The Tom Hanks classic he was worried nobody would care about: “We may be sowing the seeds of our own destruction”
Thanks largely to the fact he’s Tom Hanks, a fellow simply born likeable, audiences are generally very interested in whatever movie Tom Hanks is making, with the actor becoming one of the industry’s most popular and bankable stars.
He’s been acting professionally for over 40 years at this point, with his evolution from fresh-faced comedy star into ‘America’s Dad’ a masterclass in how to attain and secure longevity. He’s one of the few folks in Hollywood people will pay to see on the big screen for no other reason than his name being involved, but that confidence hasn’t always been reciprocated.
In fact, when Hanks was shooting the movie that would cement his A-list status, he was genuinely concerned that the average cinephile wouldn’t care less. Hindsight is always 20/20 for a reason, but there’s not much chance he’s ever been wider of the mark than he was when casting doubt on the commercial prospects of Forrest Gump.
Not only did it win him his second consecutive Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’, but the literary adaptation absolutely cleaned up at the ceremony, winning another five Oscars including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. Quentin Tarantino might have been more miffed about it than most, but Forrest Gump was a full-blown cultural sensation.
Even in his wildest dreams, the leading man could never have imagined the part of an endearing goof would find so much success, but he was more worried about the punters. As he explained in an interview with The New Yorker, Hanks experienced a borderline existential crisis when shooting one of the film’s most iconic scenes.
“At one point I say, ‘Hey Bob, I got a question for you’.” The patient director gave him the floor. “‘Is anybody going to care about this movie?,'” he enquired of Robert Zemeckis. “This guy sitting on a bench, in these goofy shoes, in this cuckoo suit, with a suitcase full of Curious George books? Are we doing anything here that is going to make sense to anybody?”
Despite being the filmmaker behind Romancing the Stone, the Back to the Future trilogy, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Zemeckis wasn’t too sure, either. “And Bob said, ‘It’s a minefield, Tom! It’s a goddam minefield. We may be sowing the seeds of our own destruction. Any footstep we take could be a ‘Bouncing Betty’ that’ll blow our nuts right off.”
Of course, history will always remember Hanks and Zemeckis as having their testes firmly in place when Forrest Gump hit cinemas to become one of the biggest movies of its era, making a complete and utter mockery of the star’s doubts in the first place.
It may have become the subject of some revisionist history debating its merits in the decades since, but Hanks questioning whether or not anybody would care about the movie turned out to be about as unfounded as it gets.
