When They Were Cool: Tom Hanks

In the 1990s I remember there was always some buzz about the crazy things Tom Hanks was doing to prepare for a role. Malnutrition was a necessary preparation for both Philadelphia (1993) and Cast Away (2000) (almost 90s). (Although Hanks is probably best known for this seemingly destructive attitude toward his body, I can think of few more insane feats of preparation than Christian Bale's transformation from normal Bale to sickeningly thin Bale for The Machinist in 2004 to massive and buff Bale for Batman Begins in 2005.) I'm pretty sure Hanks even spent a week in a box for a movie. (Did I dream that headline?) And Hanks was rewarded for his efforts - he was making money hand over fits and he received the Academy Award for Best Lead Actor two years in a row (Philadelphia in 1993 and Forrest Gump in 1994). Tom Hanks was working his butt off, and the payoff was big, but working hard is probably the single easiest way to lose cool points. The Fonze jumped a shark and it didn't require immersion training. He made it look easy. That's why the Fonze is cool and 90s Tom Hanks is not.

Flash back to The Money Pit (1986). (I never watched the Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore film Duplex, but the trailers gave me the uncanny feeling that it was a rip off of The Money Pit, and this infuriated me because I really like The Money Pit.) Tom Hanks plays Walter Fielding, Jr., the husband of Anna Crowley Beissart (Shelley Long). This is long before Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer), mind you (The Office). Heck, Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) haven't even been invented yet (FRIENDS). We're talking Sam (Ted Danson) and Diane (Shelley Long) days (Cheers). Hanks is hilarious and skinny (naturally skinny, not Philadelphia skinny) and he's starring beside the most important woman on TV. It is because of this movie and a few others (Bachelor Party, Big, The 'Burbs, Turner and Hooch, Joe Versus The Volcano) that Tom Hanks used to be cool.

The complication comes from the fact that Tom Hanks is cool in the 80s but he's not cool for the same reasons as people like Tom Cruise or Eddy Murphy. Tom Hanks was never the Fonze. He's not the guy who wears the leather jacket and sunglasses, the cool guy who is beyond reproach. Tom Hanks has always had to work, and even though I told you that working hard and being cool simply don't coincide, it worked for Hanks in the 80s but no longer worked for him in the 90s. Tom Hanks was the peoples' cool guy, subject to Murphy's Law, dealing with every difficulty either by taking it in stride or by spazzing out or by saying, "Screw you, world," and who couldn't relate to that? Unlike Tom Cruise, who was cool by divine mandate (leave space for Scientology joke), Tom Hanks was elected from among the people. He paved the way for normal people to be cool, and then he left our plane of existence.

Tom Hanks came from among us and we elevated him to coolness. He then gave us his power and left the world of cool. Where did he go? He studied the art of becoming someone else, and we showed him with our patronage that we believed in these transformations. And then he just disappeared (in other words, he got involved with producing movies). What do we do now? We look at Hanks's early work and learn the lesson he taught us - be yourself, and be yourself well, the best you that you can be, for that is the path to coolness.