All That Jazz

Here is something you might not know about me. If I watch more than ten minutes of an old movie I will not turn it off until the final credits. It's a sickness. I can't tell you how many times I have sat down to just watch a great scene and end up turning off the TV at 2 AM. This is strange because in general I hate watching movies on TV. Just ask my husband, who is constantly annoyed by my inability to tell him whether I want to watch a movie on any given night. (It's too much of a commitment. I have a similar problem with showering, but that's another subject for another post. I'm sure you can't wait.) But, if the film is from before, I don't know, 1985, I can't turn it off. One reason is that if a movie from before 1985 is on TV, it's probably a classic. The biggest reason I hate watching contemporary films is because 93% of them suck so badly that I get enraged over the wasted time. Getting caught up in something playing on TCM is a much safer bet. But more than anything it's the amateur anthropologist side of me that can't stop watching. I look at everything, how a set is styled, the makeup, the costumes, I listen to the actors' elocution and slang, and god help me if there is a true location shot. I have been known to pause a film just to study a certain shot like a diorama. It's endlessly fascinating to me.

Tonight it was "All That Jazz."  I have both an unhealthy fascination with Ann Reinking and a unwavering belief that FOSSE IS GOD (seriously, unabashedly and completely unironically) so there wasn't even a second of doubt that I would be watching it to the end. Even with a new "30 Rock" sitting in my DVR queue. And so I did watch it. Do you remember when prescriptions medication had lables that were typed? With a typewriter? How about houseplants? Did you have eleventy-thousand of them in your house in the 70's? We did. And nurses with those white hats. One of my first career choices at about six years old was to be a nurse for that accessory alone. (I also wanted to be a nun for the habit. Clearly, I was disturbed.) Did you know that you can see the birth of the 80's in that film's final number? You can. It's like ur-MTV. Anyway. Now it's late and I am tired but I don't regret it. I rarely do. It's almost always worth the lost sleep. Which is more than I can say for "The Devil Wears Prada." A film I'm sure I'll find absolutely charming in 20 years.

Comments

[Neil]

That final number when he dies is something I still remember from the first time I saw the movie. I had never seen such a bizarre musical number at the time.

[LetterB]

It's hard to tell with any film whether the times influenced it or it influenced the times. I think All That Jazz had equal measures of both. It's funny to me how that scene seems both amazingly fresh and impossibly dated.