Shooting Script

Susan Dworkin was the only writer given unprecedented access to the cast and crew during the shoot and editing of Tootsie in 1982 during the sweltering summer in New York City and editing bay in Los Angeles. A playwright, award-winning documentary writer, and Ms. contributing editor, Dworkin used her unique talent to tell how two superbly talented and driven men?actor Dustin Hoffman and director Sydney Pollack?actually make a movie about a serious actor, desperate for work, who takes on the challenge of playing a woman in a daily soap opera, becomes a star, and a better man for it. Of particular delight is Dworkin?s recreation of how the two men did ?The Tomato Scene? and ?The Big Reveal Scene,? acclaimed as two of the funniest sequences in the film. Drawn from observation and interviews not only with Hoffman and Pollack, but with costume designer Ruth Morley, actors Teri Garr, Bill Murray, and Dabney Coleman, editors Fritz and Bill Steinkamp, and many others, Dworkin delivers an intimate view of the acting and filmmaking process, as well as insight into the release of comedy and the force of creative power. This new edition includes an afterword with commentaries from critics and filmmakers about the classic film over the decades since its initial release. AUTHOR: Susan Dworkin's documentary She?s Nobody?s Baby won the coveted Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. Making Tootsie was her first book. Her later books included The Viking in the Wheat Field, Miss America, 1945: The Bess Myerson Story, The Nazi Officer's Wife, Double De Palma and the novels Stolen Goods and Desperately Seeking Susan. She lives in New York City. REVIEWS: ?Rarely do we have that complex creative process revealed to us with such sensitivity and insight?Susan Dworkin?s Making Tootsie is an important study, in a class with Lillian Ross?s Picture and John Gregory Dunne?s The Studio. Everyone who seriously cares about movies has to read it.? ?Digby Diehl, Los Angeles Herald Examiner ?Informative, crisply written and worthwhile? an intelligent account of the production of the hit movie (and) a remarkably full portrait of Hoffman the actor.? ?Washington Post Book World ?Making Tootsie has a sense of making a movie that very few books have.? ?John Gregory Dunne ?Tootsie has already achieved a reputation as a classic film comedy. Dworkin?s fluid, marvelously detailed book goes a long way toward explaining why.? ?People SELLING POINTS: ? Tootsie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture ? One of the top-grossing comedies of all time ? Voted a place on the National Film Registry, granting it official recognition as an American treasure ? Web publicity