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Tootsie (Dave Grusin) (1982)
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Average: 2.9 Stars
***** 39 5 Stars
**** 43 4 Stars
*** 58 3 Stars
** 54 2 Stars
* 45 1 Stars
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Composed by:
Dave Grusin

Lyrics by:
Alan and Marilyn Bergman

2010 Album Produced by:
Lukas Kendall
Audio Samples   ▼
1991 Warner Album Tracks   ▼
2010 FSM Album Tracks   ▼
1991 Warner Album Cover Art
2010 FSM Album 2 Cover Art
Warner Brothers (Japan)
(1991)

Film Score Monthly
(June 15th, 2010)
The 1991 Warner album was released commercially in Japan and has sold for $75 and above. The 2010 Film Score Monthly album is a limited release of 3,000 copies, available through soundtrack specialty outlets.
The song "It Might Be You" was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award. The soundtrack album was nominated for a Grammy Award.
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.
Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,858
Written 6/21/10
Buy it... if you are specifically an enthusiast of this classic comedy film and have lingering affection for the contemporary jazz of the era that Dave Grusin's score and songs thoroughly embody.

Avoid it... if you mock and loathe this undeniably dated sound as the worst of elevator music stereotypes, regardless of its effective application in the film.

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.

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