Move Over Inner Critic

There's a Dirtbag Director in town....

Everyone has an Inner Critic. I grew up in the 80s so mine is Heather Chandler with a dash of myopic Lydia Deetz. In other words: she’s repulsed by “all of this” (gestures broadly to self), but is filled with too much ennui to do anything about it other than sigh loudly and roll her eyes a lot. She’s a blast. But lately I think I have a Dirtbag Director (DBD) in there, too. 

Tootsie is one of my favorite movies. That’s the 1982 flick where Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, an actor in New York City, desperate to raise money to put on his roommate, Jeff’s, play (Bill Murray is Jeff who is mostly Bill Murray being Bill Murray). Dorsey gets the idea to dress in drag and pass himself off as Dorothy Michaels in order to land a part on a soap opera and make quick bank. Some Marx Brother’s level hijinks ensues as Dorsey falls for one of his co-stars, Julie Nichols, played by a breathy Jessica Lange, who is oblivious to Dorothy Michaels’ real identity. Also Teri Gar plays Dorsey’s friend, Sandy, who earns her comedy bonafides with little more than an arched eyebrow and a nervous giggle. Gar is an underrated comedy supernova and I will die on that hill.

When people talk about Tootsie it’s usually in the context of it being ahead of its time for the way it engages with feminism. I used to agree, but now I think that might be a reach. Audiences got to laugh at Dustin Hoffman wearing lipstick and fake eyelashes, lamenting about how women shopping sales are “animals.” He says to Jeff: “I saw this one beautiful handbag that was on sale, but I was too frightened to fight for it. I mean they’re vicious. They can kill their own!” Sure, he gets a short lens on the misogyny and sexism women face day in and day out, but, as a man, he doesn’t do anything about it. In the end he blows up the illusion of being Dorothy Michaels so he can advance his career doing “real acting” in theatre and maybe have a shot at ending up with the girl. It’s fine. It was 1982. The most radical thing taking place on screen in 1982 was President Reagan making a speech with his hair parted on the wrong side….by accident.  

The more times I watch it (which are a lot and counting), the more I think it’s a Trojan horse film. It shows up as a romcom, but tucked inside is a story about how hard it is to be a person also trying to be an artist. 

The film’s opening sequence establishes Michael Dorsey as a very, very serious ACTor. The scenes cut back and forth between Dorsey teaching theatre–leading students in exercises, coaching scenes, giving notes–and going on auditions. 

In the first audition the camera’s point of view is behind Dorsey standing on stage. We see the back of his head silhouetted by a blinding white spotlight. We hear a disembodied voice from somewhere out in the darkened theatre: 

“Mr. Dorsey is it?”

“Yes,” Dorsey replies in a deep baritone that is not his real voice. “That’s right.” 

The shot shifts to show Dorsey under the stage lights. He’s wearing a suit and has a fake mustache pasted to his face, making him seem older. He gives a few lines before the voice speaks again: “Thanks very much Mr. Dorsey. We need someone a little older.” 

This begins a seemingly endless odyssey of auditions that is the life of any working actor. In the next one Dorsey runs out on stage dressed in shorts, a tee-shirt, and carrying a baseball glove. He delivers his lines in a high-pitched voice like a young boy. The camera cuts to another darkened theatre. You can barely make out a pair of heads illuminated by another stark, white spotlight. They are wreathed by a cloud of smoke. “Ah, we’re looking for someone a little younger,” says one of the voices. 

Another audition. Dorsey flubs his lines a little, apologizes, asks if he can start again. The camera cuts to the familiar black theatre. Six footlights, like alien orbs, obscure the view. The voice of an anonymous director:

DIRECTOR: The reading was fine, you’re just the wrong height.

DORSEY: Oh, I can be taller.

DIRECTOR: No, you don’t understand, we’re looking for somebody shorter.

DORSEY: Oh, well look [he starts to take off one shoe] see? I’m wearing lifts. I can be shorter.

DIRECTOR: I know, but really we’re looking for somebody different.

DORSEY: I can be different!

DIRECTOR: We’re looking for somebody else. 

Uggh. Thanks stupid supposed-to-be-fluffy-movie-from-the-80s-for-telling-me-my-LYFE!

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to decode what the DBD wants so I could be liked, be the right kind of friend, the right kind of partner, the right kind of professional, the right kind of creative making the right kind of art to get me the right kind of life and crikey, who needs a drink? There’s a reason that you feel exhausted for Michael Dorsey before the story has even really started. There’s more going on than silly gender reversals when Dorsey-as-Dorothy lands the role on the soap. He might finally be the “somebody else” they’re looking for, but it comes at the cost of being himself. 

I think the only way to muzzle the DBD is to stop auditioning. 

I often think about how braver we were as teenagers. Maybe it’s the odd blessing that comes with a prefrontal cortex still trying to get its act together. Or maybe it’s simply youthful hubris that gives you the courage to stand in your shoes as something closely resembling your genuine self. I had a friend who I knew through middle and high school. He was funny and a little quirky, into band and music and soccer. He was a khakis and rugby shirt kind of guy. Sophomore year of high school he came back after summer break with his hair grown out, shaggy with one side completely shaved. He had an earring. He dressed in skater-biker type clothes; his L.L. Bean backpack disappeared and in its place was a weathered messenger bag covered in Sex Pistols, Ramones, and Mighty Mighty Bosstones patches. This was the early 90s. A 360 makeover like that meant that you were really committing to the whole situation–lived in, day to day in the adolescent jungle of high school–not just winking in and out of a social media feed where anything and nothing could be real. This wasn’t a phase for my friend. This was him, coming into himself, flipping the DBD the bird, being somebody instead of somebody else.  

Me, circa 1993; a high school senior; Lady Macbeth in our drama club’s production of Macbeth; I keep this on a bookshelf in my study because I AM so vain (the song WAS written about me, sorry!) and to remind myself that there is someone in here who doesn’t need a critic or director or, apparently, hair and make-up either—just herself.