Happy mistakes/accidents on film and TV.

Some of the most rewarding moments I've seen on TV were watching the cast of the Carol Burnett Show lose their s*** during those skits they'd do.

 

Because, despite being a bad thing, it did work out and they kept the shot in the film.

 

I think "happy accident" refers to a goof that makes a scene better.

As far as I can tell, the fact an actor hurt his foot didn't actually improve the scene...

 

Not an example that fits but read on.

Exactly.

I'll take the same series of movies. Viggo Mortensen (playing Aragorn) kicked a helmet to express frustration in a scene and yell in frustration. The idea was for him to kick it towards the camera but he kept missing. Meanwhile, his foot was getting pretty beat up from the multiple takes. The last take, he kicks it, it goes towards the camera, but breaks his toe, the resulting scream is much louder and intense than the previous takes.

Peter Jackson (director) thinks to himself "Wow, what great acting on this take" but really, Viggo had broken his toe. That's the take in the film.

At about 0:32.

 

Makes sense.

It might not have been on the first take.

It might have resulted in the best take.

It was the take that appeared in the movie.

We have no way of knowing one way or the other?

I will try to recall some "happy accident's".

See above.

I don't doubt that there are the best takes in many movies that are the result of the actor being in pain for one reason or another.

Added "realism" I suppose.

But, I do get the point that you are making.

 

On The Waterfront. Eva Marie Saint accidentally drops her glove, and Marlon Brando, without breaking character, picks it up, gets rid of a few leaves, and slips it on. She has to tug it off his hand at the end of the scene. About 0:45:

 

They even cracked up in the same exact places the following night when they were tapped again...

Canned laughter taken up a notch?

 

Even if this were true (which it's not) how would this qualify as a "happy" accident?

 

Many were entertained for hours debating about it. If the fictional munchkin had to kill himself, better than he did it on set, where he was somehow not noticed by any of the cast or crew filming a major motion picture. Instead of offing himself off screen where he would have been forgotten. Plus all of the actual munchkins are dead by this time anyway, so who cares if the fictional one killed himself?

Since none of this involved a real person, I feel no reason to be politically correct!

 

Except on a set, stuff like that happens all. the. time.

 

Unless they thought the mistake was a better fit for the scene, or a funnier bit, than the planned joke. Again, on a set, things like that happen all the time.

The king of that is likely the scene where Indiana Jones shots the swordsman in Raider of the Lost Ark. They had a big fight scene planned for that sequence, but Harrison Ford wasn't feeling well and didn't want to do the scene, so he pulled his gun and shot. Spielberg thought that was so great, he left it in and dropped the fight. And that's a defining scene for that series of films.

Accidents happening, and fitting the feel of the film better than the planned action, happens all the time. The great directors are the ones who can recognize when it happens and adjust plans accordingly, on the fly.

 

Except it wasn't that it was left in. It was agreed upon to drop the fight and just shoot that scene. IIRC, Ford had a major fever and was in no condition to much else than stand.

The purpose of the thread is not necessarily to list instances of last-minute changes but rather spontaneous situations caught on camera by chance.

Agreed. Recently watched an interview with Peter Jackson about the LOTR movies where he said he had mentally storyboarded the whole trilogy in his mind and said that the sets, cast actors, and a bunch of other factors radically changed how things would have to be but that the end result was better almost all the time (in every shot) than what how he had imagined shooting it.

In his case, he wasn't sticking to his guns no matter what but adapted his vision of the movies based on necessity and circumstances surrounding the production. Regardless of whether it matches his initial vision, those movies are utterly fantastic.

 

As Strat noted, that isn't what happened... Ford did not spontaneously decide to change the scene in the middle of a take. Rather, he and Spielberg discussed it in advance, and they agreed to change it. The cameramen and the sword-wielding stuntman were informed, the new scene was blocked out, and then they shot it. Imagine if Ford had just pulled out his gun and "shot" the guy in the middle of a take. The stuntman wouldn't have known he was supposed to fall down dead, as that wasn't in the script.

That's one of my points about the Steve Martin film. If an actor substantially changed his movements or actions in an unplanned way in the middle of a take, the shot would look awkward and the actor might even fall out of the shot, because the camera person would not be ready for what happened. Likewise, the other actors would be out of place. Yet in the Martin film the camera pans back for a wide shot of the entire room, as if preparing to capture his pratfall. And Hawn walks across the room so as to position herself right where Martin lands, so she can continue talking to him after the fall. The whole thing is clearly blocked out and rehearsed so everyone is in the correct position. If this were an unplanned fall, it would look much more awkward and Hawn would have been out of place. It clearly is planned and rehearsed.

 

There's a scene in the 1987 "Dragnet" film with Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks that I've always suspected was unintentional.

Friday (Aykroyd) and Streebeck (Hanks) are sitting at a picnic table in a public park, picking through a suspect's garbage, and Hanks is in the middle of a speech about how he never expected police work to be so "glamorous" ...till a couple of ducks march into the frame from behind them and waddle under the picnic table on their way to the pond, right between Hanks' and Aykroyd's legs. Hanks' surprised "WHA-OH-OH!" sounds too genuine for it to have been in the script.

 

On TV, there were many happy little accidents on Bob Ross' Painting Show each week.

 

I know you're joking but just wanted to mention that show was planned quite a bit.

 

amazing work by brando and eva marie for rolling with it and not breaking.....

 

Are we sure that was real and not reel? They did multiple shots for a single camera show For that sequence. The fall might have been real but it might have been planned just jot quite as badly as it appears.

 

Bette Davis' iconic dress in All About Eve was not supposed to bare her shoulders. After it was made it simply wouldn't stay in place as designed, so Davis pulled the shoulders down and decided it looked fine like that.

 

jaws "eating": the girl during the iconic scene in the post? (She starting really screaming.)

 

Happy mistakes/accidents on film and TV

George C. Scott trips and falls in "Dr. Strangelove" (1964)

The scene where Gen. 'Buck' Turgidson (George C. Scott) trips and falls in the War Room, and then gets back up and resumes talking as if nothing has happened.
Stanley Kubrick knew that Scott's trip was purely accidental. Kubrick kept it in the final cut because Scott never broke character & the scene added to the comic flavor.

 

ueaj I think they maybe planned for him to struggle going down....maybe holding on to the other guy...maybe slip sliding but def not that hard lol

 

Although not as dramatic as a real helicopter crash, in the 1978 movie, Convoy, about truckers and their C.B. radios, there was a scene where an 18-wheeler turns a sharp corner and turns on its side. It was an accident and not in the script. It was left in the movie.

Watch from 2-minutes into the movie trailer.