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The Short Kid from L.A. Who Refused to Be a Movie Star
Dustin Hoffman was never supposed to be famous. He said so himself, many times, with the bewildered gratitude of a man who still can’t quite believe his luck. He was too short. His teeth had braces. His face, in his own brutal assessment, had “one of the worst cases of acne in California.” In the…
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“Definitely, Definitely”: The Beautiful Disaster Behind Rain Man
When Rain Man opened in December 1988, nobody in Hollywood expected it to become the biggest movie in the world. It was a mid-budget drama about an autistic savant and his selfish brother on a cross-country road trip — the kind of film studios called “a hard sell.” It went through three directors, six writers,…