100 Favorite Shows: #76 — Fosse/Verdon
“Don’t count me out yet. I still got more to do.”
Based on Sam Wasson’s 2013 biography, Fosse, Fosse/Verdon made a clear distinction that the narrative of Bob Fosse’s (Sam Rockwell) career was not solely his; it also belonged to Gwen Verdon (Michelle Williams), hence the title, Fosse/Verdon. A deep-dive, eight-part miniseries surrounding Broadway’s greatest choreographer-dancer creative partnership, Fosse/Verdon debuted on FX in 2019 and was immediately met with rapturous acclaim and myriad award prospects. Creators Steven Levenson and Thomas Kail crafted one of the decade’s best miniseries, along with composers Alex Lacamoire and Nathan Barr and producers Joel Fields, George Stelzner, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. The biographical series was a depiction of adoration for the stage-centric medium, as well as a condemnation for its plentiful pitfalls.
(Fosse/Verdon contains spoilers in the sense that real life, I suppose, can be spoiled if you’ve not learned about either Bob Fosse or Gwen Verdon before. As such, this essay will contain similar spoilers for their lives and for the show, as well as the creative works of Fosse himself, namely All That Jazz.)
The biopic of Bob Fosse had already been done. His self-directed 1979 masterpiece, All That Jazz, told the story of tortured choreographer Joe Gideon, who was an obvious parallel for Fosse and his own reflections on his life and career. A story riddled with surprising candor, it felt like we already knew who Bob Fosse was, deep flaws and all. But Fosse/Verdon proved there was room to go even deeper over the course of a series with eight installments, nearly quadrupling the run time of All That Jazz. On Fosse/Verdon there was a story to tell about Fosse through even the reception and production of All That Jazz. One of the greatest films of all-time is not where the story ends.
In “Providence,” the eighth installment of the FX miniseries, we got to see Fosse in the throes of filming All That Jazz and the fantasy he harbored over a standing ovation when the film would inevitably sweep through the Academy Awards. The astounding audacity of the film’s final number, an extended, double digit-minute rendition of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love,” is depicted in abridged fashion on Fosse/Verdon with the focus on Fosse himself, rather than Roy Scheider (Miranda). Coupled with his illusions of grandeur and drug-fueled imagination, All That Jazz on Fosse/Verdon is so riddled with meta reverence that it’s a miracle Fosse didn’t invert his own ego, but this is still a fictionalized realm he’s occupying. The common filmmaking phrase, “Back to one” snaps him back to the reality of the film. He still has a shot to direct.
For as open as All That Jazz was about Fosse’s abusively toxic personality, Fosse/Verdon managed to unearth new shades of assholery. When the All That Jazz prep process begins, Fosse brings in Ann Reinking (Margaret Qualley) to audition for the part of herself in the movie. Her performance is weighed down by the fact that her lines aren’t fiction; they’re her real words, but Fosse doesn’t even register her discomfort. He pushes her further and further to the brink, wringing a stunning audition from psychological torture. When she proves her incredible acting talents, Reinking hardly cares how “good” she was with the scene. All she feels is hurt. Hurt by Fosse and hurt by his carelessness. To Fosse, everything he encounters is bullshit (one of his myriad binges reveals this). But for Reinking, the fact that he’s so dismissive of their past is what shakes her the most. There can be no celebratory art if it was derived from abuse.
In the earlier stages of the series, as Bob earns his spot as one of the industry’s most venerated talents, he has not yet blown his own ego out of proportion. He’s still insecure and worried about failure. At the premiere of Cabaret, Fosse can only see what should have been fixed in the film. Over the course of the episode that features Cabaret’s debut, “Glory,” we see the development of Fosse from a hyperactive control freak to a cocky, untouchable artist.
“Glory” begins with the framing of this moment in Fosse’s life as being “Three years since Street Charity flopped.” The more praise and accolades Cabaret receives, though, the more the framing title cards mutate. They track his tally of Oscar nominations and the box office totals of Cabaret. Success grows, ego grows, bullishness grows. Fosse begins to ask the dancers in his company to visit his apartment for “feedback” on his choreography and direction because he believes in his own greatness. Why would any woman say no to the man who opened Cabaret to acclaim while producing both Liza with a Z and Pippin simultaneously? As most stories of addled artists tend to go, though, the episode ends with a different title card: “Two days since entering the psychiatric clinic.” Building up and breaking down: the Fosse/Verdon way.
For many, rehab would be a chance to reclaim one’s past identity. For Fosse, he just becomes “more himself,” as Verdon puts it. More narcissistic and more careless to the other people in his life. In addition to this, Fosse becomes more consumed by the quality of his stories’ endings. Fosse’s anxiety over producing a perfect ending to Pippin bubbles over into panic attacks, including a suicidal medley of the show at the end of “Glory,” complete with the fantastical imagery of a man on a prescriptive ledge. Fosse is driven to make the finale of Pippin the only completely perfect act in the show’s entire repertoire and, eventually, he manages to stick a better landing than Simone Biles.
On the one hand, Fosse’s drive to orchestrate glorious conclusions to his emotionally raw stories led to All That Jazz, which has one of the greatest endings of all-time. On the other hand, this drive was never satiated and it pedaled him straight into an early grave, harming innocent people along the way. “The ones who die young are the ones who live forever,” a vision of Verdon — manifesting as his subconscious — tells him while he contemplates ending his life. Extraordinary people (a group to which everyone has told Fosse he belongs) not only do extraordinary things, they have to do them or else they’re squandering their lives. In his weakest moment, Fosse thinks it would be extraordinary to cut his life short. Rehab isn’t some magic cure-all that can curb those kinds of sentiments. (They’re also ideas that the driving creative forces of the show, including Kail and Miranda, had plenty of experience with in the he-will-never-be-satisfied Broadway show, Hamilton.)
Part of the visions that Fosse receives throughout “Glory” include the recurring sentiment, “Your search for meaning and fulfillment were doomed from the start.” It’s the nihilistic motto of the “tortured genius” archetype, but it also seems challenging to justify Fosse as someone who pursued art for the fulfillment of his life. It hardly seemed like Fosse ever cared more about meaning than he cared about talent, fame, and the excesses that came with them. When mulling over the ending of Pippin, Fosse cannot fathom why anyone would find merit in an ending that chooses love over glory. It’s what set his ethos in the world apart from those who were more than happy to see the characters go home happy.
Fosse also never cared so much about the illusions of happiness that award shows are proclaimed to bring to artists. For some, the Oscars and the Tonys are ways to celebrate art with their friends. For others, it’s an obsession they pursue to validate their own careers to themselves. FX is consistently deft at recreating award show ceremonies (Feud might have the best example), but the recreation of the 45th Academy Awards is seen through the lens of Gwen Verdon and Nicole Fosse (Chandler Head here, but Blake Baumgartner and Juliet Brett later), Bob’s daughter, watching from home. Over the course of Fosse/Verdon we would see the pitfalls of having a master craftsman for a parent. The occasional early return home, the impromptu dancing lesson. They’re not enough to sustain Nicole’s development. Plenty of stars’ children turned out okay, but Bob Fosse’s toxicity was too much to bear. We see the early seeds of it at these Oscars when he thanks the people in his life for his trophy, but leaves out Nicole. As Gwen tells Nicole, it’s quite literally because she didn’t do anything to help him direct Cabaret. Bob Fosse could never see how his family and his career were inextricably linked. To tragically compound it, he always prioritized the latter.
As “Providence” sets Fosse on a hurtling countdown to his death (an episode that slides between a decade of this, All That Jazz, and a Sweet Charity revival in an efficiently juggling manner similar to Hamilton’s “Non-Stop,” if there was still a second half to Fosse’s story), he makes no pointed attempt to help Nicole through her struggles, choosing instead to scold her for making the mistakes he did (and that he’d probably make again). Instead, the last days of Bob Fosse are told through the conversations he shares with Gwen Verdon (including one acknowledgement that any artist who revives their own work is well past their career’s apex).
That’s why we needed Fosse/Verdon as a compendium to the biopic elements of All That Jazz. The series puts Verdon right into the title because that is exactly where she belongs. As the final text of the show reveals, a revue of the work she created with Fosse billed her as merely an “artistic collaborator” and every story told about Fosse seemed to depict her as a bit player, rather than his most trusted and needed artistic genius. No muse brought Fosse’s work to life better than Verdon and no one ever became as much of a creator alongside him as she did. Imagine telling the story of Martin Scorsese without Robert De Niro or the story of Garry Marshall without Hector Elizondo; it can’t be done. Fosse/Verdon put Gwen Verdon back into the narrative and that alone made it a vital piece of television that felt as alive as any of the shows she put on with Bob.
In a recent interview for The Ringer, John Gonzalez spoke to Milorad Čavić about the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ 100-meter butterfly swimming race. (It’s best known for being the race in which Michael Phelps tied Mark Spitz’s gold medal record by touching the wall 1/100th of a second faster than Čavić.) In that article, Čavić spoke of how Phelps never reciprocated Čavić’s efforts to build a relationship. Regarding this, Gonzalez wrote, “All these years, Čavić has waited for a nod that never came, one to signal ‘I was a worthy adversary and that I just was as much a part of his story as he was a part of mine.’”
For the rest of Čavić’s life, he will be linked to Phelps. But the more time we spend with Phelps’ career, the smaller a blip Čavić will become. I see strong parallels between their dynamic and the one that defined Fosse and Verdon. For years, Fosse’s story (through much his own direction) was limited to Fosse himself, genius and douchebag alike, and any story about Verdon largely revolved around her work with Fosse. Just look at the opening paragraphs to their Wikipedia pages. Verdon’s paragraph mentions Fosse. Fosse’s paragraphs keep the focus on his work, his achievements. Fosse/Verdon, on the other hand, allowed the truth behind their art to be restored in the public consciousness. The core brilliance of Fosse/Verdon was in recognizing that her devotion to dance and creative growth could be just as fascinating as Fosse stepping into his own blaze as an obstacle.
“You had the part before you walked in here,” Fosse tells Verdon in the early days of their collaboration, potentially knowing full well how much he plans to torch their relationship. Throughout it all, Verdon puts on a brave face alongside her makeup. She does so when she’s cheated on, when she’s thanked in passing at the Oscars, when Chicago closes, relegating her to Broadway’s recycled trash heap of former stars. Verdon is an all-time talent who somehow doesn’t set foot on a stage for years after Chicago closes; it’s unthinkable and unjustifiable.
Verdon’s dismissal is also a devastating indictment of the entertainment industry’s disinterest in any woman above the age of thirty-five. But through it all, Verdon maintains her strength and her derring-do. She puts kindness back into the world (assuring Joan Simon (Aya Cash in an incredible supporting turn) that she’ll bring a home-cooked meal to her hospital room), but feels shock when kindness is actually returned to her (Ron (Jake Lacy, crushing the supporting boyfriend roles in multiple prestige miniseries) agreeing to move out of the city) because of how resigned she felt to being her loved ones’ doormat. It’s a tragic story, too, just in a different, less traditionally-revered manner from Fosse’s.
Tragic as it may be, Fosse/Verdon still depicts Verdon with the utmost humanity and adoration. It’s partly because of Michelle Williams’ empathetic, moving, always-slightly-broken performance (perhaps the best on television in all of 2019; thankfully, she won the Emmy for it), complete with the greatest tear wipe of all-time.
But it’s also because Fosse/Verdon was crafted from a place of genuine affection and experience for Broadway (even down to Joel Grey’s depiction by Ethan Slater. Seriously, that just screams “Stage! Houselights! Cues!”). It understands the power of dance in a way I couldn’t fully grasp until watching the series. I’d seen many dance routines and competitions over the years, but I understood them about as much as I understood how to navigate The MET. I knew there was emotion and talent at work in a highly-choreographed dance routine, but I struggled with grasping the thematic resonance as accessibly as I could with literature or television shows.
Through Fosse/Verdon, though, I understood it better. In the episodes I watched from a heated blanket in Melbourne to those watched in an airport in Cleveland, I learned about Fosse and Verdon, but I also learned about why Broadway has mattered so sincerely to so many people over the course of its existence. Every step tells a story and every flourish tells a feeling.
When faced with the palpable love of a wedding reception, the couple in question is tasked with dancing to show their affection. A first dance tells the whole story and the music helps accompany it. The same feeling overwhelms Fosse when he is tasked with giving a eulogy at his friend’s funeral (Norbert Leo Butz as Paddy Chayefsky). The emotion he feels overcomes him and the only way to express his connection to Chayefsky is to engage in a tap dance routine. Soon enough, Fosse’s turn for a funeral would come, but along the way, every step told a story. His story. And Gwen’s.
