THE INDISPENSIBLES – #13: TOOTSIE
“I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man. Know what I mean?”
There’s a reason that quote from Tootsie was within The 100 Greatest Movie Lines as seen in Premiere Magazine in 2007 (Furthermore, “That is one nutty hospital!” from the same movie, placed even higher on the same list!) – it’s not just that it truly is a great piece of movie dialogue that just captures the very essence of what the film has been all about, it’s not just that it is delivered brilliantly by the actor speaking it, it is also all to do with the fact that it is the spine of one of the greatest screenplays ever written.
That it was born from Dustin Hoffman’s request for a spec-script to be written based on an idea he had whilst working on Kramer vs. Kramer (he felt his character in that film had to be both a mother and a father, so he started thinking about how to play a man and a woman) and pushed through enough writers to rival Armageddon and its infamous screenwriters credit (Murray Schisgal and Larry Gelbart are credited, but talent as varied as Robert Garland, Barry Levinson and Elaine May all threw in some uncredited rewrites), and still emerged, as it does to be utterly, utterly word-for-word, scene-for-scene perfect is a nigh-on miracle in itself!
Tootsie works where other films, like Mrs Doubtfire and *shudder* Juwana Man or Ladybugs, don’t because it goes back to the template set so awesomely in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot – it gets that, central to the story working, the man dressed as a woman for plot purposes should not be a “gimmick”. The man-as-woman should be as much a character as the man unchanged. Tootsie actually transcends Some Like It Hot in this area because Dustin Hoffman’s female alter-ego, “Dorothy”, gives as great and as timeless a performance as what Hoffman is giving as a man. They work as two completely different people, and as a result the story works superbly – the characters, the subsequent farce and everything else, all mesh effortlessly.
Tootsie has a lot of fun with its plot complications, and as a result, it IS a lot of fun to indulge in; it swipes away at topics as varied as sexual identity, sexism, pontificating and self-serving actors, the entertainment industry, agents… and yet on top of all of this it turns out to be a wonderfully emotional love story, that by the time that iconic line (that opened this essay) is spoken and Stephen Bishop’s jaunty “It Might Be You” comes in over the credits, even the hardest of hearts cannot help but melt.
Considering he helped shape the script, many consider Tootsie to contain more autobiographical elements of Dustin Hoffman’s working attitude then perhaps many were originally aware. A notoriously difficult actor throughout the seventies and early eighties, Hoffman channels this into the role of Michael Dorsey, a New York actor who is extremely talented but aggressive with his own self-belief, and quickly becoming unemployable as a result. “You mean nobody in New York wants to hire me?” Michael questions his agent in the film’s opening act. “I’d go farther than that, Michael! Nobody in Hollywood wants to hire you, either!” comes the reply.
The agent is played magnificently by the film’s director Sydney Pollack, in what is still one of the late director/producer’s best performances out of all of his “part time roles” (see also the likes of Changing Lanes, Michael Clayton and his extended cameo on HBO’s The Sopranos too!). He also provides the voice of the unseen play director who tells Michael during the film’s opening “We’re looking for someone older,” then, “We’re looking for someone younger,” and finally, “We’re looking for someone else.”
Pollack had originally wanted Dabney Coleman to play Hoffman’s agent (Coleman would later secure, and excel, in the role of the sleazy soap opera director instead!). During a conversation that the actor and director had with one another, Hoffman wanted to know what forced his character to wear a dress and pretend to be a woman. Pollack’s response was that, if he didn’t, he would never work again. Hoffman replied that he wouldn’t put on a dress if Coleman told him he would never work again, because Coleman was a fellow actor, and he wouldn’t believe him (erm… isn’t that part of acting? To make believe on things that might not necessarily be ‘real’? No wonder Hoffman lost out on the role of Han Solo! Ha Ha). Because Pollack was the director, Hoffman insisted, he would convince. Pollack still refused to play the part, so Hoffman sent him red roses every day with the note, “Please be my agent. Love, Dorothy” Finally, Pollack agreed to take the role. Hoffman believed it was his persistence that won out. Pollack actually only took the role because secretly he knew that if he didn’t appease the actor then he would make life difficult on set and for whichever actor he cast as the agent, creating over-runs in both the schedule and budget.
But of course this happened anyway. Tootsie was a notoriously difficult shoot. Hoffman’s ego was running rampant (The crew would only give bad news to him if he was in drag. They said he was “much nicer as a woman”) and, to this day, many can not believe that the movie we see today was salvaged out of such a negative production. Pollack vowed that, whilst liking Hoffman on a personal level, he would never work with him on a professional one ever again. He didn’t.
Like the actor portraying him, Michael has a bad reputation for taking stands, throwing tantrums, and interpreting roles deliberately against what the directors are looking for, but then trying to force his interpretation upon them. Dressing up as a vegetable for a TV commercial is even fraught with difficulty. But when he attends a soap opera audition with his friend (Teri Garr) an idea starts to form – when she is turned down for the role, Michael heads back there the next day dressed as a woman, auditions, and gets the part!
Instant success occurs, much to Michael’s confusion and the bewilderment of his caustic flat-mate (Bill Murray – who ad-libbed, according to Pollack, “every single one of his lines – nothing he speaks in this movie is as it was on the page!”) and, whilst Michael Dorsey is unemployable, ‘Dorothy Michaels’ becomes a national sensation! His work on the soap opera gifts him with all the opportunities his ego could never afford him, including working alongside Julie (Jessica Lange) an attractive young actress who plays a nurse on the same show. ‘Dorothy’ and Julie become friends and finally close confidants. Dorothy’s problem, however, is that the man inside ‘her’ is gradually falling head over heels in love with Julie. And on top of all of this, the lies, the secret identities, the national celebrity and the unrequited love, Julie’s father (Charles Durning), a lonely widower, falls in love with ‘Dorothy’.
The film is just full to the brim with sublime performances, not just from Hoffman and Pollack, but from the extensive range of character actors on board too – Jessica Lange has never been more beautiful and captivating, George Gaynes is positively hysterical, Bill Murray is as fantastic as you’d hope, and Dabney Coleman is deliciously nasty too. Major kudos has to be extended to Teri Garr, one of the best comedic actresses of the 80s, and Charles Durning. Look at that scene towards the end of the movie in which Hoffman and Durning are confronted with each other in a downbeat bar. Look at the way they work the scene through every possible emotion you can expect; tension, anger, humour, respect, friendship. It’s an absolute masterclass.
It’s no wonder that the AFI ranked this as the #69 Greatest Movie of All Time (it deserved to be much higher – at least in the top fifty!). Tootsie (the title of which came from Hoffman’s mother’s name for her dog, after they opted to change the original title of Would I Lie To You?) is just utterly sublime. It works on absolutely every level it touches upon, even when such things should not be normally placed in close proximity to one another; a satirical, sexual identity farce with an extremely lovely romance running through its central core? If such a thing was even attempted in today’s movie-making climate do you think they’d get anywhere near making it as fabulous as this?
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