Tootsie

Tootsie is a 1982 American satirical romantic comedy film directed by Sydney Pollack from a screenplay by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal and a story by Gelbart and Don McGuire. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, and Charles Durning. In the film, Michael Dorsey (Hoffman), a talented actor with a reputation for being professionally difficult, runs into romantic trouble after adopting a female persona to land a job. Tootsie was partly inspired by a play McGuire wrote in the early 1970s, and was first made into a screenplay in 1979 by Dick Richards, Bob Kaufman, and Robert Evans. Richards, who was selected as director, introduced the project to Hoffman, who obtained complete creative control after signing on: revisions to the screenplay and the replacement as director of Richards and his successor, Hal Ashby, by Pollack delayed the production, which began in November 1981. Principal photography took place across New York and in New Jersey, including in Manhattan, Hurley, and Fort Lee. The film's theme song, "It Might Be You", performed by Stephen Bishop, peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. Tootsie was theatrically released in the U.S. on December 17, 1982, by Columbia Pictures to a critical and commercial success. The film grossed $241 million worldwide, becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 1982, and received critical acclaim for its humor, Hoffman's and Lange's performances, dialogue and social commentary. It was also nominated for ten awards at the 55th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won Best Supporting Actress for Lange. In 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".