Someone in a Tree2 said: "After the thrills of episode 2, I was really let down by #3. The only choreography we get in the whole episode is that weird opening dream sequence in the Editor'sHallway?!? What the hell was THAT, and why didn't anyone notice it looks nothing like a Fosse number? I can't believe we're spending so much time with Gwen's rehearsalsfora straight play-- would a miniseries on Barbra Streisand spend an hour on the movie NUTS?
And how many times do we have to see a scene where Fosse's collaborators (in this case his Cabaret editor) are portrayed as lumbering ignoramuses? Are Fosse and Verdon the only genuises we're allowed to have in one room? Grrr...."
This is one of the most egregious things about this series - for dramatic purposes trying to paint characters based on real people as jerks, bored collaborators, etc. The editor of Cabaret was one of the best and even according to Wasson their collaboaration was a good one. It's all made up, that stuff, but really one shouldn't have "dramatic license" with characters based on real people. Same goes for the character based on Joseph Hardy, the director of Children! Children! He's portrayed as a total creep, he speaks of acting in today's terminology, and I'm sorry, there is no way he would have spoken to a Tony Award-winning star with that disdain and condescension, and in front of the entire company - yeah, sure. I found those scenes embarrassing and excruciating. And back to the editor, they make Fosse look like a neophyte idiot by having him not understand when the editor says he's ready to show him the assemblage of Cabaret, like that's some verboten thing, to which the writer has him resond, "You edited my movie?" Every editor of every film ever made does the first assemblage, it always runs long because it's just all the approved takes roughly edited in some version of the film that is hardly "edited." Assemblages suck but it helps you see where things are long, what can go, and basically after viewing you begin the real work of finding the movie. Fosse had already done Sweet Charity and would have known all of this. But for the sake of some stupid need for some drama, they fabricate. I can't imagine what the heirs of Mr. Bretherton and Mr. Hardy think, nor can I imagine what the heirs of Mr. Chayefsky think with his sequence, which someone who knows those people intimately, posted on Facebook saying Chayefsky would have never spoken those things nor would Gwen have said what she said about Paddy babysitting. Again, artificial drama. And just for fun's sake, they did not say "on set" in 1972 or 1982 or before the 90s. They said on THE set. At some point well into the 90s it became this other thing. Oh, and they didn't have "handles" on paper grocery bags in 1972 either. Ah, but who cares about the details?
Updated On: 4/25/19 at 10:58 PM
