Tootsie

Tootsie star Dustin Hoffman originally wanted to make a
movie about a male athlete who rises to the top of his sport in a women's
league following a sex-change operation. But then Hoffman came across a script
about an actor masquerading as an actress in order to get a part on a daytime
drama, and he saw an opportunity to explore the theme of contemporary gender
confusion and
lampoon his own reputation as "difficult." Hoffman, M*A*S*H writer Larry Gelbart, and
director Sydney Pollack—who also plays Hoffman's frustrated
agent—worked closely together, tweaking the material on the fly, and
allowing input from a cast that included such comic talents as Teri Garr, Charles
Durning, Dabney Coleman, and Bill Murray. Pollack has never been a magnificent
visual stylist, but he made smart use of New York loft apartments and soap-opera
sets, creating a world that looks like one long stage for the characters to
trot across.

To some extent, Tootsie can come off as a little
too slick. The movie's snappy comic timing and twisty plot—which has
Hoffman donning a dress to get a job, and then becoming outrageously
popular—partially obscures what it seems to say, that men make better women
than women do. But Tootsie's mixed messages aren't as important as the
lively, lived-in spoof of a New York actor's self-absorbed life. The jokes work
because they come from people who know first-hand what kind of perfectionism
and arrogance it takes to make something great.

Key features: Deleted scenes and an hourlong look back,
featuring absorbing on-set footage and touching new interviews with Hoffman and
the others about the emotional changes they went through while making this
movie.