Worth clicking over for a humorous deconstruction of the hollow, emotional nonsense that passes for carefully considered judgement in the Hollywood-media-academia-elite circles of this country.
Kyle Smith:
“…In the final episode of Fosse/Verdon, one of the two titular characters, Bob Fosse, is shooting one of the greatest films of all time. The other, Gwen Verdon, is having a quarrel with her unspeakably dull boyfriend about whether he approves of her performing in a road-show production of a Broadway musical. These two matters are given roughly equal importance, as are the lives of Fosse, a genius who left an indelible mark on both Broadway and film, and Verdon, a second-tier hoofer and actress whom nobody would be thinking about, much less making a series about, if she hadn’t been married to Fosse.
So it went throughout Fosse/Verdon, an eight-episode miniseries shown on FX (still available on demand) that had flashes of brilliance but also proved to be a victim of the #MeToo movement, or rather a victim of Hollywood’s obsession with that movement, or mindset, or complaint. Fosse/Verdon was originally conceived as a show about Fosse. It was to be based on a biography called Fosse. It should have been called Fosse. Then #MeToo hit, and the (male) creators of the show panicked. Everything had changed! (No, it hadn’t. It rarely does.)
How, the creators and their bosses wondered, should they work #MeToo into the show? Correct answer: They should have ignored it and carried on as planned. Actual answer: Just as #MeToo morphed almost instantaneously from a movement about punishing sexual misbehavior in men to an affirmative-action reparations/hiring policy for Hollywood women, the makers of Fosse/Verdondecided they had to apply a sort of retroactive affirmative-action admittance policy to the genius club, or at least to the important-figures club. Hence Gwen Verdon, a forgotten hoofer whose work barely survives anywhere unless you count the memory of elderly Broadway veterans, had to be sanctified and made the equivalent of Fosse, a larger-than-life figure who directed Sweet Charity, Pippin, and Chicago on Broadway and the films Cabaret, Lenny, and All That Jazz. Sure, the series tells us, Cabaret was a revolutionary screen musical unlike anything ever seen before on screen and won eight Oscars (including one for Fosse over Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather), but did you know Verdon picked the gorilla costume used in the “If You Could See Her from My Eyes” number? Clearly the whole movie would have fallen apart with a lesser costume.
I’m wondering how far #MeToo feminism is going to take its logic. Maybe next year we’ll get a show called Rembrandt/Mrs. Rembrandt. No! Foolishness. What am I thinking? It would have to be Mrs. Rembrandt/Rembrandt. Still not enough. She had a name, you know. Saskia van Uylenburgh/Rembrandt. Actually, who cares about Rembrandt? Men’s stories have been told for too long. Time for some herstory. Coming soon on FX: Saskia. Do we know enough about Saskia to fill up eight hours of television? Never mind. We’ll just imagine her being suffering yet proud, suffused with unrecognized brilliance, a woman ahead of her time. It’ll sweep the Emmys. Get Michelle Williams on the phone; she’ll play it to the hilt. (You think I’m joking: The New Republic’s television critic Rachel Syme wrote “Fosse/Verdon is a pas de deux. . . . Part of me wishes it was a solo.” Guess which character she considers expendable?)…”