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10 Actors Who Didn't Know They Were Being Filmed
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00:00Hello all of you beautiful people, Jules here for WhatCulture.com, and when it comes to making a film,
00:04there is one word above all else that is absolutely paramount, and that is cut.
00:10As soon as that word is mentioned, the action breaks and reality seeps back into the project,
00:15allowing the actors and crew to gather themselves, prepare for their next take, and basically just relax a bit.
00:20But sometimes, for reasons unbeknownst only to themselves, directors will sometimes keep rolling
00:25in the pursuit of some magic shot without the actor's knowledge,
00:28and sometimes these shots make their way into the final version.
00:31So let's take a look at them, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:34and these are 10 actors who didn't know they were being filmed.
00:3710. Michael Douglas – Traffic
00:39Midway through Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning drama Traffic, the US President's drug czar Robert
00:45Wakefield heads to the US-Mexico border in California, where he speaks with the US Customs Service
00:50official while observing inspections of cars that cross the border. This scene had all of the gritty
00:55authenticity of reality, and that's because basically it was. Soderbergh took Douglas to the
01:00actual border and had him meet with a real US Customs Service executive by the name of Rudy M.
01:05Camacho. This wasn't originally intended to be part of the film, but sensing worthwhile material on the
01:10horizon, the director quietly began filming the exchange with a small handheld camera without
01:15notifying Douglas. This explains why the video quality looks markedly less clear than the rest of
01:20the film. The garish, overexposed lighting suggests that Soderbergh basically just pointed his camera
01:25and shot without setting the scene up as usual. Similarly, the audio quality is of a much lower
01:30quality than in other scenes. Soderbergh reportedly hoped that Camacho wouldn't render the material
01:35unusable by referring to Douglas by his real name, which thankfully he didn't.
01:399. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey – Dirty Dancing
01:43Of the many, many iconic scenes in Dirty Dancing, who can forget the irresistible moment where Baby
01:49and Johnny playfully flirt, dance and lip-sync with each other to Mickey and Sylvia's love
01:54is strange. Curiously, though, this scene wasn't actually in the film's script, and was originally
02:00just a warm-up exercise undertaken by the actors to get into their character before shooting. However,
02:05the director decided to start rolling the cameras regardless without notifying the pair,
02:10and considering how close the camera ends up to them, we can safely assume that they just decided
02:14to go along with it without breaking character. That one of the film's most memorable moments
02:18wasn't originally planned, and on top of that was basically a stolen take, is absolutely incredible.
02:248. Tom Hanks – Cast Away
02:26There's no denying the over-the-odds commitment of Tom Hanks' Oscar-nominated performance in Cast Away,
02:32and by the actor's own admission, he more or less went crazy for real whilst playing the shipwrecked,
02:37stranded FedEx executive Chuck Noland. In a recent interview, Hanks stated that in addition to
02:42hearing the voice of inanimate volleyball Wilson in his head, he was often filmed by director Robert
02:46Zemeckis without the filmmaker shouting action or cut. As such, Hanks frequently wasn't sure if he
02:52was actually being filmed or not while carrying out his various survivalist actions. He had this to say,
02:57That movie was literally about physical action, and I don't even recall where the camera was set up.
03:02It was just always set up somewhere, because what I had to do was I had to lash a raft
03:06together,
03:07I had to open a coconut, I had to make a fire, I had to climb in or out of
03:11a cave. It was just me,
03:12and the box, and the lens, and the behaviour.
03:157. Jason Miller and Other Cast Members – The Exorcist
03:19It's no secret that The Exorcist was one of the most infamously gruelling film shoots in Hollywood
03:24history, where Oscar-nominated director William Friedkin put his ensemble cast through near-literal
03:29hell in an attempt to create as authentically terrifying an experience as possible. This
03:34extended to the director even firing guns on set in order to produce genuinely startled reactions
03:38from the cast, resulting in actor Jason Miller, who played Father Damien, verbally confronting the
03:43filmmaker for the extreme practice. But Friedkin didn't only fire the gun during the actor's takes,
03:49he even set off the gun between takes. All the while, the cast were unaware that the director
03:53was surreptitiously filming their reactions. Many of these reportedly made it into the final cut
03:58of the film. The various jolting responses when Reagan makes noises in her room were actually
04:03the result of a brilliant but unhinged filmmaker shooting off a real gun on set, and legitimately
04:08scaring the hell out of his actors.
04:106. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy – First Man
04:14First Man is an especially interesting case for this list, as it wasn't so much that actors
04:19Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy didn't know that they were being filmed, but they didn't
04:22know that they were being filmed for the movie.
04:25You see, prior to principal photography, the director assembled Gosling and Foy with the
04:29young actors who would play their screen sons Rick and Mark, and filmed two weeks' worth
04:34of rehearsal footage centred around the actors bonding as a faux family. But what the director
04:38didn't tell the four performers is that he always intended to use the footage for the
04:42final film, as he eventually did, even replacing existing written scenes. The film's Oscar-winning
04:48editor Tom Cross detailed the process. Some of that rehearsal footage replaced scripted
04:52scenes that we had of the family.
04:54Those actors are amazing with their characters in the scripted scenes, but they really became
04:58those characters, and you see a lot of that in all of the unscripted material we had.
05:03There's a big reason why we used a lot of that footage, because it just felt like we were
05:06flies on the wall watching real people in a documentary. While you couldn't blame an actor for potentially being
05:11frustrated that their low-pressure rehearsal footage ended up on cinema screens around the
05:15world, the relaxed authenticity of the end result absolutely speaks for itself.
05:205. Scott Capuro – Mrs. Doubtfire
05:23What self-respecting Robin Williams fan doesn't love his iconic 1993 drama Mrs. Doubtfire?
05:29While Williams' sheer presence alone suggests a shoot that was heavy on improv and controlled
05:34chaos, according to one of the co-stars, director Chris Columbus employed his own sneaky tactics
05:38to get the most naturalistic work out of the entire cast.
05:41Comedian Scott Capuro, who played Aunt Jack, the partner of makeup artist Uncle Frank,
05:46recently explained the film's unconventional shooting style centred around Robin Williams'
05:51spontaneity. He said,
05:52I spent a week on Mrs. Doubtfire, and I never knew when the cameras were rolling.
05:56Robin would just start and be like, are we filming this? Is this in the movie?
05:59He'd do the scenes as scripted, and then toss the script away and try 1,000 other things.
06:03Clearly, much of the film's success lies in the director's willingness to give Williams and his co-stars the room
06:09to experiment without the formality of action and cut. And just like that, a classic family dramedy was born.
06:154. Most of the cast
06:17One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
06:19One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is such an intimate and confined film that there didn't appear to be many
06:24opportunities for director Milos Forman to catch his cast unawares. Forman strove for absolute
06:29authenticity throughout shooting, even filming the movie at the novel setting of Oregon State
06:34Hospital, where cast members were assigned a real patient to shadow in order to get into character.
06:40Some of the cast members reportedly even slept on the hospital wards for the sake of further immersion.
06:45But because this apparently wasn't enough for the director, he also had regular character workshops
06:49during production to help the cast members develop various physical tics and psychological facets
06:54of their mentally ill characters. With these workshops taking place during principal photography,
06:59Forman was able to sneakily capture footage of the actors as they went in and out of character
07:04without ever telling them that he was shooting. And some of this footage reportedly ended up in the
07:09final film.
07:103. George C. Scott
07:12Dr. Strangelove
07:13Much like with the case of First Man, Stanley Kubrick didn't so much film an actor without their knowledge
07:18on Dr. Strangelove as he did wildly mislead them about the intent of said filming. In the devilishly
07:24entertaining 1964 war satire, George C. Scott played General Buck Turgidson. And according to
07:30none other than co-star James Earl Jones, Kubrick effectively tricked Scott into giving a performance
07:35that he didn't actually want to. Scott wanted to play the part completely straight, while Kubrick felt
07:40that it should be more farcical and over the top. In the end, Kubrick teased a compromise out of
07:45Scott by requesting him that he perform a number of outrageous takes as a practice and promised that
07:50he would never use them. In a ruse that Scott probably should have saw coming, Kubrick ended
07:53up using these sillier takes in the final cut, leaving Scott so irate that he vowed never to
07:58work with Kubrick again. And you know what? He didn't.
08:012. Robert Pattinson
08:03Twilight
08:03Even while doing the press rounds for the Twilight movies, Robert Pattinson could scarcely conceal
08:08his disinterest in the franchise. And on the DVD commentary for the original film,
08:13even admitted that he didn't realise the cameras were rolling during a particularly snoozy take.
08:17At roughly the 11 minute mark of the film, Bella enters the biology class and is seated
08:22next to Vampire Edward, who is looking more than a little sleepy. Pattinson said this of the scene,
08:27I didn't actually know that they were rolling when we were doing this scene. I was
08:30just kind of cold. If the intent to capture Pattinson unawares and milk the awkwardness of his and
08:35Bella's first meeting for every drop, then it certainly worked.
08:381. Jim Boughton – The Long Goodbye
08:40Robert Altman's 1973 neo-noir classic The Long Goodbye features a supporting appearance
08:46by baseball player Jim Boughton, who plays Philip Marlowe's ill-fated close friend Terry Lennox.
08:52In the recently released biography about Boughton's life, Boughton – The Life of a Baseball Original,
08:56he talks in detail about his experience acting on the film, namely,
09:00Altman throwing him in the deep end of a major Hollywood movie. Boughton was approached for the role
09:04by Gould himself, after Stacy Keach fell ill and couldn't play the part. Boughton expected
09:09to be screen-tested and given lines to learn, but Altman did neither, simply requesting his
09:14presence on set. Though Boughton was given a script, Altman told him to toss it once he showed up,
09:19while advising him, we're just going to have a conversation, say whatever you feel like saying.
09:23When Gould arrived on set and started talking to the man, he wasn't even aware that the cameras
09:27were rolling, and when asked if they were, Altman promptly shouted,
09:30cut. Altman then filmed a few more offhand takes of the two actors talking, producing enough
09:35improvised banter that he was able to cut a coherent conversation together. You'd never
09:39really guess from watching this early scene in question, such is the genius of an all-timer
09:43filmmaker like Robert Altman.
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