A Chorus Line - Other Media

Other Media

In 1990, original cast members Baayork Lee and Thommie Walsh collaborated with Robert Viagas on the book On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line, which chronicles the musical's origins and evolution and includes interviews with the entire original cast.

In 1990, Visa launched a marketing campaign around A Chorus Line as it was touring the United States. The promotions included television commercials featuring the musical and the right to say that tickets for the show could be charged only on Visa cards. Visa paid $500,000 for the promotion.

Also in 1990, much of the original cast reunited to perform selections from the musical as well as talk about it on the talk show Donahue. This performance was given to benefit the final run of the show as it was about to close on Broadway at the time. The highlight of the appearance was an emotionally-charged performance of "At The Ballet" as performed by Kelly Bishop, Kay Cole and Nancy Lane which left several of the cast and the studio audience fighting back tears. Another highlight was the comical performance of "Dance: Ten, Looks: Three (Tits and Ass)" as done by Pamela Blair. Renee Baughman was the only original cast member who couldn't attend the show's taping because she had to take care of her seriously ill father.

The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror V" closes with a parody of "One," which the Simpsons family sings (with alternate lyrics) after they are turned inside out by a mysterious fog.

Michael Bennett and Ed Kleban are portrayed in the 2001 musical A Class Act, a partly fictionalized account of Kleban's life using some of the lyricist's unpublished songs.

James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo produced and directed a documentary film about the musical called Every Little Step, which includes footage of Michael Bennett and interviews with Marvin Hamlisch, Bob Avian, former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, and original cast members Donna McKechnie and Baayork Lee. The film includes some of the audiotapes made at the early workshop sessions and shows behind-the-scenes footage of the audition, rehearsals, and performances of both the original 1975 production and the 2006 Broadway revival. Production of the documentary began in 2005 when 3,000 hopefuls arrived on the first day of auditions for the revival. The film made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008 and was released as Broadway Broadway in Japan the following month. The documentary opened in limited release in the US in April 2009.

In 2009, music from the score was used in the television series Fringe in the episode Brown Betty, and also in the movie Land of the Lost that same year featuring Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, and Anna Friel

The song "What I Did for Love" has been recorded by Aretha Franklin from "Sweet Passion" (1977), Petula Clark, The Three Degrees on their 1977 album Standing Up for Love and most recently by Lea Michele in the first episode of the second season of the hit musical television series Glee. In a later episode in the same season, Jenna Ushkowitz and Harry Shum, Jr. performed "Sing!", although the male and female vocals were switched. The episode "Hell-O" from the show's first season was planned to feature a performance of "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love", although the performance was cut; in a later episode the song can be heard playing in the background. Never officially released, the song was performed by Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff.

"Phineas & Ferb": in one part of the live show; Heinz Doofenshmirtz sings part of One