Surfing The Channel

Posts Tagged ‘all that jazz’

Like so many things in the world that are not what they seem, Miami is always vastly more complex than surfaces could ever reveal. The surfaces here are terrible appealing however, and the sights are often so spectacular that there isn’t necessarily pressing for a deeper look. A morning on the beach, time at a club, and then a pleasant sleep in a 5 star hotel, Miami doesn’t demand more than pure enjoyment.

But sometimes fate plays a part and reveals the truth even when one might not be looking. Ben Vereen , the extraordinary talent who’s graced stage and screen through a remarkable career, was born in Miami. Or maybe not. It wasn’t until he was applying for a passport when he was a young man that he discovered that he was actually adopted. This was after he’d graduated from New York’s performing arts high school, and already started to turn heads in theaters.

He wouldn’t meet his sister until 2006, long after he’d established himself as a major celebrity, having performed the role of Alex Haley’s ancestor Chicken George in Roots. One of his greatest roles, the entertainer in All That Jazz , is also a breathtaking study in slight of hand. Throughout the film, the audience sees him as a recurring television personality, thoroughly show business to the bone, and absolutely chronic in his inability to narrate reality without radical flourishes.

By the final scene, the long death sequence of the main character, we see him revealed as a kind of angel, welcoming the dying man to the other side. It’s performed with a kind of slickness and sly awareness that speaks of both healer and trickster characteristics.

And in another spin, where fate took a hand in his own personal life, when he was in an auto accident in 1992, he wandered from his car and was struck by another car. It could well have been fatal, but instead, he survived, and saw the accident as a chance to clean up his life, to work through his own grief, and to begin again. Inspiring millions in films and in life, he is a great humanitarian as well.