--- title: Surviving "The Graduate" | daily.dev description: Dustin Hoffman recounts the grueling filming of 'The Graduate' under director Mike Nichols. He felt miscast as Benjamin Braddock, calling himself wrong for a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/surviving-the-graduate--i6rjushda twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Surviving "The Graduate" | daily.dev og:description: Dustin Hoffman recounts the grueling filming of 'The Graduate' under director Mike Nichols. He felt miscast as Benjamin Braddock, calling himself wrong for a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/surviving-the-graduate--i6rjushda og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/I6rjuShdA.png og:image:alt: Surviving "The Graduate" og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Surviving "The Graduate" **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 19 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Dustin Hoffman recounts the grueling filming of 'The Graduate' under director Mike Nichols. He felt miscast as Benjamin Braddock, calling himself wrong for a role written as an all-American Wasp. Nichols put him through brutal takes, including twenty-seven slap takes with Katharine Ross and an underwater scene that punctured his eardrum. Nichols later described the film as his own self-portrait after his professional breakup with Elaine May. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 17 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-11-01). **TL;DR:** Discussion centers mostly on whether 'The Graduate' has aged well, with mixed personal takes on the film itself, alongside some reflection on Hoffman's anxious method-acting approach and why he may have connected with audiences more than a conventionally handsome lead. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 45% mixed · 25% skeptical **The case for** - Some found the film still felt relevant and edgy even a decade-plus after release. - One commenter's appreciation deepened over multiple rewatches as they related more to the protagonist's passivity. - Hoffman's apparent miscasting and real anxiety may have made his performance feel authentic, paralleling method acting. **The pushback** - Several felt the movie hasn't aged well and found the performance underwhelming compared to Hoffman's other films. - The iconic Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack now feels overexposed/meme-ified, undermining its original impact for younger viewers. - One commenter argued the film's conformity themes don't resonate with how parenting/individualism looks today. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): People debate whether the film has aged well, with personal anecdotes ranging from lukewarm to deeply appreciative, alongside tangential reflections on method acting and relatability. **Hottest debate:** Whether 'The Graduate' still holds up artistically or feels dated and overrated today. **Open questions** - Would a modern remake need to target a different kind of conformity to resonate with today's audiences? **Highlights** > Here is my hot take. His belief that he was failing, helped him succeed. I don't mean this in a trite way. The character portrayed is supposed to be awkward and anxious. Feeling awkward and anxious in real life, left him in the right frame of mind when he walked on set. He looked awkward and anxious, because he actually was. Actually feeling what the character is supposed to be feeling, is the heart of method acting. The upside of method acting is that it creates very powerful performances. The downside of method acting is that you have to experience all of the feelings of the depicted drama. > — [btilly on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50320977) > I wonder if it's just me, or if the movie did not age well. I saw it for the first time around 10 years ago, and I was really expecting great things since I was a fan of hoffman and of simon and garfunkel. i found it a very lacklustre movie, nothing I had read about hoffman's iconic performance really landed for me, and the movie as a whole seemed dull and unconvincing. it wasn't a patch on kramer vs kramer or even tootsie. > — [zem on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50321359) > I like it, I was and still am in the age range to relate to the young two main characters and their whimsy though. In my opinion the thing that aged the worst was the soundtrack. The Simon & Garfunkel songs from this movie are so iconic and timeless at this point that it doesn't feel like a soundtrack to me but like someone made a TikTok edit and put those songs over the film, if that makes sense. Nobody in my generation knows the connection between those songs they heard as part of pop culture and The Graduate. This is an impossible psychological barrier to pass for me. Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" cannot dissolve into any movie's soundtrack for me when used unironically because I consider it a meme song (Mrs. Robinson as well to a lesser extent). It certainly would not have felt that way back then. I don't feel that way about modern songs with modern movies even though I recognize it is the exact same situation. > — [literallyanythi on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50321477) > The first time I watched it, I was a freshman in college and I could barely get through it. I hated the sense of awkwardness and what read to me at the time (2012) as intentionally cringe humor. The second time, I had graduated college, seen more of the world and how people treated each other, and I felt like I got it a lot more. I didn't feel offended by the long awkward moments anymore. It was entertaining and I was able to see the virtues and flaws of the characters, and even recognize traits of myself and other people I knew. I can't remember for sure whether I've seen it a third time, but I think I have, and it would have been in my mid or late twenties. With that watching, I was able to appreciate it most as a film and a product of its time, and imagine how it might have landed to its audience over the years. My recollection of it now is of someone who is by nature a pretty passive person struggling with the concept of his own agency, which speaks to me personally. > — [alex0015 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50321768) > Maybe the movie was successful because we could relate to Hoffman, while Redford (probably the handsomest actor ever) being rejected was not relatable. > — [WalterBright on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50321099) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50319563) · 53 points · 17 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [On swimming, learning and my journey to being the last one](https://daily.dev/posts/on-swimming-learning-and-my-journey-to-being-the-last-one-iuelwkrlb) · Event-Driven by Oskar Dudycz · 8 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Ambition Project](https://daily.dev/posts/the-ambition-project-rrh5cp9ko) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Interview Smack-Talk](https://daily.dev/posts/interview-smack-talk-jmrqfynde) · The Daily WTF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Selling out](https://daily.dev/posts/selling-out-hvkjrgvg6) · sean goedecke · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Selling out](https://daily.dev/posts/selling-out-p8vkmvdfj) · Tech Lead Digest · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/surviving-the-graduate--i6rjushda) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Surviving \"The Graduate\"","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/surviving-the-graduate--i6rjushda","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/surviving-the-graduate--i6rjushda"},"datePublished":"2026-10-31T23:56:43.321Z","dateModified":"2026-10-31T23:57:12.972Z","description":"Dustin Hoffman recounts the grueling filming of 'The Graduate' under director Mike Nichols. 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