Famously Improvised Lines or other bits in films

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Inspired by @WashYourHands mentioning the famous bit in Midnight Cowboy when Dustin Hoffman shouted "I'm walking here" at a car that almost hit him during the filming of a scene and they left it in the film.

What else though? Off the top of my head I think of Marlon Brando putting on a glove during a conversation in On The Waterfront really naturalistically like someone might do I guess. There's the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy shoots that sword fighter guy, maybe not impro'd on the spot but apparently Ford suggested he simply do that instead of fight him and the change was made.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
@Corpsey surely knows that Ian McKellan banged his head on the ceiling in 'Bag End' entirely by accident but managed to stay in character as Gandalf, and Jackson thought it was funny so he kept it in the film.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
IdleRich said:
There's the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy shoots that sword fighter guy, maybe not impro'd on the spot but apparently Ford suggested he simply do that instead of fight him and the change was made.
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I heard the reason he didn't want to do the elaborate sword fight scene is that he and everyone else in the cast and crew were exhausted followed a case of the galloping shits due to dodgy drinking water on location.

Ford is a twofer in this thread because he apparently ad-libbed "I know" as Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back when Leia confesses her love for him. Further proof that George Lukas is a robot with no understanding of human emotion: Solo's line in the script was "I love you too."
 
W

william kent

Well-known member
Brando improvised a lot of his lines in Apocalypse Now. The story goes that he turned up on set severely overweight and not having read the script, so they shot him in darkness to disguise his bulk and Coppola would prompt him into going off on these long, rambling tangents about various things in the hope they'd get something they could use.

 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
IdleRich said:
The whole thing would be a lot
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You'd think so, but Richard E. Grant ad-libbed a speech at the end of Withnell & I that, by pure coincidence, was word-for-word identical with a soliloquy by the title character in Hamlet.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
version said:
Brando improvised a lot of his lines in Apocalypse Now. The story goes that he turned up on set severely overweight and not having read the script, so they shot him in darkness to disguise his bulk and Coppola would prompt him into going off on these long, rambling tangents about various things in the hope they'd get something they could use.

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Oh yeah good one. Wasn't Martin Sheen's scene at the start where he smashed the glass similarly just them filming him drunk and incoherent?
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Mr. Tea said:
You'd think so, but Richard E. Grant ad-libbed a speech at the end of Withnell & I that, by pure coincidence, was word-for-word identical with a soliloquy by the title character in Hamlet.
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What a piece of work is a man... so he basically he chose to insert that quote.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Who was it here who suggested that in the bit in The Departed where Jack Nicholson, playing a terrifying gangster, is doing vast piles of coke with a couple of hookers he's about to bang, isn't actually Nicholson acting at all, but just some fly-on-the-wall footage of him on his day off?
 
sufi

sufi

lala
Altman did not read all of Chandler's book and instead used Raymond Chandler Speaking, a collection of letters and essays, copies of which he gave the cast and crew, advising them to study the essays.[21] The opening scene with Marlowe and his cat came from a story a friend of Altman's told him about his cat only eating one type of cat food. Altman saw it as a comment on friendship.[19] He decided that the camera should never stop moving and put it on a dolly.[29] The camera movements counter the characters' actions so that the viewer feels like a voyeur. To compensate for Southern California's harsh light, Altman gave the film a soft pastel look reminiscent of postcards from the 1940s.[29]

Altman had Gould and Hayden ad lib most of their dialogue because, according to the director, Hayden was drunk and stoned on marijuana most of the time.[21] Altman was reportedly thrilled by Hayden's performance. Altman's home in Malibu Colony was used as Wade's house. "I hope it works", Altman said during filming.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The flickering flourescent light in the scene where Laura Palmer's body is being autopsied in the second episode of Twin Peaks wasn't supposed to do that. It just happened to be faulty, but Lynch loved the effect it gave so he kept it in, and used the motif of electrical things malfunctioning in the presence of spooky goings-on in later episodes.

In the same show, Frank Silva ('Bob') wasn't originally in the cast at all, but was a member of the filming crew. In the pilot episode he was trying to keep out of shot but was accidentally caught on camera in a reflection, and Lynch thought he looked very sinister as he was sort of skulking around, and cast him as Bob as a result.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
ISTR that Rutger Hauer re-wrote the tears in the rain speech the night before rather than ad-libbing it?
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Mr. Tea said:
You'd think so, but Richard E. Grant ad-libbed a speech at the end of Withnell & I that, by pure coincidence, was word-for-word identical with a soliloquy by the title character in Hamlet.
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Old story, but apparently in the scene with the lighter fluid they replaced the coloured water that they used in rehearsals with vinegar for the final shot without telling Grant, so his reaction to drinking it is actually genuine...
 
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