Tootsie: Classic or Dud?

YENTL is a film to be shared and enjoyed regardless of ethnicity, religion or background. Its universality speaks and raises voices to different generations and social groups.

Motivational, moving and exquisitely shot with rich period flavor and mood (AND THIS IS WITHOUT HAVING SEEN THE DVD YET, SINCE IT IS NOT AVAILABLE, AND MS. STREISAND HERSELF NOTED THAT THE COLOR TINT ON THE VHS TAPE IS INCORRECT, SOMETHING SHE HAD CORRECTED FOR THE UPCOMING DVD), this is the type of story about conquering your fears and stop at nothing to achieve your dreams that is fatally missing from films in our present time.

If there is an aspect to this movie that is the most formidable, it's the music and songs in it that's what is most successful about it, since they carry the story as it progresses through its tale of passion, love, struggle and perseverance.

Ignorance has kept the film from being enjoyed and appreciated by several groups and individuals. Hopefully someday they will find the courage and wit to understand such incredible gem.

"NOTHING'S IMPOSSIBLE"

Yup. And, if apocryphal data is to be believed, Murray ad-libbed most of his role. The scene between director Sydney Pollack and Hoffman in the former's office was also improvised.

revive for Hoffman's 70th birthday. If it's not his best performance, and I'm not say it isn't, it's at least my favorite movie of his.

George: You played a TOMATO and they went half ad ay over schedule cuz you wouldn't sit down!
Michael: Yes. It was illogical.
George: You were a TOMATO! A tomato doesn't have logic! A tomato can't move!

Pauline Kael was right in saying its biggest weakness is the sentimental pap that impersonating a woman could make an egomaniacal fuck like Dorsey 'nurturing.'

I saw it at a packed preview screening the weekend before it came out and it got some of the biggest laughs I've ever heard.

the whole tomato speech is classic

Michael Dorsey: Are you saying that nobody in New York will work with me?
George Fields: No, no, that's too limited... nobody in Hollywood wants to work with you either. I can't even send you up for a commercial. You played a *tomato* for 30 seconds - they went a half a day over schedule because you wouldn't sit down.
Michael Dorsey: Yes - it wasn't logical.
George Fields: YOU WERE A TOMATO. A tomato doesn't have logic. A tomato can't move.
Michael Dorsey: That's what I said. So if he can't move, how's he gonna sit down, George? I was a stand-up tomato: a juicy, sexy, beefsteak tomato. Nobody does vegetables like me. I did an evening of vegetables off-Broadway. I did the best tomato, the best cucumber... I did an endive salad that knocked the critics on their ass.

Until Titanic it had the longest consecutive #1 streak (15 weeks).

Kael's right, but the movie ends in a stalemate. I don't see Julie putting up with his shit, and they do walk away arguing as the credits roll.

hm.

1982, Best Picture:
"GANDHI" (winner), "E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial", "Missing", "Tootsie", "The Verdict

wtf is "Missing"?

Costa-Gavras on Chile, w/ Lemmon & Spacek

Ben Kingsley beating Dustin Hoffman is one of the great Oscar crimes.

it really is -- gandhi is nigh unwatchable for me anymore

brand spanking new 2 disc shiny 25th anniversary dvd out now!

About damn time; the current DVD looks like it cost $2.50 to manufacture.

hopefully footage of Hoffman & Pollack discussing motivation, for real

hoffman *screen test* footage!

NO!

Hoffman's performance: classic; actual movie: somewhat less so, but still really good.

"Maybe there's a morals clause in Dorothy's contract in case she does something filthy and disgusting. The problem is, I can't think of anything filthy and disgusting you haven't already done."

it's pretty amazing how concentrated & fast moving this is compared to what it would be like if it were made now. i have to say i like the film and i find it funny but the fact it's so distilled removes some of the verisimilitude that would help you buy into the situation. in no way am i wishing the film were an hour longer (as it would be now) but it needs a little more imo, especially in the initial stages.

The first hour and fifteen is the best, especially the pre-Dorothy moments!

One of my favorite lines ever, from Murray: "That is one nutty hospital." Deserves to be a famous as Some Like It Hot's final line.

What's odd is how Michael Dorsey becomes Dorothy no questions asked.

George Gaynes' last line is just as good: "Does Jeff know?"

I think retelling that story about my parents calling the cops on that guy put me in a foul mood all the rest of the day. I didn't realize how deeply angry this incident still makes me!

Wait...wrong thread. SOrry.

I think retelling that story about my parents calling the cops on that guy put me in a foul mood all the rest of the day. I didn't realize how deeply angry this incident still makes me!

from Bill Murray's drunken American Indian monologue?

A beautifully surreal detour...To answer your original question, an absolute classic. I think my two favorite "mainstream" films (whatever that means) of the past 30 years--certainly my favorite comedies--are Tootsie and Broadcast News. I never tire of either. George Gaynes, Coleman, Teri Garr, they're all fantastic. I'm laughing just thinking of the way Garr says "Will I ever see you again?" after she and Hoffmann have sex.

"Sex changes things" (looks curiously at her breasts under the cover).

I still think that first half hour or so has the most accurate depiction of struggling actors/writers/whatever in a big city i've ever seen; doing shitty jobs, going to reads, having parties, getting nowhere and waiting for a break and suchlike. Going back to it a few years ago i realised i'd forgotten all that section because of the farce/ romance/ etc stuff that comes after.

it's so distilled removes some of the verisimilitude that would help you buy into the situation

Jesus God.

Pretty good essay.

for some reason i was convinced for years that ed o'neill was in this movie

better before dorothy comes along?

It's a pretty creepy stunt for everyone to just get over in the last five mins, i may be asking too much.

The writing and acting are so sharp that the Dorothy stuff works on its own: huffy soap actress falls for young costar.

maybe, but i agree with upthread comment- traded punchiness for sentimentality with the emergence of the 'love story' angle.

Teri Garr and Pollock were great in their roles, picked it up whenever they appeared

ha that's not to say the leads let it down, obviously.

I constantly go around saying, "This is a coast too, George. New York is a coast."

yeah the throwaways were a cut above alright

The Les-Dorothy exchanges underrated.

DURNING: Another drink?

DOROTHY: No -- I have to keep my wits about me tonight.

Man he sure is a jerk to Sandy!

I liked this from an interview w/Terri Garr:

Tootsie (1982)—"Sandy Lester"

TG: I just saw that again recently. I hadn't seen it in twentysomething years. And it's the same thing! Pretty, nice girls being taken advantage of by slimy men. They put a man in a dress, and he's supposed to know what it feels like to be a woman. But of course he doesn't. I think what Dustin [Hoffman] says is, "I realize now how important it is for a woman to be pretty. And I wasn't pretty." God! That's all you realized? Jesus Christ. Oh well. Don't quote me. Actually, quote me.

AVC: You play this very neurotic character who's full of self-loathing, who's desperate for attention, yet somehow, she's sweet and likeable. Was all that indicated in the script, or was that something you brought to the role?

TG: I think that's something that I was or am. Likeable? I guess, yeah. But neurotic, yes. It was right at that time in history when feminism was rearing its ugly head, so I read all these books like The Second Sex, and that's where I got that line, "I know I'm responsible for my own orgasm." [Laughs.] I read that sentence and I thought, "What does that mean?" I didn't even know. I thought that [Sandy] was caught between trying to have a career and trying to be a sexual woman, and it just doesn't work. At least it didn't in that movie, because it was made by sexist men. I can say that now, because Sydney [Pollack] isn't with us anymore. [Laughs.] But he was a fine director.

AVC: But you thought he was sexist?

TG: Oh, yeah! I think so. He just wanted the beautiful, blond, cute, shiksa girls to be nice and shut the fuck up! [Laughs.] God, I'm bad. But that's what he wanted. And that's what the world wants, I think. I'm bitter. Bitter!

I mean Sandy's a real dipdy-doo in the movie, begging for Seconal after a bad party, but it kinda made me mad that the script lets Hoffman be the only woman in the movie with her wits about her. I liked the movie, it's funny, blah blah my feminist this 1983 just called.

Also Dustin Hoffman was a hot dude back in the day! Straw DOgs kinda made me forget that bcz of how loathsome he was in it.

Michael does treat Sandy shabbily but it's to the script and Garr's credit that she's awesome anyway.

Hilarious interview, by the way. She's otm about Lange getting nominated in the wrong category.

"What a good idea, a socket for a plug."

xpost yeah that was unfair, but tptb felt that Lange was due for an award, and knew that Streep was a shoo-in for Best Actress, so...

nostalgia: this was the last movie our family (parents, 10yo sister and myself) all went out and saw together. my sister was particularly delighted with Murray's "You slut!" and the cattle-prod line.

Teri Garr on fire all through that interview! She was a doll on "Sonny & Cher" too, even w/ the often crappy writing.

this is kind of amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPAat-T1uhE

the Terri Garr quote a few posts up seems like kind of a retort to possibly when Hoffman said something similar in simpler terms (or maybe she's simplifying/paraphrasing), but still, I like how he puts it there.

whoa! I wasn't expecting that last line.

I've expressed my love for the film many times. That clip's a little hard to watch in its Bobby Bittmanesque "As a comic, Sammy, in all seriousness"...I'm sure Hoffman's quite sincere in what he says, which is maybe part of why the film's so good: he was making one movie while everybody else worked around him making another.

wow hoffamn rocks there!

I remember seeing that clip when the AFI ran their list show. I think he added something like "I know it's a comedy, but comedy is serious business."

I saw this film once, during its initial release, in a theater. Not since then. My only impression of it was that it was moderately funny, but not hilarious, and the so-called pro-feminist message in it was so watered down, so shallow, so reductionist, that it seemed no different than any other over-hyped mainstream Hollywood movie. But at the time I still had a few intellectual bones in my body. Maybe today I'd laugh like a jackass.

tbh i've never even watched this movie, i just liked that DH interview

movie is great. DH clip is amazing, too.

But at the time I still had a few intellectual bones in my body. Maybe today I'd laugh like a jackass.

haha this shouldn't be a binary

"What a good idea, a socket for a plug."

― Dale, dale, dale (Abbbottt), Sunday, May 6, 2012 11:21 PM

http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/release_boxshots/4305-a10b1e1d36f0c145bdcbc75901960037/738_BD_box_348x490_original.jpg

this movie is a difficult-to-take mix of reactionary and self-congratulatory, even though it's obvious from the clip above that hoffman's heart, at least, was in the right place. but it's hard to knock the craft with which it was made, by all concerned. for whatever that's worth (less than i'd sometimes like to admit).

The last scene with Lange was the only one that played self-congratulatory. The other moments of revelation Hoffman and Pollack (literally -- as actors) undercut.

Also: it's obvious to me that Michael Dorsey and Julie have no chemistry; the last scene played like a gay man becoming buddies with a woman, whereas Dorothy and Julie connected immediately, which Julie acknowledges ("I miss Dorothy").

Hoffman's performance when he meets up with Charles Durning in the bar near the end as Michael.. an acting masterclass right there. i think if *that* scene doesn't work then the whole thing would be wrecked but it's amazing.

BR of this should be good! I find the story of the scriptwriting meltdown behind this pretty fascinating. Also in beautiful 4k so Dustin Hoffman can mourn the true depths of Dorothy's pores.

I wish I could find the sketchbook from the time when I got really obsessed with trying to draw Dorothy.

"I wish Dorothy were prettier."

"How do you feel about Cleveland?"

"I owe myself a quarter."

I liked this movie best at a sneak screening the week before it came out

true cred right there

Criterion Blu-Ray out next week:

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Tootsie-Blu-ray/44344/#Review

"*with* the necktie?"

Excellent review in the current Cineaste of this amusing, sexually reactionary, incredibly overrated film.

and My Man Godfrey solves the problem of homelessness by opening a swank nightclub on the city dump for the entertainment of the white plutocrats who put'em there – get over it.

Hollywood's innovation is to emasculate comedy's subversive power, and even then Tootsie got a convincing lesbian crush onscreen.

MMG did not posture as socially significant.

mmg was funny all the way through tootsie dies as soon as the wig goes on

referring to OP, "last great studio comedy" is a bizarre statement, given that

1) tootsie has its charms but is by no means great

2) there have been quite a few excellent studio comedies in the past 30+ years. groundhog day is an obvious one that comes to mind.

Murray the star of both

mmg was funny all the way through tootsie dies as soon as the wig goes on

― post you had fecund thoughts about (darraghmac),

crazy talk

yeah, dmac doesn't get Hoffdrag

guilty but proud

Sex changes things. I've had relationships where I know a guy, then have sex with, and then I bump into him and he acts like I loaned him money.

guessing Elaine May wrote that line

Yup. She wrote most of Teri Garr's stuff.

the stage musical is imminent! set on Broadway rather than a soap.

The NYT review is almost a rave. "Sparkles with wit"! Only the staging is flat, Jesse Green writes, and they push the feminism a little too hard (who could've predicted).

I did laugh at the summary of the show within the show, a sequel to Romeo & Juliet.