Scent Of A Woman's Director Contacted The CIA To Try To Refocus An Out-Of-Focus Shot
Martin Brest's "Scent of a Woman" was one of the most critically acclaimed films of 1992. Powered by an emotionally raucous screenplay from the late, great Bo Goldman ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Melvin and Howard" and "Shoot the Moon"), it's probably best remembered 31 years later for the hoo-hahing performance showcase that earned Al Pacino the Best Actor Oscar he should've won for, take your pick, "The Godfather Part II," "Serpico" or "Dog Day Afternoon." This is unfair. The film does run a tad long, and concludes with a conventional stand-up-and-cheer monologue from Pacino, but the length is excusable because Brest gives his best moments, most of which arrive during the film's second act, an abundance of oxygen. He lets his actors explore, which was catnip for Pacino and a blessing for his 22-year-old co-star Chris O'Donnell.
Cast as a promising prep school student hired by a rich woman (Gabrielle Anwar) to babysit her blind, alcoholic Vietnam War vet uncle over Thanksgiving weekend, O'Donnell was asked to contend with a wildly histrionic Pacino. If he couldn't hold his own opposite one of the most celebrated actors on the planet, the dramatic tension would dissipate, leaving Pacino to hoo-hah in a vacuum (and almost certainly short of an Oscar nomination, let alone a win). This was a coveted role at the time, one for which O'Donnell contemporaries like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Brendan Fraser auditioned, so the pressure was on. He could either prove himself worthy of the hype or become an also-ran.
O'Donnell delivered, but his very fine performance failed to earn him a Best Supporting Actor nomination (even though he was, at the very least, the co-lead, the studio ran him in the secondary category). Though it was a stacked category that year (as it is almost every year), he deserved consideration, and it's possible he didn't get it because his best take in what could've been his Oscar clip scene was, due to a technical glitch, unusable.
O'Donnell's finest hour as an actor...
Brest has never been a fan of interviews, but he clammed up completely after the debacle of "Gigli." Released in the summer of 2003 to scathing reviews, the $76 million Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez vehicle grossed a paltry $7.7 million. It was a historic box-office flop, and, despite the director's previous successes ("Going in Style," "Beverly Hills Cop," "Midnight Run," and "Scent of a Woman"), it ended his career. He hasn't made a film since.
20 years later, Brest has broken his silence in a wonderfully candid, career-spanning interview with Variety's Todd Gilchrist. He seems to understand, wistfully, that his time in this industry has passed (for better or worse), so he comfortably takes ownership of his missteps, even on his hits.
One particularly painful slip-up occurred on the set of "Scent of a Woman" during the supercharged scene where O'Donnell walks in on Pacino seconds before he tries to kill himself. He disarms the veteran and frantically makes a case for his continued existence, which is the tallest of orders for a clean-cut kid who's never seen a day of combat. O'Donnell has to make us believe Pacino believes.
According to Brest, this was a draining scene for O'Donnell, and so he was concerned when, after somewhere in the neighborhood of seven takes, his actor simply wasn't nailing it. So he played a bit of a mind game. "[I] thought, 'This kid's about to shatter.' So I let him go back to the dressing room, and as he's walking back, I put out a call on the walkie-talkie to come back. And when he did it, he went right over the cliff in the best way possible."
And this is where everything went unexpectedly wrong.
And a rough day for an unnamed assistant cameraman
As Brest told Gilchrist:
"[W]hat happened was the assistant cameraman f***ed up the focus. What they used to do in those days was, if an assistant cameraman f***ed up the focus a little bit and thought the take was going to be unusable, he would whack the focus really out so the whole thing just turned into a fog to show that he was declaring it unusable."
The assistant cameraman did precisely this, and, according to Brest, panicked when he realized O'Donnell was, all at once, summoning up a spiritual storm to deliver the take that would one day be a career highlight for the young actor. He tried to get the camera back in focus, but when Brest saw the dailies he knew the take was completely unusable. So he did what any of us would do, and sought the assistance of the United States' intelligence community.
"I was so depressed for so long," said Brest. "I even had people contact the CIA. I said, 'I know those motherf***ers have some technology to refocus something that's out of focus.'
When the CIA declined to get involved in the post-production of "Scent of a Woman," Brest spliced the in-focus parts of O'Donnell's best take together with other takes, which, since I didn't know any better until now, worked plenty well for me. Still, Brest feels awful about how this all went down. "[I]'ll tell you that his best moment isn't in there. Sorry, Chris."