Tom Hanks'' Career From Bonfire of the Vanities to Saving Private Ryan

灿成

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, Tom Hanks, up for another academy award and that puts us in an encore mood. Highlights of our interviews with this extraordinary performer, next on LARRY KING WEEKEND.
　　
　　Thanks for joining us. The 73rd Annual Academy Award nominations were announced this week, and a very familiar name was on the best actor list. Tom Hanks got the nod for his remarkable performance in "Castaway." Talk about giving your all for a part, he took of 40 pounds to look like a guy who'd been stuck on an island for nearly four years.
　　
　　We sat down with Tom Hanks late in 1990. His focus back then, "The Bonfire of the Vanities," based on the huge best-seller by Tom Wolfe. I asked him whether audiences should look at the film as the book or as something that stood on its own.
　　
　　TOM HANKS, ACTOR: You must look at it as the film version of "The Bonfire of the Vanities" for a very simple reason. And that is the overpowering, the awesome star of the novel was Mr. Wolfe's prose. The way he wrote those paragraphs that always seemed to end in exclamation points. The way he could, he could unfold his characters for you by describing the type of wallpaper that they had in their foyers. This is, this is what swept you into not only "The Bonfire of the Vanities," but all of the stuff that he's written.
　　
　　KING: What is it like the first day people like yourself and Willis and Griffith and the director with the strength and persona and reputation of DePalma, when -- that fascinates me. When all of you get together that first time, what is that like? Is that -- does the symmetry begin right away?
　　
　　HANKS: I think we all end up looking for some guidance in some way. We all have preconceived notions about each other, if we don't know each other already. We already have, yeah, there is that bizarre confluence of admiration for each others talents, envy for each others successes, jealousy for each others abilities. And when it comes down to it, we just kind of hem and haw and make notes in our script and hope that Brian is going to talk and tell us what to do. I don't know how many times Brian came up to me and said, "Look, Tom, this has to be this. We have to have this in this moment, otherwise all the rest of the narrative is going to implode." He is incredible. So focused is Brian that it's not that he doesn't want to say hello to you, or good morning, it's that in his mind he's already jumped so far ahead of that he just glosses over. So ...
　　
　　KING: Now what is that like, what's that like for you?
　　
　　HANKS: Well, after awhile you get used to it. You figure out what makes the guy tick and you realize this is how he works, and you go ahead and make the movie. But initially, I stuck my face in his in the morning and said, "Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Mr. DePalma." And he would laugh and then realize that I was making a comment on the fact that he does not do that, which is quite all right.
　　
　　KING: Why is it difficult for so many actors to handle comedy?
　　
　　HANKS: Very simply, the world is broken up into two very distinctive groups. The people that make people laugh and the people who laugh at the people who make people laugh. I think that being funny is something that you are born with, cursed with, you make the call, but it's either something that is in your chromosomes and is not. And, but there is a consensus that somehow comedy can be crafted by a committee or you can take a film and bust it apart and put it all back together and it will be very funny, which can happen on, as much as lightening strikes twice.
　　
　　KING: Does it come easily to you? Is that correct?
　　
　　HANKS: I would have to say that over the course of my goofy existence that yeah, yeah, I have either been born with the gene or cursed with it, depending.
　　
　　KING: What was it like to work with Jackie?
　　
　　HANKS: It was a great honor, and I knew it at the time. I had to take stock of myself and steel myself for going to work everyday by saying, "I am not going to make a fool of myself in front of Mr. Gleason today. I'm going to treat him as a peer. I'm going to give him the respect that I would give any other fellow actor. And I will stand up to him, toe-to-toe, and we will shoot the scene as we see fit and as we rehearsed it." And, miracle of miracles, I was actually able to do that.
　　
　　But, at the time I realized that I was, I was going to be working with something other than a show-biz legend. Something other than an icon. Something other. I was working with, like, the Pope of entertainment. That's pretty much the way I viewed him.
　　
　　KING: Can you explain, and maybe it's hard because you're so involved, how that film got bad reviews?
　　
　　HANKS: Well, I think because people saddled us with a label of ambiguity. They said that we didn't know what we wanted to be. Did we want to be funny or did we want to be serious? Was this a comedy that we were selling to the American public or was it a drama? People, there were some reviewers that could not get past the fact that, yes, we were sliding things all over the emotional spectrum there. KING: People would tell me that when they worked with him, he improved you because Jackie understood not only the scene, but everything about the scene. He understood what you had to do as much as he understood what he had to do.
　　
　　HANKS: You know, I think that's the phenomenon that was Jackie Gleason. That, was just able to come, I think, to the forefront, almost, from a philosophical point of view, because so much of his work existed still. We could go back and look at it. "The Honeymooners" were still on every night at 11:00, so you could see that aspect of it. But it was very simple to go back and look at the films that he made, that -- I mean, this guy was in "Requiem for a Heavyweight" for crying out-loud. Something that you might not get the host of a sketch comedy series on television now. I don't think you'd see that opportunity anywhere.
　　
　　I think that he had instincts that were as pure as anybody who has every stood up on a stage or in front of a camera. I think it was just, he was truly, he was one of a kind.
　　
　　KING: I think Tom Hanks qualifies as one of a kind, too. And we've got much more of him ahead. When we return, batter up for "A League of There Own."
　　
　　Our next conversation with Tom Hanks was in the summer of '92. He joined us from Seattle and my first question, what was he doing in Washington state?
　　
　　HANKS: I'm about to start work on yet another opus that I will add to my film cannon.
　　
　　KING: Another opus? What is this one, Thomas?
　　
　　HANKS: This will be called "Sleepless in Seattle," Larry, "Sleepless in Seattle", directed by Nora Ephron and I'm reunited with a bunch of old friends. Meg Ryan, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Pullman.
　　
　　KING: And here you are, still out talking about a movie -- is it hard to talk about something that's already done and you're looking ahead to another thing?
　　
　　HANKS: It's hard to talk about it for as long as I've been talking about it. I have been holding America hostage, it seems, for an awfully long time.
　　
　　KING: That's right. Why are you doing so much for this film?
　　
　　HANKS: Well, mostly because I really like the movie and I really liked the time that I had on it and, but, in all honesty it's because the stakes are so high in the industry unlike, say, the other times. This summer is no exception.
　　
　　KING: So, in other words, this has got to weld it's way in here, between the "Batmans" and the "Patriot Games" and all that's going on?
　　
　　HANKS: Something happens to, something happens in America during the summertime in which the average citizen is subject to an endless barrage about every single movie that comes out. The marketplace is extremely crowded, so you have to scream extremely loud so that your movie will get some degree of attention.
　　
　　KING: Now, this has gotten, you will admit, wonderful attention, pretty good reviews. July 4th weekend, baseball, you, Madonna. By the roll of the dice, this should make it.
　　
　　HANKS: Well, there's no substitute for having a good movie. If we have a good story and we have told it in a good fashion, the audience will react. You can't fake them out; if it's no good, they'll find out very quick.
　　
　　KING: For sports, for baseball movies to make it, it's got to really click, though, right? I mean, although we've had a string of baseball movies do pretty well, normally, sports movies don't make it, right?
　　
　　HANKS: I think if you're actually making a movie about the, that is specifically about the dynamics of the sport of baseball, it's too diffuse a subject matter. If you've done, like Kevin Costner now has done twice, he's two for two, have a movie that is just using the shape and the ritual of, and the personality of baseball, but you're still talking about one of the seven great stories of literature, which all stories have to be, all movies have to be, well, then you have a chance to sort of eclipse the fact that it is actually about this very convoluted game that is usually summed up in something as diffuse as what is the infield fly rule. So ...
　　
　　KING: Was it fun to do?
　　
　　HANKS: Let me tell you something, sir. There are very few ...
　　
　　KING: Sir?
　　
　　HANKS: Sir. There are very few men in this industry that will not do one of four stories. Everybody wants to play an army man. Everybody wants to play a cowboy. I would also like to play any sort of astronaut. But a baseball player, to be able to go, day in and day out, and put on those flannels and grab that mitt and walk out onto the mesa verde and actually take part in the worship at the temple Americanas (ph), well, yes. This was a job that was a paid fantasy vacation.
　　
　　KING: I tell you, sir, you explained that delightfully.
　　
　　Madonna. She comes in for so much attention. Forget that part. What is she like as an actress? What's she like to work with?
　　
　　HANKS: Well, we -- for somebody that is a global pop icon, like Madonna is, she is actually pretty down to earth. She just came in, no entourage, had her trailer, put on her wig, went out and did the job. She was -- I can't say that working with Madonna was like working with an average Joe, but she certainly is as professional as anybody and was a member of the bus and a member of the dugout and a member of the team, just like all of us. KING: Tom, selection of parts. Is that an aspect of your business that's the hardest? What you choose to do?
　　
　　HANKS: I think, yeah. I think there's an undue amount of pressure because the, because the risks are so huge. However, boy, if you don't have an instinctual connection with the part, if you don't have some sort of organic piece of yourself that is also there on the page and springs forth, then you're going to be making a mistake. And I think it's very easy to fall into the, well, I should do this kind of a role, I should do that kind of a role, I should be playing much more to my strengths.
　　
　　KING: Can you give me a Tom Hanks rule-of-thumb when he looks at a script?
　　
　　HANKS: You have to have a theme. I guess I still think of it like I did, you know, reading books and writing papers in high school. What is the theme of this piece? What is it saying about the human condition, first, the American condition, second, and my condition, third? I always look for that. Then after that, it's the other stuff is like, who else am I going to have an opportunity to work for? What is it that I get to do that I've done well before? What is it I get to do in this script that I've never been able to do before. Then you get off into that.
　　
　　KING: Do you prefer comedy?
　　
　　HANKS: I think, I think comedy is acting with a gun to your head all the time. I think drama, for the sake of drama, usually closes on Saturday. I think that unfunny comedy, a comedy that isn't funny, closes on Friday unfortunately. But a comedy that actually tells a good story and is funny and delivers seven, eight, nine, ten bon-a- fide belly yucks through the course of it will play the entire summer, Larry.
　　
　　KING: "A League of Their Own" was a hit, of course, but there were much bigger triumphs to come. More with Tom Hanks after this.
　　
　　HANKS joined us again in January of 1994. After establishing himself as a funny yet sensitive leading man, he'd done a stunning dramatic turn as a gay man dying of AIDS. I asked him how the role in "Philadelphia" had come to him.
　　
　　HANKS: I met Jonathan Demme when I was on the press barrage for the baseball movie, "A League of Their Own," I guess about two years ago. And I was just there because I was kind of told to go, go say howdy-do. I'd never met the man and didn't really know him, but we chatted for a bit and he told me about this script that was untitled and still very much in the working stages. And we talked about it briefly. And he asked me if I would read it when I, when it was done. And he did that, when I was in Seattle working up there, I took one read of it. And we chatted for a bit, and that was that.
　　
　　KING: Did you like it right away?
　　
　　HANKS: I thought that it had accomplished an awful lot for the subject matter. A movie that I know that there were a number of other things out there that were going to try to be what, like it's a sweepstakes, in order to be the first big budget mainstream Hollywood motion picture that dealt with this aspect of our American society.
　　
　　I thought that it had a number of paths of accessibility so that the unrelenting tragedy that we all know that the story has in it is going to somehow have some degree of surprise in it for the audience.
　　
　　KING: It also has what we love. A trial.
　　
　　HANKS: Well, yes it does. But I think it has, it's not like Rocky in a courtroom, and it's not the most, you know, it's not a perfectly choreographed sort of legal battle, because they never are.
　　
　　KING: Did you question, can I do this?
　　
　　HANKS: No. I felt from the very first, beginning, that I had an awful lot in common with the character of Andrew Beckett. I thought that he was like me in so many aspects of my past and so many aspects of the way I look at life now. The fact that he was a gay man who was suffering from a terminal disease was, you know, certainly that was in there, but I didn't see that as a massive, you know, obstacle.
　　
　　KING: You are not a gay man suffering from a terminal disease. How do you put yourself into that?
　　
　　HANKS: I thought that I was as educated and enlightened a heterosexual white boy as you were ever going to get. But in the course of talking to doctors about the very specific science that's involved, but talking to an awful lot of gay men who have, who are, who have AIDS. And finding out the vast scope of who they are, where they came from, why they were so willing to talk to me in the first place, was almost, I almost felt as though I was a mercenary. I felt as though I was an unfair, sort of, a privy inspector to very, not just intimate aspects of their lives, but, I mean, literally the part and parcel of their life and who they are. Questions about their sexuality. Questions about, you know, their senses of security, and also about their health. They opened themselves up in ways that I honestly thought I was going to get slapped and thrown out of the room just at any given moment.
　　
　　KING: The makeup process.
　　
　　HANKS: Yeah.
　　
　　KING: (INAUDIBLE) every day?
　　
　　HANKS: Carl Fullerton (ph) and Alan Dengerio (ph). Yes. They, it was protracted, yeah. And all based on, you know, strict research and, once again, a number of men, some of whom have since passed away, who opened themselves up and, in incredibly unselfish ways, to literally, to show us what was happening.
　　
　　KING: I gather, Tom, this movie taught you a lot?
　　
　　HANKS: I, boy that's really quite an understatement. Like I said, I thought I was as hip and enlightened a man as you'd find average on the street. But, this is the thing, actually, that I think this movie and what the script gave me when I read it is that I have never been very, very close to someone who's died of AIDS. I've known people, people in my family, I've lost a cousin, I wasn't very close to him. I haven't really witnessed it. What I thought that this movie would give people who have never had it was the sense of a loss, of someone that they loved and cared for, to AIDS. That's a great equalizer, I think. And having been in the movie, it's a granite experience that because the country is going through and the society is in the place that it is, it's tantamount to something very, very, very, very, big.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   囧次元动漫  https://www.9ciyuan.com/