Near the end of the movie, immediately after Michael Dorsey pulls off his wig and does his big reveal. They cut to the control room and someone, apparently off camera, screams something that sounds like Saporia. There is no other dialogue in this brief cutaway.
Anyone know what this means?
I tried to identify what could sound like 'saporia', and the best I can do after several rewinds is to hazard a guess that it has to be some partial sentence, possibly added in post because there wasn't a auditory equal to Garr's at-home scream occurring in the control booth. My first watch-through (really a listen-through, because even though I have no hearing problems at all, in addition to the McGuirk Effect, I tend to rely heavily on lip reading for some odd reason), I was 99% certain that I heard 'KEEP FOLLOWING HER!' (a direction from someone in the booth to keep the camera on Elaine/Edward). Subsequent hearings,however, have convinced me that what is said is chopped dialogue from a different take, or something; I am hearing 'IT'S A [chop-pause here] FOLLOW ME NOT [yelled as a one-word exclamation]'. I have listened to this now close to thirty times or more, and the only way I can make sense of why 'IT'S A...FOLLOW ME NOT!' would be turning up here, nonsensical and unattributed, is to give auditory balance (close your eyes and listen a few times) in opposition to the volume of Garr's scream. If you remove it from the control booth, there is only some mutterings and a script book(s) dropping, possibly leaving the audience with the impression that the people in the control booth were, at the least, less shocked than Terri Garr.
There are some other words that would fit the same, but they are also nonsensical, like 'IS A...FORMING NAH!', and so on. But unless someone else has something better, I am wholly convinced that it is most likely the 'follow-me-not'. FWIW, the time length is close to matching Garr's scream, and the volume is, I believe, the same.
And sorry - my copy has no closed captioning, so I don't know what (or if) the yell was translated that way.
HTH
You're the one that nailed it. The "forming-nah" being exactly the sound that seems to be matching (though I too thought at first that it sounded like "it's a follow me not", which makes no sense too of course).
No "fellas" or no "Ritas", no "phonies" - nothing of the sort.
Btw, the certain sound is absent in the original script as well as it is in the English subtitle file that can be found online.
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Having just caught Tootsie on TCM UK after reading this, thought he said 'it's a phony' but it wasn't quite right because it sounded more like 'phony-ah'. I saw a comment on a YouTube post of the scene and this commenter said it goes 'it's a fellow, Rita!" Rita being the producer. That seems to make the most sense. Who actually says it is a mystery.
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