The Graduate at 25 (1992) Poster

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Good Documentary
Michael_Elliott4 January 2012
Graduate at 25, The (1992)

*** (out of 4)

Twenty-two minute documentary about the making of THE GRADUATE features interviews with producer Lawrence Turman, writer Buck Henry and actors Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross. Overall this is a pretty good documentary for when it was made but there's no question that a more definitive version is needed and especially when you consider that director Mike Nichols and star Anne Bancroft are not on hand for interviews. There's also not too much talk about various aspects of the production. What we basically get is a quick rundown of the events from the start of production when Turman paid $1,000 for the rights and how he hired Nichols first thing. Henry talks about reading the book and what he tried to get into the screenplay. There's also quite a bit of talk about the original cast as they were thinking about Doris Day, Robert Redford and Ronald Reagan so that should tell you where the production was going. Then we get to hear about why Hoffman got the role and as he explains his life was never the same again. We also get to hear about the style that Nichols went for and all the planning that the director did. The Ross interview is probably the least scene here as she opens up very little. Again, at such a short running time it's hard to get too detailed but what's here isn't too bad and it's certainly good to have it until something better comes along.
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8/10
Hollywood's gaming of the taxpayers exposed . . .
tadpole-596-91825618 December 2013
Warning: Spoilers
. . . as a remorseful Dustin Hoffman, who played Ben Braddock in the biggest money-maker of 1968--THE GRADUATE (which technically "opened" in December, 1967)--admits that a LIFE Magazine photographer "caught" him with his hand out in a California unemployment checks line, in the "shot seen around the world." As the preview for the current THE WOLF OF WALL STREET illustrates, with actor Jonah Hill pointing to the girl's torso shrunk-wrapped with bundles of hundred dollar bills and telling her "Technically, you DO work for me since you have my money taped to your boobs," Hoffman and the rest of his entertainment brethren technically work for us taxpayers, since they always have their hands in our pockets for subsidies, tax breaks, welfare, and unemployment checks. If you don't know this already, watch this 22-minute short (THE GRADUATE . . . AT 25, done to mark this flick's 25th anniversary in 1992) and see for yourself how chagrined Hoffman looks in relating this anecdote. He says he never stood in line for an unemployment check again after the LIFE shot exposed how Hollywood expects the general public to financially support movie stars between "shoots," whether or not we can even afford to go to the movies ourselves. Why else would have Hoffman changed his ways, if there wasn't something totally "fishy" about this whole system?
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