“We had to steal the shot”: Dustin Hoffman’s Most Iconic Line From $44 Million Movie Almost Cost Him His Life
Dustin Hoffman is most known for playing the roles of antiheroes and characters that are emotionally vulnerable. One such character that he played was Ratso Rizzo in the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy. This movie was adapted by director Waldo Salt from James Leo Herilhy’s novel of the same name and was about a pair of hustlers in New York who eventually became best friends.
There are a lot of interesting things about this movie. For example, it is the only X-rated movie to have won an Oscar. Another intriguing thing is that one of the most iconic lines of Dustin Hoffman’s career was not only unscripted but also the result of an accident, quite literally.
Dustin Hoffman’s Life was On the Line When the Iconic Dialogue was Filmed
The most iconic line Dustin Hoffman‘s career that is often quoted is “I’m walkin’ here!” However, the origin of this line wasn’t revealed by him until decades later in 2020. The actor said that the movie was being shot on the streets of New York without a permit when this moment came. He said:
“That taxi almost hit us because it jumped the signal. That aspect of almost being hit was nowhere written in the scene. Probably what I was really saying was, ‘Hey, we’re making a movie here!’ But it just came out the way it came out.”
What they were actually trying to film was Hoffman and his co-star Jon Voight crossing when the traffic light was green. It took them eight to nine shots to get the scene, and apparently, it paid off because the unpaid taxi played a key character in the movie by making the Rain Man star say that dialogue.
Read More: Greatest Movie Scenes That Were Actually Improvised
Dustin Hoffman Revealed That the Movie Had Stolen Shots
Dustin Hoffman gave an insight into the filming of the movie, and how some scenes had to be shot in public places without permission. He explained, saying:
“We had to steal the shot, which is what we did. There was a van on the other side of the street, and Schlesinger was inside [with] the camera people. You couldn’t see from outside, but they could see from inside — they shot that scene [with a] long lens.”
The Runaway Jury star also said that the movie had a very small budget, so they didn’t have the money to shut down Sixth Avenue in New York for a day of shooting and then get paid extras to walk around to make it look like a usual street.
This might have been one of the first movies that had shots stolen from a public place, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Another such movie is one of Robert Pattinson’s most renowned movies, Good Time. This movie didn’t have public places locked down during the shooting to have authentic reactions and continue the filming smoothly.
Source: The Digital Fix
