The Tom Hanks movie Bruce Willis called “dead before it got out the box”
In the 1990s, Hollywood was an eclectic land of strange, high-octane blockbusters and wacky comedies, with studios allowing filmmakers almost total free reign to create whatever crazy visions they wished to conjure. The likes of Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis and Tom Hanks were considered some of the biggest stars of the era, but not every single one of their movies hit the mark with critics and audiences.
At the turn of the final decade of the 20th century, both Hanks and Willis were considered iconic Hollywood stars, having just starred in Penny Marshall’s Big and John McTiernan’s Die Hard, respectively. As such, they were paired together with Melanie Griffith, Morgan Freeman and Kim Cattrall for the 1990 drama The Bonfire of the Vanities, which was supposed to be a major Oscar contender.
Back in 1996, Willis spoke to Playboy about the movie, which told the story of a Wall Street big-shot whose life is transformed after his lover runs over a young man, revealing why he regrets taking on the movie.
“It was stillborn, dead before it ever got out of the box,” Willis told the publication, “It was another film that was reviewed before it hit the screen. The critical media didn’t want to see a movie that cast the literary world in a shady light. In the reviews, they were recasting the film. They were saying, ‘If we were doing this film, we would cast William Hurt instead of Tom Hanks,’ or whatever”.
Fuming about the critical response from publications, the Die Hard star added: “Well, if you were doing the film, then that might mean you had some fucking talent and knew how to tell a story instead of writing about what other people are trying to do. But they were right. I was miscast. I know that Tom Hanks thinks he was, too. The movie was based on a great book. But one problem with the story, when it came to the film, was that there was no one in it you could root for. In most successful movies, there’s someone to cheer on”.
Whilst it may seem quite audacious for Willis to comment on Hanks’ casting and opinion on the movie, he is certainly right about the Forrest Gump star, with the actor eventually voicing his own opinion on the failed movie.
“It’s one of the crappiest movies ever made,” Hanks reflected on the movie before adding, “Yet if I hadn’t gone through that experience, I would have lost out on something valuable…That movie was a fascinating enterprise from the word go. It was bigger than life, and for some reason, it had a huge amount of attention on it”.
Take a look at the trailer for The Bonfire of the Vanities below, at your peril.
