Fosse/Verdon: Glory

April 30, 2019 8:46 PM - Season 1, Episode 4

Bob's career takes some huge leaps, while Gwen struggles to overcome personal and professional setbacks.

Vulture Recap: Some Men Are Heroes

posted by oh yeah! (8 comments total)

Interview with Stephen Schwartz about working with Fosse creating "Pippin," and watching "Fosse/Verdon." "Listen, I didn’t like Bob as a person. He was difficult to collaborate with. He was a nasty guy. He was a bully. But my admiration for him was strong then and has only grown stronger over the years."

"I actually made a couple of suggestions to them, which they took—suggestions about accuracy. For instance, they had a disagreement between Bob and Roger [Hirson, the bookwriter] and me that Bob wanted to make the “Glory” sequence more anti-war, more gruesome. But actually that wasn’t true. Because don’t forget it was the time of the Vietnam War, and I was very opposed to the Vietnam War, and that was part of what we were writing about. What Bob wanted to do was emphasize the sexiness of the war sequence and how people kind of get off on war. That was something Roger and I didn’t get at first, so that was what the disagreement was about. And at least in the final version of the script that I saw, the writers of Fosse/Verdon changed that."

(Interview was conducted before Schwartz had yet seen this actual episode.)
posted by dnash at 12:18 PM on May 1, 2019

The character of Gwen feels so real to me. I feel like she's a real person who I already know. The way Michelle is acting it is really good.
posted by bleep at 11:20 AM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Like the part where she casually pours the water into the wine glass and takes some flowers and sticks them in the other glass, like just thoughtlessly and effortlessly making things better & right. I love people like that. It's killing me to see her being abused.
posted by bleep at 11:21 AM on May 2, 2019

Also wow is that Vox recap biased. Gwen is flawed for making a couple of honest jabs at her ex being clearly back on his bullshit again?

So this episode ends with Fosse’s mind and body effectively shutting down, paralyzed by substance abuse, physical exhaustion, and the nagging questions — Gwen’s and his own — that keep pinging around in his head.

When I was watching it it doesn't seem like anything Gwen has said that wasn't related to saving his ass went completely unregistered. Did the reviewer think that was really Gwen saying those things in the hallucination??
posted by bleep at 1:16 PM on May 2, 2019

I'm just hoping this episode has gotten us to peak-repulsiveness for Fosse, because, watching him abuse that dancer and then her having to soothe his ego afterwards in hope of staying in the show was rough.

I've never seen a full production of Pippin -- I think I tried to watch the tv-movie once, but couldn't make sense of it, like it was too much of its time or I was the wrong age for it, so I feel like the Pippin sequences in this episode made my memory of what I saw make more sense and also confirmed that it was one of those 'this is not for me' shows.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:26 PM on May 2, 2019

The character of Gwen feels so real to me. I feel like she's a real person who I already know. The way Michelle is acting it is really good.

When Bob stops into her dressing room after the only performance of Children Children, we, the audience, know that Gwen is pissed. She's utterly composed and somehow still chilly. Or maybe it's just that her usual warmth is gone?

I have never seen Pippin, and I don't think I could watch it, but I loved the "Finale" scene with Bob. The actor they cast as Ben Vereen was fantastic. And if I hadn't read it in a recap, I would never have noticed that Margaret Qualley's character was Ann Reinking.
posted by gladly at 6:08 PM on May 2, 2019

Heartbreaking when Joan says she is most concerned about who will look after Nicole after her death.
posted by Sukey Says at 4:06 PM on May 12, 2019

This was my favourite episode, so far. The theatre nerd in me is enjoying this period in history, even though Bob Fosse is truly awful and this is effecting my enjoyment of the show a lot. I can usually forgive this in an autobiography but I'm finding his awfulness is really the tone of the show as well; he's dour and the show is dour. Verdon is interesting to watch; William is amazing, but it's not enough to make the show enjoyable to me.

I did see the Broadway revival of Pippin a few years ago. It's a weird show and I think the circus stuff in this most recent production made it work - but I guess people were impressed with Fosse's version at the time, given he won two Tonys for it.
posted by crossoverman at 2:55 AM on May 23, 2019