All That Jazz (1979)

All That Jazz (1979) is a musical drama film directed by Bob Fosse. It follows Joe Gideon, an ambitious theater director and choreographer, as he tries to balance staging his latest Broadway musical, NY/LA, and editing a Hollywood film he has directed called The Stand-Up. Despite being an alcoholic and a driven workaholic who chain-smokes cigarettes, Joe also has a reputation for being a womanizer who constantly flirts and engages in sexual encounters with different women. His morning routine involves playing Vivaldi while taking Visine, Alka-Seltzer, and Dexedrine before looking himself in the mirror and saying, ‘It’s showtime, folks!’ While Joe’s ex-wife Audrey Paris is involved in the production of his show, she disapproves of his womanizing tendencies.

Meanwhile, his girlfriend Katie Jagger and daughter Michelle provide him with companionship. In his mind, he engages in conversation with a character named Angelique who represents death, while at a nightclub. Despite Joe’s dissatisfaction with his editing job, he continuously makes small revisions to a single speech, taking out his frustration on the dancers and incorporating it into his choreography. This results in an overly sexualized rehearsal featuring topless women, disappointing the show’s thrifty investors. One of Joe’s few moments of happiness comes when Katie and Michelle perform a Fosse-style routine as a tribute to The Stand-Up, bringing him to tears.