Tootsie: (Dave Grusin) There is no shortage of
funny one-liners in
Tootsie, a 1982 comedy that proved so
entertaining that it has been preserved by the National Film Registry.
The Sydney Pollack film originally had difficulty finding the right
voice, rotating between a plethora of screenwriters before Pollack and
lead actor Dustin Hoffman wrestled the difficult subject into a workable
combination of comedy, romance, and drama with a touch of social
commentary. Despite an outstanding supporting cast (including Bill
Murray and Teri Garr), the heartbeat of
Tootsie is Hoffman, who
endured countless hours of preparation for his transformation into the
lead female role for the film. He plays a promising but insufferable
actor who can't get work in New York and becomes desperate enough to
alter his identity into a feisty woman to get work on a popular soap
opera. While working on "Southwest General," his character falls in
love, is fallen in love with, and eventually has to extricate himself
from the farce by revealing his true identity on a live broadcast of the
show. One of the enduring charms of
Tootsie is the fact that it
continues to be relevant and entertaining several decades after its
release, especially due to the contributions of Pollack himself in the
role of Hoffman's agent (the scene with an argument over playing a
vegetable is classic). The film was nominated for ten Oscars, with only
Jessica Lange taking home a statue, and was well-represented at other
awards venues. One of those receiving significant praise for his work on
Tootsie was composer Dave Grusin, a regular Pollack collaborator
throughout the previous decade. His love theme for the film was
translated into the song "It Might Be You," performed by Stephen Bishop,
and it soared to the tops of the charts in America in early 1983. Grusin
received nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy
Award, most due to this song, though the personality embodied by "It
Might Be You" was a direct representation of his underscore for the
film. While most of Grusin's scores for previous Pollack films had
gravitated towards the more conventional orchestral variety,
Tootsie required a more contemporary approach. The composer, of
course, had long been known for his solo modern jazz recordings, and
this sound was a perfect fit for
Tootsie. There is no doubt that
Grusin's contemporary jazz of the 1970's and 1980's is emblematic of
mainstream music of the era. It has since been ridiculed as being among
the most dated forms of music to ever exist, defining the stereotypical
"elevator music" that so many in the 1990's and 2000's mock and
loathe.
Grusin's music of this style had its day, however, and
its application in
Tootsie is partially responsible for
generating much of the emotional charge surrounding Hoffman's female
persona. The ensemble is typical to this genre of music, consisting of
soft keyboards, electric bass, saxophone, standard percussion, electric
guitar, and occasional embellishments from organ and other lesser
utilized instruments. The tempi and swinging style of the music easily
classifies it as jazz, though some may associate these smooth sounds
with easy listening of a light rock variety. Grusin provided
Tootsie with three themes for the rather repetitive and minimally
developed score, and the film shuffles and reprises them as needed. The
first is an accelerated six-note motif for Hoffman's struggling actor,
used most often to represent his movements early on and for transitional
scenes later in the film. Heard in "Actor's Life," this theme isn't
expanded into a song but could be considered the primary idea of the
film. The "Working Girl March" is the identity of Hoffman's other half,
inserted during the shots of her on New York City streets and glorifying
her success. The clapping effects in this theme are a bit much to
tolerate in retrospect, but the amount of spirited pizzazz is what
counts. Fragments of this theme support Grusin's other song for the
film, "Tootsie," which further accompanies the success of the fraud with
a slightly reggae influence under another performance by Bishop. The
final theme is the melody that informs "It Might Be You," tenderly
addressing the developing romance in "Metamorphosis Blues" and "Montage
Pastorale." The integration between song and score is among the
highlights of the soundtrack, with a cue like "Montage Pastorale"
directly segueing between the two versions of the melody (the technique
is employed with the "Tootsie" song too in "Media Zap"). The remainder
of Grusin's efforts mostly concentrate on source pieces of similar light
jazz and the score's only orchestral material for the soap opera's
bridge statements and the "Street Players" cue during the finale. For
the original LP album, ten longer arrangements of film cues and songs
were recorded, usually fading without concrete resolution at the end of
each track. After a Japanese 1991 Warner Brothers CD version of this
album had been out of print for quite some time, Film Score Monthly
picked it up and pressed a combination of the original LP presentation
and almost all of Grusin's remaining material (including film versions
of some recordings) for a comprehensive pressing of 3,000 copies in its
Silver Age Classics series. The album has a very specific audience
outside of the usual collectors of FSM's products, and although the
sound of Grusin's music for
Tootsie is indeed badly dated, it is
a score and song combination that deserved the best of treatment.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert of the 1991 Warner album includes no extra information
about the score or film and its packaging is in Japanese. The 2010 Film
Score Monthly album's insert has detailed notation about the film and
score.
