10 Movie Mistakes Directors Refused To Fix Because The Acting Was Too Good

3. Dustin Hoffman Almost Gets Hit By A Car - Midnight Cowboy

The Mistake

One of the most infamous bloopers in movie history occurs in the 1969 Best Picture-winning drama Midnight Cowboy, where Ratso (Dustin Hoffman) and Joe (Jon Voight) are walking down a busy New York street when Ratso is almost hit by a taxi.

The driver angrily honks his horn at Ratso, who promptly shouts back, "I'm walkin' here!" and slams his hand on the hood.

Believe it or not, the presence of the taxi was a total accident, as the production didn't have permits to shut down a New York street, and so simply filmed Hoffman and Voight from afar on a public crossing. The driver jumped the light, and the subsequent exchange was genuine.

The Awesome Acting

This is perhaps the textbook example of an actor ingeniously adapting their performance to an unexpected mistake without missing a beat.

According to Hoffman he wanted to shout, "We're shootin' a movie here!", but in an attempt not to blow yet another take - this being their fifteenth without success - he managed to keep his outburst from breaking the fourth wall.

But the entire moment is so perfect, especially with Ratso's believable frustration as he escorts his Texan pal Joe around the city, that it only added to the film's kitchen sink realism.

While it's technically a mistake, there was really nothing for director John Schlesinger to fix.