Tom Hanks launched into a playful tirade on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast in which he took listeners through the long and winding road that is a movie’s reception. At one point, the two-time Oscar winner humorously referred to movie critics as “cocksuckers” as it’s ultimately time that is the decider of a movie’s value and not the reviewers. Case in point: Hanks’ 1996 directorial effort “That Thing You Do!,” which was dismissed by critics upon release before time turned into a beloved cult classic.
“All of this stuff lives. Now what has happened is that time has become one of the metrics for how these things matter, right?” Hanks said about a movie’s reputation. “Back in the day it was just a fist fight. It was every movie you had coming out, are you going to make the playoffs or not? Guess what? No, kid, you ain’t going nowhere. Or, you got a shot.”
“It used to be you had these Rubicons that you crossed,” the actor explained. “First of all, do you love it or not? That’s the first thing. I read this [script] and I love it. The next Rubicon you cross is when the movie is completely done a year and a half later and you see it for the first time, and you might like it. It doesn’t matter if it works or not. You look at it and say, ‘Hey, I think we acquitted ourselves pretty good.’ That’s Rubicon No. 2.”
“Then the critics weigh in, that’s Rubicon No. 3, and that’s always up or down: ‘We hate it, we like it. This is the worst thing…Oh hey, Tom, I saw you in a movie. It was cute.’ That’s when you ask the wife, ‘Hey, honey, could you take the revolver out of the glove box and hide it somewhere, because I think…”
After the critics comes the box office, and “then a ton of time goes by when none of that stuff matters anymore,” Hanks said. Time ultimately trumps whatever critics had to say about the film.
“The movie just exists exactly as it is outside of loser or winner status or thumbs up, thumbs down,” Hanks continued. “And that’s when this stuff comes around, where it’s like that this thing that didn’t work back then kind of does work now, or just the opposite, a thing that was huge back then is a museum piece and doesn’t really speak to anything.”
O’Brien then brought up “That Thing You Do!,” to which Hanks responded: “Let me tell you something about these cocksuckers who write about movies. Can I say that?”
Hanks remembered a critic who originally dissed “That Thing You Do!” by writing: “Tom Hanks has to stop hanging around with veterans of TV, because this is just like the shot on TV and it’s not much of anything.” As the decades passed and the film became a cult classic, the same critic weighed in and loved the movie. “They said, ‘All you need is 20 years between now and then, and it ends up speaking some words,’” the actor remembered.
“But that’s the thing we all signed up for,” Hanks concluded. “That’s the carnival, that’s the contest. I got faith in that. That’s okay.”
Hanks has been making the press rounds in support of his new movie “Here,” which reunites him with “Forrest Gump” director Robert Zemeckis and co-star Robin Wright. Listen to Hanks’ full interview on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast here.
