Word: justines
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Kramer is an adaptation of one of those best-selling, touching novels that appeared a few years ago. Stunningly beautiful Meryl Streep plays Joanna Kramer, who walks out on a torturous eight-year marriage to her ad-man workaholic husband Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and her seven-year-old munchkin (Justin Henry). The divorce leaves Ted to mother his son, and for months he fails dismally; but after they establish poignant love, Joanna reappears and wants Billy back...
...Justin was known as the "little director," because he was so curious about how and why things were being done. "I know all about wardrobes and what it's like to be a movie star, but the glamour isn't as good as it looks," he says with appropriate cynicism. "It can be very boring, you know. I don't think I'd like to act full time. There just isn't enough time to see your friends," His real ambition, he confesses, is to have a farm in Colorado with his friends...
...Artists, over the script and editing. In Kramer vs. Kramer, he made certain that he would be involved from the beginning. To find the right boy to play his son, he sat in on a hundred or more casting sessions, then did video tapes with 40 finalists before choosing Justin Henry. Together with Benton and Producer Stanley Jaffe, he worked and worried for months over the character of Kramer, trying to get him exactly right. "I've never seen anybody come to the party with more to offer than Dustin does," says Jaffe. "He had a whole palette...
...time I had direction for Justin, I'd give it to Dustin. Then he'd pass it along to the child. Justin totally believed in Dustin, who was a genuine friend. And Dustin was a fantastic acting coach. He knew just what buttons to press...
Instead of being given a script, Justin was told by Hoffman what a scene was about and then allowed to say whatever he wanted. "When kids learn lines," says Hoffman, "you can't cut them with an ice pick." Camera angles were kept simple so that father and son, who were expected to improvise, could move wherever they wanted. In one early scene Justin, who was supposed to be rebelling against Hoffman, showed his defiance by eating a bowl of ice cream after he had been told not to. But Justin, suddenly the improvisational actor, turned the battle into...