The only director who wished they’d never worked with Tom Hanks: “John Lithgow would have been better”
As you’d expect from one of the industry’s most popular figures who’s navigated a legendary career with barely any scandal or controversy to speak of, there aren’t many bad words to have ever been said about Tom Hanks.
That doesn’t make him entirely unimpeachable, with Henry Winkler holding a lengthy grudge against ‘America’s Dad’ after he was fired and unceremoniously replaced as the director of Turner & Hooch 13 days into shooting, and he pointed the finger of blame squarely at the leading man.
The two-time Academy Award winner was even subjected to hate mail when it was first announced that he’d be headlining the cast of Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, and even back in the early 1990s, the notion of the public being so angry at Hanks that they’d write him angry letters beggars belief.
He also ruined Connor Ratliff’s confidence and aspiring acting career in an instant when he waved off his audition for Band of Brothers by informing him that he had “dead eyes,” but Ratliff did at least get a podcast out of it two decades later, where Hanks served as the guest of honour and atoned for his sins.
Basically, as much as the average filmgoer believes the sun is completely capable of shining directly out of his arse, they’re not too far wrong. However, it is at least fitting that the one movie Hanks has singled out as “one of the crappiest ever made” was directed by someone who also knew it was shite, and admitted that the Forrest Gump favourite should have never been cast in the first place.
“The initial concept of it was incorrect; if you’re going to do The Bonfire of the Vanities, you would have to make it a lot darker and more cynical,” Brian De Palma conceded. “But because it was such an expensive movie, we tried to humanise the Sherman McCoy character; a very unlikeable character, much like the character in The Magnificent Ambersons.”
Anyone who’s seen De Palma’s infamous folly will know that Hanks is blatantly miscast from the second he appears onscreen, and you could say that about the director, too. The filmmaker seemed like an odd fit for the source material, and his leading man was equally ill-suited to their role. Again, though, you could say that about almost everyone involved, from Bruce Willis to Melanie Griffith and Morgan Freeman.
“We could have done that if we’d been making a low-budget movie,” De Palma elucidated, highlighting the losing battle he always knew he was fighting. “But this was a studio movie with Tom Hanks in it. I think John Lithgow would have been a better choice for Sherman McCoy, because he would have got the blue-blood arrogance of the character.”
Obviously, when you’re making a star-studded studio picture that costs almost $50 million and goes into production in early 1990, you’re not going to cast John Lithgow if you can have Tom Hanks, no offence. To mount a minor defence, he was just one of many issues with The Bonfire of the Vanities, and De Palma swapping out his lead wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
