Drag queens are everywhere today— whether some people like it or not. So, watching a man dress as a woman to get a job might seem farfetched for those under 30. Still, Old Academy Anew explores 1982’s Tootsie this month.
TOOSIE MAY BE SET IN THE EARLY 1980S, BUT IT FEELS SO 70S THE SOUNDTRACK SHOULD HAVE BEEN HANDLED BY THE BEE GEES.
Old Academy Anew is all about the classics, but nothing in this film feels remotely contemporary to its time. Even the music in this film screams made for 1980s sitcoms, not movie theaters. Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” & Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” were the two top 100 that year. Madonna was producing her first album for crying out loud! How is it possible The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas came out the same year, looking fresher than a movie set in the Big Apple?
For the trivia fans: Charles Durning plays a very special secondary character in both movies.
IMPERFECT PERFECTIONIST
Tootsie begins with interchanging vignettes of people in an acting class and a man applying prosthetics to his face to portray a character. The man is Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman), an acting class coach and unemployed actor.
The movie’s first act is the exploration of this perfectionist’s life. He’s incapable of following directions but pushes his students to be themselves in each role. “Don’t play a part that is not in you,” he tells them; which doesn’t make sense since the point of being an actor is to be someone else. Perhaps that is his biggest handicap, his inability to adapt to become another being. Or, hear me out, he’s a time-traveler from the 2020s when you can only play what you are in real life. Gays only playing Gays. Asians only playing Asians. Transgender individuals only play trans characters; none being actors but playing themselves, using words someone else wrote. And never you dare play someone from the Middle East if you’re white-passing! Hashtag Back to the Movie.
Dorsey and his roommate/playwright, Jeff (Bill Murray), finish their day job (being waiters at night) and walk home. Dorsey seems grumpier than usual. Jeff infers it’s because today is his friend’s birthday and he hasn’t mentioned the date. “I’m a character actor. Age has no effect on me,” Dorsey grumbles as they enter their building.
There’s a surprise party waiting for them. It’s primarily people Dorsey doesn’t know, but the apartment is filled to the brim, and the cake has a lot of candles.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN IS 45 IN TOOTSIE, PLAYING A 30-SOMETHING MAN WHO DRESSED AS A WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE A SLIGHTLY YOUNGER SISTER TO ROBIN WILLIAMS’S MRS. DOUBTFIRE (1993).
Sandy (Teri Garr), one of Dorsey’s students/friends/co-stars in the play Jeff is writing, makes a dismal toast. The party goes downhill from there. Dorsey pursues to get phone numbers from several of the party-goers with varying levels of success. Probably the movie’s attempt to let us know he likes the ladies and avoid other ideas when we see him in drag about ten minutes later.
The night ends with Dorsey walking a very upset Sandy home. Her date for the party left with someone else; also feeling unprepared for the audition to play in a big daytime drama the next day. Dorsey, ever the “helper,” proposes they read her lines together. She needs to be angry for the part, and he kind of insults her to get the fire out. Alas, she’s not going to have the same fire in the morning on her own. He offers to help, by coming to the audition and insulting her to make that anger flare into success.
Sandy doesn’t get the part. When Dorsey goes to stand up for her, he hears that a role promised to him by his agent has been given to one of the soap opera actors. Forget about defending Sandy, Dorsey storms his agent’s office, citing his illustrious resume and how he’s capable of acting circles around the soap opera heartthrob. Sydney Pollack pulls double duty as the film’s director and plays the frustrated agent with his problematic client. “They can’t all be idiots! You argue with everybody. You’ve got one of the worst reputations in this town, Michael. Nobody will hire you.”
And that ain’t only New York; it’s all the way to Hollywood.
UNLADYLIKE LADY
The thing is— Dorsey wants money to produce his roommate’s play. Why is he the one looking to raise the money and not the roommate? That’s one of those plot holes that you’re not supposed to look too close to, isn’t it? Well, never mind that, if no one will work with Michael Dorsey, let’s try something new.
HERE IS WHERE TOOSIE GIVES US THAT ICONIC IMAGE OF HOFFMAN AS DOROTHY MICHAELS FOR THE FIRST TIME, AMONG THE THRONGS MOVING IN THE STREET.
One look from the director, and they are sending Dorothy out the door. When she asks why he says she looks too gentle for the part.
“I think I know what y’all really want. You want some gross caricature of a woman. To prove some idiotic point— like power makes a woman masculine or masculine women are ugly. Well, shame on the woman who lets you do that. Shame on you, macho shithead.”
I live in the South, and I have no clue where Dorothy’s South-adjacent accent is from. My wildest guess would be Two Balls, Kentucky.
That progressive rant gets Dorothy the audition. The acting is good, but they are aware she’s not visually striking. The producer keeps telling the cameraman to pull it back to make her look more attractive. In the end, they like the performance, and Dorothy gets the part.
WE MEET TOOTSIE‘S LOVE INTEREST IN THE FORM OF JULIE (JESSICA LANGE) BEFORE THE FIRST CAMERA TEST.
Certainly, making a movie like this would be unthinkable unless it was a romantic comedy in 1982, right? I mean, Robin Williams did it again in 1993— but a “comedy-drama,” the worst of all movie hybrids. Pick a lane, Hollywood…
Preparing the wig for his first day on set, Dorsey and Jeff have a conversation about the situation. Here the perfectionist surges; Dorsey talks about the things to endure in this, one of the greatest acting challenges. Jeff wants to be sure his friend is doing it for the plot hole and not to wear little outfits.
“I’m not even going to answer that,” Dorsey huffs.
The real problem here is Sandy. Dorsey wonders the implications of letting her know they gave the part she wanted to a man. Jeff summarizes, “Don’t tell her.”
Then another plot hole appears in the form of “why does Dorsey need to tell Sandy how he got the money to produce Jeff’s play?” Her investment in the situation is that she plays a character in it; she’s not a co-writer or anything else. But we need conflict, or is this a subplot? You’ll see what I’m talking about in a minute.
TOOTSIE GIVES US THE WORST EXCUSE FOR A HOOKUP IN ANY DECADE WHEN DORSEY GOES TO TELL SANDY ABOUT THE MONEY FOR THE PLAY.
Sandy takes a shower so they could go to dinner to celebrate. Dorsey watches himself in a full-length mirror obsessing over his role as Dorothy. He realizes he’s in a woman’s house and goes to the closet. The dress that catches his attention is the one on the bed, probably Sandy’s outfit for the night. I can totally see Jared Leto doing something of the sort when he was preparing for his role in Dallas Buyers Club (2013).
Intent on trying the number, Dorsey starts to undress, but Sandy catches him mid-disrobing. His tighty ain’t whity, but because they are a man and a woman in a movie they end up having sex. Why else would he be stripping? Thanks, Sandy (and the Tinsel Town Machine) for absolute film-forced shenanigans.
SUCH CONSUMMATION WILL BRING A WHOLE HOST OF SNARK AND CONFLICT THAT TOOTSIE DOES NOT NEED, BUT WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO? MOVIE HAS TO MOVIE.
Sex changes friendships, but Dorsey insists theirs won’t. Now, remember Sandy is not the “love interest.” So he will forget their dates and not return calls. He becomes a total jerk because he pursues a woman he can’t have while wearing a bra.
Still, before things really go downhill between Dorsey and Sandy, they have a conversation about that woman who got her part. Sandy thinks she’s a cow and a pushover even if that is how she’s been written. That uncalled-for review prompts Dorsey/Dorothy to take matters into their hands and go off script; which conversely turns Dorothy into a sister/mother figure for the female audience of SouthWest General.
From there the movie drags a bit with the father of the love interest pining for Dorothy; the awful main character of the soap trying to have sex with her; an almost girl-on-girl moment between Dorsey and love interest; and many other comedy clichés until the final revelation.
IDENTITY IMPOLITICS
I’m trying to think how a remake of this film would look today. For some reason, I keep seeing either Mark Ruffalo or Paul Rudd (more Ruffalo than Rudd, though) playing the titular role. Still, this would be an extremely tricky movie to pull off.
TOOTSIE PROBABLY NEVER MEANT TO BE A COMMENTARY ABOUT GENDER INEQUALITY, BUT MOSTLY BECAUSE IT DIDN’T HAVE THE COJONES TO GRAB THE PATRIARCHY BY THE TESTES.
And trust me, I am not using the P word in today’s annoyingly woke sense. Here we don’t talk about politics or religion. First, it’s impolite. Second, most people insisting on bringing those to the table don’t have a fukken clue— they just love the sound of their own voices.
Based on Hollywood’s current trend (and all the effing streaming services), Dorothy Michaels wouldn’t be a man dressed as a woman to raise money for a play. The main character will be a woman disguised as a man to overthrow not a band of evil people but a government. Hold up, aren’t those two basically the same? I digress. What I’m saying is it’d not be something innocuous but a life-death situation to make a statement that no one asked for or needed. Nothing can be simple anymore.
HOLLYWOOD WOULD TURN A REMAKE OF TOOTSIE, A SO-CALLED COMEDY, INTO A (PROBABLY DYSTOPIAN) DRAMA WITH MORE OVERACTING AND WORSE ACCENTS THAN THE ORIGINAL.
At the end of the movie, Michael Dorsey becomes a better man because he walked in a woman’s shoes. Today, the social media warriors wouldn’t even let him close to a pair of sensible shoes. Neither would the conservatives if he was getting those shoes to read for children in drag. So yeah, 2022 would not be Tootsie’s year.
I’m gonna give this movie a 7 out of 10 because Bill Murray’s Jeff was a way more interesting character, and they gave the worst underwear to Geena Davis.
Tootsie is available on HBO Max
