EARLY in his career James D. Stern got a job assisting the writer of a small
— really small — Off Broadway musical. When a few hundred people showed up to
audition, Mr. Stern recalled recently, he was shocked. “I kept saying, ‘They’re
not all here for this, are they?’ ”
It taught Mr. Stern, who went on to produce plays, musicals and movies, just
how steeply the supply of stage performers outstrips the demand. So when he and
Adam
Del Deo, with whom he has shared the producing and directing of two
documentaries, agreed to do one about the casting of the 2006 Broadway revival
of “A
Chorus Line,” they had a pretty good idea of how many auditioners they would
face. And on Friday, long after the initial 3,000 became several dozen, after 26
were hired, after they played 759 performances and closed, the movie “Every
Little Step” will open — 400-plus hours whittled down to the essential 95
minutes that capture, even more accurately than the musical does, what Broadway
gypsies endure to get onstage.
Mr. Del Deo and Mr. Stern began their documentary partnership in 2002,
tagging along as the Chinese basketball star Yao
Ming adjusted to the Houston Rockets in “The
Year of the Yao.” Their second effort, “...
So Goes the Nation,” was more ambitious, following some Democratic and
Republican campaign workers in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election. But
in “Every Little Step” there are more stories in a longer time frame, not to
mention musical numbers. And the cameras seem to be everywhere at once.
To the insistent thrum of “I Hope I Get It,” the filmmakers show us aspirants
lined up in the rain for the chance to do two — two! — pirouettes. They
eavesdrop as the arbiters behind the table render their verdicts: yes, no, no,
no. They are there when performers battle nerves before and melt down after
their auditions and, in between, struggle to follow Baayork Lee as she teaches
them the dance steps.
The filmmakers follow dewy newcomers like Jessica Lee Goldyn and savvy
troupers like Rachelle Rak, a 21-year veteran of the professional stage. Charlotte
d’Amboise goes full-out after the central role of Cassie as her father, the
ballet star Jacques d’Amboise, reflects on the toll dance has taken on his body.
And we are there as Deirdre Goodwin screams and weeps when she learns she will
play Sheila — and as Ms. Rak finds out she will not.
It’s “A Chorus Line” squared — the 1975 musical was itself a kind of
documentary, extrapolated by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante from the
tape-recorded musings and recollections at a series of storied late-night
gatherings of Broadway dancers, some of whom later appeared in the show. Marvin
Hamlisch and Edward
Kleban added songs, and Michael Bennett, the brilliant director and
choreographer who’d had the idea in the first place, fashioned it into a
powerhouse that won the Tony and the Pulitzer, ran for nearly 15 years and
spawned touring companies, foreign productions and countless amateur
versions.
What never quite happened was a successful transfer to the screen; Mr.
Bennett backed out of a planned film, and Richard
Attenborough’s 1985 attempt is generally judged a failure. In 2004 John
Breglio, Mr. Bennett’s lawyer, friend, heir and executor, and co-owner of those
audio tapes, thought the time had come to revive “A Chorus Line” on Broadway. He
hired Bob Avian, Mr. Bennett’s original co-choreographer, and also friend and
heir, to stage it.
“When I decided to bring the show back,” Mr. Breglio said, “I thought a
little bit about how Michael had talked about doing the movie — as a reflection
of how in reality actors tried to get into a show. He never thought you should
just put the musical on the screen.” A documentary, he reasoned, could “put a
mirror up to the play and the real process.”
Mr. Del Deo said that was exactly what intrigued him and Mr. Stern about the
project. “We talked at length,” he said, “about Federico
Fellini’s ‘8 ½,’ which is about a director trying to figure out his next
movie, constantly playing on what is happening in his life. We knew we could
multilayer it in that ‘8 ½’ way.”
Their movie’s account of the competition for five of the meatier parts in “A
Chorus Line” is also interwoven with a history of the original production. Mr.
Bennett, who died in 1987, is a presence throughout, and not just in interviews
with the surviving “Chorus Line” collaborators (who, Mr. Hamlisch reveals,
included the actress Marsha
Mason, after she saw an early performance and made a crucial observation).
There are video clips of Mr. Bennett dancing and audio excerpts from the famous
all-night conversations that gave rise to the show.
Like his colleagues on the stage revival and the documentary about it, Mr.
Breglio stressed how little the actual casting of the musical resembled the
simulacra offered by television programs like “American
Idol.”
“It’s not about being a star,” he said. “It’s about getting a job.” And if
“A Chorus Line” deconstructed the romantic backstage legend of spunky chorus
kids making it to the top after subbing for indisposed divas, it added its own
sentimental gloss — “What
I Did for Love” — to what can be a grueling, bruising way of life.
Just ask Ms. Rak, who danced out of Pittsburgh with a touring company of “Cats” as a teenager, made it to Broadway as a replacement seven years later and worked
her way through the ranks despite injury and a harrowing fall from the stage. In
a recent interview she said she thought she was a perfect fit for the
tough-talking Sheila. After her first audition, Mr. Avian said, he thought so
too. In heartbreaking detail, “Every Little Step” records how she lost the role
to Ms. Goodwin over the next eight months. She’s philosophical about it now, but
at the time, she said, “it almost destroyed me.”
Mr. Avian said he was not exactly thrilled when he learned that such
life-altering decisions would be documented for posterity. “I said, ‘Oy, oy, oy,
oy, oy,’ ” although as choreographer of “Miss Saigon” and other big musicals,
he’d participated in several “making of” films. “But they were very controlled,”
he noted. “You would have one day when someone would shoot, and then you’d go do
an interview.”
Mr. Stern and Mr. Del Deo were shooting every audition, and at first, Mr.
Avian said, he was self-conscious. “But by the second month,” he said, “I didn’t
have time to think about the crew. I’d walk in, they’d clip on the microphone,
the cameras went on — it didn’t matter.”
Ms. Lee, an original cast member who went on to restage “A Chorus Line”
around the world, said she too was spooked by the cameras at first. But by the
time two contenders were left for the role based on her own life, she was making
no bones about whom she preferred. “I really wanted someone to play me who had
the push of a New Yorker,” she said in an interview. Mr. Avian had other ideas,
and the back-and-forth captured on film is affectionate but deadly serious.
Such moments were rare, Mr. Breglio said. And he never had to invoke his
obligation, as executive producer, to suspend filming if a performer was in
danger of being humiliated — a condition imposed, along with many others, when
Actors’ Equity Association agreed for the first time to allow its members to be
filmed while auditioning. The union has no jurisdiction, of course, over
nonactors, so Ms. Lee could do nothing about the scene in which she is caught
“huffing and puffing, tongue hanging out” while Mr. Avian looks “nice and cool.”
She wants everyone to know she had just been dancing for 45 minutes
straight.