Dustin Hoffman interview on The Graduate (1967)

I did a play called eh-eh question mark off-broadway and right after I got very good reviews and I wasn't real you know I was like an unknown in New York had been New York ten years it's like a breakthrough part for me and I picked up the Sunday Times one morning and my face was plastered all over the front of the Arts and Leisure section still from the play a and Walter Kerr who was the most esteemed drama critic of the day had written an article comparing my performance to Buster Keaton I had never seen a Buster Keaton movie and I guessed nickels unbeknownst to me he had been trying to cast that movie not just the part of Benjamin but also the part of you know Elaine that part the Katherine played I think for a couple years and because we the movie was made in 1967 and I think the book was written in about 62 so I think they'd gone through so many drafts and I mean been a period of years and finally a draft that they wanted to shoot and they couldn't cast it like I just gotten an agent after don't being in New York almost ten years Jane Oliver and when while I was doing a she said there's this Mike Nichols movie that they've been trying to cast and I just immediately so great you know so what because I'm not going to have a chance and I had heard that they had tested everybody you know I was just like I still believe today Katherine lost and I ruined it was like the bottom of the barrel so you know had we tested earlier we would not have gotten a role we had tested a year early the next thing I heard was my agent says to me you have to sign a contract before you do the test which we all the act all the actors have tested over the months or years or whatever it is have signed contracts and they do it they did it then I think they might do it today so it's an option contract if they don't pick you the contract is void if they do pick you you owe them six pictures at a certain amount of money which escalates three pictures or two pictures would go to nickels two pictures were to go to determine that by returning the producer two pictures would go to go to Joe Levine the distributor and under saying to my aging it later friends told me that was one of the shrewdest business decisions I ever made but I knew nothing about business and I wasn't making it for that reason I did net I mean I was rather stubborn even in those days and I did not want to be forced the thought of being forced to do a part that I didn't want to do was abhorrent to me and the thought that I would have to make a movie and then after that these people could submit you know could force me to do six movies it was just you know crazy now I go to screen test for the Graduate I fly out there they give me three days off from the play my understudy takes over and I fly out and I remember they sent me that script I only had about two three days to memorize that I'm a very slow memorizer it did very badly in school ten pages is a lot and I I couldn't sleep I was so nervous the night before I flew I was because I hadn't memorized it I stayed up all night keep trying to memorize I'd try to memorize on airplane I land in Los Angeles so here I am for the first time in a movie studio me was paramount I can't remember I walk into this palatial office high ceilings lots of rooms connecting to rooms and I see Nichols and I recognize against a bar you know so I thought of a movie set and there's glasses and everything anyway all right like a drink you know he's always for casual and I comes over to me and shakes hands and I'm just I'm immediately and feeling miserable I just have bad feelings about the whole thing this is not the part for me I'm not supposed to be in movies I'm supposed to be where I belong an ethnic actors also be an ethnic New York Hunt s in an ethnic off-broadway show and you know I know my place and we start talking I can read him I feel I can read him like he feels he's made a big mistake next thing I know there's Catherine loss now he brings in Katharine Ross and she's really beautiful and that throws me because immediately the idea you know I never thought of it but you know suddenly who I would be reading with but the end and Bancroft left and the idea of that the director was connecting me with someone as beautiful as her it became an even uglier joke it was like a not a Jewish nightmare anyway she sounds sitting here she's sitting there nickels are sitting there and pretty soon he's not looking at me as well and he had never met her before and he starts talking to her and I can feel it slowly on going into the wall and he's just zeroing in zeroing in and zeroing in on Katharine Ross and I'm saying myself I get it he's got the hots for her and I'm just here to screen tests with someone that he really is a crush on any saying things to her you really remind me of my first wife I can't tell you how much you remind me my and I mean it looks like flirtation to me you know I mean I couldn't blame her but I felt I don't you know I'm not I'm a cipher I remember the next day before the screen test I'd love to shoot it someday I thought they've ever did an autobiography it was a surrealist it's so realistic in my memory it was they take I show up if a studio and I really didn't know anything about studios and they take me into this makeup department and it's a rather large makeup department it's a long room with lots of chairs it's like the old Hollywood I mean today we get made up in campers trailers in those days it was still the remnants of the studio and these things were you know these chairs were upholstered and every you know is like who knew who had sat in those chairs and been made you know the Joan Crawford's in the baby oven wreaked of that kind of you know and people are there this like an operating room and there's whoever I remember the westmore's what are legendary names and I asked me to take a seat and apparently Nichols had talked them he's not there and I take a seat and they start working on me and I think they worked on me for over two hours and I'm not getting any prosthetics so you know putting toupee on there just trying to do something with whatever is there and then Nichols comes in and he looks I remember him saying something he's very nice but I mean I'm saying something like but his ambivalence was clearly showing through says can't you do something about his eyebrows and I might learn I know Bobbi devout likes to live with I don't have so much now because you get over one of the things you loses your eyebrows but he sees the kidneys I had one eyebrow so they plugged me I never been plucked before I didn't like being buffered but they plucked my eyebrows now what I'm going to do with his nose no Nicholas talk leaves and would he knew this nose and I started shading it or whatever in trying eyes is mine and his neck is too thick I do my neck is like 16 and 1/2 inch so they put a turtleneck on me across from that I did something in my hair and it was it was maybe one of the most demeaning experiences I've ever had and it was not intentional on their part we start doing the same I go up on my lines catherine goes up on her lines neither we start getting it right but we're very tense no good he yells cut cut cut I remember at one point I pinched very gently Catherine's probably for right buttocks when Lawrence you know as a way to help loosen us up you know kind of patted her and gave it a little and she turned on me and she we later became friends but at that moment she just world on me and said don't you ever do that to me again and suddenly everybody kind of heard it the crew and whatever and I just sat there and didn't know what was going on she how dare you sorry sorry she's just trying to you know get us relaxed sorry and it and then it was it was bad up to then it was going to get worst after she laid her apologies that it was her own attention to so we started getting cut cut I mean we're shooting from 10:00 in the morning that I was I remember they don't even break for lunch and this is going on for hours it's a torture went back somehow finished the scene somehow we did they printed a couple takes there wasn't one that was any good and I went around shaking I was I was so relieved when the day was over I said that's it or whatever and I went around shaking their hands and this in this room with the crew thank you thank you thank you and apparently when I started going from one person to another I had my hand in my pocket hands in my pocket I thought I forgot thank the prop guy so I took my hand out of my pocket I think I may have had my own raincoat on I was going back I couldn't wait to go back to New York and when I took my hand out to shake his hands subway tokens came out of my pocket and they went big inhalation about that size about eight or ten of them and they all spilled out made you know people in LA crude who know they don't know what I wish can his and he looks up with them and he he says well I'll help you with that as I started have been over to pick him up and he picked them up for me and he gave them to me and I remember what he said he said here kid you're gonna need these kids are excited my agent it was like it was good news or something no he wants you to call once your call I think I don't know I'm not sure you know I mean why would I wipe the director that they're going to say no you know he didn't get the part they wouldn't say call the director tomorrow at such-and-such an hour the appointed time came because we had to wait until noon it was like noon or something because it's three hours over live in LA and I called him I guess it was his home number and I think I woke him up I thought oh you know actors always think things like that you know some subliminal you know subconsciously he would have said you got the part but when you woke him up he did it again we always think in those terms so anyway I will come back I could tell a lie so I'm sorry well he's no nice all right it was his paws I don't know what to say I said you told me to call you again in a long long pause till I almost thought we were disconnected and I hear the magic words which were well you got it those four words oh you got it first week of rehearsal he knew the right questions he said you just any idols when you were growing up who your idol did any movie stars anybody you I said my brother's my big brother was just the two of us my brother Ronnie so almost seven years older than me he asked me one time he says does your brother ever get uptight I said yeah he says well what happens to him when Ronnie Ronnie gets uptight and I could imitate my brother pretty good you think you can always invert eight the person you worship if you can imitate anybody and I said what he holds his breath when he's really upset and and he doesn't breathe he stops breathing that's how I used to always know he was pissed off at me when we were kids and then little spurts of air would come out and he said well Dodds do the scene like that good Scott that was naturally with flair I did the scene like that and Bankoff was wonderful because she would you know she wanted to create her own thing but she's sitting she's waiting he's focusing a needle try doing it again now I did it up tight my brother fight that's do that scene again hang something at the table before we get the room in the hotel I don't want to go through with it or something heshes tried doing it again and just forget about your brother now just let whatever remnants of I know this sounds kind of technical now you know but it just let the essence of it remain and I did it when I sat there with her at the table well mrs. Robinson I really don't want I'm still trying to be him but I'm not trying to be him I'm just creating the essence and suddenly he came out instead of it was born and I didn't even wasn't that aware I had done it but he broke in a hysterical laughing laughter and he has a great laugh Michael he's crying because she kept on a-goin hmm cuz I was just holding my breath the way my brother did well in the final product in the film he lays in those a few more places it's his directorial flourish and then another example would be that when she's sitting on the bed and she takes in the hotel room when she takes her blouse off and she has her brah I'm supposed to start to remove her bra or something and we're trying to work on this and the director works like the strategist say okay do it may go to some sherlocky kinetic sing-along that something really you know that's a derivative of something using 50 mm very few directors are going through that thing on how to arrive at it these can you tell me if I would sit down again and thank love would take a walk can you tell me about the first time you ever got laid I told can you tell me about the first time you ever touched a girl and suddenly this memory comes back to me and I was kind of sexually obsessed always had been even before you're supposed to be and and I you know and I was I heard about and I was telling him all this and heard about stories about what you do some kids said in the ninth graders would tell you when you're in the seventh grade if you want to get a feel you have to as a girls coming down the stairs you look for a ninth grader cuz they have the most developed breasts yeah this was a witness guide to oxy and as the girls coming down the stairs you pretend like you're putting on your jacket as you going up the stairs and it just happens to grab you know I mean this is you know and I failed at it I missed a girl and she knew what I was doing to just turn around and sort of laughing at me I remember I wouldn't I just grabbed her face and said you know he says let's try that he until Anne Bancroft so we're doing a scene it's in the movie and southern is better than she takes it shirt off and I just come over and come to try to recreate that scene that Gomorrah come around and back she didn't know what I was going to do she had no idea we're just rehearsing I come from up behind somebody's hand comes from behind her this is the great seduction I just stand there holding it not even getting either violent was I didn't even move my hand my hand goes there and she was shocked and then crush it shocked and she just went like this nichols started laughing again well I didn't want to break the scene you're not supposed to break the scenes it's good but I started laughing the whole thing was suddenly and we're in the middle of the scene and I just started breaking up and I did what any actor would do that son because when you're acting you're acting you guys will be on the stage is I turned away and walked over to the wall and stood against the wall until I stopped breaking up and I couldn't stop breaking up so I started banging my head against the wall just like this I was laughing so hard just during this rehearsal I was just going like this as it's going like this she's trying to stop laughing and Nichols doesn't know that's why I'm doing it he still thinks is part of the scene and he is in hysterics by now he gets it as the character it's in the movie when we were shooting in Luverne California there's the point where I'm upstairs yelling Elaine Elaine Elaine on the glass trying to stop the way the Reverend or preached a campaign over whom had agreed to lease out his church to the movie crew and had never done it before and somehow was misinformed the way they're always misinformed it'll just be a couple of days we'll clean up everything they have no idea that it's the Gulf War that they're allowing him to their premises and the cables and the cameras and 150 people and it goes over and the Nixon his beautiful church and whatever and the man is walking around like a cliche you know all my god you know everyone look at from day to day and be shaking his head because it's beautiful that emphasis was being slowly just chewed up so we finally get after a few days up to this thing when I have to run on the street and run up the stairs over and over again and now we finished that Park now we're going to start pounding on a glass and there's this huge glass it's at one location your head you gotta be honest to know where I'm going and he just don't that's a gift that they played class field breakers I start rehearsing I start pounding on you know and I'm always afraid that if I you know I have to give nickels what he wants Elaine Elaine and glass is shaking in fear he says please started her screaming we'd all stop looking at him he says I that's it that's it leave everyone with efj movies over get out what's the matter no that's the get in will be but I don't care it you can replace it it's a gift I don't want it broken very pregnant silence Nichols comes over to me is there any way you can knock on the glass so it doesn't break or so doesn't shake just one of my solicitor so some guy you know this everything becomes a big deal in movies everyone's you know let's get the experts on some of the head of props comes over and says I think if you spread your arms and you just tap like that it won't you know the pounding so you want me to stand here I've just run miles I run up the stairs I'm screaming on half out of my mind and when I get to this window I spread my arms and I go and the pre-stressing yes yes that's all he could to or she will always and Nikhil says trying to make it work and I do it and I'd start doing like that and that's what's in the movie every piece of film criticism that I've ever read is nickels this has been German a christ-like position and this was somehow a Jesus thing and that's why he's arms are outstretched Nicholson I talked recently a lot of sequel because I had a great idea for a sequel and he liked it I thought I should still be married to Catherine and that and Bancroft would come over for dinner and [Music] once or twice a week and you know she was friends of the family so I think thought we should not have a particularly good marriage by this point that we could have growing kids but have one kid who's still was an accident maybe it's 16 or 17 let's say a boy who has a girlfriend and I start having an affair with my son's girlfriend and nickels smile he says I get it you become mrs. Robinson Isis that's right and he smiled and he says and I know what you should be doing for a living I said what he said you should be directing TV commercials and we started to enjoy them I think it's still in the air

Channel: FilMagicians

Views: 142,833

Keywords: Dustin Hoffman, interview, The Graduate, Mike Nichols

Id: ZT_MZQl0KmU

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 20 2017