Some of the most memorable scenes in Hollywood history were actually unscripted, adding a
flicker of authenticity to an otherwise artificial — yet finely crafted — final product.
These would-be "bloopers" were too good to leave on the cutting room floor, so the directors
kept them in the final edit instead, where they live on as rare glimpses of actors dropping
their masks, if only for a moment.
Django Unchained
One of Django's chief aims in this 2012 Western is to free his wife from the clutches of terrifyingly
crazed slave owner Calvin Candie.
The meeting between Jamie Foxx's Django and Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin is extremely tense,
and for dramatic effect, DiCaprio slams his hand on a table … and right onto a glass.
"Lay your palms flat on that tabletop.
If you lift those palms off that turtleshell tabletop, Mr Butch is gonna let loose with
both barrels of that sawed-off!"
DiCaprio didn't stop at all during the take, even though he just seriously lacerated his
hand, nonchalantly picking out pieces of glass and even lighting a cigarette.
Blade Runner
Daryl Hannah took home a souvenir from the set of Blade Runner in the form of a scar
on her arm … and the take in which she injured it making its way into the movie.
While playing a replicant named Pris, Hannah ran from William Sanderson's genetic designer
J.F. Sebastian and slipped on the wet pavement …
Breaking the window wasn't planned, but Hannah finished filming the scene, preserving what
ended up being a fairly serious injury for posterity.
The Hateful Eight
For her role as the manipulative outlaw Daisy in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight,
Jennifer Jason Leigh had to know how to play a little guitar.
She learned on a vintage 19th century Martin, on loan to the production from the Martin
Guitar Museum.
In one scene, Leigh's co-star Kurt Russell was supposed to yank the instrument out of
her hands and smash it to smithereens—but the cameras were supposed to cut first, so
it could be swapped out for an ordinary guitar.
"Music time's over."
"Whoa whoa whoa!"
But the cut didn't come, and Russell unknowingly destroyed the antique Martin, valued at $40,000—so
Leigh's reaction is the real thing.
"Whoa whoa whoa!"
True Lies
James Cameron's 1994 spy comedy contains some of the biggest and most expensive sequences
in movie history, but the one scene from True Lies everybody remembers two decades later
is Jamie Lee Curtis's striptease.
Her character, Helen, takes off her clothes for a man she believes to be an arms dealer,
but is actually her husband, Harry, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Curtis's sexy moment is interrupted briefly when she loses her balance …
It's a perfect pratfall with impeccable comic timing, but it wasn't in Cameron's script.
Curtis didn't want to do the scene the way it was scripted, which called for her to get
completely naked and be filmed in silhouette.
Cameron agreed to her changes, and they worked out the choreography without Schwarzenegger's
knowledge.
So that's a genuine reaction from Schwarzenegger, who thought the fall would ultimately just
end up as a blooper.
Midnight Cowboy
The 1969 low budget classic Midnight Cowboy features one of the most famous unscripted
lines in movie history.
As Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo and Jon Voight's Joe Buck are walking across a very busy and
very real Manhattan street having a conversation, a cab nearly hits Hoffman ...
"Hey, I'm walking here!
I'm walking here!"
Hoffman's response was so perfectly in character that director John Schlesinger kept it in
the film, which went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
Annie Hall
It's a scene originally meant to serve as just a transition allowing Woody Allen's proud
New Yorker character Alvy and his girlfriend Annie to mention they're taking a trip to
Los Angeles — but it's become a classic bit of physical comedy, thanks to an unplanned
moment.
A stash of cocaine said to be worth $2,000 an ounce is passed around at a party, eventually
arriving at Alvy ...
"And what is the kick of it exactly, I never …"
Allen says it was "a complete, unplanned accident," but test screening audiences laughed uproariously
at it, so Allen, also the director of the movie, kept it in.
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