Come Hear the Music Play

If you want to learn something and enjoy doing so I suggest you give the 1972 movie Cabaret a look. It will cost you four bucks but if you don’t find it worth it I’ll send you a refund myself. 

Joel Grey as the Emcee is evil incarnate, which you might not notice.

What will you learn? Well, you will see where we are right now, this country and the vast majority of those who live here. If you recall the movie, it takes place in 1931 Berlin, with the rise of the Nazis in the background of the main storyline. This is what I’m talking about.

If you’re not in the mood for a great, profound, highly enlightening couple hours, just give this clip a look. Like three minutes.

Of notable brilliance is how Fosse crafted the last shot in the film to match the opening.  And there are set pieces that are absolute knockouts, particularly as in the clip. If that one doesn’t give you the shivers… well, it should.

Allan

A sidenote: I met Bob Fosse coincidentally in 1972, the year of Cabaret (it swept the Oscars, including best director and best picture) out in the Hamptons.  In those days the gay/show biz/literary community was all over the place on the East End and certain of my surf buddies and I were very popular with the big shots. Good looking young surfers and so on, although to my knowledge none of my crowd were gay. We had fun taking advantage of their infatuations with us. Meeting females and so on.

Ten seconds into this scene, Fosse lowers the boom.

Through novelist John Knowles (A Separate Peace and others) and his pal Truman Capote we were invited to a party at Lester Persky’s East Hampton mansion and I soon found myself in conversation with a model/actress type whose name escapes me. (Persky  was a money man who would soon produce the movie versions of Equus and of Hair.) I’d just returned from a hashish smuggling/surf trip to Morocco, had an attitude, and all was going well with my new friend. Suddenly someone nudges me aside, puts himself in the woman’s face, his back to me now, and interrupts, saying to the girl, ‘I’m Bob Fosse.’ That was it. He was Bob Fosse.

Fosses was a little guy as I recall and looked nothing like Roy Scheider, who played Fosse in another brilliant Fosse film, All That Jazz. Fosse must’ve mistaken me for a boyfriend of one of his gay pals, so when I said words to the effect of ‘Get the fuck out of our faces,’ he did so immediately.

We only see him for a few seconds but he’s important.

I relate this in case you don’t know that brilliance, talent, intelligence, you name it as a positive trait, whatever it is it has nothing to do with being or not being a fucking asshole, a meek one at that. Quite the contrary, and I know this for a statistical fact.

Actually, at the moment I cannot think of even one exception to this phenomenon, and I have a fairly impressive list.

But still, click at least one of the above links. Fosse, I promise you, would not get the truth of his own brilliant work: We are now in Berlin in 1931.To put it a more personal way (if you view the film): We are Sally Bowles.

One other thing, and this somehow relates to my previous post: Fosse is now dead. I’m not. You’re not. Good.

Addendum: If you trusted me and are happy about it, here’s another one, from a couple nights ago, and it’s currently free on Youtube. The original version of Wolfgang Peterson’s Das Boot.