Gender Opera in “Tootsie”

How do you become the many you truly are? Try becoming the woman you aren’t. While Michael Dorsey can take the blame for his desperate transformation into Dorothy Michaels, it’s she who gets the credit for making him a better man. How are gender dynamics reflected in our relationships to ourselves? When are we staying true to ourselves, and when are we just acting out a role for others? Wes & Erin discuss Sydney Pollack’s 1982 film, “Tootsie.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:12 Wes: How do you become the man you truly are? Try becoming the woman you aren't. While Michael Dorsey can take the blame for his desperate transformation into Dorothy Michaels, it's she who gets the credit for making him a better man. How are gender dynamics reflected in our relationships to ourselves? When are we staying true to ourselves? And when are we just acting out a role for others? Today we're discussing Sydney Pollack's 1982 film Tootsie. This is Wes Alwan, and this is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. 0:51 Erin: So, Wes, as usual, I have a little bit of Elaine May trivia with Tootsie Today's film. Elaine May was an uncredited script doctor on the movie. And if you had to guess which character she added to the script, which would you say she added? 1:08 Wes: Oh, she added a character. Brewster. Am I wrong? 1:13 Erin: Who's Brewster? Which one's Brewster? 1:16 Wes: Doctor, isn't it? 1:17 Erin: Oh, Dr. Brewster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:19 Wes: No, yeah, right. Played by. I mean, the character's name is Van. 1:24 Erin: Van Horn. Yeah, yeah. 1:25 Wes: Is that right? 1:26 Erin: I think so. I think so. 1:28 Wes: Okay. 1:28 Erin: No, it was not him. 1:30 Wes: Oh, okay. So, all right. I wasn't right then. Okay. 1:33 Erin: It was the Bill Murray character. 1:36 Wes: Interesting. 1:37 Erin: Yeah. The pretentious playwright. But according to some blog that I found, there was an interview with Dustin Hoffman in which he talked about what her contributions were. And what did he say? She came up with my roommate and that the girlfriend has to have a terrible lover and she has to have a kid and a father who falls in love. And she said, I'm telling you right now, you have to have a girl already in your life. And I'm going to write her with Teri Garr in mind. 2:06 Wes: Wow. 2:07 Erin: And she wrote it in three to four weeks, and that was it. So she added a lot to Tootsie. 2:13 Wes: That's amazing. 2:14 Erin: The woman's touch, you might say. 2:16 Wes: So, yeah, it is a great script. I mean, it's a very, very tight script with great dialogue and everything works so well. You know, it's the kind of film that budding screenwriter should study, basically. So what is the Bill Murray character, Jeff? What is he doing in the film? Why add him? 2:36 Erin: That's a really good question. Because I think most people think. Not most people. I think a couple of people have said that he is sort of an outcast in the film. Like he's. Nobody quite knows what he's doing in the film, I think. So he's pretentious, and yet at the same time, like, very accepting of what Michael is doing. Right. He's a little bit of this sort of pretentious director, New York stage kind of caricature on the one hand. And on the other hand, he seems to be sort of the voice for the audience, or almost like the interjection of the audience at certain points. Like, he's able to come in and be like, oh, this is. This is very strange. Or can even interfere in the scene. Like when John Van Horn and Michael are in his apartment and Van Horn is, like, about to force himself on Michael. So there's a witness to everything going on with Michael. And there's a sort of get out of jail free card when things get a little too crazy. What do you think? 3:35 Wes: Yeah, I think all of that's right. I hadn't really given a lot of thought to this when you brought up that Elaine May added him to the script. And I started to think about why that might be. I think he's the only character who really functions as a kind of mentor character in the film for Michael. And he's not much of a mentor character. So he's a foil. He offsets Michael's mania. Michael is quite manic in the beginning of the film. He's a hustler, right? And he's not just a hustler, but he preaches the religion of hustling to his acting class. Really. He preaches two different, contradictory things to his acting students, which is, on the one hand, to always work and sort of maintain some sense of optimism. Even though you're hardly ever going to work. Right. Get on unemployment and on the other hand, be true to yourself. You got to play the part that's in you. If you can't make the part yourself, you can't play it, is one of the things he says. And you also see this mania in the way he hustles with women. He hustles for acting parts, but he's also pretty aggressive with the women in the beginning of the film. To the point where one of the women he's hitting on at his birthday party says, why are you so wired? Just calls him out on it. So Jeff, of course, stands in contrast to that. So this is a very typical kind of Bill Murray character. Because there's a certain level of cynical resignation, in a way, feels like. And he's making funny quips from the sidelines. And the way he's interacting at the party reminds me of kind of his character in Ghostbusters, where he's creating fake telepathy experiments to try and hit on women. In this case, he's using his pretentiousness as a writer saying lots of pretentious things at that party to try and seem formidable to other people. But the most important thing is just what he says to Michael right before the party, which is something like they're having a debate about the necktie in Jeff's screenplay. 5:44 Erin: Yeah, yeah. 5:45 Wes: This classic line necktie is what's wrong with your play. 5:48 Erin: Yeah. 5:48 Wes: And Jeff says, today's your birthday, Michael, and you haven't mentioned it all day. And then Michael says, no, no, no, don't start with that, man. And I think Jeff says, I think you're allergic to it. And Michael says, I'm a character actor. Age has no effect on me. Which is really interesting. Right. Because that stands in contrast to the fact that he's a 40 year old, essentially failed actor who no one wants to work with. Age certainly does have an effect on him from that perspective. And then he asks Jeff, how does one not be depressed? And Jeff says, instead of trying to be Michael Dorsey the great actor, or Michael Dorsey the great waiter, why not just try to be Michael Dorsey? 6:31 Erin: Yeah. 6:32 Wes: And then Michael responds, I am Michael Dorsey. I am Michael Dorsey. I don't know what the payoff is. Well, say it like you mean it. I am Michael Dorsey. Fine. Okay. So. And then there's the surprise party that I see as Jeff's role. You know, he's kind of a Yoda light. Right. He's not a particularly wise person himself, but he, in that moment. Right. He has a little wisdom, at least in contrast to Michael. He sets up a major theme in the movie, which is this question of how one is oneself, becomes oneself ultimately. Right. Michael becomes himself by becoming a woman, that sort of thing. But I don't know, what do you think of that? Am I overstating the whole mentor aspect of this? 7:15 Erin: Well, I think those themes are there from the very beginning in that first great sequence that you mentioned where Michael is giving acting advice and it's juxtaposed with his own failed auditions. I think that you pick up on something there that I didn't even realize, which is that he's giving contradictory advice to his acting students. I was picking up on the fact that he was, of course, disobeying his own advice in his auditions. You know, he would talk about there's this contrast between being oneself, as you mentioned, you know, this advice that he says not to play a part that isn't in you. And it's juxtaposed with footage of him putting on a lot of heavy makeup and trying to hide himself and doing these acting exercises with his students that are designed to get comfortable, to break down your walls, to get to the, you know, sort of the true self. And so there's this sort of hiding versus self revelation. And then there's also this idea, I guess, of, like, authority, right? Because Michael says kind of do whatever the director says and play the script as written. And then he reads really, really unnaturally from a script. He does unnatural reading where he emphasizes, I think, the conjunctions in the sentence. And then he's constantly challenging a director's authority, granted, with some really dumb directorial advice, but also practical advice. If nobody could see him on the side of the stage, then he probably should move over or land somewhere to die earlier so that he doesn't have to then move as he's dying. So I saw that juxtaposition happening very early. And the Bill Murray character as a continuation of that kind of theme. And also, as a guy that's just, in a way, kind of following Michael's own advice because he is himself and he's. I mean, he's pretentious about it. And so that's his little flaw. He's obviously very comfortable with himself in his Bill Murray kind of way. And so it provides this sort of, like, grounding note for Michael's mania, as you point out. 9:13 Wes: So, yeah, the pretentiousness of Jeff, I think the difference is he has that sort of ironic distance to it. In a way, he knows what he's doing. Right. He's not confused about the fact that he's playing a role. At least that's the way it seems to me. In contrast with Michael, who is confused about who he is and is, in a way, playing a role in real life and failing to play it on the stage. So, yeah, you point out that he doesn't do such a great job on the stage. I think, in a way, that's a reflection of his defiance. Right. Use this phrase, hiding versus self revelation, which I think is very good. The film immediately sets you up for that, as you point out, because you get these cuts between him putting on makeup, auditioning and then teaching the acting class. The whole thing with the makeup, it kind of highlights the extent to which he is willing to become someone else, to do anything to get the part right. To really go all out to make himself for another. In a sense, there's almost a desperation in that and a triviality to it. So at one point in one of the auditions, it's Great. It's hilarious dialogue. It's like, I can be anybody. You're the wrong height. We need someone who's different. I can be different. 10:37 Erin: Yeah. 10:38 Wes: So you get this contrast between that level of kind of submissiveness and desperation. And then the. I think that goes along with the. The hiding part. Right. That's the connection you were drawing to the makeup. And then the. And then there's this instinct to self revelation which instead of coming out in making the part truly self revealing in the sense of expressive. Right. Artistically expressive, just comes out in his willingness to get into conflicts with the director or, you know, give his class advice about not merely submitting to the director or to the writer, you know, playing it as themselves, something like that. And that progresses through these intercuts. So he gets more and more. He starts out submissive and then he gets more and more defiant. And it kind of culminates with, you know, I'm not going to walk to the center of the stage while I'm dying. That's stupid. You know, not with me as Tolstoy. So he quits one of the rare jobs, it seems like, that he gets 11:36 Erin: this lack of self awareness. I guess that the acting lessons and his actual acting experiences, the disconnect between those two things, I think shows he's a very shallow actor in a way. I was talking about this just last night with a friend, this idea of motion and stillness in acting. And I was talking about. This is funny. Actually, this is pretty relevant since Michael is so manic. I was talking about the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse. Do you know. Are you familiar with Duse? No one knows her and partially that's by her own design. But anyway, she was a rival to Sarah Bernhardt. So back in the olden days, they represented two very different schools of acting. And Duse, her natural. Naturalness and lack of pretension and lack of sort of, you know, the typical histrionics of the day, the silent movie style acting, even on the stage, you know, where you're doing. Where you're sort of miming and reproducing all of these very large emotions through the body. She didn't do any of that. And she stayed extremely still. And she was noted for this. It's now considered to be her genius was her stillness versus all of this sort of business that typical stage actors of the day and Bernhardt included in that were doing with this showing that they were upset by sort of moving their arms in this histrionic way and sort of like this sort of faux rending of their garments kind of thing. You can imagine this. This sort of miming. And we were talking about still, like what creates that stillness. And it seemed to me that it was like a sense of centeredness and a sense of understanding of oneself. And a contentment in oneself. To just let the scene play and to just stay still and let it do what it has to do. So it's like you can let go. You don't have to be in hyper control of everything. And that the more sort of stable your ego, the more willing you are to cede that power. And yet at the same time, it is a power. It's like a drawing to yourself almost. It's funny because in a way, I mean, that sort of still point of the. Of the turning world. It's this contrast between the movie actor and the stage actor that I talked about before on the show. I know, where you have your Persona and then you sort of meld apart to you versus just being this pure chameleon. I think there's obviously a crossover between the two. And that you have to have a sense of yourself, whether you're a stage actor or a movie actor, but just in terms of the Persona. But with. With Michael, with this idea of being a stage actor and being a chameleon. It's like he's entirely externalized. He has no center, he has no still place. And you need a little bit of that to retain your sanity. And I think also to be a good actor. Because you have to have some quietude or some sense of oneself and a sense of reality to which a part can be molded. And so I think that a profession like acting for a person who's well adjusted and who has that sense of stillness or that sense of observation or whatever. I think acting is noted for being a very empathetic profession. Because I think there is this chameleon property. But in a way, what Michael is, is just. He's like a dress on a rack, right? Like he's just sort of going through all of these different Personas. He's not truly inhabiting them. And he's not really learning from any of these characters that he's taking on. And if he was learning and if he was being empathetic and had a sort of a sense of stillness at the center, then I think he would not be quite so clueless about, for instance, the way that he treats women. So he persists in. Like Dorothy gives him this, it seems to me, because he persists in his terrible treatment of women until pretty late. In the film, like almost until the end of the film, because he still doesn't learn to self reflect. He still doesn't learn that what the director is doing to Jessica Lange's character, he is doing to Teri Garr. So there's no sense of almost like accumulated experience that goes into making a person. So despite the fact that he's lived hundreds of lives, he really hasn't lived any lives until he becomes Dorothy. All of this is a fancy way to just agree with what you were saying, which is that he doesn't really have a sense of self. He doesn't have any kind of distance from anything. And he's just sort of donning these costumes and has no sense of the fact that he's the one filling the costume. 16:01 Wes: I like all of that about the connection to acting and quietude. It's as if he. He's kind of switched things. It's almost as if the acting is kind of this monster that's broken out of the theatrical context. And it's the way now he approaches life to the point where he can't do it very well on stage. So that making himself up before he goes to an audition, is that for the character or is that part of the hustle to try and win over the director? It sort of, in a way, stands outside of the part a little bit. And yeah, you know, what you say about. I hadn't thought about this part for acting. The sense in which you need to be yourself and to be centered and to have a kind of stillness in order to be able to successfully branch out and convincingly do your parts. Right. Acting is involving being oneself in an empathetic relation to another instead of as complete merger with another, where the latter kind of reflects a loss of self and maybe even a kind of conforming oneself to a certain idea of being someone else and possibly even a caricature or conforming oneself to the expectations of the person running the audition or maybe even ultimately to the expectations of the. Of the audience. So the extent to which you. You have to be oneself to convincingly play another is something that. I don't think it occurred to me in the way that you put it. And then the, you know, the connection to empathy, of course, in general, we're going to connect this all to his development of empathy for women and the way in which his relationship to women changes. Right. His capacity to actually love instead of, you know, in the beginning, he hustles women in the same way he's hustling acting parts. And he's being very aggressive about it. And. And then ultimately this empathy and playing the part of a woman, but knowing that he's playing that part, maybe doing more of what you. What you said he should be doing as an actor will allow him to. To change the way he. He relates to women. 18:13 Erin: It's a lesson that he learns really late because, you know, in that sequence where he. He hears from Jessica Lange's character what she wants from a man in terms of, you know, the pickup line that she. The super honest pickup line. And then he tries it. That moment reminded me so much of Groundhog Day. It's like he's trying to learn how to be a man and he hasn't. He's still in the sequence of the repeated day, if you will, where he is. Thinks that he's learning because he thinks that he. What she says that she wants and is adapting his behavior, but he's really just reading her back a script that she's given him. 18:52 Wes: Right. 18:52 Erin: He's still just being an actor. This is like Groundhog Day for the world's most prolific actor until he finally learns to be honest with Teri Garr and actually be himself, whatever that is, and adapt that behavior. But I guess we should talk about. What is it about Dorothy that makes Michael himself? What is that magic that's going on there when he becomes a woman? 19:15 Wes: Yeah. I mean, he'll use this line in the very end. You know, you don't know me from Adam, but I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man, which is just great. And it made me think that, you know, there's Freud has this great. It's actually a footnote in a paper, and I've probably mentioned it before, but he says something like, every sexual relationship is between four people because there's a masculine. There are masculine components and feminine components to everyone's personalities. And then those kind of enter into significant relations with each other, regardless of what the whole people are doing. And so I think the most obvious part of this. Right. Is just that he's forced into a position of empathy. So that's one part of this. And then one might say he gets more in touch with his femininity. Right. Which is ironic because it starts out with him putting on makeup. And there are lots of connections between the way he approaches auditions. Right. And the idea of femininity as altering one's appearance. Right. To be desirable. All of that stuff is supposed to be in parallel. But once again, he doesn't get the plight of that, even though he's suffering the plight of the actor, which is again parallel to the plight of women in this sense. He doesn't. He doesn't actually grasp their plight. So I think empathy is one part of it. And then also he's just. What becoming a woman does is it shows him his predicament in a very sharp and obvious way. This kind of conflict he has between kind of self subordination and being for another, putting on a disguise, putting on a face. And then the more self expressive, assertive side of himself, which he. All of which he puts into his ambitions on the stage. But he loses that in his personal life. He can't be Michael and he searches for self expression through acting instead. So he tries to be himself on the stage while being another in real life and so succeeds in doing neither. And in a way he needs to reverse that. So he's forced to make a choice in the sense that he. Ultimately, he's gonna have to make a decision between continuing to be Dorothy and having a relationship with Julie. So I think that's another part of this is just he's forced to address the conflict between the possibility of intimacy and the way in which he has put everything into his ambitions. Right. So when he starts out, when he gets, you know, after that great middle of the movie montage, go, Tootsie Go, he's really successful. 21:50 Erin: Yeah. 21:50 Wes: And then he's asking his agent, you know, I can, you know, I have plenty to say to women. I've been an unemployed actor for 20 years. I know what it's like sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring. And then when finally, you know, I get a job and I have no control. There's a lot of great lines in this. Whereas agent says, you're a man. Yes, I realize that, of course, but I'm also an actress, potentially a great actress. And he goes through all the parts that he wants. Lady Macbeth, the Eleanor Roosevelt story, for some reason. 22:18 Erin: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. 22:20 Wes: It's not long after that, Right. That he's desperate to get out of that. Right. He's desperate to not be Dorothy anymore. And that's just a matter of weeks. Right. So he's willing to give up this incredible success because of Julie. That's also part of how being a woman is the key to becoming himself. Because being himself, loving another, empathizing with another, these things are all interrelated. 22:47 Erin: Yeah, I like that a lot. I love the part where he's chatting with Bill Murray's character and Primping his wig on the mannequin head, he says something like, I think Dorothy is smarter than me. 22:58 Wes: Yes. 22:58 Erin: Which I love, because of course it's impossible. And it's because he's just accessing, as you're saying, like that part of himself that is submerged in his hang ups and his sort of tied up in this masculine ego that can't let anybody get a word in and that has to fight with people. And in becoming Dorothy, in a way, he's learning that women have to have a different way of dealing with people's aggression and a different way of dealing with their own aggression. I love the scene where he decides to make the changes that he wants to make to the script and then just apologizes to the director afterward. You know, it's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission or whatever the expression is. In being a woman, he's basically discovering how to be a person who tries to get along with people, you know, and in order to do that, you have to have some understanding of people's motivations. You have to be able to be softer with people and understand their own egos and, and kind of play with that sometimes. His, his little speeches to Sidney Paul, you know, they're so aggravating because he's like, I know what it's like to be a woman, because what I know what it's like to be dumped or be. Be rejected or something like that, that's the state of being a woman is to sit by the phone and have no one call. Some of those speeches are a little aggravating to me. But the parts of Dorothy that he, I think, really learns from are these. This balancing act that all women, I think, have to. And of course, many men do this well too, but that all women have to find in their own lives, which is, which is to really understand where other people are coming from and to have to, you know, it's this tension with women and social norms and things that women have to navigate every day, right? Which is that if you're too aggressive, then you're a bitch. If you're not aggressive enough, then you're a wimp. And you have to try and kind of learn to, I don't want to say play people, but manage, you know, manage people, manage people properly. And so that would suggest that Michael's character is basically just learning how to play a role again. But it actually has to come from this deeply intuitive sense of what you know is going to work for somebody. You know, how can I get what I want? And they can get what they want. How can I get what I want without wounding somebody else? 25:15 Wes: Right. 25:15 Erin: These are, I think, considerations that are more empathetic. Right. And so by being a woman and being. Being forced into that kind of empathetic role, he's learning how to properly contain other people's aggression and how to properly deal with other people's egos in a way that doesn't make himself obnoxious and hurt himself so that he's not just yelling at people. He's kind of being manipulative. But it's funny. It's like manipulative as a means of self growth. 25:43 Wes: Yeah, no, that's very good. I was thinking at one point when you were. You were talking about the predicament of women in the position of objectification and being an object of desire. Some of what we're saying goes for everyone to some extent, male and female. It's not like men have no experience of this, but it's. At the very least, it's particularly strong for women. So being the objects of the male gaze, so to speak, to be lusted after. And it's a certain kind of power. Right. And it's a power that has something to do with mere appearance, to be pursued just because of physical appearance. But it's also a enormously troubling predicament. You know, the predicament from for men is often just to be in a state of constant agitated desire. And the predicament for women, going by the stereotypes, and I know there can be nuance and individual differences have to be added to this, but, you know, the predicament for women is to be the object of desire. There are different sets of skills involved in navigating those two different positions. And of course, if Michael learns anything, it's about navigating that other position, even though he's not particularly attractive. Is that great scene when they're like, don't let the cameras get too close. It's almost panic in the control room. 27:07 Erin: How do you feel about Cleveland? 27:10 Wes: But he gets it to the extent that regardless of whether he's beautiful or not, he understands what it's like to put a lot of effort into his appearance. And he understands what it's like to worry about that. Not just from the standpoint of someone who's trying to succeed at an audition, but as something that's constant, at least to the extent that he's living in that role. It's a constant problem for him. Yeah. The other thing I was thinking about, you're talking about dealing with other people's egos. But his defiance does find a kind of outlet, a healthy outlet, in the Dorothy character. He gets to do some of the things that he was doing that were making people not want to work with him. Like just changing the dialogue. 27:56 Erin: Yeah. 27:57 Wes: And grabbing Dr. Brewster by the. By the face, which really got him excited. And then, of course, he's telling off the director for calling Dorothy tootsie and so on and so forth. That assertiveness, which. Right. The idea. Right. Is that that can hurt women. And somehow in this situation, situationally, it works. Works. And part of the reason why it works is just because it fits the role and it's an immediate hit with audiences. I don't know. I don't have a firm conclusion about that. I was just trying to think through the connection between the fact that he's becoming more empathetic and learning to deal with other people's egos. And yet the defiant part of him doesn't just completely disappear because of that. He gets the self assertion and some of the. Being Michael in a way that he was lacking. 28:46 Erin: Yeah. He becomes like, what, for me, would be the perfect woman. It's like he becomes a 1940s heroine. He becomes like Barbara Stanwyck or Roz Russell. Right. Like these strong women that have actually very, like, what is. I keep speaking in these generalities, and I'm talking about, obviously, like, societal standards and expectations, but brassy, sort of like ballsy women who are like, to me, like, the best. You know, the best kind of women. Like, they're not going to be anybody's doormat. They're sweet and they have this kind of like, heart of gold element to them, but they don't take anybody's crap and they're not afraid to assert themselves, stand up for themselves. And it's from this whole sort of ethos of women having to go to work in the Great Depression and then having to again, stay in the workforce or even enter the workforce for the first time during World War II when the men were away. It's uncomfortable, I think, maybe in Tootsie because it's so literalized, but I think there is a way in which women would do better to sort of be able to inhabit those classically masculine traits and vice versa. And so it's uncomfortable in Tootsie, I think, because you have to deal with the fact that it's made very literal and that he's a man who's. You know, I love the idea that he's. He's. He's a male actor who can't get any work, so he has to go for a woman's. But like women's parts are so easy to come by that he can just, you know, take this, don't think too hard about it or it gets, it gets a little bit icky and infuriating. It's kind of funny but. 30:22 Wes: Well, it's part of the. Yeah, it's part of the irony of the. 30:25 Erin: It's totally, totally. But it's. 30:28 Wes: In a sense he's, he hasn't really taken it away from Sandy but because she lost, you know, she wasn't able to get it. But of course he didn't in a way. 30:36 Erin: Right, right. 30:37 Wes: He's taking a part that his friend really, really wanted. 30:40 Erin: The idea too that like good parts for women are really the parts that are a dime a dozen. Of course he has to go, he has to gender swap in order to get a part because he's so universally hated as himself, you know. So as I'm saying, it's literalized but there's definitely something about this idea of exploring your masculine side if you're a woman and exploring your feminine side if you're a man, whatever those according to, you know, the popular construction and sort of integrating those elements of your personality as a kind of a balancing act, I guess. And so it's made really, really literal here in funny ways. But it's, it's what I find attractive about like I think I find certain feminine and empathetic and whatever, you know, quote unquote feminine qualities that we classically associate with females. I often find those qualities attractive in men and I, I find quote unquote masculine qualities attractive in women. And I'm not talking about sexual attraction. I'm talking about, you know, a well rounded personality. So it sort of rounds off his personality is what I think I'm trying to say. 31:47 Wes: Yeah, I like this word that you're using, integration. Because it's not just about amping up the feminine side of oneself or amping up the masculine side about. Of oneself. It's the way in which they're related. It's the, the extent to which they are. They could be split off from each other because it's not simply that he doesn't have a feminine side. Right. The feminine side shows up from the very beginning and the making himself up and again the problem of being for another and the audition, all of that stuff. But it's unintegrated with the more defiant side of himself. The self expressive part. Be true to yourself as an artist part where he's pissing everyone off. Those two things have to come together. And the other interesting thing that you were, you were getting at is that he integrates them in himself by integrating them in Dorothy. He sees the necessity of doing that in Dorothy in part just because it's, it's the way he gets the part. This is sort of a, a huge gamble. It's sort of a huge last ditch thing he's doing. Just dressing up, becoming Dorothy and then also immediately and predictably being rejected because of his looks and then taking a gamble and saying some. What. What is it? He says to them? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Yes, I think let's try to do Southern accent. 33:03 Erin: Yes, I think sounds okay. 33:06 Wes: I think I know what you 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 or any woman who lets you do that. And that means you, dear Miss Marshall. I guess Rita is the first name of that character, the producer. Shame on you, you macho shithead. Talking to Ron, the director. So that in a way is the elevator speech in favor of a different concept for the character, the character of Emily Kimberly. It's a pitch that Dorothy is giving, but also in acting, right, Dorothy is being that. So really it's, you know, this is a necessity is the mother of invention moment where the recognition of the need to integrate the masculine and feminine, you know, it's part of his gamble to win the part and pitch integration, let's say, as something that will work better on the, on the soap opera, maybe. Which it does. Which it does. 34:06 Erin: Oh, and it, yeah, it totally improves the script and it makes Dorothy, or Dorothy's character, Emily into a well rounded woman because of the fact that he, Dorothy isn't playing her as a doormat, as like a hyper feminized, you know, stereotype of a woman who just like tells the abused wife to, you know, keep her chin up or whatever the, you know, whatever the thing on the prompter said. 34:33 Wes: Yeah. 34:33 Erin: So yeah, it's like she's going from being this really bland, sad stereotype of a woman to becoming like a Barbara Stanwyck. You kick the crap out of him or you get, you know, and in a way, like Rita, the, the executive is kind of like Dorothy, right. Like she's kind of a more integrated. 34:48 Wes: Right. 34:49 Erin: It's funny to keep using that word. She's an integrated person. Yeah. She has that personality in herself and so the fact that she's associated with this really terrible soap opera, which I think, you know, we're supposed to get the impression that this is like one of the worst soaps. 35:06 Wes: Well, let's discuss some of that, because I think it's so great, the rehearsal on set. You know, I just love some of the early. The way this is set up, you know, so you've. You've got the guy on the floor. The tubes are. Come out of his, you know, this patient. 35:22 Erin: Yeah. 35:23 Wes: And you just get this line, you know, he's getting the instruction. Now when you grab her, maybe. Maybe you even say, anthea. Anthea. And he says, yeah, that's good. And then out of nowhere, is my violin here somewhere in the room? I just love that. No, your violin sunk. It's at the bottom of the lake. The violin fell through the ice. 35:44 Erin: I love the fact that his character comes back later in a funeral parlor scene because he asked for a raise, so they have to kill him off. 35:52 Wes: Exactly. 35:52 Erin: I didn't realize he was that sick. No, I just asked for a raise. 35:56 Wes: It's great. Cause this is like the moment where Dorothy and the wizard of Oz, right. Walks out into Munchkin Land and it's all Technicolor. This is his first day of work. And it's with the rehearsal and it's so. It's over the top soap opera. So it's a land of caricature. 36:15 Erin: Well, and it's also. By actually being an actor, this just occurred to me. You know, you have to. So if we're talking about women, you know, stereotypically speaking, as taking subordinate roles to men. Right. As an actor, you have to take a subordinate role to a director. And this is something that Michael's not willing to do. And also a soap opera, and not just a soap opera, but a bad soap opera for a guy who was doing, you know, Strindberg in the park, which I love. I wouldn't. I don't know that I would want to see Strindberg in the park. But anyway, it doesn't sound like picnic fare, but. But anyway, you know, for a guy who. Who has a real sense of his own highfalutin ability and sense of him. Sense of himself as a great actor, this is also demeaning and subordinate. And so the idea that he's sort of thrust into this situation, which is like you say, like Munchkinland, it's kind of exciting. He's finally working and he's getting a job. But it's also immediately demeaning and Subordinating and forcing him to punch up. And so that's kind of what I like about it. And the fact that it's so bad, you know, he can, I think, make the choice to either work with it or to condescend to it and then ultimately reject it. And as a woman, he has to work with it. 37:32 Wes: I like that. That's very good. What's motivating him once he's in that role? He's still kind of disorganized as a person and frantic and manic. I mean, he's in a sink or swim situation and flailing about a little bit, I think. What's the reasoning behind changing the lines? Right. 37:51 Erin: The. Look at me when he grabs Van Horn's face. 37:53 Wes: Look at me when I talk to you, Dr. Brewster. I don't trust a man who won't meet my eye. 38:00 Erin: That's really good, 38:03 Wes: Dorothy. Wonderful. The way you held my face. 38:06 Erin: Oh, God, I smell a one man reboot. 38:09 Wes: Yeah, you're good. This is. This is it. This is my. I'm launching my acting career early on, when he prevents Brewster from kissing him. Right. The motivation was just to avoid, you know, she. So she hits Dr. Brewster when he tries to kiss her. You'll have to deal with my mind, not my lips. Great lines there. It's just a matter of desperation not to do the kiss. 38:31 Erin: Yeah, but that's a very female desperation. 38:36 Wes: With the added incentive he's a heterosexual guy, so there's not a huge master plan about, I'm gonna build a strong female character who's gonna be really popular with the public. It's just him navigating the situation and which women have to navigate. And then it fits. It sort of fortuitously serves a larger purpose. 38:56 Erin: And that's what I like. I think about the final monologue when he does the reveal, and he's floundering because, you know, you get this sense like, okay, is he not only a great actor, he's a great writer, too. Or where is all this talent coming from? It's not as though he sees Dorothy as a type, as I think you're suggesting. He's only adapting to the situation, and so he's not coming in and saying, oh, you know, Emily's going to be this. This ballsy woman who doesn't take any crap. So he's not coming into it with this idea of a trope or, this is the kind of woman that I am. He goes into the situation and through almost observing his own behavior, that's how he determines what kind of woman he is, which I really like and I think is really smart. He's not trying to be a type and he's also not a writer. He's just doing what he thinks is appropriate for the situation based on how this character was. He sort of like, you know, has this moment of self realization, I guess, that then informs. Oh, now I have a working model of a self that I can then kind of play off of. 39:53 Wes: Very good. Yeah. 39:54 Erin: And so I think that the final monologue when he's floundering is really, you know, it's a difficult situation. He doesn't know what to say. And I think that's really important because it shows the limits of his writerly off the cuff kind of ability. But this, I think gets to an interesting tension between actors and writers actually, you know, because you have, you have a great script and then you also have actors who are inhabiting these characters and who may occasionally come up with even improvements to an already great script through improvisation. Right. And so it becomes a kind of very nebulous area where the actors are like. The characters come off the page and become self realized little people. And then they say extra stuff, you know, it's. Yeah, it gets to something that's very interesting to me. I think as someone who does my own writing, improvisation in a way is like very, very appealing to me and very interesting to me. And I love improv, but at the same time it's very concerning sometimes because you have a text that you have to be loyal to and these sort of deviations can be uncomfortable and can maybe if they're wrong headed, kind of miss the authorial intent or add something in that is not right. And of course, with a bad soap script, any improvisation will be an improvement. 41:12 Wes: Right. 41:12 Erin: It doesn't matter. But it kind of gets to this interesting tension, I think, between loyalty to the author and how you can actually be more loyal to the author through improv. In a weird way, this is why this is such a rich film, I think, for me, because it's very smart about these real philosophical sort of tensions within the art of acting, which is such a nebulous and sort of abstract art when you think about it. 41:40 Wes: Well, he's freed up to some extent by the lower stakes of the soap opera environment. Right. Any improvisation could be an improvement. And it doesn't matter how absurd your improvisation is. 41:53 Erin: Right. And how bad it is. 41:54 Wes: Yeah, it fits. Right. And then I love like Jeff's reaction to watching this on tv. You know, that hospital sure is a nutty place. It's any more implausible when he, you know, when he does the reveal, you know, as the brother, is that any more implausible than whatever that subplot was with the violin and falling through the ice? Right. So there's that kind of improvisational freedom, in a sense. But also, as you were mentioning, he can give up some of his pretentious and his, oh, I'm such an artist. And so that his. His defiance is a bit different. It's not just, I'm not going to walk across the stage to die. It's a defiance predicated on a kind of gut improvisational feeling. And then again, the necessities of the moment, the kind of urgency of his situation as playing Dorothy, not just playing Emily Kimberly. Either you were saying this, or I was thinking it as you were saying this. But, you know, he. He kind of succeeds as Dorothy because he stops trying to be an actor in that moment. It's not just acting. I'm being an actor. He's trying to survive. He has to think both about being Emily Kimberly and about being Dorothy. And the kind of stress and preoccupation of being Dorothy prevents him from trying to overact or do too much with Emily Kimberly that isn't governed by the experience of Dorothy or by the stuff that Dorothy has to deal with. So, ironically. Right. He can put more of himself into the part or achieve more of that separation that you were talking about at the beginning. That's kind of. I am not this person, but I'm in an empathetic relation to them. He can be more himself by being Dorothy. So that's one of the great ironies of the film. And therefore a better actor because he's more himself and not just someone who puts makeup on, not just someone who is trying to be what is required to get the part. 43:56 Erin: Yeah, I love that you're really pointing out to me how that works in the film. The whole thing is almost like an acting exercise in which you would try to distract yourself by performing some task that distracts your thinking mind, your active mind, to free up more of your unconscious, you know, so that that double acting challenge is sort of fulfilling that role. 44:18 Wes: Right. 44:19 Erin: I was just thinking about the fact that Jessica Lange was the only Oscar winner out of all of the performances in this film, which is so interesting. I mean, I think her. I think she does a good job. I think her character is, you know, she's very soulful and, you know, not a stereotype at all. It's very smartly done. 44:37 Wes: Was she up against Dustin Hoffman for Best Actress or. 44:40 Erin: Yeah, right. Well, you know, she was up against Teri Garr, I think, for the supporting actress category. Yeah. And, you know, I was thinking about this. I was like, you know, okay, so Hoffman's role is, obviously, it's a true feat. You know, Bill Murray's great being Bill Murray, you know, Dabney Coleman, I think, is like one of the most underrated character actors of the 80s. I mean, he's just great in everything. 45:07 Wes: He plays the best male chauvinist pig that you can get, possibly. 45:09 Erin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I would say that the two best. And you can tell me what you think. I'm pretty curious. I'd say the two best performances in this film are. I'd say Teri Garr is just delivering an unbelievable performance. Yeah. And Charles Durning, just incredible character actor. 45:30 Wes: Van Horn Slash Brewster. 45:33 Erin: No, as Jessica Lange's dad. 45:35 Wes: Oh, right, right. 45:36 Erin: Yeah. So I kind of. I mean, I love Teri Garr, so I kind of wish that she had won, because I love. I love that when she screams at Michael, to give her the pain now is so good. 45:47 Wes: Yeah, yeah. 45:48 Erin: She's so great. I mean, every single performance is great. In a movie of great performances, which was your favorite performance? 45:54 Wes: I think I agree with you that I like Teri Garr's the best. And then as far as the Durning character, Les, Julie's father, it's well done. I didn't think a lot about that character. And, you know, that performance in particular, I think I would go with Teri Garr, but I have a special. You know, I also have, like, a. Just a kind of affection for the kind of character that she is and often plays. 46:20 Erin: Right, totally. 46:22 Wes: There's a little bit of a flaky aspect, but not too much. I don't know if you agree with that. 46:27 Erin: Oh, yeah. I mean, it makes her so charming in this. I never thought about this until now, but, like, is she actually right for Michael? 46:37 Wes: So I think this is one of the interesting aspects of the film. And maybe Elaine May, if she were here, she could tell us about why he needed the female friend. 46:45 Erin: Please come here and tell me. Elaine May, 46:49 Wes: I think we figured out Bill Murray's role. I mean, I think part of what that role illustrates is Michael's dilemma around intimacy. Right. So he kind of has a friend, zoned person in his orbit, who, regardless of whether they're good for each other, obviously she's into him. And all it takes is, you know, him with his pants around his ankles in her room. You know, she jumps on that as absurd as he shuffles over to her, you know, I want you. 47:21 Erin: Yeah. What's the real soap opera trope going on here? 47:25 Wes: Right. So I think this is another thing that's split in him, the sort of affectionate and sexual sides of him. And this is a classic Oedipal, you know, what psychoanalysts would call an Oedipal thing, where he has trouble integrating the sexual side and the affectionate side. So Sandy is there to be the object of his platonic affections, and then he can go to parties and hit on women in an aggressive way. Say, you know, you have a terrific face. 48:01 Erin: Yeah. That's Christine Ebersole, by the way. Oh, yeah. Very young Christine Ebersole. Sorry. 48:07 Wes: And then end up going home with Teri Garr essentially to do platonic things like read lines together, which is like, 48:15 Erin: why would Teri Garr be the object of someone's platonic. It doesn't. Anyway. 48:20 Wes: Yeah, right, right. So she's too pretty to be right. Exactly. It's completely his problem. And, you know, in a different kind of movie, they would. You. Different kind of romantic comedy. They would have, of course, been the ones to end up together at the end. But of course, this is not that type of movie. You're asking if they were right for each other. I think ultimately not Teri Garr's character. 48:42 Erin: I mean, I think she, as an actress brings a lot of, like, surprising dignity to the role, which makes it so affecting. But, you know, she's definitely done dirty by the movie. 48:52 Wes: She tells us she's a doormat in relation to. 48:55 Erin: Yeah, yeah. 48:56 Wes: Love partners, as is Julie, you know. 48:59 Erin: Yeah, that's. 49:00 Wes: So we get that kind of thing. But, yeah, go ahead. 49:02 Erin: Yeah, that's exactly kind of what I wanted to explore. Like, how is Teri Garr's character that different from Julie? And what makes Julie so appealing to Michael? I mean, Julie isn't a good actress that we can like. She's just serviceable. I don't think that the soap opera is really giving her a chance to, like, show her chops at all. But she's obviously popular with the public. Right. Like, we see her getting stopped by fans from the beginning. So she's made some kind of an impression with soap opera audiences. But otherwise she has a child. I think that's important. But otherwise she's kind of a less interesting. Because she's less neurotic version of Teri Garr. Maybe just the neuroticism is what disqualifies Teri Garr. You can't have two Neurotics in one relationship or it'll combust. 49:50 Wes: Yeah. I mean, and Julie drinks a lot, right? 49:53 Erin: Right. But it's a sedate. Her neuroticism is more sedate. Teri Garr's more vibrating at Dustin Hoffman's frequency. 50:02 Wes: Yeah, that certainly is the case. Yeah. 50:04 Erin: I think the role of the child, it provides some Mr. Mom moments for Dustin Hoffman that's set 50:11 Wes: up early on in the movie. Right. Where he's at the party, party, and Sandy is trying to interest him in this baby and says, isn't she cute? And he says, yeah, but he's ignoring that because he's. I don't know if he's hitting on someone or he's. He's talking about creating your own opportunity. That phrase he uses a few times in the film. And. And Sandy says he loves children. He really does. So children are not on his radar at the beginning. So that's a great little, you know, one of the few little great setups in the film that's paid off later and paid off in him doing all that Mr. Mom stuff later on with the baby. It's at the farm that you see that really affectionate moment with the child where he's. 50:47 Erin: Right. 50:47 Wes: He's holding the baby and at first it's awkward, and then it becomes affectionate. And so this is part of the journey towards being capable of love and empathy is this relationship to children that changes. 50:59 Erin: Like Julie as a mother already. Like, first of all, it adds a really interesting dimension to that character. And we never learn who the father of the baby is, which I think is also really interesting. That baby is doing something for her that makes her, for some reason, more appropriate for Michael. It's grounding her or. I don't know. I don't want to. Not that the baby is this, like, accessory, like a handbag or something, but. 51:26 Wes: Well, it makes her more of a. I was going to use the phrase damsel in distress, but maybe that's not the right phrase. You know, he asked her, he says, I take it you're divorced? And she says, oh, no, I've never been married. So she is kind of, you know, you were mentioning the staid quality of her, which goes along with her being kind of a country girl. Right. Type, which is what we learned. She's not a city girl. She's grounded. 51:49 Erin: Right. 51:49 Wes: And she, it turns out, lost her mom at an early age, but has these very touching memories of the role of her mother in her life. And that's obviously led to her being troubled. And it's the same thing, of course, that's led to Les being this kind of lonely guy who hangs out at the bar but denies that he hangs out at the bar. Right. 52:13 Erin: Yeah. 52:14 Wes: And I think there's something in, you know, both Les and Julie find something in Michael, Dorothy, that is complementary to that loss of the mother. And for Michael, there's just something about this unwed mother who is not of the. You know, there's probably a class implication there, too. She's just from a different social strata in a way. Not lower necessarily, but oblique to his more urban existence. I don't know how to put it, but does any of that make sense? 52:45 Erin: Yeah. I think I got the opposite impression, though, with the idea of her being kind of a doormat with the baby. Not doormat. Damsel in distress is the term that you use. She's kind of the victim of that evil babysitter and, of course, of Ron. But I think that the baby also weirdly, makes her not a damsel in distress because she's taking care of a baby, even though she works long hours and she has to have that terrible babysitter. You get the impression that she's a very loving and involved mother and that the baby is kind of like proof that she can take care of herself, too. 53:15 Wes: She's not just about her career, which is obvious even from the way she behaves on set. Right. She's not a artist, narcissist type, so she's very different from Michael in that sense. 53:26 Erin: That's good. That's. Yes. You're clarifying it for me. There's something. I'm like, there's something here, and I don't know what it is, but you've got it, which is. 53:36 Wes: There's nothing like a baby to take you away from your own self absorption. 53:39 Erin: Yeah. Really? That's good. Should we talk a little bit about Charles Durning's character? I just love Charles Durning as an actor. He makes everything better. I think actually, this year he was not nominated for his performance in Tootsie, but he was nominated. Nominated for Supporting actor for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, I think, and might have won the Oscar for that. I love his character because he's a little bit clueless. A lot. A bit clueless. But he's so sweet. He's like, how can we characterize him? He's a little pushy. Right. And he's a little. He doesn't really listen and he doesn't really seem to have. You know, he's like a clueless man. You know, he. 54:22 Wes: And he has some old fashioned things to say about the relations between the sexes and. 54:27 Erin: Right, right. And so he's kind of in the world of the soap opera in a way, as a stereotype of a, you know, as written, the soap opera, as written as a sort of stereotypical male character. But he is also like, he jumps off the page, jumps off the screen as being more than just a stereotype. So it's like he's learned his. His role and plays it. And then Dorothy comes along and sort of on two different levels, sort of smashes that stereotype for him. And he's more than a stereotype, but he really gets his sort of world shaken. And I just. I love the scene in the bar at the end where Michael comes to apologize to him and how quickly the whole thing turns around is kind of unbelievable. But it's very touching to me. His whole character is just very touching. 55:15 Wes: It is, it is very touching. And there's an arc there, but it's very subtle, which is just to say that he's someone who lost his wife and has been alone for a long time. And he has these old fashioned views about relationships between men and women. I forget exactly what it is he says, but there's a little Archie Bunker quality there. Yeah, a little touch of that. And then even at the end where he says to Michael, you know, the only reason I did this kick your ass was what, because we never kissed? 55:45 Erin: Because I never kissed you. 55:46 Wes: Yeah, yeah. So there's obvious discomfort with any homoerotic feelings. Strong discomfort with that. And if he's learned anything, of course, it's that he can be attracted to a person who happens to be a guy. 56:04 Erin: Right. 56:04 Wes: And that attraction is not just all predicated on a falsehood. Right. It's Michael that he appreciates and, you know, and it's that appreciation that he's able to express in the end by having, you know, they play a game of pool and you get the idea that Les has forgiven him and that he's probably given him permission to go talk to Julie and try to get back together with her. So that's the arc for the less character. His idea of what it means to be a man or a woman is. Is expanded. And again, it goes back to this whole idea that the feminine and the masculine are combined in people. And the way I like to think of it is they're combined along many different facets. So it's more like a quilt. And people's personalities, you know, people are masculine to or feminine to some degree along hundreds of different axes. And that gives a particular cast to people's characters. And we're not necessarily just attracted to masculine and feminine types. And incidentally, heterosexual men are not necessarily attracted to overly feminine women. This is something that Freud points out in his famous three essays on sexuality, which is that one ought not to confuse heterosexuality and homosexuality with attraction to the masculine or the feminine per se. Right. Some heterosexual men like more masculine women. Some, yeah. 57:35 Erin: But Dorothy doesn't like those types of men. 57:37 Wes: Right, right, exactly. So it's. 57:40 Erin: Sorry. 57:40 Wes: So in the end, I think it's very particular. Right. What is it about chemistry? What is it about that makes a. A particular person do it for us? One of Freud's ideas is that it has something to do with the fact that they are modeled on an early caretaker or both. To some extent. Both early caretakers, mother and father. There are aspects of them that remind us of those early caretakers with whom we have such strong bonds. But I think that can be cashed out to some extent in terms of this sort of what I called a quilt or maybe a constellation of a pattern, let's say a very complicated pattern of masculine and feminine features. So it's like what we need in each other is just the right recipe with just the right ingredients arranged in just the right way, and that's ultimately what does it for us. And so what Les, I think, learns is that to love someone and even the way he loved his wife is not just man love woman. 58:40 Erin: Right, right, right. 58:42 Wes: It's much more complicated than that. There's a person there, and the person is a personality with all these different complicated facets. 58:50 Erin: I like that. 58:51 Wes: All right. I think that's a good place to end it. 58:53 Erin: Thank you, thank you. 58:57 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. 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