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Poster for The Human Stain
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Released
2003 · FILM

The Human Stain

A disgraced professor races to rebuild his career by publishing a tell‑all book, only to have his hidden past exposed and threaten the fragile new life he’s built.

“How far would you go to escape the past?”

Directed by
Robert Benton
Written by
Philip Roth, Nicholas Meyer
Runtime
106 min
DramaRomanceThriller

Synopsis

Coleman Silk is a well-traveled and respected professor who loses his job after unintentionally uttering a racial slur. Seeking to restore his reputation, Silk collaborates with his friend and colleague Nathan Zuckerman to write a book about the incident, during which Zuckerman uncovers a troubling secret Silk has concealed for his entire life. Meanwhile, Silk becomes involved in a romantic relationship with Faunia Farley, a younger woman whose painful history jeopardizes the web of lies Silk has carefully built.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
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Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 24

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Christopher TellefsenShot by Jean Yves EscoffierScored by Rachel PortmanDesigned by David Gropman

Box Office

2003 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.8× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$24.9M

Budget$30.0M
Worldwide gross$24.9M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $5.4M — 22% of worldwide · International: $19.5M (78%)

Opening weekend: $1.0M — 19% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $1.4M — 26% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 160 theaters

Also known as

  • Der Menschliche Makelde
  • La Couleur du mensongefr
  • La macchia umanait

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