Tootsie (1982)

[DisneyBoy]

I felt like we watching this movie for the first time since I saw it years ago and was astounded by how tight the film is and also by how little has changed in our culture with regards to misogyny, especially in light of current political events.

The first time I saw the movie, I already felt like it was kind of outdated for the director of the soap opera to constantly touch the female co-stars and give them condescending names like honey or sweetie. Here we are decades later and I think my eyes are opened much more to how ingrained those behaviors still are in men at the top of their professions.

I also really enjoyed the portrait painted of the Jessica Lange character, which I didn't pay much attention to when I first saw the movie. Her longing for a mother figure in her life again is very understated but well presented. I'm a little surprised that she would have tolerated such an abusive relationship with the director, given how strong a support her father must have been for her over the years as her only parent. Nevertheless I think I appreciated the actress character much more this time around, and recognize Jessica's performance as something subtle and layered and integral to the plot of the story rather than as love interest filler.

I get a big kick out of Geena Davis with her permed hair in a largely thankless supporting role that she adds some charm to.

It's also great fun to see how many of the entertainment industry's harsh realities work their way into the script. Michael is doing everything he can to be a terrific actor and struggling painfully in the opening moments of the movie but in a way that doesn't feel forced. I guess if I have any complaint it's that its difficult for me to believe he is so disciplined that he would screw up playing a tomato in a commercial rather than just go with the flow and accept the paycheck knowing the job is a stupid one and not worth the hassle.

Of course we get the Hollywood ending where the couple walks off together, but I think the film should have given us a bit more time before trying to make that seem like a plausible turn of events. I definitely think she would have been too hurt and betrayed to allow a virtual stranger into her life just because he wasn't as bad a guy as her ex. She is a single mother after all who welcomed a man into her bed and left her child alone with him. It probably wouldn't have made for as satisfying an ending in the eyes of the studio but I would have almost rather seen Michael get a good job out of this whole thing then her passive willingness to go on a stroll or date.

Actually, now that I think about it, it would have been really fun to see the soap opera tabloids having a field day with his story and some of the fallout from the big reveal that Dorothy had been a man. Were there lawsuits? Was Michael's career over (they got to do the play, but it was suggested it would flop so....)? Soaps were a much bigger deal in the 80s - would have been interesting to delve into that world's reaction a bit. There's a whole epilogue there that they just didn't include, but it keeps the film brisk so I guess we can at least say that.

I wonder just how groundbreaking a movie this was at the time it was released. It's still quite relevant today and of course, very funny. I really liked Michael's subtle realization that he wasn't so evolved either when it came to mistreating women. Missed that the first time around too.

Edited March 19, 2017 by DisneyBoy

[Cobalt Stargazer]

2 hours ago, DisneyBoy said:

Of course we get the Hollywood ending where the couple walks off together, but I think the film should have given us a bit more time before trying to make that seem like a plausible turn of events. I definitely think she would have been too hurt and betrayed to allow a virtual stranger into her life just because he wasn't as bad a guy as her ex. She is a single mother after all who welcomed a man into her bed and left her child alone with him. It probably wouldn't have made for as satisfying an ending in the eyes of the studio but I would have almost rather seen Michael get a good job out of this whole thing then her passive willingness to go on a stroll or date.

"I don't take this shit from friends, only from lovers!"

Sorry, but it needed to be said. I love Jessica Lange and have since she played Frances Farmer (the same year this came out, actually) but I think its worth noting that its Teri Garr's character who pretty much tells Michael to fuck off.

[BooBear]

1 hour ago, DisneyBoy said:

Of course we get the Hollywood ending where the couple walks off together, but I think the film should have given us a bit more time before trying to make that seem like a plausible turn of events. I definitely think she would have been too hurt and betrayed to allow a virtual stranger into her life just because he wasn't as bad a guy as her ex. She is a single mother after all who welcomed a man into her bed and left her child alone with him. It probably wouldn't have made for as satisfying an ending in the eyes of the studio but I would have almost rather seen Michael get a good job out of this whole thing then her passive willingness to go on a stroll or date.

This is the only note that feels wrong to me in the move even today. Jessica Lange's character was attracted to Michael as a mother figure not as a lover so that seemed like it could really take years to get around. But I understand it kind of needed a happy ending and I like to see it more as Julie realizing that Michael didn't mean to hurt her personally he basically *made fools* of the entire world... she just happened to be in it and this is a launching point for a friendship rather than necessarily a romance. 

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Here we are decades later and I think my eyes are opened much more to how ingrained those behaviors still are in men at the top of their professions.

Agreed.  One thing I always think gets ignored here is the Rita character (not sure who she is -- maybe executive producer). She really was a solid portrayal of a woman in charge. Dabney Colman's character never seemed to mess with her. 

[Shannon L.]

I loved this movie when it came out and still do.  I saw it the other day, myself, and was wondering how it would go over if it were made today. 

I was 13 when it came out, so I was too young to truly know how bad it was for women in the workplace, but I remember thinking that if it was anything like that, it was appalling and very unfair.   However, even at 13, I understood what he meant when he said "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man.  I just gotta learn to do it without the dress."  I didn't get why she didn't get it.  But, I now understand just how upsetting it must have been for her to realize how she'd been fooled.  At that age, I understood that she'd be angry, but didn't get just how upsetting it would actually be. 

[DisneyBoy]

For sure. I mean the poor woman has a lead role on a soap, is acting in New York City and living in an apartment that looks pretty nice, and seems basically like she just attended a funeral at all times. The constant drinking and the shy avoidance of eye contact with others just screams "I'm barely holding on". Her relationship with Dorothy seems to open her up in a way that helps her start to face just how unhappy she's been for so long. To have the rug pulled out from under her and have that trust violated is a pretty huge betrayal, especially considering Michael did it deliberately. He could have kept his distance as Dorothy but instead was all too happy to get to know her while in disguise. I know that facilitates the plot of the movie and his own arc as a recovering semi-chauvinist (well...sorta) but I do find it kind of damning that he doesn't draw any lines in the sand about how he wants to have intimacy with this woman who he must understand is craving a safe shoulder to cry on. It makes the movie more interesting for him to end up entangled in so many people's lives, but he certainly had more agency to put a stop to things before they escalated. The bar scene at the end of the film where he returns the engagement ring to her father, for example, wraps it all up in far too tidy a bow, but at least I felt like they gave a little bit of attention to that relationship, compared to the last scene of the film which glosses over all of her complex issues.

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Jessica Lange's character was attracted to Michael as a mother figure not as a lover.

I agree, but then I think back to the way they played the scene where Dorothy tries to kiss her in her apartment, and I get the sense that Sydney Pollack probably directed Jessica Lange to show that her character might be on some level semi-attracted to Dorothy as more than a mother figure. I wasn't sure how I felt about that scene. I'm not sure I could really buy that she was feeling any attraction to Dorothy that would have her questioning even for a moment if she were a lesbian, especially considering Dorothy took a long time to start leaning into her head so there was plenty of time for Jessica Lange's character to shut that down. Of course, sometimes when people are confronted by friends in this way, it takes them a few panicked seconds to figure out how to respond and because they love the person so much they're almost willing to briefly consider whether or not to permit a kiss to happen. I guess I just felt like the movie was trying to state that she might have some bisexual leanings and was simply asking herself in that moment whether she was willing to go there with Dorothy in particular. I'm not sure I buy that because it seems like it's a setup for the somewhat phony ending where she simply shrugs off what happens to her enough to spend more time with that guy she threw a drink at earlier in the movie.

What do you guys think - is she bisexual? Was she considering something with Dorothy? Was she ever attracted to Dorothy? I got the sense with the way the rest of the film was going that she was purely looking at Dorsey as a surrogate mother and was happily kind of nudging her toward her father, and that when push came to shove she was simply so depressed and distressed that she was willing to ask herself whether or not to go through with kissing Dorothy even though her bottom line is that she isn't attracted to her.

...

Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if she was considering suicide or needing to quit her job and leave town by the end of the film. There was something so damaged about her... kind of makes you wonder what she went through when she first became pregnant and how that guy treated her. I did really like the way she kept that man at the party in his place, though.

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One thing I always think gets ignored here is the Rita character (not sure who she is -- maybe executive producer). She really was a solid portrayal of a woman in charge. Dabney Colman's character never seemed to mess with her. 

I was going to comment on that in my original post but it was already running really long :) I never forgot that the show's executive producer seemed to be this strong well-dressed woman with great hair and a calm demeanor. The fact that she was not enraged by Michael's live unmasking suggested to me that she runs a steady ship and can weather any storm. For her to look the other way as her director belittles the actresses and one of the veteran stars goes out of his way to tongue them initially bothered me, until I realized yet again that even as a woman at the top of her profession she would still be dealing with that old school mentality and would probably have learned long ago to choose her battles carefully. She hires Dorothy and supports her ad libs probably because she can't stick her neck out too far to rock the boat and is thrilled to see someone else do it so compellingly.

I also always liked the fact the floor manager (?) was a black woman. Where have I seen that actress before? I feel like she was in other things. Either that or she just has a really memorable face and I never forgot her from Tootsie.

 

What really galls me is that the stuff I take issue with in the universe of the movie - the misogyny, the sexist writing on the show, all of that - is still very much in play today. Days of Our Lives for example still features female characters marrying or falling in love with their rapists, or getting raped as a means of character development, or needing to constantly be rescued by the men or unrealistically forgiving of their trespasses. During the show's 50th Anniversary about five deadbeat dads/husbands returned to the show to beg for their wives' forgiveness and try to romance them back into the sheets. And whether said men were lifelong assassins with multiple other families or good guy FBI agents who simply vanished for years without explanation, they were quickly forgiven by their families. Stand By Your Man, am I right ladies? It was a bit sickening. I don't know why women would be able to stomach entertainment that seems to want to keep them in such a limited box or tell them that on every level they aren't equal to men. It's astounding that the producers, head writers and network executives have struggled to update soap operas and their tropes over the last few decades. Is it that the public finds something comforting in old fashioned love stories where bulls are bulls and chickens don't try to lay eggs?

Soaps have moved forward a little bit, but not all that much since Tootsie was made.

Edited March 20, 2017 by DisneyBoy

[voiceover]

"That is one nutty hospital!"

God bless Bill Murray and his uncredited, mostly-improvised, role as the BFF.

[TigerLynx]

39 minutes ago, voiceover said:

"That is one nutty hospital!"

God bless Bill Murray and his uncredited, mostly-improvised, role as the BFF.

I liked Michael's conversations with Jeff.

When he was considering going to Julie's father's farm for the weekend, he told Jeff, "I just want to look pretty for her."

And this one, "He told me how he wanted the scene played.  I revised it, and did what I wanted instead.  He balled me out, and I apologized.  I never would have let him talk that way to me as a man.  I think Dorothy is smarter than me."

[voiceover]

When he walks in on Dorothy fighting off George Gaines' advances:

"You slut."

[Bruinsfan]

Did Dierdre Hall's character participate in the welcoming back of cads? Because I have to say, I get a chuckle out of the prospect of one of those guys maybe someday finding himself in a literal Devil's threeway.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I feel so...sophomoric after reading these comments. I never really paid attention to the nuances, if you will, of this movie. I just thought it was a very funny movie.

[LADreamr]

So much to love about Tootsie. The most poignant part though, I think, is the effect it had on Dustin Hoffman.  He still gets choked up when he talks about the realization he had making it, of how dismissive he had been of women himself.  He said it was never a comedy for him.  I would love to ask him what changes there actually were to his behavior as a result of that awakening.  

[voiceover]

24 minutes ago, LADreamr said:

  I would love to ask him what changes there actually were to his behavior as a result of that awakening.  

I'm guessing it was the "hitting on women" part.  I remember an interview w/Meryl Streep, around the time of Kramer v. Kramer, when she recalled their first meeting.  It was some party.  He walked up to her, put a hand on her breast, and burped.

33 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I feel so...sophomoric after reading these comments. I never really paid attention to the nuances, if you will, of this movie. I just thought it was a very funny movie.

Amen.  It's what I still think.

[cpcathy]

We wouldn't be still talking about it if it was not a funny movie. Still funny, still great, all these years later.  I watch it every time it's on TV (and I own the DVD).

[BooBear]

5 hours ago, DisneyBoy said:

I also always liked the fact the floor manager (?) was a black woman. Where have I seen that actress before? I feel like she was in other things. Either that or she just has a really memorable face and I never forgot her from Tootsie.

Sadly the actress died in the 90s I think. Lynn Thigpen(sp) she had a brain annurism. 

[Bastet]

5 minutes ago, BooBear said:

Sadly the actress died in the 90s I think. Lynn Thigpen(sp) she had a brain annurism. 

She died later than that, but I had to look it up to find out when -- 2003, at age 54.  She'd been having severe headaches for a few days and then, boom, a aneurysm burst and she died of cerebral hemorrhage.

As for what else one might recognize her from, she had a long list of credits.  I primarily think of her as the surgeon who did Darlene's appendectomy on Roseanne, but she was also in a Cagney & Lacey movie and a whole lot of other TV shows in the '80s and '90s.  Films, too.

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I really liked Michael's subtle realization that he wasn't so evolved either when it came to mistreating women.

I do and I don't, because his realizations are pretty self-focused:  I missed out on what so many interesting women could have added to my life because I was too caught up in narrow beauty standards to bother with them.  It's annoying that he had to actually step into the shoes of a woman to notice what was blatantly happening to the women all around him (although, sadly, this is not all that unrealistic).  And his realizations don't really go anywhere, certainly not to becoming an ally in the effort towards systemic change.

The whole premise of the film is too White Knight-y for me, with "Dorothy" being the only woman to challenge the sexist attitudes and actions permeating the set (and life), a frustration that would have been mitigated had Michael examined how a lifetime of male privilege influenced his actions as Dorothy right out of the gate. 

I remember one commentary said something along the lines of, Tootsie examines feminist issues but does it by keeping actual women in the shadows.  And that's pretty much exactly where I come down on whether or not it's a feminist film.

It is, however, quite soundly in the category of sharply-written comedy.  And you can't go wrong with Dabney Coleman as your scoundrel (see, e.g. 9 to 5). 

[DisneyBoy]

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Did Dierdre Hall's character participate in the welcoming back of cads? Because I have to say, I get a chuckle out of the prospect of one of those guys maybe someday finding himself in a literalDevil's threeway.

Yes, she did, though she's been devil-free for nearly a decade. Marlena's long time love John Black had become a real ass on the show starting in 2012, when the wonderful Eileen Davidson returned as his former flame Kristen. He broke up with Marlena in 2013 and basically prioritized work. Right before the 50th, they started having him mea culpa his way back into her heart while still going off on his spy adventures. No explanations were given for why he became such an ass to her in the previous years - he just proposed marriage and Marlena agreed so long as he retired from his Man of Mystery missions. He agreed. But guess where he is now? On yet another mission. *eyeroll* The show always makes a point of keeping the men in the position of being the bad boy with the leather jacket and the dangerous lifestyle, even when they are in their late fifties. It's like the show is willing to acknowledge that women want to be treated well by their husbands, but that deep down they'd rather have bad boys who aren't respectful of them above all else.

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Tootsie examines feminist issues but does it by keeping actual women in the shadows.

Too true. All of the women in the movie are basically resigned to their situations. The Teri Garr character does stand up for herself a bit and point out how screwy things are but she's played so much for laughs that I don't think of her as someone who makes positive changes or pushes for them.

I just tried imagining this movie as being almost exactly the same, except featuring a white man disguising himself as a black man in order to inspire black people to take less crap from the world around them...and the problems become even more evident. So yeah - a feminist movie? Perhaps not as much as it seems when all the women are taking crap to a point that seems unrealistic. Geena Davis' remark about her co-worker being "the tongue" had no hint of "I tried to sue him or get him fired for that and lost".

Worth noting: actor Robert Kelker Kelly played Bo on Days of Our Lives for an extended period back when co-star Alison Sweeney was still in her teenage years. During his run, he begin a relationship with an under-aged girl, and this prompted costars Lisa Rinna and Kristian Alfonso, who were already uncomfortable around him, to go to the producers and have him fired. Alison Sweeney's own mother refused to leave her daughter alone on the set around him. He was fired and never returned. Now, he's still married to that girl he met back then, but it's interesting to see how the ladies banded together in the face of what they felt might be a predatory type male. We see none of that in Tootsie.

Again, if there was no blatant misogyny on the set then I suppose it wouldn't have been as juicy an environment for the message the movie is trying to push. I just think if the film had gone for a little bit more nuance and shown, for example, that the executive producer was building a case against the veteran actor essentially molesting women, it wouldn't have felt so much like a White Knight story.

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I remember an interview w/Meryl Streep, around the time of Kramer v. Kramer, when she recalled their first meeting.  It was some party.  He walked up to her, put a hand on her breast, and burped.

Charming.

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She'd been having severe headaches for a few days and then, boom, a aneurysm burst and she died of cerebral hemorrhage.

I know someone this almost happened to. They were luckily rushed to the ER had emergency surgery and spent months and months in recovery. Be careful of those kinds of massive headaches people.

I didn't see her in any of those aforementioned projects, so I'm still left scratching my head as to what I recognize her from other than this movie. I'll have to take a look at her credits.

Edited March 21, 2017 by DisneyBoy

[Blergh]

A funny movie with great performances all around.

However; one hanging plot thread that never got addressed was- who was Jessica Lange's child's father and under what circumstances was this child conceived? It was clear that Miss Lange's character was unmarried but all the other characters were perfectly accepting of that by the movie's timeframe (even her own father) yet none of the characters seemed to think there was any need for the child's father to in any way participate in her life much less help support her or be in any way acknowledged. Ironically, the script did nothing to rule out the possibility that the baby was Dabney Coleman's character's but she literally could have been any male's child that Jessica Lange's character might have encountered.

Edited March 21, 2017 by Blergh
apostrophe injection

[Shannon L.]

5 hours ago, DisneyBoy said:

So yeah - a feminist movie? Perhaps not as much as it seems when all the women are taking crap to a point that seems unrealistic.

So maybe not a feminist movie as much as a man learning about how difficult it is to be a woman in the workplace and socially and how he himself contributed to it and how it made him grow as a man and a human being?  So, it was less about how these women had a savior (although, there were moments where that was suggested) and more about one man's personal growth.  That's why they included the line at the end that I mentioned earlier: "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man. I just need to learn to do it without the dress."

I agree, though, that it wouldn't have worked with your scenario of pretending to be a black man.

[DisneyBoy]

I tried to think if anyone was foolish enough to try that kind of scenario. The only think that came to mind is White Girls...

I think you hit the nail on the head Shannon.

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...under what circumstances was this child conceived?

Interesting that they overlooked that, I agree...

[VCRTracking]

I can unfortunately relate to that last statement. I had the realization a while back that I missed the opportunity of getting to know some great women over the years just because they didn't fit some ideal of physical beauty.

Edited March 22, 2017 by VCRTracking

[Dandesun]

I love this movie. Is it feminist? Mmm... not particularly, but at the same time it does handle things with some care. Michael comes to all of these realizations, sure, but I think one of better scenes is when Michael is so caught up in Dorothy that he's urging his agent to get him all sorts of gigs like Lady MacBeth or a one-woman show. "I think I have a lot to say to women!" "You have nothing say to women, Michael! You're a man!!"

I love that part because as much as Michael's eyes might be opened to how he has treated women, how he treated his friend to cover up what he was doing as Dorothy, and how the industry treats women...  he's still a man. He's not trans, he's not gay, he's not anything but a completely heterosexual man who thought he had Real Struggles until he got a first person view of what women deal with all the time, everywhere. And it's always a given that he can take off the dress, the wig and the makeup and go right back to where he was... struggling as an actor, sure, but not near as much as women have to.

That being said, the movie is hilarious. I love it. I love when Dorothy gets in the fight with the guy who steals her cab. Especially throwing his briefcase out the window and the sweet 'Thank yoooou!' I love Bill Murray's Jeff. "These are people who are alive in the world. I wish I had a theater that was only open when it rained." I just love everything about it. And I do appreciate Hoffman's view of it. It did affect him and sometimes that's what it takes.

[cpcathy]

I love to quote Jeff's lines from the film, even the ones with no good context. "Hey, I eat this stuff once a day so if anyone asks, 'do you eat his food?', I can say, 'yeah, I eat his food!'"

[craziness]

On ‎3‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 10:34 AM, DisneyBoy said:

I didn't see her in any of those aforementioned projects, so I'm still left scratching my head as to what I recognize her from other than this movie. I'll have to take a look at her credits.

Lynn Thigpen was also in the movie Godspell, which is where I first recognized her from.

[giovannif7]

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I didn't see her in any of those aforementioned projects, so I'm still left scratching my head as to what I recognize her from other than this movie. I'll have to take a look at her credits.

Lynn Thigpen was also in the movie Godspell, which is where I first recognized her from.

Loved her (and Victor Garber and the rest of the cast), along with the astounding shots of an empty NYC in Godspell. 90s TV watchers may also remember her as The Chief from the youth-targeted geography game show Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego.

I think what I appreciate most about Tootsie during repeat viewings is the strength of the supporting players. Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, George Gaynes, Bill Murray, Charles Durning, Lynn Thigpen, Sydney Pollack and Geena Davis all turned in stellar work. The last time I watched it, I particularly noted how good Doris Belack is in the relatively thankless role of the soap opera producer who hires Dorothy, then tries to extend her contract.

[VCRTracking]

Doris Belack's character is the one I love most in the movie. She conveys so much history of her character. Her reaction after the initial shock of the big reveal at the end: "I'll. Be. Damned." She's not angry. It's more like she has to respect how well Michael fooled her and everybody and realizes the amount of work he had to do to pull it off for so long. She can't help be amused.

Edited April 2, 2017 by VCRTracking

[DisneyBoy]

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90s TV watchers may also remember her as The Chief from the youth-targeted geography game show Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego.

BINGO!! Thank you.

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Doris Belack's character is the one I love most in the movie. She conveys so much history of her character. Her reaction after the initial shock of the big reveal at the end: "I'll. Be. Damned." She's not angry. It's more like she has to respect how well Michael fooled her and everybody and realizes the amount of work he had to do to pull it off for so long. She can't help be amused.

Very well said. It's true that she's terrific at suggesting the character's long career in the business. I still can't help but wonder what kind of a nightmare he left her to deal with after that big reveal. If she were to admit that she was fooled, she might very well lose her job. This is exactly the kind of thing that networks panic about and fire people over.

[cpcathy]

Why would she have to admit she was fooled? I bet that episode got fantastic ratings, and what a storyline! I bet she won another Emmy!

[DisneyBoy]

Consider the Rachel Dolezal fiasco and all of the interviews Michael gave to magazines pretending to be Dorothy and speaking up about women's rights. They would have definitely had huge ratings and word-of-mouth, but just as much controversy. The network would basically have to say that they knew what he was doing all along and knowingly set women up with a heroine who was a fraud just looking for work and knew nothing about the struggles women face first hand...or admit that they were completely ignorant and had no safeguards in place against people sneaking their way into the studio in disguise.

I guess I am overthinking a little bit, but I would have liked this movie so much better if it had given some thought to all of the ways Michael would have had to be fooling everybody constantly. Even going to bed with the Jessica Lange character and having his wig with curlers slip around on his head could have been disastrous.

[cpcathy]

Oh crap, I did forget the magazines!

[VCRTracking]

Another thing I love about the movie is the song "It Might Be With You" by Stephen Bishop.

[cpcathy]

Yes, it's very eighties, but I like that song. I thought perhaps it should have won the Oscar.

[VCRTracking]

It lost to "Up Where We Belong" from An Officer and a Gentleman. 1982 was a pretty great year for movie songs. Another nominee was Rocky III's "Eye of the Tiger". I like the early 80s songs in general like "Arthur's Theme(Best That You Can Do)" by Christopher Cross or any Irene Cara song.

Edited April 8, 2017 by VCRTracking

[Shannon L.]

I know there are still original songs for movies, but I don't think there are as many and I don't think most of them compare to the 80s movie music.

[VCRTracking]

Yeah. So many great songs just from movies in the 80s. Even Mannequin had a great song!

The late Sydney Pollack on Tootsie:

Edited April 8, 2017 by VCRTracking

[Sharpie66]

Just getting caught up here, and have to comment about Lynne Thigpen. She was from my hometown of Joliet, IL, and I have loved her work ever since I first saw Godspell on TV back in the mid-70s (it was on every Easter/Palm Sunday weekend on Saturday night after the 10:00 news, and Mom let us stay up to watch). She was also the radio DJ in The Warriors. 

[festivus]

I remember seeing this movie with my little boyfriend(we were 16) and loving it. I wasn't familiar with Dustin Hoffman or Jessica Lange before it but I have loved them since. I haven't seen it in such a long time but I remember feeling so bad for JL's dad, he fell for Dorothy and she couldn't return his love. I wonder if teenagers today would go see this type of movie or was that an 80's thing? I need to watch this again. 

[VCRTracking]

17 hours ago, festivus said:

I haven't seen it in such a long time but I remember feeling so bad for JL's dad, he fell for Dorothy and she couldn't return his love.

The late, great Charles Durning(The Sting, Dog Day Afternoon). I love when a comedy doesn't just have characters who are broadly comic but also "real people".

 

On 3/21/2017 at 7:34 AM, DisneyBoy said:

I just tried imagining this movie as being almost exactly the same, except featuring a white man disguising himself as a black man in order to inspire black people to take less crap from the world around them...and the problems become even more evident.

It happened and it was called Soul Man and it pretty much killed C. Thomas Howell's career. Also James Earl Jones and Rae Dawn Chong are in it! The movie did have good intentions showing a white kid the privilege he didn't know he had compared to black people but man.....! I'll just leave you with this image:

Edited April 30, 2017 by VCRTracking

[Inquisitionist]

On ‎3‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 11:46 AM, Cobalt Stargazer said:

"I don't take this shit from friends, only from lovers!"

Sorry, but it needed to be said. I love Jessica Lange and have since she played Frances Farmer (the same year this came out, actually) but I think its worth noting that its Teri Garr's character who pretty much tells Michael to fuck off.

Really wish Teri Garr had won Best Supporting Actress instead of Lange. 

[paramitch]

It's so great to see a topic on this (thanks @DisneyBoy) since this is one of my all-time favorite films, and I think it's still incredibly underrated to this day. The most impressive thing about "Tootsie" for me isn't that it's a superb, well-produced and very funny movie -- it's that it was so prophetic that it still stands up amazingly well decades later. The film seamlessly and empathetically addresses everything from feminism and workplace equality, to sexual harassment, the grueling life of an aspiring artist, single motherhood, homosexuality, misogyny, and even fandom.

So I have to say that yes, I absolutely think this is a feminist film, and an important one. Michael's journey means so much less than Dorothy's, and that's what moves me.

On 3/19/2017 at 8:58 AM, DisneyBoy said:

The first time I saw the movie, I already felt like it was kind of outdated for the director of the soap opera to constantly touch the female co-stars and give them condescending names like honey or sweetie. Here we are decades later and I think my eyes are opened much more to how ingrained those behaviors still are in men at the top of their professions.

I also really enjoyed the portrait painted of the Jessica Lange character, which I didn't pay much attention to when I first saw the movie. Her longing for a mother figure in her life again is very understated but well presented. I'm a little surprised that she would have tolerated such an abusive relationship with the director, given how strong a support her father must have been for her over the years as her only parent.

It's also great fun to see how many of the entertainment industry's harsh realities work their way into the script. Michael is doing everything he can to be a terrific actor and struggling painfully in the opening moments of the movie but in a way that doesn't feel forced. I guess if I have any complaint it's that its difficult for me to believe he is so disciplined that he would screw up playing a tomato in a commercial

I wonder just how groundbreaking a movie this was at the time it was released. It's still quite relevant today and of course, very funny. I really liked Michael's subtle realization that he wasn't so evolved either when it came to mistreating women. Missed that the first time around too.

Yeah, the movie's prophetic in a lot of ways. Women today are still navigating everything it depicts (and then some). And Jessica Lange's Julie is absolutely wonderful -- she's so real and believable. She's smart, talented and strong, but she's also a little bit of a mess, drinks too much, lets Dabney Coleman's character treat her like crap, etc. Her loneliness and her real affection for Dorothy always move me a great deal. You make a great point about her having a sweet father as a positive figure, but my suspicion is always that while he must have been sweet and kind, it seems like he also may have fallen slightly to pieces after the loss of her mother, and that he became a bit absentminded and that she may even have been more of the caregiver at that point.

Michael's monologue about the tomato and some of his other experiences onscreen are supposedly drawn from Hoffman's own experiences.

On 3/19/2017 at 9:46 AM, Cobalt Stargazer said:

"I don't take this shit from friends, only from lovers!"

Sorry, but it needed to be said. I love Jessica Lange and have since she played Frances Farmer (the same year this came out, actually) but I think its worth noting that its Teri Garr's character who pretty much tells Michael to fuck off.

Teri Garr's Sandy is such a wonderful, real character, and I always feel like a sad casualty of Michael's journey is his wonderful friendship with Sandy. Even though Michael's an ass in the beginning of the film, for instance, he is really a good friend to her -- walking her home on his birthday, and then showing up to enrage her the next morning before her audition, etc. Their friendship is so mutually supportive and sweet, and I always cringe when he'd rather pretend a seduction of Sandy rather than admit he wanted to try on her dress (hey, they're actors, he should have been able to bullshit something!). I also love it when Sandy absolutely goes full-on ballistic in the end -- AND that she takes the candy with her. (It does seem like they repaired their friendship a bit, as the poster did show that they performed Jeff's play together.)

On 3/19/2017 at 10:16 AM, BooBear said:

This is the only note that feels wrong to me in the move even today. Jessica Lange's character was attracted to Michael as a mother figure not as a lover so that seemed like it could really take years to get around. 

One thing I always think gets ignored here is the Rita character (not sure who she is -- maybe executive producer). She really was a solid portrayal of a woman in charge. Dabney Colman's character never seemed to mess with her. 

I bought that they ended up together because the movie smartly gave us that earlier scene where Michael went up and talked to her as a man, and that she was (I felt) at least a little interested in him before he gave her the assy speech about just getting down to sex. Then we have the almost-kiss, and that adds another aspect as well. (Note: @DisneyBoy, I don't think Julie is bisexual, but I do think she had a momentary impulse with the near-kiss -- and I love that she acknowledges that openly when she confronts Dorothy. But I think the goodbye in her dressing room is pretty definite that she would not pursue it -- and in fact she ends the friendship because she worries about the imbalance in their relationship and that it would be leading Dorothy on.)

So with the realizations of the story and then with their final conversation, I do think there's room there for multiple endings -- we can either headcanon that they proceed with the romance or (my case as I get older) know that at the very least they will be good friends. The embrace as they walk away always moves me, because Dorothy was so important to Julie, and this way she has that friendship back in her life. I don't care if they're lovers, I do care very much that they stay friends. There was a real friendship there.

On 3/20/2017 at 7:17 AM, DisneyBoy said:

For sure. I mean the poor woman has a lead role on a soap, is acting in New York City and living in an apartment that looks pretty nice, and seems basically like she just attended a funeral at all times. The constant drinking and the shy avoidance of eye contact with others just screams "I'm barely holding on". Her relationship with Dorothy seems to open her up in a way that helps her start to face just how unhappy she's been for so long. To have the rug pulled out from under her and have that trust violated is a pretty huge betrayal, especially considering Michael did it deliberately. He could have kept his distance as Dorothy but instead was all too happy to get to know her while in disguise. 

Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if she was considering suicide or needing to quit her job and leave town by the end of the film. There was something so damaged about her... kind of makes you wonder what she went through when she first became pregnant and how that guy treated her. I did really like the way she kept that man at the party in his place, though.

I don't see Julie as being nearly as damaged as you describe, however. I certainly don't think she's suicidal or anywhere near it. I think she's simply insecure, lonely, and unfortunately willing to tolerate that the man in her life is a philandering asshole. I think a lot of what you see as depression is simply the realistic side effect of Julie's very grueling life -- she works incredibly long hours on a difficult if satisfying job and she's the single mother of a toddler. I definitely think she was strong enough to overcome the knowledge of Michael's deception and to even allow him back into her life in some fashion by the end, in a believable way.

On 3/20/2017 at 9:01 AM, voiceover said:

"That is one nutty hospital!"

God bless Bill Murray and his uncredited, mostly-improvised, role as the BFF.

I love every single moment of Murray as Jeff. He's just so at ease and incredibly funny. And the fabulous moment when Jeff walks in on Dorothy actually having to fight off Van Horn physically (which is really important and timely -- yes, it's funny, but it's so not funny too).

On 3/20/2017 at 10:26 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

I feel so...sophomoric after reading these comments. I never really paid attention to the nuances, if you will, of this movie. I just thought it was a very funny movie.

But that's what makes it such a masterful, terrific movie! Somehow so many of its topics and Michael's revelations just flow along seamlessly by as part of the story. I love that it never feels forced.

On 3/20/2017 at 10:31 AM, LADreamr said:

So much to love about Tootsie. The most poignant part though, I think, is the effect it had on Dustin Hoffman.  He still gets choked up when he talks about the realization he had making it, of how dismissive he had been of women himself.  He said it was never a comedy for him.  I would love to ask him what changes there actually were to his behavior as a result of that awakening.  

I'm very divided on this topic, to be honest. Dustin has spoken so movingly about his experiences on Tootsie, and I'm really glad that they affected him as deeply as they did. But he himself was honestly and famously an absolute, ginormous ass on many occasions (he and Pollack for instance had a tempestuous friendship because of this mirrored in the film). Case in point, @voiceover's anecdote, or even further, Hoffman's staggeringly unprofessional, cruel and arrogant behavior toward a grieving Meryl Streep on Kramer vs. Kramer. His behavior on that was so over the top that it permanently affected my opinion of him. 

Yet I do appreciate that Dustin talks publicly about how "Tootsie" changed him. It should have. It better have. And I appreciate that he speaks honestly about how it sparked a realization of his unconscious cruelty toward, and dismissal of, women who were not young or attractive (so they had nothing to offer him). The realization that Dorothy herself wouldn't have been someone he'd have even felt was worth talking to speaks volumes. I know he wanted Dorothy to be prettier, but I think it's incredibly important that she wasn't young and wasn't pretty. If she'd been pretty I actually don't think he would have learned as much.

 

On 3/20/2017 at 1:47 PM, Bastet said:

I remember one commentary said something along the lines of, Tootsie examines feminist issues but does it by keeping actual women in the shadows.  And that's pretty much exactly where I come down on whether or not it's a feminist film. 

I can't agree with this take on the film for a number of reasons, though -- Julie and Sandy are both incredibly complex interesting characters with an enormous amount of screen time that I can't agree are in the shadows at any point of the film. Then add in the soap opera showrunner Rita and Lynne Thigpen's Jo, both in positions of production power, and I think the movie puts its money where its mouth is.

I do agree that a man's journey as the central conceit can be a bit tiresome, but for me, something magical that happens, is that Dorothy is always a separate character in the movie to me. Essentially, she is her own person -- she is Michael, yes, but she's someone else, too -- the real woman he discovers inside of him. And that probably sounds dorky and New Agey, but I don't think it is. I think it's possible to view this movie as genuinely empowering because it isn't ultimately about Michael getting a great job on a soap, it's about Dorothy's journey and realizations as well.

On 3/28/2017 at 10:36 AM, Dandesun said:

I love that part because as much as Michael's eyes might be opened to how he has treated women, how he treated his friend to cover up what he was doing as Dorothy, and how the industry treats women...  he's still a man. He's not trans, he's not gay, he's not anything but a completely heterosexual man who thought he had Real Struggles until he got a first person view of what women deal with all the time, everywhere. And it's always a given that he can take off the dress, the wig and the makeup and go right back to where he was... struggling as an actor, sure, but not near as much as women have to.

Beautifully put. And I think this is what makes it, sadly, still so timely today. Not a lot has changed -- or, well, not nearly enough.

Edited July 24, 2017 by paramitch
stupid typos!