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The only thing harder than writing comedy is writing about comedy. I keep sitting down, trying to write about "Some Like it Hot" and why it's the funniest movie of all time. And every time I end up gushing about the writing, the acting and the next thing you know I'm bogged down in discussing the thematic use of gender confusion, homosexual identity and a bunch of other film school silliness that always boils down to the same thing: Men in dresses are funny. It doesn't matter if it's the members of Monty Python dressed as housewives mud-wrestling, or the Kids in the Hall dolled up as pop-star Tammy or the Queen. And there's always when Bugs Bunny dressed as a hot girl bunny in a tight sweater. Men in dresses are just funny, funny in a way women in drag aren't. Now, we could go into gender roles and the ways in which they limit us. How in a black and white sexist world, women are weaker than men, so for a man to be dressed as a woman is demeaning to him, and that's funny. Or how a man in drag is somehow gay, and that's funny. But neither of those explanations gets even close to explaining the timeless appeal of men in drag. The real reason it's funny is actually pretty simple: it's so much harder to pull off. Men have big shoulders and big hands and deep voices and stubble. They're supposed to be as masculine as they can make themselves, and when they have to reverse that, the stress of it all is hysterical. Two classic comedies, Some Like it Hot and Tootsie, exploit this discomfort to its fullest. o o o o o
plot synopsis Tootsie stars Dustin Hoffman, playing perfectly off his own reputation as a "difficult" actor by portraying, well, a difficult actor. As Michael Dorsey, he argues with directors, he bickers during auditions, he irritates his few friends. To get around his reputation (and feed his own ego with an "acting challenge,") he dresses up as a woman, Dorothy Michaels, and gets a role on a General Hospital-style soap. Next thing you know, his no-nonsense character is a feminist icon, but the charade brings him more trouble than he imagined: lecherous drunks assault him, nice men propose to him, and he learns first-hand that what women say and what they think can be very, very different.review Ugh. Actors. By nature, the phoniest of people, making a living pretending they're someone they're not. They're fake; they're irritating; they're enraging. And yet Tootsie, a movie about an actor reaching new heights of phoniness, is about the funniest movie you'll see.---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home . |
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