The regrettable movie Tom Hanks called “the most important of this or any career”
Tom Hanks has always kept his eyes firmly fixed on the mainstream.
Opting for big blockbusters or sentimental stories designed to appeal to a wide audience, the actor subsequently secured his success, and he has since become one of the most well-known faces in all of Hollywood.
In the early years of his career, he appeared in a string of comedies that earned him his place in the industry, many of which reek with a quintessential ‘80s essence. That’s not to say they’re all bad, but the kind of ultra-American comedy that the actor frequently appeared in feels intrinsically linked to Hanks himself, laced in nostalgia and a strange kind of comfort, even if you weren’t alive back then. From The Money Pit and Splash to Big and The ‘Burbs, it’s not hard to see how Hanks quickly became a leading man.
He captivated audiences with his charms and lovable persona, and as the decade neared its end, he starred in a film that wasn’t exactly going to be the next Citizen Kane, but it’s one that proved to be “the most important movie of this or any career,” something he once told Bafta. Starring in the 1989 movie Turner and Hooch, in which he played a detective accompanied by his canine sidekick, Hanks learned some important lessons about filmmaking which shaped his approach to acting.
“The danger is you could be working with almost anybody who has no sense of humour. The editor could have no sense of humour, and the editor can be going through things like ‘Let’s cut here and let’s cut there, let’s cut there,’” he explained. After a scene was shot which involved Hanks’ Turner trying to get Hooch to go into the bath, he found that the editor drastically changed how the scene was meant to pan out.
“We shot it probably 11 times, because the dog often runs off the set. You can’t keep the dog in the moment, and we weren’t trying to do a thing where the dog’s behaviour was shaped by the editing. We said the dog will have to be a dog and I will have to react off that dog being a dog. So it was actually very hard work. So we gave it to the editor and he came back and he had turned it into a kooky bath montage theme.”
Clearly, this wasn’t what Hanks had in mind. He then realised that he had a chance to give his own input, so he turned to director Roger Spottiswoode and suggested a different idea. “I said to Roger ‘I don’t know much, but I think I know some things that are funnier than others. I don’t know how long you want this scene to be, but just find the best master, the one take, and just stay with that as long as you dare, and I think that will be better than a cutty version of it. He put it in there and it ended up working pretty good.”
The movie might not have been a super-acclaimed hit, but the actor clearly learned a lot about filmmaking from his experience. He soon went on to have a more active role in the films he starred in, evidently knowing what it takes to make a successful movie.
