Word: pollacks
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...show biz. Michael Dorsey is the kind of fellow who overthinks the role of a tomato on a commercial and quits an off-Broadway show because he does not want his character to die where the director wants him to. He is, as his agent (wonderfully played by Director Pollack) tells him, "a cult failure." Michael's friends include his playwright-roommate, superbly underacted by Bill Murray, who is so sober about his art that he wants to have a theater that is open only when it rains and a girlfriend, played by Teri Garr, who makes high comedy...
...Movie Movie and TV's MASH, each did new versions. A large contribution was made by Elaine May and smaller ones by Valerie Curtin (Inside Moves), Barry Levinson (Diner) and Robert Garland (The Electric Horseman). After arbitration, screen credit finally went to Gelbart and Schisgal. But it was Pollack who "sat in a room with a staple gun and a pair of scissors," stitching all this material together. He insisted that a certain innocence and tastefulness had to be maintained, despite the fact that "Dustin is more outrageous, more adventurous, shall we say." The star's willingness...
...filming began, in the nurturing side of Dorothy. Some of her ferocious integrity as an actress comes from a friend of Hoffman's, Actress Polly Holliday (Flo on TV's Alice until 1980). He had directed her in a Schisgal play, All over Town. When he and Pollack decided that Dorothy could have a Southern accent like Holliday's, Hoffman got in touch with her and she coached him. Says Hoffman: "It wasn't just the dialect, it was this other thing she has: she is a very tough lady, she is uncompromising." After attitudes came...
Even with two men pursuing her, Dorothy can't think of herself as attractive. Says Pollack: "Dustin has said to me that if he just didn't have that face, if he looked like Robert Redford, he'd be the world's greatest actor, so he incorporated his lack of confidence about his looks into Dorothy. Finally, we're looking at the story of an actor who, when he had to play the part of a woman, was skilled enough to get in touch with the woman in himself. That is why, when Jessica says...
...quite a moral. But it is at least a line, and a principle, that Pollack, Hoffman and everyone else could agree on as they wobbled and squabbled along disaster's edge over the long, intemperate season they endured together. It has given meaning, and a sweet humanity, to then-comedy. It is what will make Tootsie roll straight into everyone's heart. And into everyone's mind as an unmelting movie memory...