Bruce Jenkins: These dialogues, and I know
some of you have been here for others in the
past, began with a grant from the MacArthur
Foundation and it was a small part in their
attempt to do for this period of time what
the Carnegie's had done a hundred years ago.
Carnegie's had built libraries and the MacArthur
Foundation thought that they wanted to support
the more contemporary form of literacy, which
is the literacy of the moving image art. And
we proposed doing a series of dialogues that
looked at the craft of the oldest of those
art forms, the cinema.
Bruce Jenkins: We have since found support
for this project from the Regis Foundation
here in our own community and we've focused
mainly on not what I think most film viewers
look at as that arena of creativity, which
is what you see on screen, namely the actors,
the kind of most visible part of the creative
aspect of cinema. But on that point, behind
the screen or behind the camera. Producers,
writers, and most especially directors. Over
the years, we've been able to acknowledge
and in a way celebrate and finally hear from
a number of actors turned directors. Our very
first program in this series was with Clint
Eastwood, who at that moment had done I think
about 15 or 16 features. He had been directing
for two decades and was here to talk about
yet another new film, the film made right
before The Unforgiven. And our moderator that
evening is our moderator tonight.
Bruce Jenkins: We're very, very pleased to
have Richard Schickel distinguished critic
from Time Magazine, who six years later now
has a book out on Clint Eastwood and it'll
be coming out in November. But he's also the
author of the Disney Version, a wonderful
book on DW Griffith and many other volumes.
I don't think I need to say very much about
our main guest tonight. I think he's really
a virtually an American icon, but I will say
that his extraordinary talents, I think he's
brilliant both in front of the camera. And
I think if you get to see the new film behind
the camera, are only exceeded by his personal
generosity and what in show businesses called
class. It gives me a great deal of pleasure
to welcome here to Minneapolis, to the Walker
Arts Center, Richard Schickel and Mr Tom Hanks.
Richard S.: For some reason today, the following
phrase popped into my head, probably because
of its utter inappropriateness. It's the famous
phrase of DH Lawrence in which he describes
the American hero as stoic, isolate and killer.
Richard S.: But the reason it popped into
my head was that Bruce and I had been running
through clips that we were thinking of playing
for tonight's program, talking about. And
one of the things that did become clear to
me as we looked at some of what Bruce and
I both regarded as the most powerful and interesting
scenes that Tom had done, was how many of
them had to do with one form or another of
isolation and overcoming it, dealing with
it in some way or other. And the fact that
the one word that is seems always to be attached
to him, likability. A word that I think you
have said you would like never to hear again
in your life. It is a combination of those
two qualities it seems to me as a critic,
that has made Tom Hanks the unique presence
that he has become in the movies.
Richard S.: The American hero is usually an
isolated figure, but he is usually not necessarily
maybe righteous. He is not necessarily likable.
He is not necessarily somebody that we affectionately
identify with. Maybe respectfully, maybe fearfully,
all of those ways, but I think that's something
that is unique in what Tom has brought to
the movies. And I think it is something all
of us, his critics have kind of groped for
some phrase that's applicable to him. Some
comparison that's applicable. At press conference
this afternoon the names of Jimmy Stewart
and Henry Fonda came up. Once when he was
quite a young actor, I compared him very specifically
to some stuff that he was doing in a particular
film that reminded me of stuff that Cary Grant
had once done in films.
Richard S.: But there is this quality that
is modern, that is up to date, that is not
quite like those other guys that preceded
him to the screen. And it's that, that I think
is what has fascinated us and made this a
great career and probably is going to make
it a career that will go on a long time.
Richard S.: Anyway. One of the things I observed
in-
Tom Hanks: No wood-
Richard S.: There is no wood, dear.
Richard S.: One of the things that comes clear
when you read profiles in the like of your
early life is that it was in some measure
I think an isolated life. Was it not? That
is to say you moved a great deal. You were
a kid who was in and out of new schools on
a fairly regular basis. Your family was, as
they say, a broken home. I don't know if that
phrase is even applicable anymore.
Tom Hanks: Busted.
Richard S.: Busted in some ways. Does that
in some way, first of all, I have observed
that an awful lot of, a disproportionate number
of actors come from homes in which you know
the father or the mother is missing. And it
does seem to me that there may be some need
for attention that comes out of that circumstance.
That's kind of like a first question to reflect
on. And a second one might be is that isolation
creep into your performances in some way?
Some sense of the fact that many of us in
life are perhaps lonelier or less communal
than we once were in America, or at least
like to think we once were.
Tom Hanks: What I remember most about growing
up at any given date on the calendar from
1956 to about 1993, was a sense of confusion,
more than anything else. I was confused by
what was going on in my own house. My folks
divorced in 1961 which was pretty hip stuff
to do in 1961. The only people who got divorced
were like movie stars. Frank Sinatra got divorced.
Richard S.: Right?
Tom Hanks: Nikki Hilton got divorced, things
like that. So I did begin moving around an
awful lot. It wasn't a destitute lifestyle
and there was always a lot of people around,
but the sense of confusion I think translated
for me into ... I was the youngest in whatever
family I was in so there were times when I
was home by myself a lot. And I think that
if there is any one thing that sort of does
in fact drive my artistic bent in choosing
films or relating to characters or being interested
in these themes, even if they're just comedies,
is usually that combating against loneliness.
The sense of loneliness that if you are honestly
feeling it when you're six years old, it's
not an easy thing to grasp.
Tom Hanks: Now, my wife has never felt a lonely
day in her life just because of the nature
of who she is and the family atmosphere that
she comes from. But it's not a desire. I don't
recall being desirous of attention in order
to balance out those feelings of confusion
of loneliness. Really just what I wanted was
I think, is some degree of engagement with
other people. Our house was as dysfunctional
as the vast majority of American houses seem
to be, especially in years like 1966 and 1972,
pick the year. But what I was always wanted
to be in was just in a room full of bunch
of animated people who were doing anything
other than arguing with each other, because
I had seen plenty of that. As soon as the
argument starts, well that's time to go off
and it's better to be by yourself then.
Tom Hanks: But I was always just looking for
the gang kind of ensemble that a family is
supposed to be or a classroom is supposed
to be or a playground is supposed to be. And
then later on what a theater actually is,
completely based on a group of people. Some
of them are getting attention, but others
are waiting for their moment.
Richard S.: Theater and theaters and movie
companies are funny, aren't they? They're
very intense families that you're not stuck
with for life.
Tom Hanks: Thank God.
Richard S.: I mean in other words. It's very
intense, very loving, very close usually.
And then everybody goes their separate ways
and-
Tom Hanks: Well that's about ... that's very
loving for about the first two weeks. But
as soon as you put the books down in the play,
you begin to start hating some of those people
now. Intensely, as a matter of fact. Really
in having no respect for them or their work
or where they came from. You don't want to
be like them. And why did they get that part
in the first place? How come I don't have
that part because I hate him. I hate her too
and I can't play her part. I understand that.
But he, I can't stand, I should have his role.
Tom Hanks: The ensemble atmosphere of my experience
at a place, The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival
in Cleveland, which is now the Great Lakes
Theater Festival in Cleveland, that was a
huge realization that I came to. That you
could be in with a bunch of people, you could
be working with a lot of people and you did
not have to like them. And you didn't even
have to respect them for 22 hours of the day.
But those two hours that you were doing the
play, there was something that was actually
superhuman and very cool that was expected
of you. You were supposed to suppress your
dislike of them or your distrust of them and
do the show with them. That was the mark of
a professional.
Richard S.: And also, I mean at least out
of that confusion, which just doesn't happen
in families. It usually just rattles on in
a family.
Tom Hanks: Yeah. You have no choice.
Richard S.: Over the decades.
Tom Hanks: Yes.
Richard S.: But at least-
Tom Hanks: Hi, Dad.
Richard S.: Yeah,
Tom Hanks: Merry Christmas.
Richard S.: Yeah.
Tom Hanks: It wasn't that bad.
Richard S.: You could take a haircut.
Tom Hanks: Yeah, exactly. How long is that
shower going to be? What are you a shareholder
in the gas company?
Richard S.: But at least for those two hours
out of the dysfunction, function came if it
was a good show. And so that's kind of like
a, a thing that I think is kind of make you
go on.
Tom Hanks: Yeah. It would gave you give purpose
to your day. Then of course as soon as the
curtain came down you were making sure you
didn't talk too loud about where you're going
to go have drinks after the show. They might
hear you and then they'd show up there too
and didn't want that to happen.
Richard S.: But what was the moment ... well
here you've mentioned that you know the fight
would start and you would slide off into somewhere
or other. Did you slide off into movies? I
mean, did you slide off into the movie theater
down the block? Or did you slide off into
the movie on television?
Tom Hanks: I slid off into television. Now,
occasionally the movies. Certainly often the
movie on television, but really television,
I knew what time it was by what was on TV.
I didn't need a watch for a decade because,
Love of Life is on, I'm supposed to go to
school now. Star Trek is over. Time for dinner.
Gunsmoke is on, I have to go to bed now.
Tom Hanks: And that was it. And actually,
if you're going to look back-
Richard S.: Luckily you never changed time
zones.
Tom Hanks: Pacific standard time makes all
the sense. How you people can watch the 10
O'clock News is beyond my comprehension. Johnny
Carson is on at 11:30 and that's all there
is to it. 10:30 I don't understand. It's actually
kind of ... you can look back on the television
that I grew up certainly watching every moment
of every day and it's kind of like this benevolent
kind of thing we had. A blue light and the
choice of only a few things as opposed to,
you know, the vast amounts of stuff that you
can see right now. But just by that very,
very dent that you couldn't choose what you
wanted to watch. Really. I mean you had three
choices, maybe four if you had an independent
channel.
Tom Hanks: And I didn't even get channel UHF
channels until I was 13, and that opened up
a whole world of Japanese animated cartoons
that I'd never seen before. Man, I didn't
understand Speed Racer or the first time around
and I don't get it now. Does this Chimp talk
in the back of this racing car? I don't understand
what this is.
Tom Hanks: But I mean the aspect of the way
society opened itself up to me for the first
time for an artistic premise was with some
odd dichotomies that were sandwiched right
next to each other. I mean, the first time
I did see some of the great films of all time
was on TV and I had to get through Mayberry
RFD before they were on. Watch Mayberry RFD.
Okay. Now Stalag 17 is on channel 44. I'll
watch it like that. Oh, aren't you like that?
Richard S.: Yeah. Did it ever occur to you
in some tiny infinitesimal, subliminal way
that those were actors? That was a profession
that people obviously took up. That it might
be something that you would be interested
in?
Tom Hanks: No, because they were the icons.
You know, I could maybe believe that I could
get a job as a disc jockey, something like
that. And I mean, actually in high school,
that was one of the things that I thought
I would aim for. A glamorous career in radio.
And Oof thank God I dodged that bullet. That's
a tough gig. But no, I wasn't the type who
sat there thinking someday that's going to
be ... It was an... I mean, I might as well
yearned to be an astrophysicist or a cardiologist.
Richard S.: You've probably seen the survey
that came out in the last couple of days in
which American parents asked to contemplate
jobs for their children, ranked movie star,
even lower than President.
Tom Hanks: Wait, they don't want their kids
to be a movie star?
Richard S.: The don't, yeah. In the old days
we wanted our kids to grow up to be President,
what have you, you know? President ranks ... they'd
rather they were a carpenter than either a
President or a movie star.
Tom Hanks: Trade, learn to use your hands.
In some ways I wish I had some skill with
tools because I still got to call somebody
to fix the screen door. So would have served
me well, as a matter of fact.
Richard S.: But it really speaks to the notion
that stardom is now something where people
are intruded upon in ways that they were not
in the past. That your life is an open book.
I think much of this survey was based on that.
If you're President now, then they go back
through your entire childhood. If you're movie
star, you can't walk down the street without
having trouble or having a tabloid photographer
take your picture in an unflattering position.
Tom Hanks: Yeah. Yeah. That happens. I think
though, it's a bag of snakes that somehow
you open yourself, because there's movie stars
like let's say for example, Daniel Day Lewis.
I have no knowledge of Daniel Day Lewis other
than the movies that he makes. He's an absolute
chameleon and a mystery. There's others like
that, but I think that in the harsh realities
of the commerce of being a movie star, sooner
or later you open up some sort of crack in
the door and the next thing you know, you
are some degree of fodder. Not just for tabloids
and stuff that comes and goes, but just that
kind of like juggernaut that is movie, motion
picture marketing. The thousands of television
shows and publications that make their living
off of talking about the people who make movies
or television.
Richard S.: Well, what was the moment? I mean
this was high school drama class, I think,
or something where you said, "Hey, this is
kind of fun. This is kind of interesting.
This is something I can do."
Tom Hanks: It was when you become suddenly
cognizant that you can actually make a choice
somewhere now and that life isn't this thing
that drafts you. You know? "You, okay you,
you're going to plumbing school. And you,
you're going to be an engineer." When there
was like a choice that was, I realized that
you could decide to do things and that could
actually become your skill. I knew a kid who
I went to fifth and sixth grade with, who
said in fifth and sixth grade that he was
going to be an architect. And I just thought,
"You're nuts. You're not going to be an architect.
You'll be something else." Well, he's an architect,
and you know, took me a few years to realize
that I could say something.
Tom Hanks: When I went to high school, the
first year I was in high school, I thought
there were certain things you had to do. I
thought you had to try out for sports because
Wally Cleaver did on Leave it to Beaver or
something like that. All the boys on My Three
Sons were always on the basketball squad or
something like that. So I guess I had to,
too.
Tom Hanks: I tried to play on the soccer team
without ever having played soccer. They needed
guys on the team. So I say, "I might be able
to make that team." And unfortunately there
were about 14 guys on the team who had played
soccer for the last six years of their lives.
I stood around and rooted for them as much
as I could on the sidelines, a member of the
team, but never played in a single game. It
was very sad. No, didn't play in a single
game. I thought there was a law. "Doesn't
the school system have some kind of bylaw
that says you have to let me into a game?"
"No. No, Tom, you're just that bad. You're
going to stay and you're going to root for
the team."
Tom Hanks: But I did run track that year because
actually I was kind of fast. I could run the
440 and the mile relay. But they were so cripplingly
not fun. I mean honestly, it was not fun.
The only day I truly remember from working
out for the track team was the day I went
over to the pole vault pit and stuffed some
of the sponge rubber under my shirt and sort
of looked like I had shoulder pads on. And
went over to where the spring football team
was having tryouts and asked the Coach if
he needed a tight end. The guys all cracked
up and even the Coach laughed. And so that's
what I remember from my track workouts is
sticking sponge rubber under my shirt.
Richard S.: This is your very first sight
gag?
Tom Hanks: Well, my first use of humor in
order to crack up a bunch of people I really
didn't like. And we had a very vibrant high
school drama department that did a play in
the autumn and a musical in the spring. My
sophomore year, which in California was my
first year of high school, they have three
year high schools there, the fall play was
Dracula. That had a bunch of my friends in
it and I just saw that and I thought "I wish
I was up there. I wish I was doing this. How
do you do this?"
Tom Hanks: And the next year I enrolled in
drama class and we actually had a classroom
that had a small stage with a curtain at the
front of it. And my drama teacher who is now
the world renowned Rawley T. Farnsworth, the
man I outed in front of 3 billion people at
the Academy Awards. He just loved the theater
and he loved plays and he actually he didn't
hate us kids. So it worked out pretty well.
But I tried out for ... the first role I got
was Jake Latta in Night of the Iguana. Now
what a high school is doing, doing Night of
the Iguana ...
Richard S.: Perhaps Rawley T. Farnsworth deserves
his accolades.
Tom Hanks: He really liked to direct. He liked
to design and build a set and everything else
was essentially the high school play. But
you know, it was a great cabana with palm
fronds and a hammock and the whole bit. And
Jake Latta is the guy who comes from the tour
company in the second act, I believe, who
takes the tour away from the Reverend, defrocked,
Reverend Shannon. Then the play really begins.
Tom Hanks: It's a part of such distinction
that when the movie played late at night at
one o'clock in the morning in about 1971,
we all gathered at my house, the cast of this
high school production to watch it. My part
was the only one that had been cut from the
movie. The guy was the bus driver took the
thing away and so there was no Jake Latta
in the thing. But I remember there was a ... it's
a sad ... I mean it's humble beginnings, folks.
It's a requisite for every movie star.
Tom Hanks: I remember distinctly the feeling
of the three days of auditions that Mr Farnsworth
held. There were two days of general readings
and Friday was the callbacks. It was two hours
from three to five of incredible nervous anticipation
while we were all seated down in the theater
just like this. We'd have to come up on the
stage and read the scenes as we were doing.
He mixed and matched characters and actors
and actresses and did that for three days
and was called back on Friday. And so did
some more and then that weekend, Saturday
and Sunday, truly I had an anxiety that I
honestly had never had before anywhere else
in my existence. It was that exciting.
Tom Hanks: I was going to find out on Monday
morning whether I had been cast in Night of
the Iguana. Monday morning you're riding the
bus to school and the heart is beating. "Is
my name going to be on it? Is my name going
to be on the paper? Is my name going to be
there?" Now, Rawley Farnsworth, he was the
first person I ever knew who typed on a typewriter
that had pica type. It was like every letter
was italicized so it was hard to read. A bunch
of squiggles and stuff so you really had to
get in their close.
Tom Hanks: And I remember it was that blue
mimeographed paper, you know that smell? Oh
yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You're showing
your roots. And you know, Jake Latta is pretty
far down the cast list but nonetheless there
it was Jake Latta. I spelled my name T-H-O-M
back then and it said Tom Hanks and, and I
was thrilled. Now honestly, Jake Latta has
like maybe 16 lines in the entire thing. But
man, it was fun.
Richard S.: And did you say after Jake Latta,
life after Jake, that's it, you said, "The
die is cast. I will be an actor."
Tom Hanks: It was a brand of fun that I didn't
know existed anywhere. It was such an incredibly
intense place to go. I mean, it just beat
the crap out of the track team. I mean it
was just everybody was vibrant and alive and
they were chicks there, there were girls and
it was like always this hubbub of activity.
And I honestly thought that that was the most
fun that I ever had. And you know, at the
age of 15 to suffer a crushing post creative
depression because your role of Jake Latta
and Night of the Iguana's over. It took at
least 10 days, Richard in order for me to
come out of my alcoholic stupor. I was so
depressed.
Tom Hanks: But it immediately gave me a taste
to want to do it again. And I was the stage
manager for My Fair Lady at the spring musical
and the next year I did one act plays in the
high school department. The next year I was
just an acting maniac. I did it all, but I
still didn't think in high school that that
was something that you could actually pursue,
somehow. I thought still eventually, I would
have to become an insurance salesman or work
at a hotel or something like that. I thought
that someone was going to say, "Hey, wait
a minute now."
Tom Hanks: And it wasn't until I was in my
second year of junior college that I even
tried out for another show.
Richard S.: Really?
Tom Hanks: Yeah. Yes.
Richard S.: What did you think you were doing,
Tom, in that interim?
Tom Hanks: Well, I had this ... this is why
I thought I was doing all the responsible
things that you're supposed to do. I was going
to junior college. I actually sent my SAT
scores to three institutions of higher learning.
I sent one to Villanova. Because you get three.
You can send three free ones for taking the
SAT scores. "Well what do you want?" "I don't
... Villanova." I was hoping they'd send me
a sticker or something like that. "Thank you
for your application. Here's a sticker. You're
not getting in." I sent one to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Because you know,
we're just trying to crack everybody up. "Well,
where are you ...?" "I'm going to send one
to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
And I sent one to Chabot Junior College in
Hayward, California. That's where I went.
They accepted me with open arms.
Tom Hanks: And I thought what I was doing
there, I thought, "Well, you know what? I'll
go to junior college and I will take all of
those courses that are required of you." You
know your ology courses. Your zoology and
biology and sociology and ology, all the study
of studying things. Ology ology. I truly just
bided my time bored out of my skull with being
a college student. There's this line that
Lawrence Olivier says to Dustin Hoffman in
Marathon Man as Dustin Hoffman is being tortured.
"How I envy you your college days, the one
time in your life when truly nothing is expected
of you." That's what I was reveling in. "Hey,
I don't have to do anything. I'm just going
to college."
Tom Hanks: And it wasn't until much later
in that I ran into an old friend of mine from
high school and he said, "Why aren't you trying
out for plays?" I said, "Well, I'm just ... I
don't know." And he said, "Shame on you."
He literally said, "Shame on you. You should
be doing plays." And then I auditioned for
Our Town.
Tom Hanks: I had a job then at the Oakland
Hilton Hotel as a bellboy, which is a fabulous
job because you get tips. You've got cash
in your pocket all the time. I was taking
drama classes at the same time and I was just
taking those for fun. Just because.
Richard S.: You weren't going out for plays?
Tom Hanks: No, I wasn't. No, I was not. I
didn't really think you could work that into
your life. I thought there was some other
responsible thing you had to do in lieu of
having that fun.
Richard S.: I could stay on this early Tom
Hanks for a long time.
Tom Hanks: Oh, it's fascinating stuff, Richard.
Can you believe it, folks?
Richard S.: We have this long-
Tom Hanks: The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. If I sent one to Macalester College,
I probably could've gotten in. It's the only
reference I have.
Richard S.: Listen, Pal.
Tom Hanks: Is there a local reference I can
throw out that'll make you all laugh?
Richard S.: I'll tell you something. It's
the only college that ever let me be a visiting
professor.
Tom Hanks: Oh, lets here the groan now, folks.
Richard S.: But what professionalized this?
I mean, let's, let's skip ahead.
Tom Hanks: Please, let's do.
Richard S.: Get onto early TV. First movie.
That sort of thing.
Tom Hanks: Okay. All right. Well, I ended
up going to the Sacramento State University
and actually studying Theater Arts when I
realized you could make that choice. And all
I did was study theater arts. I learned how
to build sets and stage manage shows and whatnot.
And because I was not cast in a show there,
all my friends got cast in Joe Orton's, "What
the Butler Saw," I was not. So I had to go
to this regional kind of little theater downtown
in Sacramento, and I was cast by Vincent Dowling
of the Great Lake Shakespeare Festival in
to play Yasha in The Cherry Orchard. The supercilious
servant, that's what the review said about
me. I was a supercilious servant, Yasha. If
I had gone to Macalester college, I would
have known what supercilious meant, but of
course I couldn't get in.
Richard S.: As it was you thought that was
a rave.
Tom Hanks: Yeah, I did. That's pretty good
notice. But anyway, I ended up, because Vincent
had a theater that he was trying to turn profitable,
he had a program that he called the intern
program. Which was essentially 50 slave laborers
who were unpaid.
Tom Hanks: Because they got to work with bonafide
professionals who had viewed it as a great
opportunity. And it just so happened that
it was the opportunity that ended up getting
me into to the Actors Equity union because
they didn't have enough Equity cast members
to fill out a show of Taming of the Shrew.
So I was able to play Grumio in that and that
got me into the union. And that got me three
years of work with the Great Lakes Shakespeare
Festival. And in the middle of that, most
of the actors who were there from New York
and they said, "Listen, and if you have a
card in your wallet that says you're a professional,
you can't go back to Sacramento, California.
You've got to go to a place like either New
York-"
Tom Hanks: I had a friend actually, Clive
Rosengren, who was from Minneapolis, and he
said, "Hey man, there's a lot of stuff going
up there at the Cricket Theater and the Chanhassen
Dinner Theater and the Guthrie." But he was
the only guy from Minnesota and they were
like eight people from New York. So we ended
up going to New York.
Richard S.: Were you funny in these roles?
I mean-
Tom Hanks: Yes.
Richard S.: I mean-
Tom Hanks: I was supercilious Richard
Richard S.: What I meant to say was were you
intentionally funny? No. What I meant to say
was, were you being cast in comedic roles
primarily?
Tom Hanks: Oh yes. Well there's not many funny
spear carriers and I. did a lot of that. Just
kind of stand there. As soon as that play
within a play is over, you lift up Claudius'
throne and carry it out. That's pretty much
what I was doing for some of the shows. Yes.
But the nature of the... I mean the thing
that I had really always kind of been in school
was loud and louder. And that paid off when
you were auditioning for something like Grumio
the supercilious servant of Petruchio. and
yeah I got gigs. I was cast in roles that
were primarily comedic and for some reason
I played Reynaldo in Hamlet. Reynaldo is a
role that's almost always cut from Hamlet,
and honestly for good reason, he comes out
and has a little scene with Polonius. Then
Polonius sends him out to spy on Laertes.
Unless you want to do a four hour Hamlet,
there's no reason to have Reynaldo in there.
And I tried to pump as much humor into him
as I could. Man. They just sat there, stone
faced.
Richard S.: The early television and so forth...
To be honest with you, I never saw that series.
Tom Hanks: Bosom Buddies?
Richard S.: That beloved series that you were
on.
Richard S.: Hey, I was always out at night
going to the movies. And so I actually didn't,
but.
Tom Hanks: Oh, I thought you were just watching
Magnum PI. It was on opposite us, you see.
Richard S.: But that was a kind of... You
went to New York and they found you and you
did that.
Tom Hanks: If I had known what was going on
in that process, I would have probably become
nervous and blown it. I had just kept going
to these minute and a half meetings with people
in some office somewhere in Midtown Manhattan
and I would do whatever they'd say. "Take
your glasses on. Okay, put them off. Okay.
Read this. Hold this up. Spin around. Bark
like a dog. Say moo." I'd do anything anything
they asked me to do. And the next thing I
know I am flying first-class for the very
first time on an airplane to Los Angeles to
test for a bunch of that season's TV pilots.
Tom Hanks: I tested for the TV version of
Breaking Away and didn't get it. I tested
for the TV version of... What was the Chevy
Chase, Goldie Hawn movie? Foul Play. I tested
for some show called Blue Jeans about a rock
and roll band. I actually kind of learned
how to sandbag the audition for that one cause
I didn't want to do the role. If they gave
me that job I didn't want to have it. And
I auditioned for a Bosom Buddies and was was
actually cast in that. I was part of a...
Joyce Selznick, the casting office and a relation
of the famous Selznick family, although not
a close one, was in charge of this thing called
the ABC Talent Development Program in which
she would go off once a year and cover Chicago
and New York and Los Angeles and sign promising
newcomers to exclusive contracts to ABC.
Tom Hanks: And out of that fabulous talented
pool of people would be their new members
of a lot of their new television shows. And
I was in a group that included Al Corley,
John James, who ended up being on a Dynasty,
Anne Jillian who did her television series,
Donna Dixon, myself. And I was on Bosom Buddies.
Richard S.: How did you feel about yourself
as an actor then?
Tom Hanks: I had no concept of myself as an
actor in any way, shape or form. I was still
operating on the loud or louder school of
auditioning. My audition piece for classical
Shakespeare companies was a farce from Beyond
the Fringe that Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
thing, which was a bunch of Shakespearian
jibberish. because I knew that everybody who
had gone in before me was either doing the
bastard speech from King Lear or now is the
time for something from Richard the Third.
So these poor, poor casting people had to
sit through "Bastards, bastardyup bastard,"
you know, that kind of stuff. And they were
just bored out of their heads. And then-
Richard S.: So you came in and did a little
comedy, Tom.
Tom Hanks: I would do a little comedy and
they loved me to death. Not that they gave
me the job, but they said, "we want to thank
you so much."
Richard S.: Had you, in these New York years,
had you done any kind of earnest acting studies
as you've gone to Herbert and Uta and all
that crowd or had you not done that sort of
thing?
Tom Hanks: I didn't do it simply for the reason
that if they had told me I was bad or worthless,
I would have believed them and it would have
been bone crushing. They had the the theater
Guild, I believe... What was it called? TCG.
Theater Communications Guild. And you could
go down there and audition and they would
sort of like pipeline you out to theaters
all over the place. And I wouldn't go because
they had to like you. They had to think you
did a good audition piece before... You had
to literally pass their muster. They had open
auditions still at the public theater down
in Lafayette Square.
Tom Hanks: And I would not go down and audition
for them because if I didn't get it, it would
have broken me. And also I didn't really have
the greatest amount of confidence in my chops
at that point because really I only had honest
to God, maybe six credits on my resume and
only three of those were real. So those were
lies. I actually told these people I could
juggle and play the guitar and I could do
neither. I couldn't juggle or play the guitar.
Well, what are the odds of them asking me?
I always thought. So by the time I was cast
in Bosom Buddies, if you look as you all study
the early episodes of Bosom Buddies, I believe
the kinescopes are still available-
Richard S.: On sale in the lobby.
Tom Hanks: On sale in the lobby. $28.95 a
piece. All I do, I shout so loud. I mean I
just, I'm in the, "My parents. Where's my
parent? Modigliani. Henry, what are we going
to do?" That's the way every line.. "They
don't have the tuna salad sandwich." That's
the way I delivered every line. I was just
shouting. I was shouting because when you
get the job in television, they think you
know what you're doing. So no one said to
me, "Look, the microphone is right there.
You don't have to yell." Nobody said that
to me. So I was still thinking, you know,
"Well this is what I did in Cleveland. As
Grumlio." And it was only through the pain
of watching myself Thursday nights at 8:30
following Mark and Mindy, With, with a handful
of other Americans, cause they were watching
Magnum PI with Tom Selleck, which premiered
the same year we did, but he was on the cover
of TV guide long before his show was even
on the air.
Tom Hanks: That's when I realized, no, I'm
really doing something horribly, terribly
wrong. And that first year of Bosom Buddies
I actually did kind of spend examining this
thing called acting for a camera. And it looks
horrible because it's on videotape. Most television
series were done on film, but we did four
camera video taped show and the lighting is
bad and then the hair is huge and I look like
a big Stockard Channing in drag it. And I'm
living in a horrible house, somewhere in the
Valley and I don't have a car. It was an incredibly
educational process that that was also at
the same time, big time show business. It
was an odd dichotomy to be in.
Richard S.: Did that really, other than teaching
you not to shout when it was inappropriate,
did that make you an actor two years of every
week going in and doing it?
Tom Hanks: Yes it did. Because it was acting
with a gun held to your head. Peter and I,
Peter Scolari, the other bosom buddy or the
left bosom, I'm not sure which one. Maybe
I was the right bosom. He and I became so
tight in the course of making this, that we
actually had this kind of strange Gestalt
communication... We were the only guys on
the show. All the girls had their dressing
rooms way on the other side of the stage.
And so he and I would like lean in each other
doorways, and ponder the universe in our work
and stuff like.... Man those cats in Chicago
at that place, Steppenwolf theater, they're
doing it right, man. They're doing great stuff
and here we are trying to figure out how to
shoot an episode called Hildy's Dirt Nap.
Tom Hanks: But we wrestled with our craft
there. Peter was from the Colonnades theater
lab in New York and we really did wrestle
with it. We felt so inferior because just
two stages down they were shooting Taxi and
the stage across the street, Robin Williams
was still a nationwide phenomenon, farther
on down, Henry Winkler was in his 14th season
of being Fonzie. How long could that guy live
above a garage? We never understood, and still
be the toughest teenager in all of Milwaukee.
I never quite understood that. But the second
season of the television show yeah, he and
I, both at the same time, really did try to
perfect these kinds... Someone never told
us this, but we realized through osmosis that
less was more. And that we, as the actors,
had to come back to the demands of the script,
demands of the producers, to always make it
louder and funnier or faster or choppier or
whatever it was.
Tom Hanks: And we were always trying to do
these incredibly small and subtle things.
And in the second season, if you remember
the hit television show Bosom Buddies, there
was one episode where it was just Peter and
myself in a log cabin snowbound up in the
woods, and it was one of the first times the
two of us... It might've been the only time,
it was just he and I in the episode together,
we were separated from the rest of the ensemble.
So it was literally a two person play between
these two guys who could finish each other's
sentences. And the good news is that right
about that point, I think both of us figured
out how to do it. The bad news was it was,
we only had three episodes remaining til our
show was canceled. A little late to the process
but we finally figured it out.
Richard S.: The, because, we have all these
clips to play, we have to make a quick jump.
Tom Hanks: I thought we were going to start
with a pilot of Bosom Buddies and then go
to the second episode of Bosom Buddies.
Richard S.: That was the original plan.
Tom Hanks: We have disappointed hundreds of
people, Richard.
Richard S.: You keep giving these long answers
to these questions.
Tom Hanks: I'm sorry. I'm still fascinated
with my mind Horatio Algers story.
Richard S.: But obviously we're going, well
not so obviously, but why not? We were going
to start with Splash.
Tom Hanks: I think we should. Thank God for
Splash. Oh, please. No, no, please.
Richard S.: How'd you get that job?
Tom Hanks: I got this job because no one else
would take it. There there was an A-list of
actors at the time, that was cast in 1983,
I essentially spent a year unemployed in Los
Angeles. Not a good place to be. But I had
done one guest spot on Happy Days, and the
guys who wrote Splash, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo
Mendel were still executive producers of Happy
Days or something like... Excuse me. And Ron
Howard, little Opie Cunningham, Ron Eat My
Dust Howard, Ron The Smith Family Howard,
was going to direct this pretty much big budget,
mainstream Hollywood motion picture for the
Disney Studios.
Tom Hanks: The A-list actors at the time,
which consisted of people, I don't know like
a Dudley Moore, Richard Dreyfus, Elliot Gould,
whoever was on the... Richard Gere, there
was just no way they were going to make a
Little Mermaid Movie with Opie Cunningham.
It just wasn't going to happen. I guess they
had seen The Boatniks and figured that it
was like a... It was a thing. And so I got
to go into this... I met Brian Grazer, the
producer for the first time, and it was also
one of the first times that the producer was
about my age, he was a young guy, and Ron
was, were all essentially all peers, and they
were just trying to get this thing made.
Tom Hanks: And I went in actually thinking
that I was reading for what became the John
Candy role. I had no attention or track record
or anything that would warrant me going in
to read for the lead. But I just talked with
him for a while and Brian Grazer and then
I talked to Ron and then I went home thinking
that, "Well then I guess that's it." And I
had the sides. I was prepared to read for
the role of the wacky brother, but they didn't
ask me to. So I was actually kind of bummed
out. But then Ron called me back and said,
"Listen, I'd like you to come in and read,
but I'd like you to read for the lead. Alan
Bauer, I guess that... Alan Bauer, was that
his name? Alan Bauer "Oh wow. All right, fine."
Tom Hanks: And because they were young guys,
I wasn't intimidated by them. It's not like
every other audition process felt like you
were going to the bank to ask for a loan or
something. Some old guy in the back, "Thank
you very much. No, you don't get it." But
this was, just kind of go off and goof around
and play. So I read, he videotaped me on I
guess maybe five, two or three scenes, maybe
five scenes. And it was easy and I just rattled
it off and he called me up the next day and
said, "Listen, well first of all, you got
the part. Secondly, I'd really liked this
actress, Daryl Hannah to play Madison, but
the studio is giving me some trouble. So can
you come in and do a... I'd like to do a film
test with you and her in order to submit the
job for her." And I said, "What?" All I heard
was "You got the part." And the rest was,
the head was spinning and it was that ludicrously
easy.
Richard S.: Wow. Well, we're going to play-
Tom Hanks: Please. Let's see a clip. Enough
of the Tom and Richard show.
Richard S.: Anyway, I don't think we need
to explain this clip.
Tom Hanks: I don't even know what clip it
is.
Richard S.: It we do we can do it afterwards.
Tom Hanks: All right, very good.
Tom Hanks: Which one was me? I don't...
Richard S.: See what I mean. It is, I think...
I mean, Hey, your guy who ends up with a mermaid,
it's not normal. It's a little outsider-ish.
It's a little odd. And-
Tom Hanks: A guy that has something wrong
inside, yes. Yes.
Richard S.: So that's my thesis.
Tom Hanks: Well, it's a good one.
Richard S.: Anything more to be said about
that? The work on it? John Candy?
Tom Hanks: Well, John was one of the most
miraculous human beings on the planet. Really,
that's John. The John in real life was exactly
like that, in the best of all possible ways.
He was a great instigator and an organizer.
And he was like that to everybody he met.
Perhaps to a fault. I mean, he was talking
to strangers on the street like that sometimes.
But he very big hearted guy.
Richard S.: There followed, after the hit
of Splash, there followed a period where you
did Volunteers, The Money Pit, Turner and
Hooch and whatnot. These were extremely-
Tom Hanks: No applause for those. They can't
all be hits.
Richard S.: Well I went and I hold out my
reviews and I gave you three in a row good
reviews on those movies.
Tom Hanks: Oh is that right?
Richard S.: Yeah. Cause I thought they were
funny. I thought, particularly Volunteers,
the character you played in that was hilarious.
That kind of honking wasp from-
Tom Hanks: Darien, Connecticut. Lawrence Bourne
III.
Richard S.: And then of course I always liked
dog movies.
Tom Hanks: Actually Turner and Hooch, there
was some good stuff in Turner and Hooch.
Richard S.: Damn good stuff. What I'm getting
at is that despite their relative-
Tom Hanks: Dog lovers.
Richard S.: I think these were all actually,
in commercial terms, successful movies.
Tom Hanks: Yes, they were there. This is the
weird thing. Yes they were. Which is sort
of-
Richard S.: Well, it's not weird. They're
not bad movies.
Tom Hanks: They all-
Richard S.: Didn't they do something for you?
In a certain sense I think every actor who
is going to have a substantial career needs
a period of time when it doesn't make that
much... I mean he shouldn't be in horrible
movies, but he needs a time for the public
to kind of take stock of him, to take him
in a little bit, to get past that first, "Oh
wow. He was terrific in Splash or whatever,"
and become somebody that you, what did you
say, get used to in a pleasant way. I have
a feeling that movies like that make it possible
for you to go on and do quite a different
kind of movie. And if you hadn't had those
movies, maybe that wouldn't be true.
Tom Hanks: I think it's absolutely true. At
the time it was such an educational process,
not just about how it is to make a movie,
but what you would have to go through as the
performer in that movie in order to somehow
tell the truth on any given day that you're
shooting. What was great about... The riff,
and actually it's in your programs, which
do cost a dollar a piece. I made Bachelor
Party and I made these movies almost back
to back. I had very little time in between
them. Because at that point I didn't realize
that you could say no to anything. Look, "Hey,
they're asking me, I'd better do it cause
they're going to stop asking me sooner or
later." So there was Bachelor Party and The
Man With One Red Shoe and Volunteers, and
I can remember this era of filmmaking easy
because everything was so new to me and the
images were so clear.
Tom Hanks: Volunteers, The Money Pit, Nothing
In Common. I essentially made those five movies
pretty much back to back. And in doing so
I learned how to be a filmmaker. I learned
how to drive to the soundstage or the location
every day and slowly put everything that was
honestly going on in my life behind me. So
when the time came I could stand up in front
of the camera and be charming or witty or
sad or whatever was required. And I was able
to learn how to do that without ever using
an artificial stimulus for doing it. I wasn't
tricking myself into doing that. I was actually
learning how to take the mental steps in the
actor's preparatory steps in order-
Richard S.: The kind of stuff they actually...
Had you gone to a proper drama class they
would've probably taught you how an actor
prepares. They would have taught you how to
do that and you'd never learn it on your own
driving down the 405.
Tom Hanks: Exactly. And by myself cause I
wasn't a big enough star to have a driver
yet. But once again, for all those movies,
it was an educational process for me, and
yet it was big time show business because
before my very eyes, and much to my amazement,
I had become something of a bankable movie
star for a certain type of movie in an atmosphere
that was supposedly cut throat and vicious
and incredibly dangerous. But I had no idea
because they just kept asking me to make movies.
And so I did.
Richard S.: Did you have a kind of, again,
possibly out of childhood where you were a
little bit economically disarranged, did you
feel like "This is my shot. I've got to have
it. I better take every job that comes along
and put the money in the bank and against-".
Tom Hanks: You bet. I had long philosophical
discussions with friends of mine of how what
you do is you never buy anything unless you
can pay cash. Because if you have to make
payments on it, your nut is going to improve.
And I looked at every movie as buying me...
This now buys me another three years of independence.
So when it all comes down and it stops, I'll
be able to live for three years without having
my house taken away from me. That's the way
I thought.
Richard S.: It is uncanny to me how much in
common all actor's stories are. I mean the
details are different. But the motions moving
people, at these stages of their lives. I
just finished writing a biography of quite
a different kind of movie star and this-
Tom Hanks: Michael Keaton?
Richard S.: This unnamed movie star said to
me, he said, "I didn't feel secure until I'd
done Dirty Harry." Well man, he'd been a star
for a decade. That's-
Tom Hanks: I wonder who he's talking about?
But yes, yes.
Richard S.: The point being that it takes
that long to say, "Well, maybe I'll get another
job." But was there a restiveness, because
we're going to come up now on two more movies.
But the one you shot before the more famous
of them, were you saying to yourself "I got
to do something besides these bourgeois comedies.
I've got to do something cause they're going
to get tired of this or I'm tired of it" or
whatever was going on. What was going on?
As you headed up toward our next clip, which
will be Punchline. Don't, not yet. Were you
saying, "I got to get some edgier. Got to
get something, whatever"
Tom Hanks: I was trying with every job to,
as a hedge against the future, to expand whatever
horizon, whatever spectrum I was being accepted
in. I was a light comedian. I was a leading
man in kind of romantic comedies. And what
I was always trying to do is have some aspect
of either the theme of the movie or the character,
just to bolster that a little bit, so we just
get into some other colors just so there was
something else that I could do. In Volunteers,
I was trying to do like a full-on character
with a different voice like that. In The Money
Pit, it was a huge, big budget special effects
movie.
Richard S.: Yeah. But you were also playing
a lot of wonderful kind of desperation in
that. That to me is I think where I made the
Cary Grant remark-
Tom Hanks: Oh yeah now I do recall.
Richard S.: Because it was about that kind
of fuming-
Tom Hanks: A lot of this: (Sigh)
Richard S.: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Tom Hanks: She did awfully well.
Richard S.: Used to do, and then he'd whinnying
like a horse. One of his good comic tricks.
Tom Hanks: With a movie called Nothing in
Common that Gary Marshall directed and I made
with Jackie Gleason played my dad and Eva
Marie Saint played my mom. That was truly
the first time where I actually said to the
director, "Look, I'd like to do... Let's go
all the way on this. Demand something more
of me so that this story of the father and
the son would be much more serious." That
was the first time I thought that I knew enough
about the moviemaking process to ask to be
invited to the filmmaking process with the
director and the writer saying, "No, I think
this should be different or better or this
shouldn't be here at all." But then... I'm
trying to think now, you guys-
Richard S.: I'm pushing up towards Punchline.
Tom Hanks: Punchline, then I'm trying to remember
what I did. Nothing in Common, then I made,
oh Mailman in the Desert. Every Time We Say
Goodbye and oh I think I made Dragnet there
or somewhere in there. Dragnet. Then did I
make Turner and Hooch? I can't recall.
Richard S.: Yeah I think Turner and Hooch
actually-
Tom Hanks: No, no, no, no. That was later
on. So when Punchline was around, this was
funny studio politics. I had a deal at Columbia.
They used to do these things where they would
say, "Hey, you should develop movies for us.
You're an actor, you're smart. You should
develop movies for us." And then they give
you an office and they give you a secretary
and they give you a phone that you can make
all the long distance phone calls you want
to with. And that's really why you go to the
office just to call, "Hey, I have a friend
in Hawaii I can call him." And I was supposed
to development, I didn't know how to develop
movies. I didn't have an original idea in
my head, but they wanted to give me an office.
So I took it.
Tom Hanks: Punchline was a film that was there
at Columbia that Sally Field was very interested
in. And at first, the studio said, we already
have Sally Field in this movie. We want a
Sally Field movie and a Tom Hanks movie. We
don't want a Sally Field/Tom Hanks movie.
We want two different movies so therefore
you cannot do Punchline. Then that regime
all got beheaded in the public beheading that
they have there around the Pacific Design
Center in Los Angeles, a big square, there's
a guillotine, all the agents show up and applaud.
Tom Hanks: And then David Puttnam took over
Columbia Studio for the beginning of his brief
tenure. And he and I had dinner at the Bel-Air
hotel and I was so scared. I didn't even know
where the Bel-Air hotel was then even still.
And here I was meeting a guy who's going to
be running the studio and he said, "Tom, what
do you think about your work?" And I said
to him, what I just said to you, "Well, what
I'm trying to do is I'm always trying to expand
the horizon of what's expected of me as an
actor. So that's the only way I can grow.
So I know I'm not doing comedies with a capital
C, but there's some other things in there
that I try to do different da da da da," and
he looked at me and says, "Well, that works
in theory, but I don't think you're really
doing it. I think you have to make a bolder
choice." And I said, "Well, I'd love to, but
I got to operate with what's coming down the
pike." And he said, "Well, why don't you want
to do Punchline?"
Tom Hanks: And I said, "I was told I couldn't
do Punchline." And he said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "Well, the last guys there said Sally
field movie, Tom Hanks movie, we don't want
to Sally Field/Tom Hanks movie." And David
Pottnam went like this. "That's just the kind
of thing, but I'm trying to bring a halt to."
And the next thing I was doing was I was having
a meeting with David Seltzer who wrote and
directed it and not long after then, I had
a meeting with Sally Field, who was actually
attached as one of the producers and I ended
up getting the job.
Richard S.: The scene we have here, I'll let
you maybe set it up a little bit. It's the
scene in the rain.
Tom Hanks: Oh, okay. The character of Steven
Gold is a standup comedian who is probably
the most... He is unredeemable. He is an unredeemable
human being. I always viewed him as being
that kind of refuse that washes ashore in
places like Venice, California. This is what
I said when I was having meetings, "Look,
I know guys like this." And what's heartbreaking
about them to me is that they only feel truly
alive for those moments when they're doing
their standup comedy because they get to be
despots up there. The world operates at their
own speed. They stay up as long as they want
and they make the audience laugh, provided
they're good, of course, and at that time
they feel such incredible rages of power that
it screws them up for real life. As soon as
they get off, they are not that person anymore
and they literally can't deal with life as
we know it.
Tom Hanks: That is the case with countless
standup comedians. If you do it too long,
you become a hideous human being. And I thought
that this was a guy who, at the age of 25
or 26, was well on his way to being one of
the saddest human beings on the face of the
planet. And that's the way I played him. And
in this case, he has this ridiculous love
fatuation with a woman who's much older than
him, who is married, lives in New Jersey.
And he actually thinks that, deluded by this
power of his life as a comedian, he thinks
he can convince her actually to run away with
him.
Richard S.: I think that's a great scene.
I really do. How much was that worked out?
I mean, how did you work it out? Was that
largely directorial? Was it largely you? Was
it-
Tom Hanks: It was all me.
Richard S.: It was all you, of course.
Tom Hanks: David Seltzer had said early when
we were in rehearsal, he said, "Would you
like to... I'll bring in a mime and a choreographer
and we can plan something." I said, "Get out
of here." I've seen the movie. All Right.
I'll come up with something.
Tom Hanks: And so that was what we did.
Richard S.: Really?
Tom Hanks: Yeah. Yeah.
Richard S.: That's remarkable because there's
some wonderful beats in there.
Tom Hanks: This was the most important movie
in my career, actually, Punchline was. This
was the first time that I openly said I would
like to do this. I declared my intentions
prior to taking the job and even though, the
movie... I mean, it wasn't a huge, massive
success and there's a lot of fake moments
in it as far as its examination of the world
of the standup comedian. It is the first time
I saw the movie and said, "I don't know who
that guy is." That was the first time I stopped
thinking about the specifics of what I wanted
to do and just went along with the instinctive
thrust of what I had been thinking about.
Richard S.: And yet having just said that,
I have also read I think an interview you
gave on at the time-
I have also read, I think an interview you
gave at the time that you thought there was
more of yourself in this part than there had
been in some of the other parts. Can you put
that together with what you've just said?
Tom Hanks: Yeah, because it's a thin line
between control and chaos. And when you're
dealing with the incredible personal sensations
of either acceptance or rejection from utter
strangers. If you sense, if you give into
the self-loathing that goes along with putting
yourself in that place to begin with, I mean,
what kind of pathetic human being does this?
And either makes a living at it or feels good
about himself by pursuing that?
Richard S.: Would you extend that beyond standup
comics to all persons who perform?
Tom Hanks: There's a poem about the tight
rope walker that an actor is, you know? That
every night he steps out on that little wire,
and is he going to fall? And why is the audience
there? Are they there to see him successfully
walk across the wire? Are they there on the
odd chance that he's going to fall down and
kill himself? Which is it? And I think that
for myself, as a human being, it's a constant
battle to make sure that you don't fall down.
Because once you do, man, it's very hard to
get back up there again.
Richard S.: So you think all actors, no matter
how much success they pile up in life and
all that, they can never fully relax? Can
never fully say, "Oh, well I got it made now."
Tom Hanks: I don't think-
Richard S.: They'll turn against me like mad
dogs.
Tom Hanks: None that I have come across-
Richard S.: Really?
Tom Hanks: -feel any other way. That it's
all just a matter of time.
Richard S.: It's interesting that you made
Punchline and Big back to back. Actually,
I guess Big was made after Punchline, but
Punchline came out before.
Tom Hanks: We made Punchline in the winter
and spring of '87, and that scene was actually
shot in February at 125th Street in Manhattan.
It was freezing cold, and they had rain machines
on top of it. It was miserable.
Richard S.: But Big is the, I suppose in most
people's eyes, is the antithesis of Punchline.
But Big is also, for an actor, kind of a remarkable
thing to attempt isn't it?
Tom Hanks: Well... Go ahead.
Richard S.: Well, just the notion of playing
a 13 year old. A 13 year old mind is, I think,
seems to me, a big challenge. Difficult to
do. Is it harder to do radical innocence than
it is to do radical shittiness?
Tom Hanks: It is the easiest thing in the
world, doing Big. It was the easiest. It was
the simplest yes to say, because the screenplay
was so good. I mean, it was all right there.
I got together with, with Penny Marshall when
we were actually honestly talking about doing
it, and I said, "I get this. I think I understand
this. It's about this kid." We had a discussion.
Actually, it was this moment. Penny and I
didn't know each other very well. Then we're
trying to size each other up and feel each
other out there, and is she going to really
let me go with the instincts here? Or what's
the deal? And we had a discussion about the
scenes when Josh is in the office.
Tom Hanks: Now, there had been a couple of
other movies out at the same time that had
the same kind of theme. The kid is really
a man or a man is really a kid, or something
like that. We were going to be like the fourth
movie in that whole narrow genre that came
out within five weeks of each other or something.
And more often than not, they had scenes where
the adult who was actually a kid is in an
office. And in some of these movies, the kid
was marveling that he could spin around in
the chair, and he looked down and would spin
in his chair. As in, "Oh, this chair spins.
Isn't this fun?" And we both knew that that
is such a horse shit moment. Pardon my language,
but I just heard myself say, "fuck" in the
screen.
Tom Hanks: We both knew that kids are not
going to be interested in a chair that spins,
because they've sat in chairs that spin. They're
going to be fascinated by this cool telephone.
It's got a bunch of buttons on it. That they're
going to pick up and say, "Hello, who's there?
Hello? Hello, hello?" That's what they're
going to do. And when we both realized that
we were talking about that same thrust towards
how to display the behavior and therefore
explain the character, well, then it was pretty
much a done deal.
Richard S.: The scene we have here is a scene
in which... Talking about sort of, again,
loneliness. This is the moment where he comes
to the big city.
Tom Hanks: Oh Lord, yes.
Richard S.: With his little pal. And again,
to me, it fits this notion of a person who
is trying kind of bravely, as so often happens
in a lot of your movies, trying bravely to
pretend he's with it and can handle it. And
man, he can. So here's the scene from Big.
Richard S.: Have any moments in life like
that?
Tom Hanks: Yeah, they all got worked out right
there. That day of shooting as a sad and lonely
little boy.
Richard S.: So how do you play a little boy?
If you're a grown up guy? I mean, do you just
remember? Or is he always in there for us
to tap into?
Tom Hanks: Well, we're all child deep inside,
aren't we? We're all children. I mean, there
was certainly a beginning of that, but I did
do stuff in preparation for that that was
kind of odd. I watched my own kids. My oldest
son was only, I think, he was eight at that
time. So I observed him quite a bit. And in
a cheesy kind of fashion, but there's a spirit
of play that I honestly worked on developing
prior to that, that I could do just at my
driveway playing basketball, and having the
same sort of imaginary basketball games in
my head like I did when I was eight years
old and stuff like that.
Richard S.: Were you the announcer?
Tom Hanks: I was-
Richard S.: And he strives for the board.
Tom Hanks: I was everything. I was the kid
on the team that shouldn't be playing. I was
the man who could never miss a three pointer.
I was the coach. I was the announcer, and
I was also an amazed fan all at the same time.
I did it all. And it was all by myself, you
know, literally for hours in the backyard,
just trying to develop that.
Richard S.: Again, I think a lot of actors,
maybe the first acting they do is for an audience
of one, which is themselves, because they
are kind of lonesome, and they're kind of
wandering through the fields if they're farm
kids, and there's nobody around to play with.
Or they are the new kid on the block, and
none of the kids in the new school are speaking
to them. And I think I have an impression
again from talking to actors through life
that a lot of actors begin in that way, that
kind of imagining characters for themselves.
Tom Hanks: The backyard on a sunny day.
Richard S.: Do you think there's some truth
in that?
Tom Hanks: Oh, absolutely. The backyard on
a sunny day, I distinctly remember, I mean
for hours. I'd just nail the sheet to a stick,
and it became a flag. And so suddenly I was
Johnny Tremaine, or the Little Drummer Boy,
or fighting the Battle of Gettysburg in the
bamboo field back behind our house. Or I would
tie a brick. I would stick a brick in the
back of my bathing suit and lay at the bottom
of our doughboy pool, sucking air through
a garden hose that was running up to the top
of the pool, and I was an astronaut on a space
walk. I could honestly keep myself entertained
for hours, and not break a single law.
Richard S.: Big is a movie that I think made,
and I think this happens again in many star
careers, there's the movie that makes people
notice you. And then there's the movie that
establishes you forever. I mean, "Oh, he's
really a movie star now." And it seems to
me, Big is that movie in your career.
Tom Hanks: Yeah. Yes it is.
Richard S.: That's the one where after that
there could be really no doubts. No nothing.
I mean, probably tell us on your part, no
doubts in the larger audience is mine, because
this was a presence and this was a figure.
Do you think that's true?
Tom Hanks: Well, everything that happened
that was connected to that movie was, I mean
incrementally, so much huger than anything
else that had ever happened. I mean, I was
nominated for an Academy Award, and I lost
to Dustin Hoffman that year for Rainman. But
still, the first time you get that kind of
attention and exposure for this thing that
you just did quite naturally, yeah, after
that, I was something different.
Richard S.: Did it go to your head?
Tom Hanks: You know what? It probably did
for a while, in all honesty. I won a Golden
Globe Award, you know? Because they give out
awards for, they split it between comedy and
drama or something like that. So I won Best
Performance In a Comedy. It's like I had this
trophy. And for a while, I guess I was anticipating
a parade in my honor down Sunset Boulevard
or something like that. Yes, I'm here. Can
you believe it? And when that happened, I
was actually making Turner and Hooch. When
I was nominated, it was actually during Turner
and Hooch. And yeah, I think that there was
some aspect of, "Hey, I know what I'm doing."
You know, "Hey, don't tell me. I know what
I'm doing. Yeah, come on, come on. Let's just
do it. Let's just do it. I know what I'm doing."
Tom Hanks: You get a degree of carte blanche
on that for a while, but then if you're smart,
you realize that you thought you knew what
you were doing, but it stinks to high heaven,
what you tried. And then you realize that
you don't know a thing, man. Just get out
there and please the director.
Richard S.: We're going from Big to another
Penny Marshall movie where you're playing
somebody considerably older than yourself.
Tom Hanks: So let me get this straight. We're
not going to see clips from The 'Burbs.
Richard S.: No.
Tom Hanks: No Joe Versus the Volcano?
Richard S.: I believe I have actually confessed
to you that I think Joe and Volcano is at
least two thirds of a terrific movie.
Tom Hanks: It is a brilliant movie. It is
a brilliant movie for 80 minutes. Yeah. Or
maybe 55 minutes. It is. The first two parts
of that are unlike anything I had ever seen
or have seen since.
Richard S.: And it's me... In a funny way,
that's the movie where I started thinking,
this is somebody to be reckoned with, because
that opening, the whole business is where
you're playing this actually surreal comedy.
Tom Hanks: Yeah.
Richard S.: And the whole business of, I don't
think anybody in America saw this movie except
me and you.
Tom Hanks: And Sylvia Drake of the LA Times.
Richard S.: Yeah, right.
Tom Hanks: And a few handful of folks who
chose not to watch Magnum PI, which was still
on the air at the time that we made it. So
who had the last laugh? I have to say that...
Richard S.: Talk about that. Even though we
haven't got a clip, that movie... Something
drew you to it that was different from Big
and different from-
Tom Hanks: We don't have the clip, but here's
what it was. There was a moment in that movie
where Joe Banks stands up on a raft made of
floating suitcases in the middle of the Pacific,
watches a full moon rise above the horizon,
gets down on his knees and thanks God for
his life. And then the last thing he says
is, "I never knew it was so big." And then
he falls over unconscious. That to me was
a moment to kill for as an actor in a motion
picture. It was incredibly audacious and bodacious
of John Patrick Shanley to write it and want
to turn it into a movie. And I felt as though
if you could fit a movie around this moment
in this thing, you'll have something that
is as unique as anything that's ever been
put on cellular. We came close. But that was
the reason I did that movie, for that one
scene all by itself. Everything leading up
to that and everything after that.
Richard S.: Yeah. It's a movie that also...
At least in a funny, and visually, it's the
most curious of all your movies. It's the
furthest away from conventional movie making,
I think, that you've ever gone.
Tom Hanks: Oh, yeah.
Richard S.: Just the look of the movie, that
weird, fake volcano and the raft made of stuff.
And the opening scene where Tom is employed
in a factory that makes products largely dealing
with the anus.
Tom Hanks: American Paniscope Corporation,
it's called.
Richard S.: And just the guys coming to work
in the morning-
Tom Hanks: It's very weird, man. It's very
odd.
Richard S.: -is one of the funniest, maddest
scenes I've ever seen in a movie.
Tom Hanks: There's also a scene in that where
I come out of the doctor's office after he
tells Joe Banks that he has a brain cloud,
and he's just standing there, and this lady
is walking this huge Great Dane. And I just
stop her, and I look at the dog, and I end
up hugging the dog. But it's a long shot,
and I'm just literally clinging to the life
of this dog so much. I actually thought that
was a brilliant moment too. One that I didn't
quite understand that much, but nonetheless-
Richard S.: Well, and unfortunately we can’t
show you this movie.
Tom Hanks: Unfortunately, we have no clip,
but...
Richard S.: But if you ever see it on television,
at least watch 80 minutes of it.
Tom Hanks: Pretty wacky. Yeah.
Richard S.: But League Of Their Own, in its
way. That's a wild character for you, isn't
it? This veteran, tobacco chewing, baseball
manager.
Tom Hanks: The secret of that, I thought,
once I was reunited with Penny was that he
was only 30. I was 36 when we made that movie.
It was four years ago. I was 36, and I said,
"Look, it was written as a 50 year old, washed
up, you know, thing." And when I was talking
to Penny and we were doing that feeling each
other out thing, even though now we were good
friends, I was still feeling her out. And
I said, "Well, do you think that I could play
this role the way you want me to do?" And
she said, "Yeah. I think you can do it."
Tom Hanks: And I said, "Well, because here's
the thing. You know, I'm only 36. I don't
want to come in and try to play like I'm 50."
She says, "No. You can be how old. How old
are you? You'll be how old you are." And I
said, "Because you know, that's kind of, that
raises the stakes here a little bit, because
this guy now should still be playing ball.
His best days aren't behind him. He should
be enjoying the best days of his career right
now."
Richard S.: Actually, that's kind of a brilliant
insight, because at 36 most ballplayers are
washed up.
Tom Hanks: Yes, right.
Richard S.: It was during the war, and a lot
of 36 year old players had gone-
Tom Hanks: Exactly.
Richard S.: Did go on.
Tom Hanks: Right, right. He should have been
then at the tail end, perhaps, playing out
the last season or two of what was a brilliant
career. And he had blown out his knee, now
an alcoholic, and he was now falling down
so far that he couldn't go off and fight the
war. So I actually thought that here was a
very sad figure of a person that everyone
would be able to relate to a little bit better
than just the classic, cigar chomping, fat,
50 year old guy who hates these women.
Richard S.: Okay. Here is the scene from A
League Of Their Own.
Tom Hanks: What's great about that was Bitty
Schramm, who is Evelyn, the girl that I'm
yelling at there, is such a sweet, gentle
soul. She cried in rehearsals. She cried at
the run through, the camera, she cried every
time I yelled at her. As literally, it was
such a well-written, you just couldn't go
wrong with that. It was so much fun to do.
It was. It was great.
Richard S.: And wouldn't you say, I mean,
you know, based on what you've done before,
you'd never really done anything like that.
Tom Hanks: No.
Richard S.: You played depressed. You played
a little pissed off, and you played confused
and all that. But you'd never played rage
that I can remember before that.
Tom Hanks: I had never played a man with a
history. That's what I thought, when I did
this. I had never played a man who had a past.
I played guys who were going through the defining
moment in their lives. I had never been a
character who had something go on that was
all ephemeral. It wasn't part of what the
movie was, and yet it was the core of who
the character was. So this actually is, I
think, the first time I ever played a man
in a motion picture. Up and to that point,
I played some sort of growing, extended adolescence,
Peter Pan syndrome, 1980s, kind of, I don't
want to commit to a relationship kind of guy.
And this was the first time I think I played
actually a human being of my generation.
Richard S.: Oh, this is actually true. I mean,
what he's bringing to it is the inappropriate
history of his career to something that's
sort of like it, but really isn't.
Tom Hanks: I have the slave camera here. It's
kind of like the thing that Johnny Carson
has, you know, you could always just kind
of go like that. Steve Allen.
Richard S.: The next clip we're going to play
is in a way a more conventional movie. That's
Sleepless in Seattle.
Tom Hanks: What clip is this, man? I don't
remember. Shouldn't I know? I had to.
Richard S.: It's the New year's Eve scene.
Tom Hanks: Oh, okay. Okay.
Richard S.: This movie is really a movie about
movies. Don't you think? I mean, in the sense
that it is a movie that comments on certain
conventions of-
Tom Hanks: Did you talk to Nora about this?
Richard S.: No.
Tom Hanks: Because this is exactly what she
said to me when we had, just before the Beverly
Hills Hotel was torn down for renovation or
closed up for renovation, we sat there, and
this is exactly what she said.
Richard S.: Oh, really?
Tom Hanks: This is a movie about how movies
portray us living our lives, or something
to that effect. But this was literally about
movies' effect on us and how we want our lives
to be like movies. And when they actually
do kind of resemble a movie, you know what
we say? Geez. It was just like a movie, you
know? Isn't that great?
Richard S.: I suppose the scene we're going
to play is sort of like that in a way in that
it has kind of a wish fulfilling aspect, but
it's a scene that's really about this man
who is still suffering from the loss of his
wife and the need to try and keep some kind
of a life going, and this emptiness. So let's
just look at that and talk about it a little
after.
Richard S.: That was extremely effective movie.
Tom Hanks: And it's so simple. It is a very,
very simple movie. The complexity of it is
in the juxtaposition in the screenplay, this
was one of the first times, well, not one
of the first times, but the screenplay was
so overpoweringly great. It was like, how
come nobody ever thought of this idea before?
I mean, it was so easy. Of course. Well, ding
a bang a boom. Well, that's it. And bang,
you got the movie. And yet no one had ever
cracked that safe.
Richard S.: Well, it's an interesting movie
in that the people that we usually know in
the first reel are born to come together.
They never even know each other. I mean, the
only movie that even roughly like it is that
Lelouch movie where the two people-
Tom Hanks: Oh, Lelouch.
Richard S.: Yeah. There's a movie like his
where the two people do not meet until their
suitcases are on the same plane, and they
come down. But we see their lives moving closer
and closer together.
Tom Hanks: It's the kind of storyline that
would just drive studio executives nuts.
Richard S.: Yeah.
Tom Hanks: "What? We're going to have Meg
Ryan and Tom Hanks in the same movie, and
they don't meet? Are you nuts? Come on. There's
got to be a way. You can bring it on page
60. They can meet on page 60. How about that?
Page 60, that'll work. Come on. We can't do
this. This is crazy. Everyone's going to be
sitting there saying, come on, come on, come
on, come on."
Tom Hanks: And the movie is, you know...
Richard S.: But I mean, isn't that really
the essence of romance, isn't it? It's denying
your gratification. I mean-
Tom Hanks: When you're an actor and you meet
with a director who, and Nora also did the
huge rewrite of Jeffrey Archer's script and
all we do is talk about our own parts. We
don't talk about the movie. Here's what I
think my part means, Nora. You know, she had
all this great stuff. And I said, "Well look,
this is about, no, that's all very nice and
good, Nora, but here, if I do this, I'm playing
the guy's physiological process of grieving.
That's what this guy's going through. This
is not a guy who wants to get laid or meet
the girl of his dreams. This is a guy getting
over the death of his wife. That's what this
is."
Tom Hanks: And Nora said, "Hmm, okay." And
then we fought like cats and dogs from then
on.
Richard S.: But you were right. I think we're
going to move to a picture that you said something
so quite wonderful about it in an interview
that I can't help but quote. It was Philadelphia,
and the seriousness of that movie and all
that. And you said to some interviewer prior
to the picture coming out, you said, to the
effect, "I'm going to bring my relentless
likeability to this part," and-
Tom Hanks: That nice juggernaut.
Richard S.: Yeah. The juggernaut of nice,
but I think there is something to the fact
that you were willing to commit to this movie
that made this movie possible. That is to
say, here was trustworthy Tom Hanks doing
a part that at that moment at least was radical
for a leading player to do. And I suppose
concerning some people. I know the studio.
It wasn't that long ago even. I can remember
how anxious the studio was, because that studio
came online. And yet you didn't seem to me
to have the slightest problem about committing
to it. I don't know what problems there were
about playing it.
Tom Hanks: None, about, I couldn't believe
that they were actually going to make the
movie. This is a type of film that if you
make it for $7 million, it's kind of understandable,
and you release it in a few theaters in Los
Angeles and New York and the Twin Cities and
Toronto and Chicago. And it might make half
of its money back and edit it up. But here
was a film that they were coming at, it was
a major studio, was like a $30 million movie,
and Jonathan was going to be making it. It
was a big undertaking, and the subject matter
had never been touched in such a mainstream
way. Jonathan wanted to make a movie that
dealt with homosexuality, homosexuals in America,
and AIDS in America that would in fact play
the local Cineplexes. That would be able to
stand toe to toe with mass marketing motion
pictures that star like Stallone and Schwarzenegger
and the like and draw an audience.
Tom Hanks: That's one of the reasons why he
approached me to be in it. That's one of the
reasons Bruce Springsteen does the, not the
title song, but one of the songs. That's why
it's populated with his usual cast of his
repertory company. He sent it to me after
we had chatted about it briefly and asked
what role was I interested in. And I said,
"Oh. Oh, Andy. Without question, Andy. Because
I felt even on paper that I knew who Andy
was. It didn't matter that he was gay and
I'm not. It didn't matter that he was from
Philadelphia, or he's a lawyer and I'm an
actor. I read through that, and I just saw
this is a guy who is so much like me that
I think I'm perfect to play.
Richard S.: What are your points of reference,
really, with him?
Tom Hanks: Well, he says things in there.
He says, talk, things about a sense of fair
play. He also talks about the idea of the
there is a shadow life that goes along with
it. He's not openly gay at the law firm. There
are secrets that we all sort of keep to ourselves,
not because we're ashamed of them, just because
it helps us deal with the realities of our
daily life. I have those. They're different
from Andy's, but I still have those sort of
secrets. I also liked the fact that he was
going to be, in a lot of ways, the first homosexual
man that big chunks of the audience would
know was a homosexual. Meaning that they live
in a town or they live in the city or they
live in a part of the city, and they honestly
don't think they come across gay people.
Tom Hanks: Never mind that they own their
liquor stores, and they work at the bank.
They're all over the place, but nonetheless
in their mind, they have yet to honestly meet
a gay person, because they haven't been to
the Village in New York City, or they've never
been to San Francisco. That's their mindset.
And here I was going to be perhaps the first
gay man they ever knew, that they ever met
through the movies, and I come from a great
family. I have a good job. I was a decent
human being, and I had my wife, Antonio Banderas,
and I had been together for 11 years. I liked
the fact that it was as much a piece of relatively
common Americana as I have come to represent.
Richard S.: The scene we're playing is a scene
where the character Tom plays is suing his
law firm for unlawful dismissal, because they've
discovered that he's a gay man. And this is
a scene of his testimony in court.
Tom Hanks: That courtroom was filled with
people who are suffering from AIDS. And in
the course of the movie, I think we had 153
people who was either in a scene or worked
on the film that had AIDS, and I think all
but a handful are dead now.
Richard S.: Wow. Is that... I don't want to
sound cold. To play a person chronically ill,
and ill in this particularly, vividly tragic
way, is that as an actor extraordinarily difficult?
Or is it actually not as hard as it seems?
How do you relate to, not to gayness, to illness
of that profound a nature?
Tom Hanks: It beats you up in your real life
to actually do it. I talked to so many people
who had AIDS and asked the most boldfaced
of questions, like a bad journalist, you know?
"What were you doing when you found out you
had AIDS? What were your feelings when you
got the news officially? How do you think
you got it?"
Tom Hanks: That was actually, it was such
a prescribed way of preparing for the role
that it kind of made that part of it easy.
Well, geez, there's just so much I need to
know. So it was really just conversations.
The difficult part was at the end of the day,
when... Sorry. You'd be working day in and
day out with so many people around you that
you know are kind of checking out, because
they've got it. You know? And when I'd go
home, we were staying in Philadelphia in a
condominium there in Rittenhouse Plaza. At
that time my youngest child was only two years
old. And man, to go back and here's this little
boy, and he's playing Cowboys and Indians,
you know? He's literally got a cowboy hat
on. It's like, oh, this is, this is too much
of a Hallmark moment here.
Tom Hanks: But dad has come home with his
shaved head, and he only weighs 160 pounds
now. And all he wanted to do was play Cowboys
and Indians. It put things in a perspective
that was not quite the same as, say, with
Turner and Hooch. Sorry.
Richard S.: It's okay. Forrest Gump is in
a certain way, as far from that as you can
get. Except that he is a man in his strange
way involves not just one of the crises of
our times, but as it turns out, about a half
dozen of them.
Tom Hanks: And it ends in 1985, so we've-
Richard S.: Right, so at least we cleared
some things-
Tom Hanks: We missed out on that whole OJ
thing, man.
Richard S.: Yeah. Is Forrest Gump in some
ways kin to the kid in Big?
Tom Hanks: Oh, Lord, yes.
Richard S.: And in what ways is he not kin
to him?
Tom Hanks: Well, he is kin to him in his confusion.
There's just so many, I always said this thing
about Forrest was that he can only operate
at the speed of his own common sense. He cannot
rationalize. He can only do what he is told,
or do what God says he's supposed to do, or
do the things that his mama said he should
always do. And other than that, that's his
only template for living. All the rest of
it, he has to be able to process through his
own experience of what is this moment like?
Is this moment like anything I've ever gone
through before? And if it's not, then he doesn't
know what to do, and he's stand stock still.
Or he falls back on what he's been told to
do. That's how he's kin to the boy in Big.
How he is not like the boy in Big is that
he is on his own. He doesn't get to go back
home.
Tom Hanks: And I think the reason why I think
the movie entered into so many people's personal
consciousness, the national consciousness
is another thing. That's dictated by Time
Magazine and what people thought about our
revisionist vision of the 60s and the computer
technology of how did you talk to John F.
Kennedy? But personally, I think that what
Forrest figured out how to do by the time
the movie comes to an end is combat his own
loneliness. I think the reason why the end
of the movie is so, you cry. When I was reading
the script, I cried when Mama died. I cried
when Jenny died.
Tom: I cried five times in the last 20 pages
of reading the script, because there is a
moment when there is no recourse left for
Forrest and we know that he is now going to
be alone. Because we have so much invested
in him and we are projecting so much of ourselves
on to him that loneliness becomes our loneliness
too. It is not until the end of the movie,
where he has a little boy that we realize
that it is incredibly hopeful that Forrest
has survived, therefore we have survived because
he has someone that is going to keep him engaged.
And he has a family that is going to be just
as nurturing to him as he is going to be able
to nurture it. Therefore, he beats the loneliness
rap, in that respect Josh has an easier time
because he gets to go back to his house.
Richard: Here is that scene where we see Forrest
Gump coming up to the moment where he beats
the rap.
Richard: I once did a television program about
George Cukor, famous director of the golden
age. He said that the business of movies,
and he’s talking about commercial movies,
is to penetrate the reality that lies beneath
conventions. That's particularly the task
he thought of actors meaning that however
corny a scene maybe what the actor brings
to it is the human reality, whatever his reality
is that makes that real. It makes it transcend
the sentiment of it or the fact that we may
have seen a dozen scenes like it before or
that it is a convention of some kind of movie.
I think what we look at when we look at a
career like yours is a career that has taken
all kinds of movies that are conventional
movies. Some of them have a gimmick, like
Big and Forrest Gump, but the trick is to
get to this essential human reality no matter
how outrageous the movie is. I think that's
what you do, I think that's what you are doing.
Do you think that's what you're doing?
Tom: I'll be damned, Richard.
Richard: You understand that I meant that
as a compliment?
Tom: Yes, I do. Anything that's had George
Cukor in it is going to be compliment. We
have to go and bust it. We have to tell the
truth under the most fake of circumstances.
Spencer Tracy said that. I remember hearing
that when I was in college or something, "an
actor's job is to hit the marks and tell the
truth.”
Richard: Jimmy Cagney used to say that.
Tom: They must have got together at the friars
club.
Richard: He used to say, " plant your feet
and tell the truth".
Tom: This is something that I did not learn
until I had been doing this for a while, but
once I learned it....
Richard: What did you think you were doing,
if you weren't doing that? It seems to me
that you were doing that.
Tom: I thought I was fooling people. I thought
there was a degree of smoke and mirrors that
you can escape with your life with.
Richard: When a camera is this close to you,
you thought you could get away with it?
Tom: I thought you could. I thought they bought
their tickets regardless. But there's no substitute
for it and I don't know exactly when I fell
on that. Movies are such fake enterprises,
even the scene we just saw, the circumstances
that surrounded that should have precluded
us from being able to do something that I
think is as emotionally raw as that scene
still is for me. Prior to that we had been
in Vietnam, a car ride away, shooting a scene
where Forrest crawls into a tunnel under Lieutenant
Dan's orders. I stripped off my battle fatigues,
jumped in a car, drove over to the big oak
tree and Bob Zemeckis and I were in my dressing
trailer and he was saying, "what do you think
of this?" Eric Roth had written a big long,
rambling thing that had stuff in it about
"life is a road and sometimes you sit by it
and it goes on and you don't know where it
leads to and where it comes", it was all kind
of good, but there wasn't a particular thing
in there that we thought had matched up to
a lot of the stuff that we did.
Tom: Me and Bob sat there batting stuff back
and forth about each other, about our own
lives and what's going on in Forrest Gump.
The end result was this, we came up with that
45 minutes before we went out and shot this
thing. We shot it in an hour and 15 minutes,
as the sun was going down, we only had seven
passes at the whole thing for all of our set
ups. What is up there now is verbatim what
we came up with 45 minutes prior. We had to
trust our own knowledge of what the truth
was for Forrest Gump and we then had to excise
the stuff that was smoke and mirrors and what
was fake. There was stuff in that speech that
Forrest wouldn't say.
Richard: This is near the end of the film
that you shot this.
Tom: Yes, it is.
Richard: By this time you two had lived with
this and given to Forrest Gump. I think this
is an important point about movies, a truth
comes out of the process of making a movie
with the actor and the director paying attention
to it that logically may not be the truth
that the writer, not living with it in the
same textural way couldn't approach anyway.
This is a kind of form of planting your feet
and telling, the current, existential truth
as you understand it at this point in the
process.
Tom: In theory, it can all work really great.
In practice when you're put there actually
doing the battle brick by brick, of making
the movie, you come up against moments where
you say "This can't be, this simply cannot
be. He can't talk like this and he can't know
this". That happened so many times on Forrest
Gump that we lost count. There were so many
times we were standing up in front of something
and that wouldn't work because of what Forrest
Gump went through. We would force it in, but
we were so armed with understanding and trusting
each other as far as the movie that we were
making. We believed each other when the other
person said you can't do that.
Richard: This is the end of your career as
far as I'm concerned for this evening, as
an actor. Now we're going to talk about you
as a director.
Tom Hanks: It's only one o'clock in the morning.
Richard: That thing that you do is something
that I think you have not done, as an actor,
that is to say it's an ensemble piece about
an ensemble, for peets sake. It's something
that is about the rock culture. I think rock
was more glamorous for you growing up than
the movies. You've hinted at that and it's
what was coming over the TV, The Beatles on
Ed Sullivan. Seemed to be more glamorous than
Charlton Heston, perhaps? Or more within your
range perhaps?
Tom: The Beatles meant more to us than Kirk
Douglas, no question about it.
Richard: What sent you to this? What sent
you to writing the script and then wanting
to direct it? What clicked in your head that
said it's time to look back on my boyhood
dreams? Because it wasn't your boyhood, you
didn't grow up Erie and you didn't play in
a band, as far as I know.
Tom: It was an idea that I could see in my
head very, very clearly. When the time came
that I honestly needed to be doing something
else, because I was in an unhealthful atmosphere
of touring the country promoting Forrest Gump.
Which was great in June, but by December and
January came around it became a very narcissistic
and unhealthy position to be in.
Tom: It's like you're campaigning for your
movie and you're having to ask questions like,
"is the world's revolution going to tilt if
you win a second Oscar for this?" It was just
a movie that I was proud of and that was the
only reason I was there. By the way, I wouldn't
mind having that second Oscar. I'm not going
to turn it down if they offer it to me.
Tom: You throw yourself into this pit of I'm
going to try to write this thing, I've never
written a screenplay before, but I've worked
on screenplays and with screenplays. I have
people that I trust to tell me that I have
my head up my butt, if it doesn't work very
well. The ensemble aspect of it came almost
directly from my time on the bus with the
Great Lakes Theater Festival, in which from
outward appearances it looks like everyone
loves each other and has a great time, but
as soon as you're on that bus for 15 minutes
you realize there are some people that are
not talking to one another. It's a loose confederation
of a creative alliance.
Tom: I had forever been fascinated by this
narrow frame of time of 1964, when I was the
youngest kid in the house, everyone else was
teenagers. The argument seemed to always be,
who was better, The Beatles or the next band
that appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. Is
it The Dave Clark Five, The Rolling stones,
Freddie and the Dreamers? Not too many people
voted for Freddie and the Dreamers. I was
convinced that The Dave Clark Five was way
better than The Beatles, because there were
five of them. I was only eight and I just
wanted to be different from everybody else.
Tom: The music is still very vibrant and lively
for me now, I think my musical taste seized
up right about the White Album, I don't think
I've really listened to much since. The Go-Go's
had a couple of good albums in the 80s. I
like The Pretenders and Springsteen, that
double blast of Sherry darling and the ties
that bind on the river. I like music with
a beat. There was this concept of the serendipity
of the change of drummers. Serendipity is
I bowed down before a god of serendipity,
thank god I wasn't cast in that play back
in Sacramento. Otherwise, I wouldn't be where
I am today. Thank goodness the Shakespeare
Festival's company wasn't big enough to completely
cast Taming of the Shrew. This idea of a change
of drummers, because one breaks his arm, is
that the catalyst that makes the destiny for
this band happen? To me that is just as vibrant
examination of the human condition as any
other movie that I've been able to make.
Richard: One thing I noticed about this is
that the part you wrote for yourself, or deciding
you could play, he's kind of a mean guy. Maybe
not mean, but he's awful realistic.
Tom: They don't let me put on sunglasses and
just hang in the background for a lot of movies.
I did write this thinking specifically that
I would play the man. I wanted him to smile
with his face, but not with his eyes. I wanted
him to be a mysterious man of questionable
motives, that we honestly don't know is he
a benevolent dictator or just a dictator.
Richard: I can't imagine how you could imagine
such a fellow, in show business, where we
do not encounter persons of this type.
Tom: I'm not saying it's not based on a string
of representatives who worked for me. I've
met a couple of guys like this.
Richard: It's shocking to hear things like
this.
Tom: There is a bottom line mentality that
we'll use you when you're good and we'll use
you up when you're done.
Richard: What we're going to see is the up
moment from the movie. It's the moment in
which this little band in Erie, Pennsylvania
has the first glimmering that their little
garage tune may go out into the world, further
than their garage.
Richard: I'm not going to try to top that
and I don't know why you should. It's a terrific
scene, in a really lovely movie. Probably
got your whole second career going.
Tom: It makes the hair stand up on the back
of my, neck still. And I've seen it 1800 times,
it works out okay.
Richard: I asked you this before, Spartacus
is a highly personal reference, is it not?
Tom: You bet! Spartacus was one of those movies
that you sought out and tried to see when
you were 11 years old, there was just something
about Spartacus.
Richard: Even thoughit was Kirk Douglas
Tom: He was a good looking guy in Spartacus.
Tony Curtis too.
Richard: Now you feel Spartacusian.
Tom: Yes, I do. Unfortunately, that is the
second reference to Spartacus, we had to cut
some other references to Spartacus in
the movie.
Richard: We are obliged, because it is not
two in the morning to go to some questions.
Stick a hand up somewhere, somebody.
Richard: There's one!
Speaker 3: First, of all I love Joe versus
the Volcano.
Tom: And we have no clip
Speaker 3: I am an aspiring film maker and
wanted to know what your words of advice as
a director are?
Tom: I have so few words of advice, as a director,
other than change your shoes at lunch time.
Your feet get really tired and it helps you
get through the rest of the afternoon. I don't
mean to be glib towards your answer, but I
was able to become a director from the safest
of all positions. I was a movie star, the
studio didn't want to piss off. So I got to
go and say "I want to direct this movie" and
they said "yeah, okay Tom, we'd love you to
direct the movie. We want you to have a long
and fruitful relationship with the studio,
so let's have it begin with this movie you
want to direct." There is no substitute for
perseverance, I think anytime you get an opportunity
to create something, that is honestly some
sort of visual translation of something in
your head or on a piece of paper you must
leap at that opportunity, no matter how mundane
or trivial it may be. That is where you will
develop everything that will become your style.
Tom: I can't see any hands. Anybody else?
Tom: Guy in Yankee hat, in back.
Speaker 4: Who's your favorite actor or actress?
Tom: That I've worked with? Or in life as
we know it? My favorite actor of all time
is Robert Duvall. He has been ever since I
saw a movie called The Rain People, that was
one of Coppola's early works. Then a week
or so later, I was watching To Kill a Mockingbird
and realized he was the guy playing Boo Radley
all those years. From that moment on I was
just on his creative bus, I'd still pay money
just to watch him walk across the street.
Tom: My favorite actress is Sophia Loren for
reasons that are obvious to anyone.
Tom: Yes?
Speaker 5: Any movies you wish you had done,
that you turned down?
Tom: I've turned down some really great movies
that have gone off and been very, very successful,
but I don't regret turning them down. Because
I didn't get them and they wouldn't be the
same films as they turned out to be. It used
to be, that I'd never say the movies that
I had turned down, because it was just too
painful, but now the stature of limitations
has run out on that. I actually told Phil
Alden Robinson on the phone that the book
Shoeless Joe would never be able to be turned
into film, because there's no way a movie
could capture the magic of the short story.
The movie was filmed as Shoeless Joe and released
under the title Field of Dreams, so I guess
proved at that moment to have my little head
up my little butt. I think that was when I
was still riding the wave of megalomaniacal
madness after having made Big.
Tom: Yes? There's a hand
Speaker 6: Do you think agents in Hollywood
tend to keep material from their actors their
own purposes?
Tom: Oh, no! It's almost impossible to explain
how this works, but every myth that might
have been communicated or everything that
you think is true about how agents operate
are really not true. An actor forges his own
decisions. An agent will not keep a script.
If you're at my level, I have conversations
with people all the time. They just meet me
and say, "hey, I have a script" and I have
them send it to my agent or send it to me.
And I know about it.
Tom: When you're at a lesser level and you're
trying to get work an agent will kill for
you to see a script, read a script, and like
a script, because he makes money off of that.
Agents are not nearly as powerful in getting
an actor a job as they are powerful after
the actor gets a job and they negotiate the
deal. That's really what they do, they negotiate
the deal to get you more money, to get them
more money, to drive up the cost of filmmaking,
to make it impossible to da da da. I'm being
facetious. As far as getting of the job goes,
that's almost totally in the actors hands.
Either by getting the audition or winning
the audition.
Tom: Way over there, yes?
Speaker 7: In your line of work, what was
the biggest surprise for you? Whether you
thought this was going to apply critically
to your success or vice versa you weren't
sure it was going to hit big.
Tom: It's hard to day the biggest surprise,
because there is almost always a surprise.
Very rarely do you see the movie and say "This
is it. This movie is going to make $127 million,
there's no question about it." I would say,
of late, what surprised us all very much was
Apollo 13 being as successful as it was commercially.
Simply because, everybody knew the ending.
We didn't know if they would actually be able
to withstand that foreknowledge, also the
amount of technical lingo we were throwing
at them, in lieu of fake dramatic moments
from the flight.
Tom: Yes?
Speaker 8: Who was one of the greatest directors
that you've worked with and why?
Tom: Bob Zemeckis is the possessed by the
movies that he makes. He works himself, you,
and the crew into the ground in the course
of making the movie, but it is never from
a position of not knowing what he wants. A
lot of times you'll work with directors and
you'll waste a good chunk of the day just
trying to figure out how to do it and where
to da da da. Then eventually you figure it
out and have to go back and make changes to
stuff that you did because they finally figured
it out at 11 o'clock in the morning or two
o'clock in the afternoon.
Tom: Bob Zemeckis knows exactly what he is
doing. You show up, the camera is there, the
shot is ready, you don't even have to rehearse
it sometimes. You just have to figure out
how to say the lines. There's a joke about
Bob Zemeckis movies that all you do is remove
the slates at the beginning of every scene,
just cut that out of the film and the movie
is cut, it's released like that, you put it
in post and it's done. That's how thorough
he has thought about every single one of those
shots. He is amazing and I don't know how
he does that. Penny Marshall is the direct
antithesis of that. I tell her this is movie
making by attrition, you're just trying to
wear us down. "Well I don't know what I'm
going to want so I need…"
Tom: By the time I made A League of Their
Own, I knew this. I knew how Penny works,
the girls on the team didn't. There was one
long scene in the movie, in which the girls
are talking about ways in which they can attract
more people to the games and Madonna says,
"what if my bosoms pop out of my blouse" and
everybody has a line. I was supposed to be
in that entire scene, on paper it was seven
pages long. I thought, seven pages long in
a Penny Marshall film, that will be 14 and
a half days of shooting, the same scene over
and over again. I had a line at the beginning
and a line at the end. When we were rehearsing
it for the first time, "all right ready, Tom
and girls and Action, Tom!" I came out and
said something like "it looks like a great
day for baseball", then I walked out of the
dugout. She says, "How come you..Why did you
leave?" I said, "Penny, I'm the manager I'm
taking the lineup to the umpire at home plate."
"Oh, all right."
Tom: I got out of two weeks of the most mundane
film shooting, I played ball, I read books,
I learned how to knit, I sent faxes back and
forth, I wrote a computer program, then I
showed up after 14 days of shooting to walk
in at the very end of this scene saying "all
right girls, there's dozens of people waiting
for us to play baseball." And then I sat down
in my place. I only had to do that once. There
wasn’t a hilarious story about directing
techniques.
Tom: Every one of them has a very different
way of shooting and filming, talking and communicating
to you. They're all worthwhile, it's just
a matter of what the end result is going to
be.
Tom: Yes? Way up there
Speaker 9: Now that you're a director, how
is your relationship with the cinematographers…I
was just wondering about your relationship.
Was it difficult for you to transition being
in front of the camera to being behind and
knowing how camera angles are going to effect
it?
Tom: Yeah, At the very beginning of the film
making process on That Thing You Do, I threw
myself on the mercy of Tak Fujimoto, Victor
Kempster our production designer, and Richard
Chew who was the film editor, because I didn't
know what to say to you guys. I had just been
an actor in this kind of stuff. I don't know
the language, what I'm supposed to say to
you. I don't know how to start this relationship
off. With the actors, I was prepared because
I was going to let them come in with an idea
and go from there. If you don't know your
lines, know what you want to say instead of
the lines and we'll figure it out. You can't
go wrong, you won't be punished. Anything
you wanna do, anything you wanna do.
Tom: With Tak, he would talk to be about film
stocks and I told him I didn't know anything
about film stock and it was whatever he wanted
to do. He would ask did I want a cold look
or a warm look for the movie, I told him a
cold look. He would say, "you want it to have
a cold look?" And I'd say, "No, I'd rather
it have a 
warm look, Tak."
Tom: Once we started having these inane conversations,
it would turn into something where we could
actually find common ground. For example,
the scene you just saw, is one of the first
times, and Tak and I did talk about this,
this was our shooting philosophy, this is
the first time the camera moves in an obvious
manner. I wanted the look of Erie to be a
static place, I wanted the changes in the
visual narrative to come from different cuts.
We had a lot of cuts, but they're all static.
When these kids hear their song on the radio
for the first time, that's when we lay the
dolly track and are moving down the street
at 20 miles per hour, we got a handheld camera
whipping around inside the store. That movement
will translate into the kids excitement. We
were able to have those conversations periodically
with Tak Fujimoto and myself, but more often
than not, I was just saying “boy Tak, what's
next?" I'm not going to argue with the man
and I'm also not going to tell him to do something
that is contrary to what he thinks is the
best way in order to shoot a scene. I had
ideas that he shot for me, in retrospect it's
not surprising how few of them are actually
in. The vast majority of what you see is because
Tak Fujimoto knows so much about what he's
doing.
Richard: There's one guy down here that's
been kind of patient. You have been up first.
Or speak in unison.
Speaker 10: Is the movie's gain live theater's
loss?
Tom: Towards me? I don't think so. The chops
that it requires to be a truly great stage
actor is a hugely artistic enterprise. I,
honestly, think the only thing the theater
lost was a loud actor. I would have been very,
very loud although, then I could have had
the distinction of playing myself in Big the
musical. It might have been a nice gig. I
could be closing the day after tomorrow.
Richard: I would just like to say, I spent
a lot of time watching actors in movies.
Tom: It's your job Richard!
Richard: Somebody's got to do it.
Tom: It's a pretty good gig, actually.
Richard: It's a good gig, because I love actors
and I love acting. It truly is something that
I cannot do. Theater versus movies, theaters
loss and movies gain, I think the kind of
acting that Tom does is kind of American acting.
It looks very simple and like it comes from
some place very simple. I suppose it does,
but the trick about it is always what you're
stripping away from it to get down to that
simplicity. And really truly great movie actors,
you named a few of them: Spencer Tracy, Cary
Grant, Jimmy Stewart, so forth, are in touch
with that simple, basic thing. They're also
in touch with something else that is very
important to be in touch with, which is to
be in touch with your sense of anger, rage,
and not sucking up to the audience.
Richard: One of the things as I went through
your material is, it's so easy for comedians.
They really do want to be loved by, and I
supposed comic actors want to be loved too.
One of the things I like about Tom's work
is the integrity of his playing, not only
finding the simplicity, but not particularly
asking us to love him. Maybe he just knows
he's a lovable, or even likable guy.
Richard: I think we have to end on that.
Tom: Thank you! Sorry it went so late everybody!
Thank you!
