Tom Hanks is going on about a favorite subject: Money.
”Am I big box office? I guess so, I hope so,” he says. ”It`s good if I am, but I wouldn`t out-and-out lay claim to that. Supposedly, I am. But nothing I`ve done has really gone over the roof or entered into the national consciousness.
”The only movie that got into super-megagrosses was `Splash,` my first success,” he continues. ”My salary`s okay these days. But it`s not growing by leaps and bounds.
”Maybe if I had muscles,” he adds, a dig at Sylvester Stallone`s reputedly seismic fee for ”Rambo III.” Perhaps Hanks should make a ”Rambo” takeoff, it`s suggested.
”Yeah, now what would we call it?” he asks, pausing only a second, just enough to set up the punchline: ”How about `Crambo?` ”
Clearly, Hanks is much like the guy he so often plays: glib, slyly smart- aleck, ever amiable and bubbling with nonstop, rat-a-tat-tat fraternity blather. He would be at home at the ballpark, swilling beers around a beach campfire, playing poker all night or childishly charming a diffident career woman at a yuppie watering hole. (Too late for the latter: Hanks wed his longtime friend, actress Rita Wilson, on April 30.)
But there`s a deeper, richly subterranean side to Hanks the man and actor that Hollywood is getting closer to unearthing. His talent is more than that of a lickety-split funnyman. In the underrated ”Nothing in Common,” Hanks portrayed an aggressive, lightning-quick advertising genius with a mix of comedy and realism that rivals (and, in an odd way, almost foreshadowed) Holly Hunter`s television producer in ”Broadcast News.”
Like the film, his performance went largely unnoticed, to be followed by his more or less supporting work for Dan Aykroyd in ”Dragnet” (a hit that
”could have been funnier,” Hanks now admits). Some of Hanks` more resonant acting skills have been put to use in two new films, one coming out in the Chicago area this Friday, entitled ”Big”, and another, with Sally Field, called ”Punchline,” due this fall.
Hanks says ”Punchline” may be closer to the drama-as opposed to comedy- that people keep asking him to make. Written and directed by David Seltzer, the sensitive hand behind ”Lucas,” ”Punchline” is about a terrific comedian who`s a terrible person (Hanks) and a terrible comedian who happens to be a fine human being (Field).
”The idea is to capture the how and why of a stand-up comic, how he gets up night after night and tries to be funny, even when his life is falling apart,” Hanks says. ”It`s not exactly sad, but it`s not the most upbeat thing in the world, either.”
(The film`s opening dates have been delayed several times, causing speculation the movie is in trouble. Not so, says Hanks. ”There`s a new regime at Columbia (Pictures), and they realize that the film is the kind of thing that can`t be rushed. David just finished editing last week, but we didn`t have to reshoot anything, and that`s when a movie`s in trouble-when there`s a lot of reshooting.”)
At the moment, Hanks is more concerned about his other current movie,
”Big,” which takes off from an idea that (strangely) has fueled several comedies in the last year, most of them widely panned. Hanks plays the grown- up persona of a young man who, at 13, is magically transformed into an adult, at least in body, though mentally, he`s still the same awkward pre-adolescent he was before the change.
After terrorizing his parents, who can`t figure out what happened and only know that this strange adult is in their home, claiming to be their son, Hanks` character flees to New York, where he gets a job at a toy corporation and, given his first-hand instincts for childhood play, rises meteorically to the top.
Unlike ”Like Father, Like Son,” ”18 Again” and ”Vice Versa,”
”Big” isn`t played strictly for laughs. The film is touching, sweet and endearing, almost a Capra-esque parable of how much we lose as adults and how a childlike mentality can instruct the modern corporate world.
”In a way, it isn`t what it`s supposed to be,” Hanks says. ”On the one hand, its this summer comedy-fantasy slash romantic blah, blah, blah, big- budget thing, but it`s also small and honest and truthful.
”A lot of the movie is two people sitting in a room talking to one another, not riding around in fancy cars or jets,” he adds. ”For me, it required a lot of paring back of the stuff I`d done before and done with some success.
”This is a guy who isn`t very verbal or aggressive,” he continues.
”I`ve played guys who were verbal, aggressive, sarcastic and caustic. In this case, I had to play someone who is literally innocent.”
Sight gags are by no means missing from ”Big.” In one funny scene, Hanks attends a corporate party and, after wolfing down his character`s first ample sampling of caviar (mistaking it for blackberry jam, Hanks theorizes), he volcanically regurgitates the obnoxious-looking stuff, almost right into the face of the woman talking to him.
But Hanks also plays a young man whose grown-up body enables him to have his first real and very touching romance, with another executive of the toy company, played by Elizabeth Perkins. Perkins` character is enamored of the pure, pristine honesty of her boy-man co-worker (Hanks` role is something of a ”Starman” echo) and, in explaining why to her other, more typically adult male suitor (John Heard), she utters the theme of the movie: ”Unlike you,”
Perkins tells Heard, ”he`s a grown-up.”
”If we were to maintain our credibility with the movie, we had to tackle this issue of maturation very seriously,” Hanks says. ”We had to confront head-on our own loss of innocence, of intimacy, that comes with adulthood and the competitive nature of the world.
”As adults, we can all probably pinpoint that single moment or month or year when we became adults, the last time of our youth. When it`s gone, it`s gone, and you wish you could go back sometimes to when you were a kid and you could sleep in the back of the car while dad did the driving. None of us would ever really want to, unless maybe just for a day.
”But that, to me, is what the film is about, and it`s a tough line to walk, to do a comedy with a capital `C,` one that you hope they laugh at, but find endearing and are enriched by as well.”
Hanks came to the project after a string of others wandered in and dropped out, including Steven Spielberg, a possible director at one point, and Harrison Ford, one of several stars planned for the lead role. Eventually, Penny Marshall, known mainly as television`s Laverne, signed on to direct, her second feature. (She also directed Whoopi Goldberg in ”Jumpin` Jack Flash.”) James L. Brooks, director of ”Terms of Endearment” and ”Broadcast News,”
produced the picture.
”Penny and I are good friends, so when we started talking about the movie, it wasn`t like dealing with a stranger,” Hanks says. ”I knew from the start what she was saying wasn`t ego or fluff or diatribe.” Hanks also worked with Penny`s brother, Garry, on ”Nothing in Common,” but he says, ”They`re nothing alike. Garry was by no means preparation for Penny.”
Meanwhile, his personal life took a leap with his recent marriage, a well-planned-in-advance but quiet wedding attended by family and close friends. (Giant cutouts of the couple were on display for those wishing photographs with the bride and groom.)
Hanks and Wilson, his second wife (”I think 31 is about the right age to have been married twice, don`t you?”), moved from the valley into a home in Santa Monica, ”a great place to ride your bike and the air is fresher.”
Already the father of two children, Hanks, who studied his own kids in preparing for his ”Big” role, says he plans to have more. ”I don`t want to have 12, I don`t think people should have 12 kids anymore” he says. ”But maybe one or two more. Right now I`m just enjoying a wonderful life.”
