Tootsie: the Musical?

[PiraguaGuy2]

Posted: 8/29/10 at 5:06pm

Seriously. If any movie is dying to be musicalized, it's this. It's got the farcical comedy, the romantic subplot, the social commentary, and is just plain fun. So many moments lend themselves to musicalization, and the film's incredibly beloved. With Norbert Leo Butz, Laura Benanti and Katie Finneran in the Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, and Teri Garr roles, they could pull together a great cast of Tony-baiters.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 8/29/10 at 5:20pm

I think Bette Davis' LADY FOR A DAY wouold also make a terrific musical.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 8/29/10 at 5:42pm

A stage version was in the planning stages about (5?) years ago.

[husk_charmer]

Posted: 8/29/10 at 9:46pm

I can think of a million other people I'd want to see play the role of Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels than Norbert Leo Butz.

[aasjb4ever]

Posted: 8/29/10 at 9:55pm

I completely agree with NLB. hilarious. Book a house and engrave his Tony.

Posted: 8/29/10 at 10:04pm

It is already in the works. A version was completed but one of the collaborators passed away. But it is all in the works.

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 8/29/10 at 11:03pm

I'd prefer a new original musical than one based on a film from the 80s. We all saw how well 9 to 5 did. No younger audiences would even know what this is about. 9 to 5 sounded great on paper too.

[Jon]

Posted: 8/30/10 at 11:54am

Would it be a period piece? The audience for soap operas has dwindled greatly over the past decade.

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 8/31/10 at 2:55am

I think that "Tootsie" seems like a good idea for a musical, but probably wouldn't be. (I've actually thought of starting a thread called "Ideas for Musicals That Seem Good But Probably Wouldn't Be")

First off, you could not get a stage cast that has the star power of the movie cast. And I'm not just talking about Dustin Hoffman. Almost every role in that movie is cast with star quality performers: Charles Durning, Dabney Coleman, Teri Garr, Bill Murray, etc. Just as in the case of the musical version of "My Favorite Year", when you compare the two casts, the musical version's pales in comparison.

Then you have the drag factor, it loses something onstage. Discussing the musical version of "Some Like It Hot", Ethan Mordden points out that, since movies are so much more naturalistic, drag in movies is an act of subversion or deviance. Onstage, it's not shocking, it's an age old tradition.

And musical versions of movies are much harder to pull off than people think. For every "La Cage Aux Folles" and "A Little Night Music" and "Full Monty", you have a "Why?" musical like "Big" or "The Wedding Singer" or "Young Frankenstein", shows that are basically the movie performed onstage with a bunch of songs. And, yes, if you have the next Stephen Sondheim writing your score, it could be a hit. But, even if the score is good ("Sunset Blvd.") if you haven't brought something to the project that makes it actually theatrical (and not just something that is being performed on a stage), it probably won't be a hit.

And "Tootsie" is so linked to it's time and place (New York in the 1980s) that you can't do anything to "jumpstart" it, the way "The Full Monty" took the British city where the movie is set and re-set it in an American city. You can't update "Tootsie" because his charade would end as soon he is unable to produce two forms of ID and his social security number for the HR department.

Also, there are things in movies that are very hard to reproduce onstage. And in their effort to reproduce them on the stage, the musical's creative team will spend a lot of time and money on things that either just lie there or are embarassing.

An example of the former is when "The Goodbye Girl" tries to recreate the scene where Marsha Mason goes into Richard Dreyfus' room on the night he moves in and finds him naked playing his guitar. In the movie, it's done with a medium shot of him sitting on the bed, leaning against the headboard in a perfectly natural position. Onstage (since there are no medium shots in live theatre), he's sitting in the middle of the room in a yoga position with an extra large guitar in his lap. In the movie, it's a chuckle. Since they put so much work into it, onstage they try to turn it into a big laugh. And fail.

An example of the latter is the car chase scene in "Sunset Blvd." I mean, if you actually have to show footage from the movie to try to recreate it onstage...that should be telling you something.