And Jessica was the one who of the winnowing down process kept going, so of course we kept following her. So we actually followed probably about 10 different people. STERN: Well, we followed Jessica after the open call. SIMON: How many dancers, dancers/actors, did you follow? And at least in one case, Jessica from Parsippany, I mean how did you know Jessica from Parsippany was going to audition? You know, after he finished the tape sessions, him along with Marvin Hamlisch and Bob Avian and Donna McKegney(ph), that whole team, they really worked for months and months and months, and in the film hopefully we highlight how they navigated through everything to ultimately come up with the show that we all know today. DEL DEO: You really understand the process Bennett was going through. SIMON: And we'll explain - you take excerpts from the tapes of dancers talking 35 years ago at this particular point and you're able to follow it through to actually what winds up as a script and a plot point in the show. And so he had said to John, if there's ever a revival on Broadway of this show, I'd love it if someone would make a documentary out of it. And when Michael was still, you know, going, he had always thought that "A Chorus Line" was sort of a documentary itself.
STERN: Well, what happened was - this is Jim talking - I've produced some 16 shows in New York myself in addition to directing with Adam, and John Breglio, who had been the producer of the revival and the executor of Michael's estate, had the tapes in a vault, in a safety deposit box. SIMON: Why does it only last 90 minutes? How did you get hold of Michael Bennett's original tapes? SIMON: And in my role as an impartial journalist, I loved every minute of this. JAMES STERN (Director, "Every Little Step"): Thank you very much. ADAM DEL DEO (Director, "Every Little Step"): Thanks so much for having us. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being with us. "Every Little Step" was directed by Adam Del Deo and James Stern. There is a new documentary about the origins of "A Chorus Line" and about the lengthy audition process for the show's 2006 revival on Broadway, a kind of audition within an audition within a show. SIMON: These tapes inspired "A Chorus Line." It opened up Broadway in 1975 and became one of the longest-running musicals in history. I think that maybe there's a show in that somewhere.
I think we're all pretty interesting and all of you are pretty interesting. MICHAEL BENNETT (Director-Choreographer): Now, I don't know whether anything will come of this or whether there is anything. He recorded 12 hours of conversations with a group of Broadway hopefuls. More than 30 years ago, director and choreographer Michael Bennett had been thinking about trying to make a musical that would spotlight and celebrate those background players, the chorus line. The people who without them there is no show. SIMON: By gypsies we mean song and dance folks, not the stars. The song is dedicated to gypsies everywhere.