"Joanna!" "I'm home!" " Hi." " Hi." "From the very first day I bought the book I only imagined Dustin doing the part." "When Bob Benton came on the project we agreed he'd be the ideal Ted Kramer." "We wrote it for Dustin from the beginning." "It was a brilliant choice on Stanley's part." "We finished the script." "At that time, we had his manager read it, who loved it." "He thought Dustin would be terrific." "And we couldn't get an answer." "I was working and it was a very low point in my working and emotional life because I was getting a divorce." "My first one." "My only one." "None of us think we're gonna get divorced when we get married." "So it was..." "And I had children involved." "And also I was having difficulty in the projects I was involved in." "And it was literally at a time when I thought:" ""I don't wanna make movies anymore." "I wanna go back to the theatre."" "Bob and I flew to meet him." "He was in London having come in from Bath where they were shooting." "I called him on a Friday and it was all arranged." "He said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "What are you taking about?"" "I said, "Bob and I are supposed to meet with you."" ""Oh, why don't you meet me 4:00, Sunday at the hotel?"" "I hung up the phone and told Benton, "Forget it." "That doesn't sound like enthusiasm." "We're gonna get kissed off."" "We went to meet him." "And of all the things in my life which define luck, this was it." "He was in the lobby waiting for us." "That's how much he wanted to get us in and out." "I wanted to meet downstairs." "Once you have someone come up to your suite you can't get rid of them." "It's harder, a longer meeting." "I did not want a long meeting." "And we walked in the bar and the maître d' said:" ""I'm sorry, if you'd made reservations, I'd have held a table." "We're full."" "And he had to invite us up to the suite." "On such things hang amazing consequences." "So we went upstairs and I started to talk." "And Stanley started to talk." "As did Dustin." "And I was candid with them." "I said, "I'm in the middle of a divorce."" "And it's like those few things in life that you think you're prepared for because you've heard a lot of stories you've read a lot, you've seen a lot of movies." "Until you've been there for the birth of your child or the death of your parent or someone in your family or your own divorce, you haven't been there." "And I said, "What I am experiencing is just so different and so much deeper than what I read of the novel and what I read in your screenplay." "It's just..." "I'm not connecting with it." "And because it's something I'm going through I think it would be too painful for me."" "What got said between all of us and who said it, I don't remember." "I think what got Dustin more interested is that he'd be doing the hardest thing for an actor to do:" "To play himself." "Which is really hard and requires an extraordinary kind of self-observation and discipline." "There are not many actors with the range and the discipline to play themselves." "It sounds simple, but it's the hardest thing for an actor." "I think Benton, he always smiles and he gave me one of his Benton smiles and said:" ""What would you like to do?"" "I said, "Do you wanna go in a room with me and spend a few months?"" "I think Benton said, "Yes." And Stanley chimed in." "I said, "I'm not looking to rewrite the story of my experience the facts of it, but I think the truth of it."" "I moved into the Carlyle Hotel." "Bob and Dustin would come every day and we'd spend approximately 12 hours or more every day talking about the screenplay, talking about life and trying to find the truth that we could bring to the screenplay." "That's how the process started." "And it was long." "Dustin has all these ideas, and they're terrific ideas." "L'd get caught up." "Then Stanley would say, "No, here's what the movie is."" "And he'd rein us back in." "It was almost like group therapy." "Talking." "Knowing that no one would repeat outside what was being said." "Real revelations made about who the people were." "All of which Dustin absorbed." "That's what he is." "He's an absolute sponge." "You walk with him, thinking you're talking to him." "You turn around and he's paying attention to some homeless person or something." "And he's just absorbing it." "I think the spine that was found is what makes divorce so painful is that the love doesn't end." "Which is what both parties want it to do, if it's a real love." "All those moments of when you first met and looked at each other." "I mean, those extraordinary moments which you want to make disappear and repress and get rid of." "The realization that they are like freshly cut flowers." "And it made everything we did then loaded." "It was just loaded." "I love you, Billy." "It's in the first shot." "I mean, she's got the best face of anybody on-screen." "There is an inherent intelligence and goodness that comes out of her." "And I think the audience responds to that." "There are certain actors, they're like..." "To watch them work is like watching a battleship sailing into harbour and just move its guns around, and fire off the round and hit the target, put the guns away and move away without..." "As though ifs effortless." "And she can do anything." "I mean, she can do anything." "I first heard about it through my agent who knew that I was greedy for work." "And I was playing in Central Park in The Taming of the Shrew in free Shakespeare in Central Park in New York." "And I was shooting Woody Allen's movie too." "But my agent sent me up anyway because I only had two weeks to work on Woody's movie and he sent me to Stanley Jaffe who said:" ""You know, how do you think you can..." "You can't shoot someone else's movie and be in a play and be in our movie." "This is a very important movie."" "I said, "But I just have a little part." "I'm just in the beginning and the end." "If you can work around it so I can work on Woody's movie in the middle."" "I was a repertory actress." "I worked on many plays at the same time." "I thought I could do it." "We had a conversation about what qualities we needed in the character of Joanna." "Primarily, she had to be likeable immediately because she was gonna do within the first five minutes the most heinous thing a woman can do:" "Leave a child behind." "And you had to not just write her off at the end when she came back." "I think if there's anything that runs through all my work, all my characters it's that I had a relationship with them where I feel I have to defend them." "I thought she was a rat in a maze, you know?" "She had no choice." "Sick people don't often have a choice." "And I thought she was mentally ill." "You know, ill." "Depressed." "Sort of out of control." " I'm leaving you." " Honey, please." "I can't hear." "What?" "Okay, you too." "Thanks a lot." "See you tomorrow." " Did you guys eat?" " Ted, I'm leaving you." "Ted." "Keys." "Here are my keys." "Here's my American Express, my Bloomingdale's card my chequebook." "I've taken $2000 out of our savings account." "That's what I had when we got married." "A lot of people were making dramatic moves in their lives to find themselves." "That was very much an issue." "It was in some long, extended way a playing out of what had happened in the '60s when you had this whole flower generation and the idea of "Be faithful to your own feelings."" " ls this a joke?" " Here's the cleaning, laundry ticket." "You can pick them both up on Saturday." " You." "You have to pick them up." " What's wrong?" "I paid the rent, the Con Ed bill, and the phone bill, so" "You really pick your times to..." "She was married to a man who did not know how to have an intimate relationship." "Come on." "Okay?" "And she was trapped in this and she was frantic." "Was she suicidal?" "She was on the verge of a breakdown for sure as a character." "And recognising that and not wanting to be a bad mother she did what the best mother would:" "She loved her child enough to leave him." "Just tell me what I did that's so terrible." " It's not you." " Then what?" "It's me." "It's my fault." "All she knew was that her life lay on the other side of the gangplank." "She had to walk, get off that ship." "And she didn't know how it was gonna turn out." "Very often when you look at people that are interior people you don't know why they do anything." "They don't explain themselves." "A lot of it is that she was locked up inside herself." "But I knew I had the chance to come back at the end and explain who this terribly imploded person was." "He's better off without me." "Joanna, please." "And I don't love you anymore-." " Where are you going?" " I don't know." "There are magazine versions of life, and there are real versions of life." "And at the time, there wasn't any guy I knew who had a formal job who could've peeled off several hours of the day to be with his kid or be with his family even if his wife continued to be in the marriage and not have suffered in work." "The most intense and rewarding part of his life at that point had been his working life." "And his family was something he put up with." "He put up with the weekends just to get to Monday again... .-.because that's where he was the most alive." "Where's Mommy?" " What'?" " Where's Mommy?" "What time is it?" "The little hands on the 7, the big hand's on the 9." "Where's Mommy?" "I grew up in a town outside of Manhattan where the film was shot." "Shirley Rich was the casting agent on the picture." "And she was doing just an overall search for any sort of young boy that age that might fit a physical profile that could be the son of Dustin Hoffman." "At first glance, I didn't think he was right because Leave it to Beaver had been on TV recently and I thought he looked too much like a TV kid with the bangs and looked too perfect." "I think in my mind's eye, I wanted a real funny-looking kid like I could believe would be my own." "But that's not to say my own kids aren't gorgeous." "But if a really ugly kid had walked in he would've gotten my vote, I think." "We were lucky Dustin wanted to be involved." "And he was at many of the readings we did with the kids." "Justin was the last of the young boys that we tested." "And he came out and he started the scene." "Dustin would improvise." "Justin would improvise right back." "He'd stay with him in the scene and match Dustin in energy which is really hard for a young kid to do." "There was this magical moment when Justin sat next to me and he got very close." "We were talking and improvising and the camera was there." "At some point, he just put his hand on my leg." "And it was so familiar." "It just felt like, the way one of my kids was..." "When kids sometimes touch a parent, they make a kind of contact." "It's almost like monkeys." "There's a physical-Hand on the shoulder or just on the leg." "And there was something exquisite in the moment between us." "When we were three-quarters of the way done, boy, did I ever yell, "Cut."" "He was the boy." "We were in total agreement." "I said, "That's my kid" I guess to myself, and I think they felt the same thing." " "That's my kid."" " Dustin said it best." "He was the hardest actor that he'd worked with in his entire career." "There was no such thing as dishonesty." "Everything was honest." "Justin was astounding." "He's the best child actor I've seen." " I think you forgot milk." " I didn't." "Milk comes last." "When you're having a good time you forget things." "I just wanted to see if you're paying attention." "Fun, isn't it?" "When's the last time Mommy let you in the kitchen?" "I don't like it in pieces." "It tastes the same whether it's in pieces or whole." "Bread is bread." "Besides, French toast is always folded." "In the best restaurants, you see folded French toast." "You get more bites that way." "The French toast scene was just some awesome acting by Dustin Hoffman." "We ran through that scene and when they rolled it was a completely different thing." "That whole thing of folding it up, dipping it, "Okay?"" "That's all improvised." "I can't remember if getting burned at the end was improvised or Bob had written it or it was in the book." "But we still found ways to improvise the moment." "Daddy, it's burning!" " What'?" " It's burning!" "Damn it!" "Goddamn her!" "Oh, shit." "When he kicks that and drops the pan he really gets to the heart of the matter." "It just blew..." "It was like, "Wow."" "This is what it's all about, you know?" "This is fantastic work." "Justin would come and we'd tell him what was to happen that day." "The script supervisor, Renata, would go and run his lines with him." "Then we would sit there and rehearse." "And then he and Dustin would run lines and rehearse together." "I said to him at one point, because we took to each other, Justin and I." "And I said, "Justin, you don't talk like that." "That sounds like kids on TV in those sitcom shows or something."" ""Okay, Dad!" or something like that, you know?" "Whatever." "And he kind of looked at me." "He was very bright." "And I said, "You know, you're kind of very mature." "You don't like play it... " It was like a kid playing a kid, as I remember." "I think Bob told the parents, and they were shocked, I think:" ""Please don't let him memorize the lines anymore." "Don't let him prepare." "Just bring him in." "We'll take care of the rest."" " We need some detergent." " All right, let's go." "No, Mommy buys the kind with the orange circles on it." " There's no difference." " Mom said it was the best." "Dustin gave me an insight into myself." "He helped me understand and mould things that obviously, I didn't know I had but that other people did and a way to channel that." "Sort of an example:" "A teacher, a mentor, you know, a friend." "He was a very quick learner." "He understood very early that we didn't want Billy, we wanted Justin." "Did you bring the chocolate chip ice cream home?" "Yes, I brought the chocolate chip ice cream home and you can't have it until you eat all your dinner..." "Where are you going?" "Get back here now." "A lot of things came from Dustin." "The ice cream scene, which many think is the empreinter of the film or signature of the film, is great because it's truthful." "We all have been in that moment." "All are terrified of the frustration that you start to feel." "You'd better not do that." "You'd better stop right there." "I'm warning you." "But that's not in the writing." "I remember because that was something my daughter Jenna had done to me." "I told Justin the story while we were sitting there getting ready to do that scene." "I said:" ""You know what this reminds me of?" And I told him the story about Jenna." "I said, "She went to the freezer and took it out."" "He'd say, "What'd she do?" He'd get all excited." "And I said, "Well, she violated." "She took-She ate it."" "He said, "I wanna do that." I remember I said, "Go ahead."" "Right away you see the cameraman and lighting guy saying:" ""We're lighting for the table here." "We're not lighting for the refrigerator."" "Hey" "Did you hear me?" "Now, you listen to me." "Don't be smart." "Put that back until you finish your dinner." "If you take one bite out of that, you're in trouble." "It was wonderful." "We were having fun." "He was really doing it." "I said, "I gotta talk to Bob."" "Bob was in the next room talking with Stanley about the schedule." "When Dustin had an idea, he says to me:" ""Don't say no until you've heard me out."" "All I wanted was to say, "No," but I said, "Okay."" "And I just remembered Stanley went..." "And he just..." "You know, because this was a re-light." "This was another 30, 40 minutes." "And then he acquiesced." "It was wonderful." "Irresistible." "It was so much better than what was on the script." "It was perfect." "I am not going to say it again." "I am not..." "Bob liked it." "That's, again, a credit to him..." ""because a lot of people just wanna shoot what's prepared." "It's like making a reservation at a restaurant that you really like." "On the way there, you see another place and somebody says, "Let's go there."" "It's pretty tough to get everybody to say, "Okay."" "It's a restaurant we haven't tried before." "And Bob said, "Okay."" " I hate you!" " I hate you back, you little shit!" " I want my mommy!" " I'm all you've got." "I want my mommy!" "Yes, there were vignettes that we created that came from truth." "And I think that's what made the picture accessible." "Most people I know try and make the generic picture." "And we try to make the specific picture, thinking:" ""If it happened to us, it happened to others."" "It's a different way of making movies, and probably not fashionable now where things are cut together much more quickly." "But in the olden days, in the '70s behaviour was interesting to people and very often..." "I remember Dustin screaming, "Don't!" "Don't cut!" "Don't cut!"" "Because the stuff that comes before a take or just after a take sometimes, that's when most purely you live on-screen and most effortlessly the story's told." "Go to sleep now because it's really late, okay?" "Good night." " Sleep tight." " Don't let the bedbugs bite." "See you in the morning light." " Daddy?" " Yeah?" "I love you." "I love you too." "Part and parcel of being with Dustin Hoffman was improvising." "And I had come out of improvisational theatre myself being pan of Second City workshop under Paul Sills in the '60s." "So I loved improvisation." "I was very comfortable with it." "But I was very glad that Benton was there to do the finished product in the writing." "Jane was special." "I mean, it is a small part but she got an Academy Award nomination for it because she brought such, again, a truthfulness to it." "Tell me where you were." "Well my French professor finally asked me out." " When'?" " The other day." "You had a date." "The normality of two friends talking about nothing." "It may be my favourite scene in the picture." "Because it was so honest." "Just two people who like each other... .-.sitting in a park, watching their kids and talking." "That's a great example of a scene partly written, partly improvised." "By that time, they knew each other and the characters so well." "They could move the way they wanted to move." "The words were just words that were stuff we had to" "I remember we just talked a lot, even in between takes." "We tried to get into that." ""So how you doing, Jane?" "How's life?" "Got a boyfriend, anything, whatever?" "How you doing?" "What's your longest relationship?" You get into that area." "I find out he's married." "He's deep in analysis." " He's telling me his life story..." " Wonderful!" "...and all I can think of while I sit there is that I'm paying a babysitter $3.25 an hour to listen to his problems." "Daddy!" "Daddy, look!" " Take that out of your hand." " I'll get him." "Did you hear me?" "Billy!" "I remember that Nestor set the shot up so... .-.that I would fall onto a series of mats placed around the jungle gym." "And I think the mats were everything from motorhome cushions to sandbags because we're doing the longest fall." "Which is only like four feet or something like that." "Movies and insurance, everyone's freaking out." "So Stanley says, right before we're about to roll:" ""Let's put a perimeter of people around in case something happens."" "Sure enough, I missed the cushions." "I think Stanley was the one who bounced me back towards the cushions." "And then we set up for Justin just to be lying there in the veritable fake blood." "And he knows he's gotta cry." "It's the first time he had to cry in the movie." "And he's like any actor:" ""My God, what am I gonna do?"" "I've told this to friends." "They look at me like I'm brutal." "They say, "Oh, my God." "How could you do that to a kid?"" "But you had to have been there to understand this relationship." "And I just started talking to him about how much I love working with him and how much the crew loved him." "He didn't know at this point how temporary the relationship is with a film crew and a cast and that when it's over, it's over." "And sometimes you don't see anyone ever again and sometimes you just see them once in a while." "But ifs not ever going to be like this again." "And I just was using words like this, because he really enjoyed working." "And he just was lying there in this blood and looking up." "I said, "You know, you like Eddie, Eddie Brown, the camera guy." "You know, you may not see us, so-and-so there."" "And he started to fill up, and he was just crying and I said:" ""You're feeling something now, aren't you?"" "I bring it up because it was, in a sense, gotten there by improvising." "That whole process, I never felt manipulated in any way." "I mean, I was having a ball." "And learning how to cry someone suggesting that I think of sad things was great." "I thought, "Cool, I can make myself do this if I think of this." "How neat."" "But when it was over, he couldn't stop crying." "Everyone got a little nervous because he's just a 6-year-old kid." ""Cut!" "Beautiful, wonderful." And he's still..." "He's heaving." "And I remember picking him up and holding him and I kind of walked with him." "And I said, "Are you okay?" He's, "Yeah, yeah."" "I said, "Are you sure you're okay?" He said, "Yeah" and he's crying." "I said, "You really did a good job." "Did it feel like you did a good job?"" "He said, "Yeah, yeah."" "I said, "Well, how do you feel about when you do a scene you really cry?"" "And he went, "I feel terrific!"" "And it was streaming." "And I said, "You're an actor then."" " I can't see, Daddy." " Rest your head." "Watch it!" "I wrote it as one long massive tracking shot from the moment he comes out of the park until he gets to the hospital." "I think it has two cuts in it several cuts, because it's as fast as Dustin could run." "And he ran again and again and again and again." "That was scary." "They tried to explain there were stunt drivers in all these cars." "They control everyone in the cars." "Poor Dustin's doing it so many times." "And Dustin's having to carry a 60, 70 lb." "Kid the whole way." "That little muffin wasn't that light." "Justin had a lot of dense muscle." "And he was something to carry." "But my memory is that I could open the door go in, and that was a cut." "And I could then drop him like a sack of potatoes on the ground." ""You're on your own now, Justin."" "Okay." "That was a big one, huh?" "They're stitching into a pad on the side of my head." "It looks like the doctor's actually stitching it." "And Dustin is..." "We're trying to figure out when to moan the best time for the scene so I don't jump on anyone's lines." "We had a system where Dustin would squeeze my head when it would be a good time for me to cry." "I couldn't see the doctor's hands." "So when the doctor would go in like that..." "Okay." "Okay, we're almost done there." "Justin had an enormous natural talent." "I mean, 7 years old and he really knew how to do things naturally." "But I do remember one scene, when he was lying on the gurney or he had just fallen in the hospital and we were about to shoot the scene." "Justin's lying there, looking up at my face, saying:" ""Where's my Dustin?" "Where's my darling Dustin?"" "It was so sweet." "We made a deal, right?" "You take a bath every night and you wash that filthy hair twice a week, right?" " Right?" " Yeah." "Okay." "Dustin was amazing with that little boy." "He really was." "He set out to make him fall in love with him." "Did I have to when Mommy was here?" "I don't care what you had to do when Mommy..." "Did I, Dad?" "Did I?" "Are you listening?" "We'll talk about it tonight when I get home, okay?" "Come here, give me a kiss." " Hey." " What'?" "You're a terrific kid." "That was the critical moment." "Meryl comes back and says "I want my kid back" right at the moment I've become father/mother." "I want my son." "You can't have him." "Don't get defensive." "Don't bully me." "I'm not getting defensive." "Who walked out 15 months ago?" "I don't care." "I'm still his mother." "From 3000 miles away." "Because you sent postcards gives you the right to come back?" "I never stopped wanting him." "What makes you sure he wants you?" "What makes you sure he doesn't?" "That was her scene." "All I'm hearing when I'm doing the scene with her is:" ""I want Billy."" "We rehearsed it a few times, and it's her scene." "I remember saying to Benton, "Somethings wrong, it's not working."" "He says, "What is it?" "I don't know."" "I said, "There's just something..- I'm really angry by the..." "I know that I just, I don't..." "I am really pissed."" " Don't talk to me that way." " I anticipated this." "Do what you have to." "I'll do what I have to." "I'm sorry about this." "Do what you have to do." "The shattered glass in the restaurant scene was completely Dustin's invention and spontaneity." "I think it was an improvised moment." "It was the best of what improvisation can be." "To the cameraman I said, "See that glass there on the table?"" "We talked like convicts in the joint." "You don't want the guards to hear you." "You know, "See that?" He says, "Yeah."" "I say, "Okay, just tell me if I whack that before I leave..." "I'm not gonna whack it at the floor, I'm gonna whack it at the brick wall." "Because I don't wanna hit her."" "It's not a breakaway, it's a real, you know? "Have you got it in the shot?"" ""Just move it a little bit to the left."" "So I go back there and he says..." "I'm looking at him and he's going:" "Nobody knows what we're doing." "So he's ready for it." "Benton knows." "I say, "I want one more, I wanna do something."" "Meryl knows I wanna do something but she doesn't know what." "And she's not expecting any of this nonsense." "And we do it." "It felt wonderful." "And she really..." "I mean, she's not acting." "But, you know, Meryl does a lot of..." "Ninety-nine percent of her work's not acting either." "So, I mean, she's spontaneous." "But she was very spontaneous here." "And I remember she was pissed." "I found out much later while we were doing the publicity that he was really..." "That he was mad at me." "And I didn't..." "I mean he, Dustin, was mad at me, Meryl." "Well, I didn't know that." "I still don't know why." "I read some of the stuff that came through." "He was doing the interviews, saying he was so furious with me, and I was playing a game with him." "Just like playing tennis with Pete Sampras or something you gotta be on your game." "I don't know how to play tennis, and I wasn't in a competition." "I'm sure I was acting out on her throughout the movie stuff that I was feeling toward the wife that I was divorcing in real life." "It was the first time I ever made a movie where I was living through what I was acting." "Unlike a writer or a painter who gets up in the morning and can exorcize what they're going through." "We get stuff in the mail." "So you know, it's quite unusual to be getting a divorce my first and only divorce at the time I'm shooting a movie about a man getting a divorce." "People said, "It must be very painful."" "I said, "It was great."" "It's like Justin saying, "I feel terrific!"" "Because there was..." "It was a wonderful feeling." "I mean, just show up." "Just show up and turn the camera on." "He transformed his anger into the glass instead of me." "So I guess I should be grateful." "Dustin has a way of eliciting so many possibilities from you off-camera." "He'll throw you for a loop." "He'll say something that has nothing to do with the script." "But he wants a particular response." "It's almost a directorial approach." "There were times I wanted to strangle Dustin." "L'd say, "Lets just get through it." "We'll worry about it tomorrow."" "Dustin would say, "No." And he's right." "And you would learn to trust it." "You'd argue about it, but that's the rough-and-tumble of making movies." "You must allow people to find stuff." "As long as it stays within the limits within the boundaries of the picture you believe in." "Bob Benton was a director who really ruined me for everybody that I've worked with subsequently." "Because he introduced the "C" word:" "Collaboration." "I thought, "This is how everybody works." "This is cool."" "Everybody doesn't." "But he made me feel important in the process for somebody who has 15 minutes in the movie." "I remember him just tearing his hair sometimes that he'd let us this far into the process." "He is a gentle, sweet human being, first of all." "That's what makes him a great director." "Because he knows where to go with something." "And he knows that in order to get actors in moments to achieve something, you can't force it." "You can't push something." "He never tells anybody, "No."" "He goes, "That's very interesting."" "That means, usually, "I think it's the worst idea I've ever heard."" "But he's very smart about listening to people and ultimately filtering out what he doesn't like-.." "...and keeping what he does." "He doesn't have pride of authorship." "If you can make it better, do it." "I was working on Woody's film at the same time, Manhattan and Woody would say:" ""There's a comma in the middle of that sentence." "It's there for a reason." "Maybe you should just do it the way it's written, okay?"" "And I was like..." ""Okay!" "But I'm working on this other thing and he lets me do what I want."" "By the end of the movie..." "No other director said that to me." "He says, "I'll give you screen credit." "Share screenwriting credit with me."" "And I, like a fool, said, "No."" "Because I would've had another Academy Award on my thing." "And it was very, typically, generous of Bob to say that." ""Thundering typhoons, what are you doing?"" ""Resting." "It's tiring work, you know."" "It is a small story." "You're with one or two people in the scene." "That's what you're focused on." "And Bob is, in my opinion brilliant at defining what's truthful in those moments." "Dustin is brilliant in finding his truth." "His fear was he wouldn't find the truth in his testimony." "Meryl's view was, "Where's the truth?"" "And they were both allowed to play with their testimonies." "Now, Mrs. Kramer, would you tell the court how long you were married?" "Eight years." "And would you describe those years as happy?" "The first two, yes." "But after that it became increasingly difficult." "I said to Meryl, in a moment of euphoria:" ""There's this speech I've written in the courtroom." "I like the sense of the speech." "I like where it begins, I like where it ends." "But I feel as though it's a speech written by a man put into the mouth of a woman." "Would you rewrite it and come back to me with it?"" "And 15 minutes later, I forgot I had said it to her." "So on the first day of shooting in the courtroom Meryl comes in and she says:" ""I've rewritten the speech you wanted me to write."" "I suddenly remembered I'd asked her to do it and I thought:" ""Jerk, I'm gonna lose a friend as an actor." "I'm gonna lose a day's work." "It's gonna be awful."" "So I say, "Okay, let me look it over."" "It's all handwritten." "It's not even typed out." "And it's too long by about a fourth but it's perfect." "Billy's only 7 years old." "He needs me." "I'm not saying he doesn't need his father but I really believe he needs me more." "I was his mommy for five and a half years and Ted took over that role for 18 months." "And in it, she puts in the thing that makes it a killer speech." "But I don't know how anybody can possibly believe that I have less of a stake in mothering that little boy than Mr. Kramer does." "I'm his mother." "I'm his mother." "That's devastating when she says it." "It's something I'd never have thought to write." "I've never been divorced, but friends who have were in that moment when you realise that it's lawyers talking and things always distort." "That's when you've divorced, when you've really lost each other." "Because you can't even speak to each other." "And you don't know each other." "So in a way, maybe that's why courtroom dramas are so..." "Because people put their hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth and they tell an intimate truth as well as the one that's gonna get them what they want." "Something had happened in the shooting that Benton had caught." "One of the best moments a director has caught in my career as an actor." "As a film actor." "Thirty-five years, or whatever it is." "He caught it." "And that is that..." "This is very personal stuff." "But Meryl had lost her boyfriend recently before the film." "John Cazale, I think that's the way you pronounce it." "He had been in Godfather and Dog Day with Pacino." "And I knew she wasn't over it." "I know you never get over these things, but she was not over it." "I went over to Meryl and I just said something to her." "I don't remember what, but it had something to do with John." "I think I asked her to look at me at a certain point." "Were you a failure at the one most important relationship in your life?" "Were you?" "!" "No,." "And my nod didn't have anything to do with the lines that we call the text." "My nod had it to do with that I know she's still feeling the loss of John." "Because I had said something to her about that." "And it was as if something had happened." "Benton happened to look over to see what she was looking at off-camera." "He saw me go like that." "Afterwards, he got very nutty and came over and said, "What was that?" "She went like this and you went like that."" "I said, "No, we're just..."" "He said, "It looked like you were telling her she was good." "I wanna reshoot your side." "I gotta reshoot it."" "And, again, that becomes a signature moment in the movie because these two people loved each other." "They were fighting over custody and despite themselves, that's what it literally is despite yourself, you're connected." "Whatever it was they shared as a dream as a couple they were struggling, starting out." "And it went away." "There's a terrible tragedy to that." "They're forced to listen to one another." "They're forced to hear one another." "They're forced to remember they loved one another." "That's the pivot on which the narrative shifts that courtroom sequence." "And it's vitally important." "It is where reconciliation begins." "The most important thing was that there was a resolution in the relationship between Ted and Joanna." "Not that they'd reconcile, but things would be okay for them and Billy." "Are you ready?" " Mes'?" " Ted, it's Joanna." "We shot the end a second time because the way it was articulated initially, she said:" ""I couldn't stand people's expressions."" "It sounds like she came back out of guilt." "It was, again, Benton who felt this, that it was too abrupt how she just reappeared in the picture and said:" ""You can have him back."" "So I thought about what she'd really feel like and what it would really be like to take this boy away from everything." "I came here to take my son home." "And I realised he already is home." "I love him very much." "She is the one who does the final, totally heroic act." "She doesn't give up Billy, not because she doesn't love him but because she does love him." "I do know that I was really, really pregnant when we shot the final scene." "It's a great way for an actress to get a close-up." "Because they can't shoot down here." "How do I look?" "She looked at me as Meryl and she said:" ""How do I look?"" "Because she'd just cried in the scene that we shot before." "Mascara, whatever." "And she didn't want it dripping or whatever." "And she had been cleaning herself up a little for her last shot on-screen." "And I said, "You look terrific."" "And Benton said, "What?" "!" "What?" "!" "What'd you say?"" "I said, "She wants to know if she looks okay for her last shot."" "And he knew that was the end of the movie." "Terrific." "Oh, I don't think that's the end of the story." "I think that they're in process." "When you have a child together you can get divorced, but you're in each other's lives all your life." "She's on the ship again." "They're not living together but they're all going through it, in a way, together." "Who knows where Billy..." "I'm sure when he got to be a teenager he was sent right over to his mom's." "I was surprised by the success of the film." "I knew it was a wonderful story, but I thought it was a small story." "And it turned out to touch many, many people." "For me, it was a really wonderful experience." "It was wonderful." "I went into this not knowing anything and came out on the other side a completely different human being." "The response was extraordinary." "It was a great ride." "Because when it happened, to be part of it and to also really care and be friendly with the people who were sharing the experience, was fantastic." "When I saw the film, I came out and stood on the street and everybody said, "Wow!" "Wow!" "Who knew that's what Benton was doing in his little brain behind the camera as we were shooting?"" "I was surprised that teenagers went to the movie." "I thought it'd be a movie they'd stay away from." "But, in fact either their parents were divorced or their best friends' parents were divorced." "And they needed to know it was gonna be all right without being..." "Reducing it..." "Them to platitudes." "I think that Kramer vs. Kramer had an impact on the culture." "I know I've had family court judges tell me... .-.that they used the material on the basis of making decisions in court." "Someone even went so far as to tell me that it was cited in disputes as often as any legal precedence were." "So I think that there was some kind of cultural change that took place." "There was this court stenographer who was working as the court stenographer on our movie." "I figured they couldn't find an actor who could do it as accurately as this lady who did it in real life." "So I talk to people, and I was talking to her one day in between takes." "I said, "ls this what you do?" "Do you do divorces?"" "She said, "I did them for years, but I burnt out, I couldn't go on." "It was just too painful." "I really love what I'm doing now."" "I said, "What?" She said, "Homicides."" "Much better." "She looked at me and said, "There's no comparison."" "She said, "Divorce is much..." "I don't care how bad the homicide is." "It doesn't compare to the pain and stress in the room of a divorce." "Give me homicide any day.""