Kramer vs Kramer, the movie where Meryl Streep discovered that Dustin Hoffman was a better actor than a partner

If the first impression is the one that counts, the time meryl streep met Dustin Hoffmann couldn’t have been worse. He was directing a play where she wanted to act. Neither was famous but both were already talented. Meryl auditioned. Hoffman from the shadows asked him to solve the scene. She acted and liked it, he asked to meet her.

“Hello,” he greeted her. She replied with a: “Hello, I’m…”, but was interrupted by a long and rude belch from the director. Far from apologizing, she approached and with a smile that was more idiotic than seductive, fondled her breasts. Dumbfounded, she managed to push him away with a forced smile, while she thought: “What an obnoxious pig!” She decided not to work with him, and neither did he with her.

Several years passed from that unpleasant first encounter where Dustin Hoffman starred Papillon, The graduate Y All the President’s Men that made him a famous and required actor. In 1978, and after Al Pacino rejected the role Columbia Pictures summoned him to star Kramer vs. Kramer. The film told the story of ted kramer, a successful publicist whom from one day to the next his wife, joanna, leaves and must take care of his little son. The film was an adaptation of a novel by Avery Corman which had been a publishing success two years earlier.

Chosen the protagonist was missing the main actress. Director Robert Benton offered the role to Kate Jacksonone of the stars of Charlie’s Angelsbut the mighty Aaron Spelling denied him permission to participate. Faye Dunaway Y jane fonda They didn’t agree either. Benton began to get desperate until the representative of katherine rossanother of the summoned actresses who did not agree to participate, suggested the name of Meryl.

Benton summoned her to a meeting along with Hoffman. The day of the meeting, the actor greeted her correctly. When Meryl was told what the story was about and what her character would be like, she felt it was an adult version of Cruella de Vil. Joana Kramer She was a selfish and superficial woman who from one day to the next and for no apparent reason abandoned her son and her successful husband. She asked to go deeper into the psychology of that woman and warned that if they did not modify the script, she would not accept.

When he retired, Benton thought that they had had the worst interview in the world and that he had never come across an actress as educated as she was intelligent despite her “sweetie Danish” name. Hoffman just said: “It’s her, let’s look no further.” What had convinced him was not the actress’s determination but something a little more gritty. I knew that he had recently died John Cazalethe great love of the actressand the loss that Meryl went through in her real life would be ideal to transmit it on the screen.

The first day of shooting Meryl and Dustin did not share any scenes. On the second day, the script indicated that both should discuss. When recording, Hoffman decided to go beyond the screams that the script indicated and gave her a slap that literally turned Streep’s face. The violence and surprise was such that the studio fell silent. No one moved to rebuke him, or to defend her.

The filming continued and the mistreatment disguised as art, too. So that Meryl could act out the pain of Joanne, Dustin continually reminded her of Cazale’s death. He claimed that he behaved like this not because he was cursed but because he followed the method Strasberg which teaches that “the action only comes into play once the actor has learned to react and feel”.

Covered in “the method” and to achieve familiarity, he also had long talks with justin henry, the little actor who played his son. But just as he managed to make her laugh with his stories, he did not hesitate to assure her that his dog was dying to make her cry. After each scene she had long talks with Henry where they discussed what they had done right and wrong. Henry, who had just turned eight, was nominated for an Oscar for that work, though we don’t know if he ended up a child psychologist.

Meryl had long talks with Benton about making changes to the script because she kept saying her joanna it was too linear. He argued that her character’s decision to abandon her son was not that of a cursed unbalanced person but that of a woman tired of being “wife of” and “mother of”, but never her. A woman who, far from believing in her maternal instinct, felt that sometimes she did everything wrong and that is why she believed that the best thing to avoid hurting her son was to abandon him. She was not a bad woman, but in bad times. That is why it is only when she regains control of her life that she asks for custody of the child.

Benton listened to his clever actress and changed the script based on her suggestions. When this happened, Hoffman would reproach her: “Meryl, why don’t you stop carrying the banner of feminism and just act?” She acted but did not shut up. In a scene in a restaurant Tedd/Hoffman had to argue with Joana/Meryl. Hoffman decided that in the scene and out of script he would throw a glass against the wall in Streep’s presence. She didn’t mention it to anyone, only to the cameraman, so he would know where to point her lens. He wanted it to be a surprise to get a more natural reaction from his partner.

Meryl Streep’s stunned face is totally real. When “Cut!” was heard, Meryl began to remove the glass fragments that remained in her hair and with a sweet but withering voice warned her: “The next time you are going to go off script, I would like you to let me know. ”.

Benton not only listened to the contributions to the script that his female lead made. Hoffman also suggested changes. It is that at that moment she was separating from Anne Byrne, his first wife, and stamped what he felt about his own divorce on that of the Kramer. His contributions were so great that Benton offered to appear in the final credits as a co-writer, something that the actor did not accept. He may have regretted it when the film won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

The tension in some scenes between the two protagonists seemed more real than acted. So much so that Dustin even said that he wanted to kill his partner. “He didn’t mean it. He thought about it in a scene. But with him everything is competition. That’s what motivates him: who’s winning. And in that movie it came in handy”, Streep tried to de-dramatize in an interview with Los Angeles Times.

Hoffman and Streep delivered two unforgettable performances. Dustin would admit that by that time he was no longer “the ugly guy with the big nose who did everything possible to look handsome.” He would tell many years later that between 1979 and 1982 he lived through one of the worst times of his life because his mother was dying, his agent had died, he was separating from his wife and, as the his character in KramerShe had no idea how to relate to her children. “While I was filming it I was really getting divorced and my own boys needed me. I felt like an obligation to be with them. However, when I worked with Justin, my son in fiction, I felt more intimately connected to him than to my own children. And that is probably because… men are… cowards ”, he would reflect with the Argentine journalist Silvia Maestrutti in 1996.

Although it seems incredible, it was another character, tootsie, that man who pretended to be a woman to get a job, the one who managed to make women understand more. “It was the most mind-boggling experience. I told my wife: ‘We live different lives! We’re on different planets!’ On the street, men looked at me and eliminated me because I did not fit into a sexual identity. I had never experienced that before, and it made me furious”, she assured in a 1992 interview. She added: “The whole image of masculinity is such a false and horrendous thing, all based on aggression”.

Although Hoffman claimed that tootsie helped him rethink his attitudes, to that set he also brought the mixture of irascibility and violence that they knew him in Kramer vs. Kramer. Bill Murray, who in that film played his roommate, said: “It was a walk through hell. The first day I got to the set and there it was Sidney Pollack, the director and Dustin fighting screaming as if the entire cast were in another room. Although Pollack received an Oscar nomination for the film, he swore he would “give it up if they gave me back the nine months I spent with Dustin making it.”

Filming is finally over. The $8 million film grossed $100 million. It was nominated for nine Oscars. Although everyone thought that the film that would sweep the statuettes would be apocalypse now, Kramer vs. Kramer It was the one that won best film, best screenplay, best actor and, obviously, best supporting actress. Dustin and Meryl never filmed together again.

Only once did Hoffman even hint at self-criticism for his behavior. “I projected onto Meryl what I really felt for Anne Byrne, my wife, and the one I was divorcing at the time. It was the first film where I represented what I was living.”

In 2018, in an interview with The New York Times, Meryl spoke about what she experienced with Hoffman. “It’s difficult because when you’re an actor, and you’re in a scene, you have to feel free. I’m sure I inadvertently hurt people in physical scenes… But that was my first movie and it was my first take in my first movie,” she remarked. And she added: “He slapped me and you see it in the movie. He was overdoing it. But I think those things are currently being corrected.” Her representative also clarified that “there was an offense, something for which Dustin apologized and Meryl accepted.”

For his role as joanna, Meryl won her first Oscar. She herself said that at one point in the ceremony and, already with the statuette in her hand, she went to the bathroom. After a while a person warned: “Someone abandoned an Oscar here.” She was the actress, who had forgotten it on the bathroom floor. For many it was a distracted gesture, for others one that shows that awards are not as important to him as telling good stories. But perhaps a psychoanalyst would say that by forgetting the statuette, what she really wanted to forget was the filming. It is up to the reader to choose the option that seems best to him.

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