Beautiful. That should have been a musical directed by Fosse! Fosse as a choreographer turned director reminds me of another director I love, Stanley Donen. Aside from dance and music, their movies have another thing in common: incredible editing. All That Jazz and Lenny both play around with time in a way the Donen film Two for the Road does. A lot has been written about Fosse and his love of Fellini films. All That Jazz does borrow from 8½, but this is not an homage. Fosse, inspired by Fellini, created something new. It’s a tragedy that Fosse didn’t live longer, because in his five films—Sweet Charity, Cabaret, Lenny, All That Jazz, and Star 80—I see what could have been one of the great filmmakers of all time. Imagine Bob Fosse directing Chicago! All That Jazz is the beginning of that journey. It’s as if all his gifts—the love of dance and the inspiration from Jerome Robbins and Jack Cole; the personal and profound collaboration with his partner, Gwen Verdon; and the man himself—were coming into focus."

"Cabaret is the classic work [from director Bob Fosse], but Star 80 I think is really worth visiting, because it wasn’t a successful film and it really dealt with a kind of heinous crime. The film itself is brilliantly made, in terms of rhythm and storytelling; if you look at it you’ll see that a lot of directors of my era have been influenced by the aesthetic. Bob Fosse’s great ability with rhythmic storytelling is very alive in the movie, and what’s so intriguing is that it takes a true chapter in the history of Hugh Hefner and the world of Playboy and tells it as a kind of psychological thriller — but with a whole lot of Fosse-like theatricality. So I think that’s a kind of little off-the-radar gem."

"This is the second film on my list about a dying man, and like Hunger, it’s based on true events. Bob Fosse came to feature filmmaking by way of dance, which is entirely evident here. This film features a lot of actors dancing, dancers acting, and dancers dancing. It’s a sweaty and sexy take on the stress and fragility of the creative process. Plus, it features an early-career Jessica Lange as the Angel of Death."

"I think one of my favorite films of all time is Star 80. I’m a huge [Bob] Fosse fan, and I love that movie. There’s something about it; the music, Eric Roberts is so incredible in that movie. There’s something about the way he made that movie; it sort of lulls you into this comfortable state, and then all of a sudden it’s absolutely horrifying. It’s also kind of funny and ironic at times and winky. I just think he was a genius."

"I’m going to go with All That Jazz for number one. It’s Bob Fosse directing a movie about himself; he changed the name to Joe Gideon from Bob Fosse. So he’s directing a movie about a musical choreographer/director who takes too many pills, sleeps with too many women, drinks too much; he’s a moviemaker who’s editing a movie while he’s doing a play and having hallucinations with musicals. It’s so unbelievable how he balances it all, and it’s Roy Scheider’s best performance, I think, ever. He’s amazing in it. It is so amazing. He’s a pretty despicable guy in the movie — I mean, he sleeps around on his girlfriend — but you love him. The doctors tell him not to take his drugs, but he does it anyway, and you still love him. You don’t blame him. And it’s sort of how Bob Fosse ended up dying, so he really forecasted his own death. I mean, he even put his girlfriend in the movie as his girlfriend — Joe Gideon’s girlfriend — and then cheated on her! Like, he had his character cheat on her. It’s so f***ing unbelievable. Just brilliant. That’s number one. That would be my, I have to say, overall all-time favorite. I’m just very impressed by that movie. It’s just really, really good. It’s got like four musical numbers in there, but they’re not like Glee. Some of them are in drug-induced hallucinations, and some of them are, he’s actually directing a musical. I’ve done plays; I’ve done one musical. But the first table read, when they’re going to put up this play, it is so like the table read on plays. I recognize so many things that they get right. Yeah, that’s my all-time favorite."

"Second film: All That Jazz, Bob Fosse. It’s an incredibly hopeful, uplifting art journey and you know, on the one hand it’s about a man who is killing himself through over-work and who is over-extended and miserable and is going to die of a heart attack, and on the other hand, it’s Bob Fosse’s celebration of the fact that he didn’t die of a heart attack. He came through, and now he’s going to take the events that precipitated him into his heart attack, create a roman à clef around them, and build something magical, which he does. There’s a sort of strange and lovely honesty to it that, the first time I saw it when I was about 15/16 and it was on television, I found arresting, and it’s magic."