“What department did you say you were in?”: the scene that defines Tom Hanks’ entire career
Mileage may vary on whether or not there’s even such a thing as the definitive Tom Hanks movie, but there’s definitely one scene that captures the essence of the performer’s past, present, and future better than any other.
Like plenty of future stars, Hanks made his feature debut in a terrible slasher flick before becoming perilously close to getting typecast as a comedy. After 1980’s He Knows You’re Alone, his next six movies were all comedies, and his first detour into drama didn’t go as planned when Every Time We Say Goodbye set a record it still holds as his lowest-grossing theatrical release ever.
He couldn’t keep pratfalling forever, but it was just as obvious that he couldn’t undergo a complete reinvention in the space of a single picture. There was a sweet spot somewhere in the middle that needed to be found, and Hanks found it and then some when he was cast as Josh Baskin in Penny Marshall’s Big.
The body swap caper had been a cinematic staple for decades. Still, beyond the fresh-faced enthusiasm Hanks brought to the more light-hearted elements of the story, the role gave him the opportunity to display pathos and emotion he’d rarely been allowed to exhibit on the big screen. Funnily enough, it earned him the first Academy Award nomination of his career and won him a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’.
It would be another half a decade before Hanks was finally cemented as a Hollywood heavyweight outside the realms of comedy, but everything audiences have come to know and love about ‘America’s Dad’ and his bulletproof public persona can be traced right back to Big. Not just the film, either, but one scene in particular.
Falling upwards in his new career, Hanks’ Josh finds an unlikely supporter in Robert Loggia’s Mr MacMillan, who’s immediately intrigued by his youthful exuberance. They walk through a toy store, shooting the breeze before the presence of a giant keyboard, which gives rise to not only one of the most iconic scenes of his career but one that perfectly captures his appeal in microcosm.
Hanks is now a decade older than Loggia was when they shot the scene, which only enhances its position as a career-defining two minutes now that he’s long since become an elder statesman of affability. Josh’s carefree attitude towards his corporate overlords is reflected through both his freewheeling sense of fun and the way it inspires his older counterpart to adopt a more childlike worldview towards his own company, so it’s functional on a narrative level.
Beyond that, though, it shows Hanks’ mastery at combining drama and comedy not just in the space of a single scene but from one line of dialogue to the next. It requires a performance that’s relatable to the adults and children in the audience, doesn’t stray from Big‘s primary remit as crowd-friendly escapism, and manages to convey an entire personality through virtually nothing but body language when he hits those keys with his feet.
Think about the greatest performances Hanks has ever given; his Academy Award-winning turns in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, his rom-com masterclasses in Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, his exuberant voice acting in the Toy Story franchise, his grounded emotional showcases in Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and The Green Mile, or his fleet-footed outings in Catch Me If You Can, The Ladykillers, and A Man Called Otto.
At various points, he’s pitched himself as broadly as possible, dialled it right back to find the human element, used little more than the merest flicker of expression to share his innermost thoughts with captive viewers, and effortlessly won over hearts and minds as a relatable, identifiable everyman who rose to the very top of the industry without sacrificing his man of the people reputation.
Big is every single one of those strands woven together over the course of 104 minutes, and each individual fibre is on full display in the piano sequence, which as a whole is embedded firmly into the fabric of not only pop culture but Hanks’ onscreen iconography.
Sure, it’s a guy dancing on a giant keyboard, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s everything Hanks wanted to be as an actor, everything he became as a superstar, and everything audiences have come to know and love about him.
