"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."

"The last one is Pulp Fiction. Me and my, as he was then, I suppose, eight-year-old, nine-year-old son, thought it was great. I just loved, again, the way [Quentin Tarantino] used time, the way he moved backwards and forwards in time, which I thought was sort of groundbreaking, although it may not have been. But I thought it was. And I saw the energy and the vigor of it all, and just the images of it. I just love that film. I watch it now and again, as it were, and it never palls for me at all, but I just thought he kind of invented a way, or kind of storytelling technique, which is sort of second nature to us all now, but again, that nonlinear business — for me, it was a revelation. I’m sure there have been other films like it, but this seemed to work so well within a very contemporary, very fast-moving, very original piece. To have the courage to play with the structure, and tell things backwards and forwards and all that sort of thing, I thought, was not just cute, or just showmanship. It actually enhanced the drama, trying to figure out where you were and what was going on. I found that a very creative effort, and so did my son, which thrilled me. He wasn’t fazed by it at all."