Tom Hanks names the unforgivable crimes of comedy: “That’s a fucking sin, you don’t do that”
Actors don’t have to have extensive experience playing in front of hostile or uninterested crowds on the stand-up circuit to know what makes comedy sink or swim, with Tom Hanks using the genre as his springboard to long-lasting superstardom and picking up plenty of important tips along the way.
It wasn’t until the early 1990s when he won back-to-back Academy Awards for ‘Best Actor’ in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, that the star truly broke free from his reputation as being a comedy guy, but his ability to extract laughs from both television and cinema audiences is what got him there in the first place.
After following a well-worn path by making his feature debut in a shitty slasher, Hanks quickly became known as one of his generation’s emerging comedic superstars. For the remainder of the 1980s, the only time he ventured outside of it to a significant extent ended up yielding the lowest-grossing film of his entire career.
Ron Howard’s Splash put him on the map, The Money Pit introduced him to executive producer Steven Spielberg, and Big earned him a Golden Globe win for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’ and the first Oscar nomination of his career. That’s without even mentioning Dragnet, The ‘Burbs, Turner & Hooch, Volunteers, or Nothing in Common, either, all of which kept him firmly in the comedy arena.
Even on the small screen, Hanks got to be the first person to attack Fonzie when he guest starred in Happy Days, he appeared in 37 episodes of sitcom Bosom Buddies and guested in other hit shows like The Love Boat, Taxi, and Family Ties, so his comedic expertise defined him almost exclusively for close to a decade.
Having then evolved into a respected thespian who elevates a picture by their involvement alone and can always be relied on to deliver the good onscreen, hearing Hanks illustrate the dos and don’ts of how to succeed in comedy is something every aspiring performer should pay close attention to.
The advice may be straightforward, but coming from someone like Hanks, it’s well worth taking on board. “To be funny when you’re not supposed to be funny is a crime,” he mused to Rolling Stone. “But to not be funny when you’re supposed to be? That’s a fucking sin, you don’t do that.”
Hanks couldn’t have been clearer that “no matter if it’s Chekhov, Ibsen, you just don’t do it.” A lot of professionals would wholeheartedly agree that comedy is a lot harder to pull off than drama, and for an A-lister like him, the only thing worse than unintentional hilarity is seeking to tickle the bone on purpose and missing by miles.
