"And then the movie's over and there's wild applause, and we start to walk out after everyone's left." "A woman by the name of Radie Harris, who is a reporter, a Hollywood columnist, she's kind of legendary." "I don't know if she still works, but she had a cane, she had trouble walking." "That's why she was only halfway down the stairs when we came down." "Everyone else had left." "We walked down and she recognized me and looks up at me ..." "Thissounds like a movie, but this is the truth!" "Nobody else was there. I'm feeling strange. lt's just a strange feeling." "She looks at me and she says:" ""You're the young man that played that part." She points a finger at me." "A little itty-bitty woman about 4'1 0." "I saw her years later." "I said: "Yes."" "She says:" ""lt'll never be the same for you, life is never going to be the same."" "Just like someone ..." ""From this moment on ..." "... yourlifehas changedforever! "" "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me." "The book was reviewed in the "New York Times"" "and it sounds like an interesting, possible screenwriter, so I read the book but I wasn't keen on him as a screenwriter but the book has stayed with me." "I actually paid 1 000 bucks, not only that, but out of my own pocket, and it got me right there because I barely had it, but I believed in it and I wanted it." "Mike Nichols, I hired him long before" ""Virginia Woolf"." "He'd done a Broadway play, "Barefoot in the Park"." "I sent him the book, not knowing him." "I was in New York, had a message from him that he liked the book." "We met, decided to do it." "I just want to say one word to you." "Yes, sir?" " Are you listening?" " Yes, I am." "Plastics." "Mike Nichols asked me if I wanted to write a script." "That simple." "Gave me a book and I said yes." "Can I help you, sir?" " What?" "No, I'm just ..." "Are you here for an affair, sir?" "I think we made 6 tests, all with actors we admired." "Almost all with actors we knew better than Dustin." "I think maybe I was the only person who'd seen Dustin perform on stage," "and it was clear from the tests that Dustin was really interesting." "Our dilemma was that we had conceived of that character and all major ones as being prototypical southern California" "big, blonde people." "Our fantasy casting, when we were talking about it, when it was being written," "was Bob Redford and Candy Bergen for Mom and Dad." "Ronald Reagan and" "Doris Day." "All blond, all healthy, surfboards is what we called them." "We wanted a family of surfboards." "So here comes Dustin, clearly not a surfboard!" "So we immediately rationalized it:" "He's a genetic throwback." "Doris Day and Ronald Reagan have had this mutt." "We all were there for the readings, the screen tests, and we knew Dustin was the guy right away." "I saw him in a play called "Harry, Noon and Night", a Ronald Ribman play at the American Place Theater." "This must have been 1 963 or 1 964." "He played a crippled, German transvestite." "And it was impossible to believe that he wasn't at least one or two of those three things." "It was a breathtaking performance." "In the Charles Webb book, the character's name is Benjamin Braddock." "Right away I'm in trouble!" "He's 6 feet tall, blond-haired, blued-eyed ..." "Saysit in thebook." "Head of the debating team, track star, WASP." "I said, "lt can't be that desperate!"" "I had heard that they had tested everybody." "I still believe that Katharine Ross and I were the bottom of the barrel." "Say hello to Mrs. Robinson." "Hello, Mrs. Robinson." "Hello, Benjamin." "I had seen her on Broadway and early TV work, but on Broadway she did" ""Two for the Seesaw", the role of Gittel, which was funny and sexy!" "What was your main subject at college?" "Art." " Art?" "In the scene where they're in bed she had a little vulnerability there, which was a wonderful addition." "I guess you lost interest in it over the years?" "Kind of." "Early on, when Mrs. Robinson asks Ben to take her home, in the scene at her house, there's such funny, surreal, sexual tension!" "Oh, my God!" "Pardon?" " Oh no, Mrs. Robinson, oh no!" "What's wrong?" " You didn't expect ... ?" "What?" "You didn't think I'd do something like that?" " What?" " What do you think?" "Well, I don't know." "It was sort of Pinter married Charlie Chaplin, I don't know." "I was really struck by that." "It was funny, yet serious." "Basically it's the core story about a guy having an affair with the mother of a girl he falls in love with, it's so powerful that nine different writers would come up with nine interesting versions." "Elaine's coming down from Berkeley." "I want you to call her up. - l will." "I think you two would hit it off well." "Katharine, who was as striking as any girl in the business and probably still is, that was no problem at all." "Katharine was the dream girl from across the street anywhere in America." "She was gorgeous!" "She still is, the hair and she had no make-up on and she was just a wisp of a ..." "You know, I couldn't look at her in the eye." "He thought we'd make a good team." "Oh no!" "He said that?" "He said we'd make a pretty good team?" " What's wrong?" " ls he a student?" "A medical student." "What year?" " Last." " Well, where did he propose to you?" "In his apartment." " You went to his apartment?" "But you didn't ... youknow." " No, I didn't spend the night." "People have asked, "How well did you know Katharine Ross?"" "Unfortunately I've always had to say:" ""Just enough to really admire her."" "Elaine, I like you." "I like you so much." "Do you believe that?" "Everyone told me they fell in love with Elaine." "I thought:" ""lt's good they don't really know me!"" "You're the first thing for so long that I've liked." "The first person I had to be with." "One thing Mike did that was invaluable for this film, was that we rehearsed this film for three weeks before we ever shot anything." "We started off on a sound stage with chalk marks and prop furniture." "It gave us a chance to do it a lot, to try anything that we wanted to try." "Go over the back fence. I'll meet you around the corner." "Put your shoes on." "The most difficult scene of the movie to shoot was the scene in which she finds out what had gone on between Ben and Mrs. Robinson." "I have to tell you something." "That woman, that older woman I told you about ..." "That one!" " The married woman." "That wasn't just some woman." " What?" "Tell me what this is all about!" "I'm looking at Dustin and I turn around and I see her." "And then turning back he wanted me to cry, and I couldn't do it." "And I always sort of felt disappointed in myself." "But it worked how it worked." "Nichols was working very specifically and he set the scene up." ""l want you to come in and want you to really be asking for prophylactics on the whole walk over, and when you get there."" "He even shows Buck Henry appearing, just like a woman pharmacist would." "He said, "You pretend he's a woman pharmacist." "When you say, 'A room, please!" "', what you really say is 'Prophylactics!" "' to a woman pharmacist."" "Yes, sir?" "A room. I'd like a room, please." " Single or double?" "A single." "Just for myself." " Sign the register, please." "is anything wrong, sir?" " No, nothing ..." "Have you any luggage, Mr. Gladstone?" " Luggage?" "Yes, I do." " Where is it?" "What?" " Where is your luggage?" "It's out in the car." " l'll have a porter get it." " Oh, no." "I'd rather not bring it all in, I just have a toothbrush." "I can get it myself." " Of course." "I'll have a porter show you the room." "Oh, actually, I'd just as soon find it myself." "I just have the toothbrush to carry up and I can handle it myself." "Whatever you say, sir." " Thank you." "The style of the picture was Mike." "I remember we were in New York on 57th Street and he says:" ""What should the style of the film be, or the theme of it?" "Maybe it's a boy who saves himself through madness."" "It's like I've been playing a game, but the rules don't make sense." "They're being made up by all the wrong people." "No, I mean no one makes them up, they seem to make themselves up." "That's the most brilliant cut I've ever thought of, except it was Mike's." "That was pre-production planning." "That doesn't happen accidentally." "A lot of creative work is thinking!" "What you call intuition is your creative talent brainpower working overtime!" "Oh, God!" "Let me out!" " Don't be nervous." "Get away from that door!" " First, I want you to know that you can have me." "If you won't sleep with me now, you can call me up any other time." "Understand?" " Let me out!" "Mike is brilliant, he's so smart and creative." "You don't show up and that happens, you've got to plan very far ahead." "I was always taken by the love-story part of it." "A story about one guy's desperation to connect to one person." "It's very corny, but when Dustin's writing her name, it affects me every time, I suppose because it's something I've done." "Mike and I were sitting in the office one day and he said:" ""How about Simon  Garfunkel for the music?"" "Nichols always wanted Simon  Garfunkel." "He always wanted Paul's songs." ""Sounds of Silence" is the perfect selection for that time and place." "Paul only wrote that amount of "Mrs. Robinson" for the picture." "I asked him directly and through his manager to write the full song, so we would have a merchandising tool out there." "He was reluctant about doing it for whatever reason." "The picture came out, big success, he quickly wrote the rest of it, recorded it, and had a big success." "One thing that Mike did, a wonderful addition, was that the wedding ceremony should be completed before he breaks in." "I said: "You're kidding!" lt wasn't like that in the book." "I thought: "What an idea!" l was uncomfortable with it." "I went back later and said,"What a terrific idea!" He said, "l'm nervous, maybe I shouldn't do it." l said, "lt's good, stick with it!"" "Elaine, it's too late!" " Not for me!" "And with the cross, I think, it could have offended a few people." "It was strong stuff!" "But it's in the book and I never thought of not using it, nor did Mike." "Maybe there's inadvertant symbolism in it, but I didn't ..." "It was a practical measure." "He needed a weapon to bar the door with." "In a church." "What do you use?" "I always use a cross!" "We knew the credits would run over it." "It was important just to keep a life going, not just sit on the bus and then drop out of character." "Wonderful director, Nichols." "He had no plan but he had a lot of options that he knew he was going to discover in the editing room." "He was doing what an artist is supposed to do." "He was painting and feeling his way." "It certainly made a writing career for me. I never stopped working." "I did become what you call 'hot.' l got offered so much stuff that I didn't know how to deal with it." "I was standing in line in unemployment, and suddenly there's a guy snapping me." "A photographer." "I didn't know ..." "I said, "Where are you from?" He says, "Life Magazine!" and leaves." "And then it comes out in 'Life', a big picture of me: "'The Graduate' standing in line in unemployment!"" "It unnerved me." "So I stopped going." "It pissed me off that I couldn't go there anymore." "The dirty looks from the others!" "What I did get was an endless stream of ideas for what were thought of as anti-establishment comedies." "Some of which I actually wrote!" "I was 29, excited, scared and I said probably the worst line of my life, because I felt I should say something momentous!" "Anne and I were trying to get a cab, it suddenly started to snow, and I looked up and said: "Anne!" "What?" "Do you see that snow?" "That's real!"" "I was trying to root myself!" "It all worked." "It's a good movie!" "Nichols and I talked about a sequel." "I had a great idea." "He liked it." "It might be sort of interesting." "It was never seriously talked about."