by Karen Vera, Yahoo! Southeast Asia
There can’t be many other bigger stars than Tom Hanks. Two Oscars (won in a row), starred in movies that have earned a billion at the box office, worked with almost all the top-calibre directors in the industry and even played the creative guiding force behind projects like “Band of Brothers” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
Without a doubt, the question in everyone’s mind is: Well, what’s he like? How does it feel to be in a room with an honest-to-goodness movie star?
The “Saving Private Ryan” star held a session with the media this morning at the Capella Singapore hotel to present “Larry Crowne”, which he directed and co-stars with Julia Roberts, and the film that was holding closing night gala premiere for ScreenSingapore.
Dressed in a cotton-pique polo shirt and grey trousers, Tom Hanks wasn’t particularly tall or even strikingly handsome in person. His star quality is not a physical kind of thing, but it was undeniable once he began to talk and hold sway in a room full of journalists. He possessed the classic sheer force of personality. There at last, was the Tom Hanks, and the words he spoke is what made him seem like a STAR, larger than life.
“How are you all doing?” he said, greeting the media. “Singapore is living up to all expectations!”
Then there was his voice in which those words were delivered: easily distinct and recognizable as Tom Hanks, round and majestic, authoritative but not scary. The conference was only 30 minutes long, but dense with his fascinating language about his creative process and stories about cheeky French journalists. Not even Yahoo! was spared his from his affectionate mocking (“You’re from Yahoo!? Really? The website thing that goes on? I heard about this Internet thing. If I don’t turn on my computer then I don’t know what the heck is going on! I like that sound [does the old dial-up handshake sound]. Is that from Yahoo!? Then I get your stuff all the time!”)
He began the session by sharing the background on “Larry Crowne,” the story of a man who gets released from his job at a giant supermart, (no) thanks to the recent economic decline and the for his lack of a college degree. Larry (played by Hanks) decides to reinvent himself at middle age and go back to school.
The script was originally developed by Nia Vardolos (star of “Greek Wedding”) and was merely about “exploring a man’s reinvention” says Hanks. “We actually imagined back then: I go back to college and Julia Roberts is my teacher… and guess what happens!” (Laughs)
But in six years since Hanks got involved with project, the financial crisis of 2008 reared its head, and the movie’s story took a deeper meaning than just a funny story about the antics of old dude back in college.
“We were actually able to incorporate some of the realities: the mortgage crises, the losing one’s home… We were able to constantly expand the theme of reinvention, from the idea that it might be an interesting thing to an important thing for a guy might have to go through.”
How did he strike a balance between comedic and serious elements of the movie?
“I would say there were ways where it [changed] because we were no longer being a pure entertainment,” he told the media at the conference. “We had a number of sequences that were set at the U-Mart, before Larry got fired. They were pretty overtly comedic… But it didn’t balance with the rest of what was going on in the film.” Comedy with a “capital C”, he added, became less about “’let’s construct a beat or a joke’ to ‘let’s make sure that it comes out as a form of true behaviour, to what’s going on.’ We ended up relying on a much broader scale… It’s all still very authentic and ends up being comedic, but not an overtly silly comedy. It’s still something we can all recognize as various parts of ourselves.”
Asian audiences may relate to unemployment, but would a story of reinvention appeal as well?
“I don’t know! That’s a good question. I have no idea,” he says. “But what I think can [relate to] is the relative joy, or the excitement or the pleasure, that you can get by throwing yourself into a new atmosphere. I don’t know if reinvention or regeneration or starting all over again is something that’s built into the psyche of other societies — that seems to be what the American dream is all about — that anytime you want to, you can pack up and start all over again. I would trust cinema is such a worldwide language that it would translate to any audience, be it here or there. BUT, wouldn’t it be surprise that it’s just the opposite!? Then we have made a horrible, horrible mistake!” (Laughs)
So far though, Tom Hanks’ film career has more successes than mistakes. He reveals that his next project is fresh foray on a genre we don’t usually associate him with: science fiction.
“If it works out”, he says he will be starring in an adaptation of “Cloud Atlas” to be directed the Wachowskis of “The Matrix” fame. “I’ve never worked with anybody quite like them and what they’re expecting of the entire cast and me specifically is a mystery to me. But the desire to do what’s next is really: am I tantalized by the role, and am I how it works in the examining of that theme, and whether that theme should have a motion picture made about it or not. That’s my sole criteria now for going back to work as an actor, or I guess, as a director.”
Are there places as an actor he won’t go? No, he says. “But there’s places I won’t go as a storyteller. By and large, I make movies that I would like to see myself. So… I’m not ragging on anybody, and anyone can see any movie they like, it doesn’t matter to me. What do I know? But did you have the ‘Saw’ series over here? The horror film ‘Saw’? I’m like: ‘What the hell is this?!” What the world? Are we insane? See people slowly cut up by some guy and dismembered… I don’t get that!”
“I’m not going to bother seeing that and I’m also not going to make that movie. The thing is, if you’re making movies at a certain level, and people are paying to go see, you’re making some form of social document that’s going to last a long time, whether it’s good or bad. And I’ve made some bad movies that will last as long as the good ones will. But in order to go out and do all that work, and invest time in making it, in traveling around the world talking to thousands of Singaporean journalists all at the same time, your really have to be making something that somehow matters, and the only way it can matter if it’s about something you’re trying to find. Even if it’s a silly comedy or it’s about some science fiction thing or even it’s about superheroes, you have to land on a particular kind of square, somehow holding up the mirror to nature and examining the human condition. That’s my job, and I’m very lucky to have it. And I feel even better when we succeed in doing that, as opposed to only merely coming close.”
