By Marc S. Sanders
Tootsie is my favorite comedy of all time. At age ten I saw it on Christmas Eve with my family and beyond the Star Wars and Rocky films, I had yet to see an audience respond, or more specifically laugh, so uncontrollably for two hours straight. I might not have recognized all of the innuendo and I was not yet alert to the idea of women feeling belittled while knowing they should be entitled to equal respect, but the performances, especially from Dustin Hoffman were entirely genuine. Tootsie still remains the only film where I can forget that a man, a not so attractive or sexy man, is convincingly disguising himself as a woman who possesses internal strength and gusto.
Whether directing or acting on screen, Sydney Pollack was not someone well known for overseeing comedy at the time. Yet, that’s an attribute to the end product of this celebrated movie. Other than a typical Bill Murray routine in an uncredited role, no one in this picture is waving their hands in the air to insist they’re funny. The humor of Tootsie bears from true, raw emotion, fear and desperation. No one is doing Saturday Night Live sketches and building up to the next punchline. Despite the cross dressing, Tootsie is not even a farce. A guy gets a job wearing the necessary garb and modifying his verbiage, but only to earn enough money to survive. However, it also doesn’t help that he’s falling for his co-worker.
Dustin Hoffman is an actor living in New York City named Michael Dorsey. He’s a great, learned performer, especially on the stage, who lives with his playwright buddy Jeff (Murray) in a crummy apartment in the meat packing district. They need to raise enough money to put on Jeff’s play in Syracuse.
The problem is that Michael can no longer get cast in anything. Not on stage or even in a commercial. His agent (Pollack) says it point blank that nobody will hire him. He’s just too difficult with short bursts of temper and no tolerance for others who work in the field.
So, Michael surrenders to desperation and puts on the guise of a character actress named Dorothy Michaels. As quick as she stands up for femininity against a chauvinistic TV director (Dabney Coleman) she is cast on the most watched daytime soap opera. As long as Michael can perform off and on camera as Dorothy he should be able to earn more than enough money for Jeff’s play.
Complications arise though when he becomes protective of his co-star, Julie (Jessica Lange, in her Oscar winning role), against her unfaithful boyfriend, the TV director. Julie’s widowed father, Les, is falling for Dorothy though, and then there is Michael’s friend Sandy (Teri Garr) who lost out on the part that he earned, and to keep things maintained has been seduced by Michael into a romantic relationship beyond just their friendship.
With me so far? I hope so because there’s even more obstacles to overcome. Tootsie is very economical in its story development, but it’s also a very crowded film.
Don McGuire and Larry Gelbart (TV’s M*A*S*H) wrote this Oscar nominated script with a brilliant collection of characters. The blessing is while it sounds like farce, Tootsie is never delivered with a slapstick tongue. In order for the film to work, Dustin Hoffman especially had to portray Michael Dorsey as a guy with natural ticks, motivations and fears. He accomplishes that because Michael always ensures that Dorothy is as real as she can ever be. When Dorothy hails a cab or shops for clothes the southern accent must hold while perusing through the city streets in heels. Michael gets frustrated over what to wear for a dinner visit at Julie’s apartment. Especially when Julie opens up her heart, Hoffman is precise to make sure Dorothy approaches with a low whispered approach to simply be a consoling girlfriend.
The comedy arrives when Michael has no other choice but to break this strong powered female persona. Dorothy will call for a cab but if it just won’t stop, then a deep voiced, bellowing New Yorker will come out of this woman’s mouth with an angry “TAXI!!!” I like to believe that Sydney Pollack deliberately arranged for Dorothy to yank a Woody Allen lookalike out of a cab that was about to be taken from Dorothy too. Dustin Hoffman knows Michael Dorsey is such a committed method actor that he has to convince all eight million people in New York he is strong willed Dorothy Michaels – a character actress capable of playing the new Hospital Administrator on Southwest General.
There are so many fleshed out pairs of relationships in Tootsie – all going beyond the cross dressing of the film’s main character. All of these people could get along forever if only for the fact that some characters have befriended a man while others truly believe they have made a connection with a woman. How long can we have it both ways? The facade has to undo itself, right? True. Thankfully it occurs at the end when every single character can have it explained to them all at once. I’ve never forgotten the roars of laughter from my mom, dad and grandmother as the end of Tootsie arrived. Well-placed close-up shots of every actor who had a speaking role in this movie is covered (well except for Sydney Pollack as Michael’s agent). On Christmas Eve in 1982, the packed movie house at the Forum Theater on Route 4 in Paramus NJ only amplified the shocking reactions. Tootsie is a reason why you sit among a crowd at a movie theater.
This is Dustin Hoffman’s all-time best performance. He was nominated against fierce competition from Paul Newman in The Verdict, Jack Lemmon in Missing, and Ben Kingsley in Ghandi (who took home the trophy). Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels is a much more challenging role than what Hoffman superbly accomplished in his two Oscar winning roles (Kramer Vs Kramer, Rain Man). Robin Williams or Tom Hanks could have played Michael Dorsey who invents Dorothy Michaels. Yet, what Hoffman emotes are the natural tics of a guy who is constantly broke while he charms an array of women at his birthday party, only with the intention of bedding them and hardly ever listening to what these ladies have to say. When Hoffman puts Michael literally in a pair of woman’s shoes though, he begins to identify the lack of respect that women endure on a daily basis.
Watch Dustin Hoffman’s body language. He becomes angered with his agent upon learning that he lost out on a role which somehow leads to a debate about whether a tomato should walk or talk or sit or stand. That back and forth is outrageously hilarious. Having seen Tootsie hundreds of times though, I now appreciate how a schleppy looking Michael hustles across the streets of New York, avoiding traffic and then marches down the hallway to his agent’s office. Hoffman twitches his head and shrugs his shoulders as if he’s prepping to give the agent a piece of his mind. Hoffman is so absorbed in this guy he’s playing. I am not recognizing any other kind of Dustin Hoffman that I’ve seen anywhere else.
Sydney Pollack is also attuned to the cutthroat atmosphere of desperate theater folk trying to survive in this concrete jungle. Tootsie opens with a montage of quick episodes for Michael. He is leading a workshop while being candidly ugly with his fellow thespian students about how challenging it is to get work. In between, are auditions that he goes on where there is one reason after another why he can’t land a role. Michael Dorsey is an incredibly skillful actor, but that means nothing for this role or that role.
On this most recent viewing I caught on to a detail that never occurred to me. Bill Murray as Jeff, the broke playwright, is snacking on lemons and wincing while he talks to Michael. Now I don’t know if this is in the script or if this was Pollack or Murray’s idea. Nevertheless, it’s a brilliant detail. These guys are so broke that they have resorted to smuggling lemon slices out of the restaurant they work at to live off of. Another actor or filmmaker would have used an orange or cookies. Who snacks on lemons? Only those with nothing else to rely on.
Makeup bottles with spirit gum, cannisters of fake blood, prosthetic teeth, props and sloppily hung costume wear are all given focus beyond the broad comedic storylines. Sydney Pollack pans his camera over all of these items with no actors in frame because he wanted to ensure that being an actor or a playwright in New York is nothing glamorous. It’s a world of unending torment. All of these nuances and details justify the extremes that Michael has to go through to achieve his goal.
Jessica Lange never plays her role for laughs. Her portrayal of Julie, the beautiful, blond celebrity of daytime television, is authentic and she inherits a new girlfriend to confide in. Finally, Julie can share what she values and holds dear. You can’t not fall in love with someone who only treasures the best parts of her young life and yet only seeks a companion to chat with. A humble celebrity is hard to find and that is one reason Michael falls hard for her. Lange is outstanding while being so heartfelt.
Teri Garr’s comedy stems from the insecurities of actors. Sandy is described as someone who wants to commit suicide at a birthday party. Doing community theater for over thirty years I know precisely who this person is. I’ve been this person, and I’ve encountered hundreds of these people. It’s hard to be a big fish in the small pond of community theater. Imagine trying to hold on to your sanity when you have to compete with all of New York. Teri Garr was rightly Oscar nominated for what could have been a throwaway part. Like Hoffman she also has these little gestures that suggest her lack of confidence. After she sleeps with Michael and he’s getting ready to leave, Garr peaks at her naked chest hidden underneath the sheets. It’s as if she’s wondering was I not attractive enough. She’s hurting. No matter if she just had sex with one of her favorite people, she is still suffering.
Charles Durning is familiar for having the tough guy, intimidating persona because he’s usually so much larger than life. However, he offers a sweetness to this guy who’s ready for companionship. You don’t want Michael or Dorothy to let him down. Les doesn’t deserve to get hurt.
Again, as I described any of these characterizations, none of it is funny. They are wrapped in sensitivity. There’s a lonely sadness to people like Michael, Jeff, Julie, Sandy and Les. Yet, when this variety of sorrow and anguish collide, while poor Michael is only trying to make some money, does it all combust in hilariously, unwinnable scenarios of tremendous proportions.
Tootsie is an amazing film. It is one of the smartest, most insightful scripts ever written and it is blessed with a cast and director who mastered how to live in an unforgiving and unsympathetic industry. This picture offers lessons in the human spirit while demonstrating the lengths and boundaries that must be broken in order to survive. By practically not performing as a comedy, it only becomes that much more funnier and wiser.
Tootsie is a perfect film!
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 