Ted Carey writes about the trailer for All That Jazz which we featured here yesterday…
I worked as an usher in the local movie theater while in college and this is the preview we showed all through the busy Christmas Season in 1979, which meant viewers of films like Kramer vs. Kramer and The Rose were getting this preview. When we started showing All That Jazz in January, there wasn't a night where (usually by the time Young Joe climaxes during his dance routine) patrons wouldn't be out in the lobby to complain about the nature of the movie and asking if this was the same film they had seen previews for. Many specifically said they were expecting A Chorus Line. Many were older women (although all of a sudden, fifty isn't all that old, eh?) who had (for the most part) never been to an "R" rated movie before. We rarely ever had patrons asking for their money back, no matter how bad the movie was — I'll say it didn't happen five times a year. For All That Jazz, it wasn't unusual to have that many and more ask each showing and I always knew it was because these people felt they had been deceived. We always gave full cash refunds (often for the popcorn and drinks as well as the ticket) and often threw in a free pass for another night.
That being said, I always enjoyed the movie and it did good business for the month or so we showed it.
Yeah, it's kind of a deceptive trailer…and it's interesting that they used the "Bye Bye Life" song in it. I would have thought they'd want to hide all suggestions that it was a movie about Death and instead use "On Broadway" or some other tune.
I would have thought a lot of patrons would have walked out and demanded refunds when they got to the scenes of open heart surgery. I once met Wallace Shawn, who was in the film…but he told me that many people didn't know that. The reason was that his scenes were intercut with the open heart footage and (he said) much of the audience either closed their eyes or walked out then. (Remember Johnny Carson's line about those scenes? He said, "Every filmgoer in America should be glad that Bob Fosse didn't have a proctology operation.")