sugarpussOShea

Ohh - gotcha. Yeah - his "last resort" move makes more sense if he's in some small city with limited acting roles but he's in NYC for crying out loud! If you can't land any roles on tv, in commercials, or in a play, maybe you're not talented! It also feels like yet another F YOU to Terri Garr's character to go for the part they rejected her for before she really got a shot at it. (She's really treated so badly by him and it's played for laughs but I really feel for her. She needs new friends.)

I think it's Michael Dorsey's overestimation of his own acting talent that makes him do it - he thinks he's so good that he can even dress as a woman, audition, and land the part easily - which he does! I think it's hubris that makes him dress as a woman and the lure of easy and consistent soap opera money that makes him choose that part. I heard Hoffman on Fresh Air a couple of years ago and he said that he was really upset when they were making him up as a woman for this movie because he realized that he looked like a woman he wouldn't look twice at. He said not looking pretty made him realize what women who aren't beautiful go through. This was before stories about how obnoxious he was on various sets were mainstream so I had mostly positive feelings about him going into the interview but I thought, dude - you have no idea what it is like to be a woman because you dressed up like one for a movie one time. You know how to feel sorry for yourself and can start to understand how judgmental you are towards women but you don't really understand what it's like to put up with guys like you all the time. Really turned me off him.

This is such a good point and brilliantly said - something I never noticed and I've seen the movie many times. The fewer investigative journalist outlets we have, the more evil people get away with in politics and business on a national and local level. Older movies that were serious about print journalism are hard to find but Sam Fuller's Park Row is a great one - Fuller was a reporter before he was a director and he financed and produced the movie himself. It' s about the early days of cut-throat (almost literally) tactics to jockey for readership and is really good. TCM shows it occasionally; they showed it at their film festival in 2018 and John Sayles introduced it, giving such a great history of journalism and Fuller.