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Review of Tootsie (Dave Grusin)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
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.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
1991 Warner Album:
Total Time: 38:55
2010 FSM Album: Total Time: 73:48
NOTES & QUOTES:
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.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Tootsie are Copyright © 1991, 2010, Warner Brothers (Japan), Film Score Monthly and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/21/10 (and not updated significantly since). "You were a tomato! A tomato doesn't have logic!" |
