The Graduate with Q&A
I just got home from watching The Graduate at the Lincoln Film Center. They are having a few Anne Bancroft days and Mike Nichols (the director) was there afterwards for a Q&A. I love New York.
The film is obviously pure genius and it was nice to see it on the big screen for once. The Q&A was absolutely hilarious. Mike Nichols is a very funny and quite humble guy. He was full of stories about the casting and shooting of The Graduate. He basically said that they had absolutely no idea about anything at the time. It was only his second movie and he had just gotten to L.A. and was awestruck by everything and everyone. So cute! He said that Ava Gardner (who he loved) was really interested in the role and called him so that she could play the part but insisted that he would say that he called her. But she just wasn’t right for the role.
Of course there were questions about the music. As far as I know, this was the first movie to use popular music instead of a classical score (at least that’s what I remember learning at film school, I could be wrong). Nichols said that his brother had given him a Simon & Garfunkel CD as a present and that he was listening to it everyday while shooting the film. At one point he just thought “this is perfect!” Apparently they needed one last song for the scene where Ben (Dustin Hoffmann) breaks into the Robinson’s house and Nichols didn’t like the stuff that S&G came up with. He asked if they had anything else and after a little bit they came back with the famous song “Mrs. Robinson” which they had originally written as “Mrs. Roosevelt.”
There was one question from the audience about if it was intentional that Dustin Hoffmann is jewish and Anne Bancroft isn’t but Nichols said it wasn’t. The only thing that was intentional about it was that he had to be different from the normal Beverly Hills boys.
Well that was my evening and I thought, I’d share it with you guys. 
Tags: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffmann, Mike Nichols, The Graduate
March 11th, 2010 at 1:58 am
Although I think the film has somewhat aged, it still is a classic! Thanks for sharing
March 11th, 2010 at 7:21 am
@Castor – What do you mean, aged?
March 11th, 2010 at 7:44 am
I mean some of the things that appeared cool in the 60’s, just don’t resonate the same 40 years later. Benjamin takes Elaine to one (weird if not creepy) date and not only is everything is ok even though he was sleeping with her mother, they actually fall in love? Frankly not very credible. His “disconnectedness” with the real world just make him look childish now and the romance, by today’s standard is nearly non-existent. I think the success this movie saw was really a product of its time.
March 11th, 2010 at 8:52 am
I don’t remember if The Graduate was the first to use pop music, but I had also learned in film class that a movie two years later, Easy Rider, was the one that triggered the whole using popular music in movies thing. Maybe because The Graduate is all the same folk doing the music, it’s considered ’scored’ in some way.
March 11th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
@David – I didn’t know that! I thought you studied mathematics? Did you sneak into a film class?
@Castor – Although the film is obviously from the 60’s I disagree about a few things. I think it would still be “bad” for a 20 year old man to sleep with a much older, married woman. I also think that there are still plenty of “misfits” that feel disconnected from the world. And about Elaine falling in love with him after one strange date – I don’t think it was more credible back then but its a movie and its done in a nice way so that its ok. I don’t want to see them going on lots of dates because thats just not what the movie is about. You can’t really tell Romeo and Juliet to go on a few more dates before they get married, can you?! We just accept that they fell in love. I do agree that the same movie made today wouldn’t be as successful but I still think its a brilliant movie and it spoke to me when I first saw it in my teens when I felt disconnected from the world.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Mathematics was my major, but I was allowed to study other subjects too. I was pretty close to obtaining a philosophy minor, just needed a course on Kant and Chinese philosophy to get it. As for film, I took as much as the history/analytical stuff as I could. I didn’t take any production courses since I knew I wouldn’t actually be going into the field. Bringing it back to philosophy, I did take a Philosophy of Film and Literature course that was incredibly interesting.
Also, like a lot of people, I did quite a bit of acting in high school. My drama instructor pulled me aside one day and told me that I had a shot of making a real career out of it, not as a star but as a character actor, but I decided to get out of it in college when I saw how competitive it was. I still attend plays fairly regularly though.
March 12th, 2010 at 5:09 am
@ David – That’s cool! I studied film at an arts school and wanted to take all the other subjects as well (like photography, acting, costume design and all of that) but we weren’t allowed to do that. I think its much better to study more then just one subject. You can always do a bit of “community acting” on the side
It’s bloody competitive. I went to my first audition a couple of weeks ago (for an off Broadway play that doesn’t pay anything) and they auditioned like 1000 people. Its nuts!
March 27th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
It’s one of the greatest films made a few decades ago. The story, the actors’ play, the imagery – outstanding. The dialogues are magnificent. And last, but not least, the sountrack is amazing. Who of us is not familiar with “Mrs. Robinson”?
March 27th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
@Joanna – Welcome to my blog! I agree with you, its a fantastic film.
August 2nd, 2010 at 8:39 pm
This is fantastic, wish I could have been there. The Graduate is one of my all time favourite movies. Very interesting stuff, thanks for posting Vanessa.