Dustin Hoffman: 27 Slaps and a Punctured Eardrum — SkimNews
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- Dustin Hoffman writes in a recent New Yorker essay that making The Graduate was "a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life," adding that he felt "immediately uncomfortable, unworthy" and feared Nichols had concluded he'd miscast the lead, at times thinking "I have no fucking idea what I'm doing."
- The Graduate nearly went to another actor: Hoffman read Charles Webb's novel, saw that Ben Braddock was an affluent, all-American, straight-A debate-team star, and assumed he was "all wrong" for the part because he "looks as ethnic" — his agent had to talk him into a screen test, which he won.
- Mike Nichols was "frequently sour" on set and "irritable with everyone," a "shocking, destabilizing" shift from rehearsals, but Hoffman says a "certain sadism" "seemed to creep in" only when the director was working with him, leaving him repeatedly feeling close to being fired.
- Katharine Ross was instructed by Nichols to "hit me, hit me harder" through 27 takes of the rain-soaked scene in which Benjamin admits his affair and Elaine realizes the woman is her mother; she worried about hurting Hoffman, who told her "Just don't hit my ear," but she missed a few times and he was dizzy — and Nichols never used the slap.
- Dustin Hoffman shot an underwater scene the next day in a scuba suit, and when he surfaced, blood was trickling from his ear: the combined slapping and underwater pressure had punctured his eardrum.
- The Graduate opened on Dec. 22, 1967, earned seven Oscar nominations and won best picture at the 40th Academy Awards.
Why it matters: The Best Picture winner — seven Oscar nominations after its Dec. 22, 1967 release — carries a darker production ledger: Hoffman says Nichols' "sadism" singled him out for 27 slaps whose take was never used, and he left pool filming with a punctured eardrum. The film's legacy now sits against its lead's documented physical cost.
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