directed by Richard Attenborough;
screenplay by Arnold Schulman, based on a stage play conceived, directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett;
music by Marvin Hamlisch; lyrics by Edward Kleban;
cast: Michael Blevins, Yamil Borges, Sharon Brown, Gregg Burge, Michael Douglas, Cameron English, Tony Fields, Nicole Fosse, Vicki Frederick, Jan Gan, Michelle Johnston, Janet Jones, Pam Klinger, Audrey Landers, Terrence Mann, Charles McGowan, Alyson Reed, Justin Ross, Blane Savage, Matt West
Show business is the only business that reminds us there is no business like it. And it never tires of that message. If there were as many books about books as there are musicals about musicals, there wouldn't be room on the shelf for books about anything else.
"A Chorus Line" is the quintessential backstage musical, a celebration of the lives and hard times of the gypsy dancers who turn up by the hundreds to audition for a handful of jobs on Broadway. It takes years of brutal hard work to become a good-enough dancer to dare to go to an audition, and then the reward usually is a brusque "thank you" and a sweaty ride home on the subway. In order to succeed as a Broadway dancer, applicants need a limitless capacity to absorb rejection, and "A Chorus Line" celebrates that masochism in song and dance.
"A Chorus Line" is now in its 11th year on stages all over the world; its story is by now well-known. A choreographer is casting eight dancers for a new musical he hopes to stage, and during one long and truthful day he auditions dozens of dancers before he makes his final selection. Richard Attenborough's film treatment of this story sticks to the outlines of the stage version, by and large, although he leaves the stage to fill in the details of the choreographer's old romance, and he leaves out some of the original songs to make room for some new ones.
The result may not please purists who want a film record of what they saw on stage, but this is one of the most intelligent and compelling movie musicals in a long time - and the most grown up, since it isn't limited, as so many contemporary musicals are, to the celebration of the survival qualities of geriatric actresses.
Most of the scenes take place inside a theater. Zach (Michael Douglas), the choreographer, sits behind a writing platform somewhere out there in the darkness. Occasionally he lights a cigarette, and the ash glows as he takes the measure of the dancers on the stage. He can see them. They can't see him. He communicates by microphone. They step hesitantly to the edge of the stage, blinded by the spotlight, and talk into the void. Well, if that isn't the life they wanted, why did they volunteer for it?
Platoons of dancers are brought on stage, winnowed, dismissed. Finally there are 16 left, and Zach asks each one of them to talk on a personal level - talk about when they were born, and where, and what their lives have been like, and what their dreams are. Many of the dancers have the most extraordinary difficulties in doing this, and one of them is frank: "Give me the lines, and I can play anybody. Just don't ask me to talk about myself."
Meanwhile, a backstage drama is taking shape. An unexpected dancer has appeared for the auditions - Sheila (Vicki Frederick), Zach's former girlfriend. They met in the theater, courted in the theater, broke up because Zach's job left no time for a personal life. Sheila was a star, but now she simply needs a job.
Unlike the play, the movie opens up by going offstage for flashbacks to their affair, but the flashbacks are notable mostly for the way they focus on the theatrical lives of this couple - the way their private lives seem valid only to the degree that they reflect acceptance from the audience.
The underlying tension in the movie circles around Zach's eventual decision: Will his heart or his profession make the eventual decision about Sheila? Douglas plays Zach on a staccato, harsh note; this is a workaholic who walks around with a lot of anger. That makes it all the more effective when he occasionally relents and gives one of the dancers a break; softening momentarily before putting on his mask again.
I thought Zach's most revealing moment came when he made the cut from 16 dancers to eight, reading out eight names and then, when the eight were assembled downstage with smiles on their faces, thanking them and dismissing them; he had chosen the eight he did not name. Was this a misguided attempt to tell the rejected eight that they were also winners? Or was it simply cruelty? We are left to answer for ourselves. Such questions are intercut with song and dance, with virtuoso solo numbers (my favorite was Charles McGowan's "I Can Do That!") and ensemble production numbers, leading up to a big and splashy finale, in which all of the dancers who originally auditioned are back on stage, together once again. That leads to my one major difference with Attenborough's approach.
Since "A Chorus Line" is a musical about itself, and since the whole hard, bitter, romantic truth of the story is that many are called but few are chosen, the roll call at the end strikes a false note of triumph. Better, perhaps, to have eight dancers on stage, and then cut to the others putting on their street clothes, waiting at bus stops, explaining to friends how they didn't get the job, or going to their dance classes yet once again. I think the message of the play is that you don't get called back for a grand finale; you simply go to another audition.
EVERYONE was convinced that ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' could never be tamed for the screen, but Mike Nichols turned it into a group triumph for himself, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Though it was generally agreed that ''Hair'' would not work as a film, Milos Forman transformed it into one of the most original pieces of musical cinema of the last 20 years.
Then they said that ''A Chorus Line'' couldn't be done - and this time they were right.
At one point or another in the last 10 years, just about everybody who is anybody in show business was asked to take charge of the film adaptation of this innovative, sensationally successful Broadway musical, which opened on Oct. 25, 1975, at the Shubert Theater and is still there - the longest running show in Broadway history.
Joseph Papp and Michael Bennett, the producer-director team responsible for the show, declined to work on the movie, and so, eventually, did Mr. Nichols and Sidney Lumet, among others. The job was finally accepted by Richard Attenborough at the time he'd just won the Oscar as the director of ''Gandhi.''
Mr. Attenborough is listed as the director of ''A Chorus Line,'' but what he seems actually to have done is to act as the escort to the screen of a reasonable facsimile of the show, not noticing that it was dying en route.
It's evident that Mr. Attenborough understood the problems facing him and his associates, including Arnold Schulman, who wrote the film's screenplay. He's avoided the elephantine style by which he inflated ''Oh! What a Lovely War,'' Joan Littlewood's small, satirical theatrical improvisation, into a huge, over-decorated, over-orchestrated, all-star musical epic. This ''Chorus Line'' is no ''Gandhi''-dances. The physical scale remains comparatively intimate, but the exuberance has gone.
In the theater, ''A Chorus Line'' unfolds inside an unadorned backstage setting with all of the spontaneity of the sort of group audition it records. The theater audience is in the privileged position of sitting in on an open call for dancers - ''gypsies'' - for the chorus of a new musical show. As the audition proceeds, the dancers become identifiable personalities, interacting with each other and with Zach, the show's no-nonsense choreographer, who remains a mostly unseen presence, a voice heard over the public-address system.
In a series of tough, slangy, funny, sometimes moving monologues, which are, in fact, first-rate song-and-dance numbers, the aspirants manage to implicate the members of the theater audience in what is, for each dancer, the chance of a lifetime. Their audition behavior and their stories are often corny, but Michael Bennett's expert staging and choreography, and the fine score (music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban), combine to produce the kind of coup de theatre that seems to have been created in a single burst of breathtaking inspiration.
The result is a theatrical happening in which the audience is made to feel an integral part. It's not, of course, at least not any more so than would be an audience at a performance of ''The Seagull'' or ''Abie's Irish Rose.'' Yet that simulated complicity is essential to the success of ''A Chorus Line'' on the stage.
Having recognized this, and the impossibility of finding any cinematic equivalent, Mr. Attenborough has elected to make a more or less straightforward film version that is fatally halfhearted. Though the film stays mostly inside the theater, it does occasionally venture outside, but in ways that only call our attention to the frustration and desperation of people who want to make a ''real'' movie. A shot of a brilliantly yellow taxicab driving over the Manhattan Bridge becomes almost comically irrelevant, even though it's at the start of the film.
From time to time, too, the present action is interrupted by what Mr. Attenborough describes as ''flashcuts,'' which are simply shorter versions of flashbacks, and which interrupt the narrative flow as effectively as a loud snore. These, however, are decisions that can be defended - in theory, anyway.
Impossible to defend are some key casting choices and the overall staging. To the now beefed-up role of Zach, the choreographer whose dictatorial manner is said to be excused by his fantastic talent, Michael Douglas brings a singular lack of charm and conviction. His warmest smile would freeze a cardboard container of coffee in five seconds.
Equally without charm, and without special graces as a dancer or singer, is Alyson Reed, who plays Cassie, Zach's former lover who returns to New York after an aborted Hollywood career to resume the life of a gypsy. Miss Reed's singing of the show's hit song, ''What I Did for Love,'' the movie's penultimate number, is photographed so portentously you might suspect Mr. Attenborough had confused ''A Chorus Line'' with ''La Traviata.''
Some members of the chorus do stand out, especially Gregg Burge, who tears things up effectively in ''Surprise, Surprise,'' a new Hamlisch-Kleban number choreographed by Jeffrey Hornaday; Charles McGowan, who sings and dances ''I Can Do That''; Vicki Frederick, as the aging (nearly 30) gypsy named Sheila; Audrey Landers (once of ''Dallas''), who does a smashing ''Dance 10, Looks 3,'' and Yamil Borges, who sings the last word on second-rate method acting, ''Nothing.'' As Larry, Zach's assistant choreographer, Terrence Mann is an ever-ready figure of sanity, in the context of the film as well as of the audition.
The performers don't have an easy time of it. Mr. Attenborough sometimes sets up a singing-dancing monologue in such a way that he allows the individual performer to be upstaged by the members of the line in back. No matter what's happening in the center of a shot, it's difficult to take one's eyes off poor, pretty Nicole Fosse (the daughter of Bob Fosse), who must stand pigeon-toed virtually throughout, thus to indicate her innocence and naivete.
Subtlety is not Mr. Attenborough's style. The singing voices, even when they are good, have been recorded to ear-piercing intensity. Almost everyone appears to have been directed to overreact, including the cameraman, whose oddball camera angles are sometimes as distracting as Miss Fosse's toes.
Thousands of talented dancers and singers flock to New York City every year with hopes of landing a role in a Broadway musical. Despite their tremendous expenditure of physical energy and discipline, only a few are chosen. And even then, the individual is soon overshadowed as the many in the chorus line become one.
This screen adaptation of the Broadway musical offers a loving tribute to these "gypsies" and the gusto they bring to their craft. Two new musical numbers have been added to the original show, and the kinetic choreography of Jeffrey Homaday is a treat to watch.
Michael Douglas plays Zach, the hard-nose choreographer who is conducting the auditions for a new Broadway musical. From his god-like perch at the back of the auditorium, he orders the 17 finalists, who are competing for eight spots in the show, to share something about their lives, hopes and dreams. Among the most interesting are Sheila (Vicki Frederick), a jaded hoofer who has been around the block and knows the scene; Morales (Yamil Borges), a feisty Puerto Rican woman; Richie (Gregg Burge), a dynamic dancer; Bebe (Michelle Johnston), a spirited performer who is just recovering from a nervous breakdown; and Paul (Cameron English), a homosexual with a sad story to tell.
One the major missteps of the film was the casting of Alyson Reed as Zach's old girlfriend who walked out on him and now desperately needs a job even though she's had a taste of the big time in Hollywood. This leggy actress doesn't convey the fire or passion needed to make her performance stand apart from the others.
Everybody, at one time or another, has been on a line similar to this one-anxious to be accepted and terrified of being rejected by someone judging his or her worth. Director Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) makes the most of this dramatic tension in the story along with the hopefulness of all those in the audition. Best of all, he captures the vibrancy of modern dance from the free-form confusion of the opening scenes to the high-stepping kicks of the finale.
I had one singular sensation while watching Richard Attenborough's A Chorus Line (or A Chorus Line: The Movie as it was billed on theatrical one-sheets): I wanted to hurl. The film, based on a Broadway musical I have no plans of ever seeing in person, is traumatically bad, a stone-passing ordeal that I suspect haunts its progenitors like something resurrected from Stephen King's pet sematary. (A Chorus Line paws its way out of the grave again this month as it debuts on R1 DVD.) It's not that the picture was made with any special incompetence, but that its various elements, from the fixed set to the songs (with emphasis on the couple penned for the film alone) to the performances to the performers proper, are hideous, loathsome--tacky and sour, wanting for a glimmer of aesthetic appeal. A Chorus Line is the ugliest song-and-dance movie I've ever seen, which is saying something: I've seen Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers series.
Although I'm no expert on musical theatre, preferring to ply my masochism elsewhere, I recognize that the movie's definition of a choreographer as the smoking man seated at a binoculars' distance from the stage making voice-of-Oz pronouncements into a handheld mike may be a little off-the-mark. As the Fosse caricature Zach, Michael Douglas spends most of A Chorus Line shrouded in darkness--probably a wise career move, though a raincoat and sunglasses would've been even wiser. Zach's casting the chorus line for "Glengarry Glen Ross", according to the marquee outside the film's central location, and he'll spend the course of the afternoon over which A Chorus Line takes place whittling down a room full of patently-insincere Great White Way hopefuls to the eight men and women most capable of bringing David Mamet's melodious real estate agents to life.
In the film's only great scene, Zach names his selections for the chorus line, but there's more to what he's saying than meets the eye. The moment reflects an integrity of character conception, a true God complex in Zach the rest of the film waffles on, and it rewards both the sadistic and the compassionate viewer with an earnest show of suffering that, despite numerous coming-out soliloquies and Freudian confessionals, had thus far eluded the filmmakers. It's tough to feel sorry for a bunch of uncharismatic nancies who wilfully subject themselves to the Zachs of this world for a chance to change out of their leg-warmers and into a glitter-suit (Attenborough's infamous quote "I adore courage" seems to apply disingenuously here); the reason A Chorus Line doesn't work is also the novelty that attracted its creators to the original project: it traps you in an intellectualization of the lunatic goal of becoming a Rockette. Trust me, you'll be crying "uncle" long before those gams are flashed.
As the last person in America who hasn't seen the play, I was crushed to find how completely this supposed breakthrough musical conforms to the standard Broadway encounter-group formula: a collection of characters, carefully but artificially varied according to age, sex, race, and background, are brought together on a more or less arbitrary premise; they spend a couple of hours confessing their innermost sufferings and begging the audience for sympathy; and when it's over, everyone feels improved. Still, if you know what you're getting in for, the film shouldn't disappoint. Richard Attenborough's direction achieves that balance of impersonality and brisk pacing we've come to recognize as "professionalism," and he doesn't clog up the dancing with too many stylistic gimmicks. The cast, mostly composed of young unknowns, destroy the illusion of human variety by uniformly adopting the same showy, demonstrative acting style, but they do know how to move.