Released in 1988, Rain Man provided Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman with some of the most memorable scenes of their careers. One of them did not exist in the script: the scene set in a telephone booth is due to a particularly awkward unexpected event and to Tom Cruise's perfectly authentic reaction. Directed by Barry Levinson, Rain Man tells the story of Charlie Babbitt, a car salesman as arrogant as he is interested. After his father's death, he discovers that the majority of the family inheritance has been left to a special facility. There, he meets Raymond, his older autistic brother whose existence he had previously been unaware of. Played by Dustin Hoffman, Raymond has an exceptional memory and impressive abilities with numbers. Charlie decides to take him with him in the hope of recovering part of the money. This road trip gradually transforms their relationship and allows Charlie to look at this brother he has only just met in a different way. A completely improvised moment among the many scenes that reflect the growing camaraderie between Charlie and Raymond, one of the funniest takes place in a telephone booth. The two men are squeezed into this tiny space when Raymond suddenly lets out a fart. Charlie, clearly disgusted, then asks him if he really did that. The situation may seem to have been carefully prepared to provoke laughter. It was actually not planned at all. Dustin Hoffman's fart was perfectly real, as was Tom Cruise's reaction. "When we are in the telephone booth and I let out a fart, it was a real fart. It wasn't written in the script," Dustin Hoffman said in an interview with Esquire in 2009. The two actors were waiting for the take to start when Dustin Hoffman took advantage of the door closing to let out this small accident. Surprised by the smell and the situation, Tom Cruise asked him if he had farted. Hoffman nevertheless remained in character as Raymond and answered him without interrupting the scene. Barry Levinson immediately decided to keep the scene. Installed behind his screens and equipped with his headphones, Barry Levinson heard everything. Far from asking the actors to redo it, the director would have rushed over laughing and told them that this exchange had to definitely appear in the film. He then allowed them to integrate it into the scene as they wished. Invited years later on Graham Norton's show, Tom Cruise confirmed the authenticity of this moment. "It was real and this take was kept. I was disgusted," he explained in comments relayed by The Irish News. Dustin Hoffman considers this accident as one of his favorite scenes in the film. The actor believed that humor was essential to the balance of Rain Man and allowed the two brothers to be more human. For him, Barry Levinson had also demonstrated one of the main qualities of a great director: knowing how to recognize a precious moment when an unexpected event occurs in front of the camera. This spontaneity certainly contributed to the success of Rain Man. The film won four Oscars, including those for best film, best director for Barry Levinson, and best actor for Dustin Hoffman. Nearly four decades later, this sequence mainly reminds that the most natural and memorable scenes are sometimes those that no one had thought to write. Rain Man is currently available to rewatch on streaming on Prime Video.