Ever mis-remember an actor's reading of a line?

Cafe Society
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Mr. Rilch just finished watching the “Guy From Downtown” scene in Glengarry Glen Ross. If you remember, when Alec Baldwin is just gearing up in his speech, he names the two prizes in the sales contest. “Second prize…Wanna see second prize?..A set of steak knives.”

Now, I saw that movie a few times on video when it was new, but never got around to acquiring my own copy until it was out on DVD. The first time I watched it in that format, I realized that all along, I’d been mis-remembering Baldwin’s reading of “A set of steak knives.” In my memory, he had opened the box with a flourish, and read the line in a rather smarmy way, like an unctous game show host. But what he really did was simply hold up the box and flatly state, “Set of steak knives,” as if to say, “BFD”.

See the difference? The way I remembered it, he was playing with the salespeople a little bit, before hitting them with “Third prize—YOU’RE FIRED.” The way he did read it, it was always about their jobs, not the car or the steak knives, from the moment he walked in.

Another instance of this was with Pirates of the Carribbean. I saw it once in the theater; then Mr. Rilch bought the DVD the day it was released. (He worked on it, y’know!) The very beginning of the scene where the Black Pearl crew storms the governor’s mansion has Elizabeth sitting in bed reading while a maid brings the warming pan and stays to query her about the proposal she’s just gotten. She begins by saying, “If it’s not too bold…”. Elizabeth feigns indifference at first, but when the maid mentions Will Turner, she replies, “That is too bold.”

Again, I remembered it differently. I thought she had said, “Now that is too bold,” in a warning tone. But she actually said, “That is too bold…” in a softer voice, as if this was a question she didn’t even want to ask herself. Same thing: I heard the line as evidence of Elizabeth’s indomitable spirit, and her class sense (the servant was taking liberties, one might say), when in fact, it showed more of her romantic yearnings.

So has anyone else ever put their own “spin”, so to speak, on an actor’s performance? If I’m not the only one, that might explain some of the times I’ve wanted to yell at film critics, “What movie did you see? The character wasn’t like that at all!”

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I saw “Who’s Harry Crumb” in the theaters when it first came out. In one scene, John Candy is holding photos (which he has actually not seen yet) of some marital indiscretions involving either Jeffrey Jones or Annie Potts. He’s joking to his client (either Potts or Jones) about the man’s manhood (again, he hasn’t seen the photos), holding his thumb and index finger real close together saying something like, “And look at that tiny little wingus.”

However, I’ve seen this several times on premium cable, and that is not the line. It’s more like “And look at that tiny little. . . [looks around, sees his “Word of the Day” desk calendar]. . . fallacy.”

I would have sworn the original was “wingus,” but no one else remembers it.

But then, I haven’t bumped into many people who say they’d seen it in a theater, so the subject doesn’t exactly constantly present itself.

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I can’t think of any specific examples right now, but sometimes I’ve mis-remembered the delivery of a joke in a movie in such a way that it is funnier (to me, at least) in my memory than it is when I see the movie again. It’s not just that the joke isn’t as funny the second time, I’ll actually have this anticipation of a particular tone of voice or bit of comic timing that turns out not to be there. How disappointing!