Hoffman: I Got ‘The Graduate’ Role by Accident
The Hollywood sta introduced a special screening of the iconic film at the Karlovy Vary film after being honored with the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contributions to World Cinema.
Itis, of course, the famous line from the iconic The Graduate, a special screening of which Hoffman introduced on Saturday.
The Hollywood legend had quite a bit to say to an adoring audience in the Hotel Thermal, the legendary “headquarters” of the Czech festival, which welcomed him with a rousing standing ovation.
Hoffman: “It was an accident. Mike Nichols was the director of the moment. He was like Spielberg today.” But the filmmaker faced a casting challenge. “He had spent almost two years looking for this person to be the graduate, and after two years, I know this because he wrote it later in his autobiography: he was willing to say we can’t make it, and he was going to not make the film.”
Lucky timing then?
“Literally, the last day he was going to see people, it was my turn and Katharine Ross’ turn. Had we been there two years before, we would not have gotten the role.”
The movie came out in 1967, but it’s still providing inspiration for people in their 20s today.
“It’s actually the same,” Hoffman argued, highlighting Charles Webb’s novella, on which the movie is based, which was written in 1964. That was “before the Vietnam crisis, which divided America as it is divided today.”
Hoffman also highlighted a social aspect explored in The Graduate. “The parents were coming out of the Great Depression of the 1930s when no one could get a job, and suddenly now, because of the war, they were able to work, and to give things.”
Also scheduled to visit the festival over the next week are Juliette Binoche, cinematographer Robert Richardson, Jeffrey Wright, and Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. and instead of giving themselves, they gave objects. So the generation that was living then was not given love – they were given objects.
Hoffman had been honored with the fest’s Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contributions to World Cinema.
He is one of many stars attending the Czech fest, which runs July 3-11 this year.
