1982. Maybe, perhaps, one could go out on a limb and declare it, I dunno, the Best Year Ever for movies. If one were so inclined. There were obvious movies like Rocky III, Poltergeist, and Tron …there are too many great ones to list, and I don t want to get sidetracked The Thing, Six Pack, First Blood because there’s just not enough space, Friday the 13th: 3D. Let’s just get to the film’s nominated:
Missing: Really good movie, not much re-watchability.
Tootsie: Not one misstep in this bad boy. Works like a clock, seems simple, but all the moving parts have to work perfectly, and they do. Possibly my favorite comedy, sometimes I think it might be the best movie ever.
Gandhi: The Best Picture winner. They threw this one in to make me a cynic. I appreciate it now, but at the time, you couldn’t pay me to see it. In terms of awards, this is the safest movie of the bunch.
The Verdict: Good Lord, what a movie. I almost love it but…
E.T.: When I was a kid, it was my solid choice to win. And I still love it, but…
Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie is a transcendent comedy. If you haven’t seen it because you’re understandably turned off by the idea of another movie about a man in a dress, please allow me an attempt at changing your mind. Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, an actor whose, ahem, perfectionism, has led to a career drought. Hard up for a role, he dons a dress and a wig, calls himself Dorothy Michaels, and wins a role on the fictional soap Southwest General. Ratings soar, he falls in love with a co-worker, Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange, yowza), and has to keep his secret from his sorta girlfriend Sandy (Teri Garr), while fending off advances from Julie’s father (Charles Durning). A comedy snobs can admit to liking. It’s far greater than the sum of its parts, an endlessly witty and clever story in which no one says or does what you expect them to say or do in any scene.
Love this exhange with his agent, played by Sydney Pollack:-
Michael: You should have seen the look on her face when she thought I was a lesbian.
George: “Lesbian”? You just said gay.
Michael: No, no, no – SANDY thinks I’m gay, JULIE thinks I’m a lesbian.
George: I thought Dorothy was supposed to be straight?
Michael: Dorothy IS straight. Tonight Les, the sweetest, nicest man in the world asked me to marry him.
George: A guy named Les wants YOU to marry him?
Michael: No, no, no – he wants to marry Dorothy.
George: Does he know she’s a lesbian?
Michael: Dorothy’s NOT a lesbian.
George: I know that, does HE know that?
Michael: Know WHAT?
George: That, er, I… I don’t know.
Observations and commentary on sex, relationships, and sexism in the workplace are of secondary importance to Pollack and company. But it’s there, and like the humor, it stems from seemingly contradictory notions:
- Men and women are equal
- Men and women are different
E.T. had a lot of tricks up its sleeve, but its greatest strength was and remains this: a lonely little boy. Wisely, no one in the movie ever identified Elliot as lonely or said, “That poor Elliot, he really needs a friend,” or, “When his dad went away to Mexico with Sally, he took a piece of Elliot’s heart with him.” We simply knew these things to be true. Besides that, Elliot was just like a real eleven year old boy — He had Star Wars figures in his room, and he talked about Atari with his brother.
The knock against E.T. and its chances of winning were that it was a kid’s movie. Tootsie didn’t do itself any favors by being hilarious. This is not only cynical and condescending, but it’s wrong and just plain wrong. And possibly evil. Both movies make the mistake of appearing effortless, and they made big money. One can see the work that went into Gandhi and the movie hardly set box office records – it’s an achievement, its proponents might say. Well, sure, and kudos to the filmmakers for making a commercially limited movie. But one shouldn’t assume that either E.T. (no stars, no budget, no violence, no sex) or Tootsie (bankable cast, sure, but, seriously, about a hundred million things could have gone wrong here) were safe bets.
So, what shoulda won? I can’t decide, so I’m going to make my pick based on which one I’d rather watch right this minute: Tootsie.
[Post edited by author, 09/16/10: I watched E.T. and changed my vote. Then watched Tootsie and can no longer decide.]
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