Tom Hanks: 'I have been in some movies that I hate'
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Last year, Tom Hanks remarked that, out of his 80-plus films, four of them are "pretty good." Now, he's going a step further by admitting there's movies in his catalog that he hates.
"O.K., let's admit this: We all have seen movies that we hate," Hanks said in a recent interview with The New Yorker editor David Remnick. "I have been in some movies that I hate. You have seen some of my movies and you hate them."
Mike Marsland/WireImage Tom Hanks promoting his recent film 'A Man Called Otto'
This New Yorker interview is the latest stop on Hanks' promotion tour for his debut novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, which was published last month. In both the novel and the interview, Hanks is trying to convey to the public the experience of making a movie — particularly the fact that you don't always know how things are going to turn out while you're working on them. To describe that feeling, Hanks employed the metaphor of "crossing the Rubicon," which often refers to passing a point of no return, as an essential part of the filmmaking process.
"The first Rubicon you cross is saying yes to the film. Your fate is sealed. You are going to be in that movie," Hanks said. "The second Rubicon is when you actually see the movie that you made. It either works and is the movie you wanted to make, or it does not work and it's not the movie you wanted to make. That has nothing to do with Rubicon No. 3, the critical reaction to it."
In this metaphor, the fourth Rubicon is the commercial performance of the movie, which reflects the initial public reception, and the fifth is how that public reception changes over time. Hanks cited That Thing You Do!, his 1997 directorial debut about a fictional one-hit wonder band, as an example of the latter.
"I loved making that movie. I loved writing it, I loved being with it. I love all the people in it," Hanks said. "When it came out, it was completely dismissed by the first wave of vox populi. It didn't do great business... now it's a cult classic. What was the difference between those two things? The answer is time."
Hanks does not name any of the movies he's made that he "hates" — and be careful guessing, because you might be wrong. When the actor was asked to name his three favorite Tom Hanks movies during an appearance on The Ringer's The Bill Simmons Podcast in 2021, he listed A League of Their Own, Cast Away, and Cloud Atlas. Though the last of those didn't perform at the box office, Hanks said that "making it was magical."
Hanks' next film is Asteroid City, his first with director Wes Anderson. Following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the star-studded film is set to hit U.S. theaters later this month.
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