One of the extras accompanying 1982’s Tootsie on the Criterion Collection blu-ray is an interview with Dustin Hoffman where he says the film hasn’t dated at all. I challenge that statement, given the increased focus on the struggles of trans actors in recent years, as the plot of this movie has him pretend to be a woman in order to land a plum role on a soap opera.
That he has taken a role from actual women is one layer of unpleasantness. That one of those actresses who had been up for the role is a close friend played by Teri Garr is another layer. That he then has sex with her for the first, and apparently last, time adds more layers to what is becoming a rather distasteful lasagna of sorts.
When the film opens, we see Hoffman auditioning for one play after another, failing to get the roles for such as reasons as being too young, too old or simply just not what they’re looking for. In a strange way, this sequence has a vibe akin to a horror film, with these criticisms being delivered by disembodied voicers, the unseen speakers somewhere out in the darkness of the theatre.
Roommate Bill Murray proposes he just try being himself, but Hoffman doesn’t think anybody wants that. Hoffman’s agent (Sydney Pollack, also the film’s director) just wants his client to be less difficult to work with, as the man keeps getting fired from the gigs he lands: “God forbid you should lose your standing as a cult failure.” He’s even legendary among his friends for this reason, as we learn at a surprise birthday party for him that he “reminds us what acting is all about–being unemployed!”
On the morning after that party, he’s accompanying Garr to the audition for that soap opera, where they don’t even give her the opportunity to try some lines. Hoffman had been there at her request to provoke her, so as help her channel the outrage that is essential for the role she wants. Instead, he is the one who becomes outraged, when he learns another of Pollack’s clients got a role he was told he would be auditioning for.
This is when he decides to undertake the subterfuge of becoming Dorothy Michaels. It is hard to imagine the homely actor as a woman and yet, courtesy of a wig, some padding and a whole lotta makeup, he becomes something of an uncanny valley version of a woman. And so, it is a strong personality and definitely not appearance which convinces producer Doris Belack to hire “Dorothy”. As a cameraman responds when director Dabney Coleman tells him to pull back further to make “Dorothy” more attractive, “How about Cleveland?”
Hoffman, as Dorothy, frequently goes off script, improvising dialogue that is not only retained by the creative team but which changes the course of the show. The initial motivation for Hoffman to do this is because the very first scene he will be in has been rewritten that morning to have him kiss star George Gaynes. I find it bewildering Hoffman had not anticipated having to kiss a man on a soap opera, but he seems to manage to dodge every such occurrence with an improvised line.
Suddenly, the other female characters are emboldened, especially that of a nurse played by Jessica Lange. These two become close friends, though Lange does not know she is confiding everything to cross-dressing man.
This aspect of the film is what I find dates it the most. Not only is his deep betrayal of Lange’s confidence appalling, but it is shameful how he treats Garr. Even that sole time he sleeps with her was initiated only because he needed a cover for her finding him in her bedroom in only his underwear, but he was in that state so he could try on her clothes while she was in the shower. Please, as if Hoffman could carry off anything Garr might wear. Then he keeps avoiding her and forgetting each date they have arranged, all the time pursuing Lange. This is a truly terrible person.
At least Garr gets some of the best bits in this movie, even though she gets relatively little screentime. At Hoffman’s surprise birthday party, she sneaks a sandwich into her purse. She also gets stuck in the bathroom for a half-hour: “I’ll have to remember that if I ever do a scene where I’m trapped somewhere.” I also liked her reaction to Hoffman’s announcement he doesn’t have money for cab fare, “That’s OK, it’s cheaper to get mugged.”
Of the male cast, Murray gets the lion’s share the best lines, with such zingers as “You are just doing this for the money, right? It’s not just to wear the outfits?” Always the master of deadpan delivery, his masterpiece of that art might be his reaction when he comes home to find Gaynes attempting to sexually assault Hoffman’s “Dorothy”: “You slut.”
Then there’s the one man of the cast whom Hoffman betrays as thoroughly as he does Lange or Garr, and that is Charles Durning as the father of the former. Durning is a widow who becomes enamored with “Dorothy” and it is painful to see the man getting jerked around like this.
Tootsie is a deeply funny picture which had some problematic aspects then, and which fares even worse through the lens of today. Something which dates the work even worse than its sexual politics is the deeply 80’s, deeply terrible, Dave Grusin score. One legacy of the film is it gave the world horrible yacht rock standard “It Might Be You”. Isn’t it bad enough what the movie does to the Durning and the women in Hoffman’s orbit, but did it have to subject the audience to that?
Dir: Sydney Pollack
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman
Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray