Gotta say it right off the bat — I looooooved this movie.
But then I'm a theater geek from way back, and Every Little Step is crack for theater geeks: a documentary about the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1975 musical A Chorus Line and the casting of its 2006 Broadway revival.
But will the theater-phobic love it, too?
I'd say yes. Because this movie is not just relevant to Broadway babies; it's hot-wired into the American zeitgeist.
A Chorus Line director/choreographer Michael Bennett taped conversations with 22 veteran Broadway dancers in 1974, then adapted those tapes (with writer Nicholas Dante) into a show whose innovative mix of candor and glitz would change the shape of the American musical. And in setting up a fictional audition as a framework for the dancers' stories, A Chorus Line anticipated the mass appeal of a show-biz ritual that has now come to dominate popular entertainment.
Bennett wanted to illuminate the experience of Broadway "gypsies" — dancers living from show to show, never achieving stardom but doing what they do for the love of it. But the genius of A Chorus Line is that it allowed anyone to identify with the dancers' struggle for acceptance, even if most audience members couldn't dance their way out of a leotard.
Now, judging by some of the people who try out for Idol et al, not even that division remains. Three thousand people showed up for 19 roles in the Chorus Line revival. As one of the wanna-be's tells the camera, "Everyone's doing it — getting into showbiz," so why shouldn't he? (This same guy, Tyce Diorio, is now a judge and choreographer for So You Think You Can Dance?)
Every Little Step, directed by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, serves as a real-world corrective to reality-show spectacle. The familiar refrain "I really need this job" (from the song "I Hope I Get It") is threaded throughout the documentary, and the sentiment is all too familiar to these dancers. "I'm out of unemployment," says one. "I really need this job."
Unlike the shame-mongers of TV reality shows, the backstage personnel for the Chorus Line revival seem to care more about creation than destruction. They can be brutal, no question: original cast member Baayork Lee, charged with recreating the choreography, is a tiny drill sergeant, shouting "Eat nails!" to the dancers to get them to try harder. After the first decisions have been made, a stage manager bluntly informs the rejects: "You've been cut. Can you please get out?" But the more humane aspect of the proceedings is expressed by director Bob Avian (co-choreographer of the original): "Bottom line, you gotta like them right away."
And when it all comes together, the result is ineffably moving. A tear streaks down Avian's cheek when he hears one actor deliver the famous monologue by Paul, the gay dancer estranged from his parents; it's an amazingly heartfelt reading, and leaves Avian unable to speak, except to mutter, half laughing, half crying, "Sign him up."
I would tell you the actor's name, but part of the pleasure of Every Little Step is that the filmmakers do an excellent job of maintaining suspense about who's going to get cast. You'll be surprised by some of the outcomes, but I dare you not to care about the fate of Chryssie, who is either an authentic klutz, a very good actress or both; Rachelle, the embodiment of hard-bitten, almost-over-the-hill Sheila; or Charlotte D'Amboise, the closest thing to a Broadway "name" in the bunch and the first dancer I've ever seen who could make sense out of the too-long "Music and the Mirror" number, in which Cassie, the star who's down on her luck, tries to convince the director to cast her in the chorus.
The first Cassie, Tony winner Donna McKechnie, is among the interviewees. We learn that the final fate of her character was determined by Neil Simon's then-wife, actress Marsha Mason, who suggested a crucial plot change. Composer Marvin Hamlisch provides a cautionary tale about "Dance: Ten; Looks: 3." (The lesson: Don't reveal your punchline in the playbill.) And the filmmakers make brilliant use of Bennett's original tapes; we hear excerpts as transcripts scroll down the screen, then the image shifts to clips of actors delivering those same words on stage.
Bennett, who died of AIDS in 1987 at the age of 44, is seen accepting a Tony for the show in 1976: "I wanted one moment," he tells the audience, "and now I have it." Stern and Del Deo have given him another — one all of us, theater geeks or no, can cherish.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2009.
