Tootsie (1982)

Directed by Sydney Pollack; produced by Sydney Pollack and Dick Richards

Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) is a talented New York actor so difficult that his agent (Sydney Pollack) confesses that no one in the country will hire him. Outraged by this news – and frantic for work – Dorsey decides to apply for a job not as himself but as somebody else. He’ll show everyone: he applies to a soap opera as a woman named Dorothy Michaels, a disguise which not only gains him employment, but popularity and respect – and a dizzying array of complications.

There are many comedies which amuse me, but few that make me laugh aloud. Tootsie is one of them. Going on forty years of age, this film is in no way out-dated, and perhaps cannot be. Like most superb films, it is largely the result of the triumvirate of excellent acting, directing and writing.

The casting of Hoffman in the lead role was a stroke of genius. It had to have gone to a ‘serious’ actor who was known for dramatic performances. If it had been filled by a comic actor, the effect would have been quite different, an unsuccessful ‘in-joke’. A proponent, at least in his early years, of ‘method acting’, Hoffman’s character’s dedication to his craft might be seen as a little self-deprecation. (During the filming of Marathon Man, Laurence Olivier, seeing Hoffman’s anguish in developing his role, advised him with a smile, “Just act, dear boy, just act.”) But the intensity Hoffman gives most of his parts makes the whole premise of Tootsie realistic, and not just a gag.

Bill Murray represents the sort of actor who might have ruined the film if he had been the lead. But as Dorsey’s roommate, his restrained reactions to his friend’s predicament actually come off as the voice of reason, and he is as close to a straight-man as the movie needs. Jessica Lange is very appealing as the female lead; she conveys an unhappiness with her character’s situation that is convincing, someone who is trapped in a cycle of bad decisions. Teri Garr, Charles Durning, Dabney Coleman (playing the type of role that landed him a couple of successful tv series) and director Pollack are all very good. Christine Ebersole and Estelle Getty have bit parts, and look very fast for Tobin Bell as a waiter at a party.

The writing could not be bettered. The comedy is not derived from a man wearing a dress. While the incongruity of a male who is clearly not female trying to pass as one may be humorous, it is fleeting, good for a single-scene chuckle. Hoffman is credible as a woman, and the very fact of his impersonation is not treated as the joke. It is the situations that arise from it that provoke the laughs.

Yet the story has its serious side, tempered by the comedy. Dorsey learns about himself, sees his flaws, sees the problems with how men treat women and, what’s more, does something about them. No major character is two-dimensional in Tootsie: even Coleman, an acerbic Lothario, has his faults mitigated – or at least explained – in one scene.

Pollack’s direction is dead-on. When dealing with major scenes, he gives the actors their head, seeming only to set parameters. The small, incidental scenes add both to the story and the comedy: in about three seconds, we see Dorsey, dressed as Dorothy, bellow at a cab – stopping one in his light female voice doesn’t work – then swig his arm angrily, in a decidedly feminine way. That brief moment shows how closely Dorsey and Dorothy are related. Characters are introduced in ways that permit the audience to know their most significant characteristic right away. Dorsey’s difficult nature is demonstrated in a hilarious sequence in which he rants about playing a tomato in a tv commercial and a performance as an “endive salad that knocked the critics on their ass.”

Tootsie is one of the best cinematic examples of making a comedy work by treating it seriously. This isn’t a farce, and situations and actions – and reactions – are realistic. There is little hyperbole, except perhaps in the devotion Dorsey exhibits to his role as Dorothy; and in that case, it is clear that that is his wont. Besides, most of us know of at least one such obsessive. Its believability is another of the movie’s assets.

Using only the best ingredients, and eschewing anything cheap and unimaginative, Tootsie remains one of film’s enduring – and endearing - comedies.