The chorus liners go on and on about their insensitive parents and bullying teachers and broken homes and sexual traumas and nervous breakdowns and how it's all okay now because (here goes) 'I'm. The stuff of 'A Chorus Line,' in short, is plenty fatuous - it takes that famous photograph of Lyndon Johnson showing off his appendix scar and blows it up into a world view. They continue so they can draw themselves up, clench a fist to their bosom and aver, with breathless pride, 'I'm. The other dancers probably haven't worked in a year, either, and what 'A Chorus Line' is really about is why anyone would continue in a profession that seems to consist mostly of humiliation. Why such a spectacular dancer hasn't worked in a year is never explained, but please, let's not quibble. Well, who should show up but Cassie (Alyson Reed), Zach's old flame and former star hoofer, looking for a job in the chorus - she left for Hollywood a while back and hasn't worked for a year. Presumably, these people are so hungry for a job that they'll do anything, because pretty soon they're pouring their hearts out, while Zach, growling insults and encouragement into his microphone, lurks in the shadows like the Wizard of Oz.

The dancers stand on stage in a line Zach sits 20 rows back in the theater. The choreographer, Zach (Michael Douglas), who is not very nice but, inevitably, 'so goddam talented,' doesn't want the usual singing, dancing or scene readings - he wants confessions. 'A Chorus Line' takes you through a day of auditions for the chorus of a Broadway musical. Based on the long-running Broadway musical, it's not an adaptation so much as an assassination, a case study in how not to bring a play to the screen. 'A Chorus Line' is a kind of 'Murphy's Law: The Motion Picture' - everything that can go wrong does.

The chorus line royalties