15 Facts About “Scent of a Woman”

Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Facts About Scent of a Woman.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. MATT DAMON, BEN AFFLECK, BRENDAN FRASER, AND O’DONNELL’S CASTMATES IN SCHOOL TIES ALL AUDITIONED FOR CHARLIE.
“The whole cast went down to audition for it,” Matt Damon remembered in a 1997 Vanity Fair profile. “So the way I found out about the part is, I’m checking in with my agent, to see if anything good has come in, and my agent says, ‘Here’s one with a young role, and . . . Oh my God, it’s got Al Pacino in it!’ So I go up to Chris and say, ‘Have you heard about this movie?’ and he says [curtly] ‘Yeah.’ So I say, ‘Do you have the script?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Can I see it?’ ‘No—I kinda need it.’ Chris wouldn’t give it to anybody.” Stephen Dorff also auditioned.

7. ‘HOO-AH’ CAME FROM PACINO’S GUN EXPERT.

“I was working with a lieutenant colonel who was teaching me the ways [of the Army],” Pacino recalled. “We worked every day, and he’d teach me how to load and unload a .45 and all this stuff. Every time I did something right, he’d go, ‘Hoo-ah!’ Finally, I asked, ‘Where did you get that from?’ And he said, ‘When we were on the line, and you turned and snapped the rifle in the right way, [you’d say,] ‘Hoo-ah!’ So I just started doing it. It’s funny where things come from.”

12. O’DONNELL’S BEST TAKE WAS A CAMERA OPERATOR’S WORST.
“The one scene where Chris O’Donnell cries, the focus puller missed and it was soft,” editor Michael Tronick revealed. “Normally, Marty [Brest] wouldn’t consider looking at something that’s imperfect that’s flatly out of focus. But it was the best take and we knew it. It had to be in the movie.”