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Hanks? No ThanksTom should never win another Oscar.

By Erik Lundegaard
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2001, at 3:00 AM ET
Tom Hanks

On Oscar night I'll have my rooting interests—Crouching Tiger, Ang Lee, Laura Linney, Benicio Del Toro—but, as with last year's World Series, I'll mostly be rooting against. In baseball I'm ABY (Anybody but the Yankees), and when it comes to this year's Academy Awards, I'm ABH (Anybody but Hanks).

I can already hear the complaints. How can you root against Tom Hanks? He's such a nice guy! And he was so good in that movie. Being alone on that island and talking to that volleyball and losing all that weight? Have you ever tried to lose weight? It's tough! That's good acting!

First—and less important—Hanks wasn't really right for Cast Away. He makes a very good light comedian, a very good everyman, but in straight dramas he tends to play slightly sad men with little emotional range. The essence of Forrest Gump, remember, was a rock-solid simplicity that never changed; the essence of Capt. John Miller in Saving Private Ryan was an impenetrability that his troops constantly wondered over. Chuck Noland cannot be so simple or impenetrable. Cast Away is a brave movie because for 45 minutes it discards one of the main precepts of drama: the interaction between two characters. It's just Noland and nature, or more accurately, Noland and Noland—the tearing away of the social Noland revealing the bare, existential Noland. Hanks can't pull this off. He's great as the social Noland ("I have created fire!") but can't come near to portraying the depths of human aloneness necessary for the existential Noland. Shouldn't he have gone a little crazier on the island? Started talking to God? Believed himself to be God? Instead, he simply becomes stupefied. He's just Forrest Gump sitting on a park bench with no one to talk to.

So what, right? The Academy is famous for rewarding mediocre performances.

Unfortunately, we're on the verge of an unprecedented moment here. Tom Hanks already has two Best Actor statuettes, and no actor has ever won three. None. Not Marlon Brando (two), Spencer Tracy (two), Jimmy Stewart (one), or Henry Fonda (one—as he lay at death's door). Not Robert De Niro (one) or Jack Nicholson (two). A third Best Actor statuette is sort of like a third presidential term before FDR: uncharted territory.

So if he wins for Cast Away, the Academy will in essence be saying that Tom Hanks, the Turner & Hooch guy, is—in terms of statuette count anyway—the greatest actor in the history of American film. It would be as if Calvin Coolidge had been our only third-term president.

At least the Academy has shown a decided aversion to awarding that third Best Actor statuette. Fredric March, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, even Tom Hanks (for Saving Private Ryan) were all nominated once after picking up Best Actor statuette No. 2; all went home alone. Hell, Spencer Tracy was nominated six times after winning his second award and never managed to snag the third.

Yet. Hanks is well-liked, he is almost all of Cast Away, and—worse—he alters his body radically during the course of the film, which members of the Academy generally confuse with good acting.

So what can be done to prevent this tragedy? Well, if you know a member of the Academy, start talking up Pollock. Wasn't Ed Harris amazing? Wow! You don't see performances like that often. (If they ask, quickly dismiss Russell Crowe, Geoffrey Rush, and Javier Bardem; we don't need to split the anti-Hanks vote.) Then, for good measure, invite them over for a mini-Tom Hanks film festival. Say, Bachelor Party, The Money Pit, and Volunteers. I'd throw in Bonfire of the Vanities or You've Got Mail, but cruelty has its limits.

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Erik Lundegaard has written for the New York Times, the Believer, and MSNBC.
Tom Hanks by Brad Rickerby/Reuters.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:


[Notes from the Fray Editor: "If he can save the producer of Cast Away the entire cost of a cast, save himself, and still sell tickets, then an Oscar might be warranted for that" says David W. Rochlin. In which case, says Phillip Johnston, here, "I wonder if Tom will at least thank Wilson." And we like Daniel Simon's idea that a sympathetic character has an advantage (Hannibal next year anyone?).

The Hanks oeuvre came under considerable scrutiny. Bachelor Party is one of the greatest movies of all time: at least three readers think so. But if you're looking for bad Hanks movies how could you leave out Joe Versus the Volcano? No, that's a good movie… (one reader for each view). Oh, and there were hundreds of other posts that said "How could you be so mean about that nice Tom Hanks?"]


Yes. We understand you thought the performance was mediocre. We understand you don't think he deserves a third Oscar. But how can you stoop so low as to post the worst Hanks pic you can find? Sheesh! Some people have no standards.

--Vanessa Kimmel

(To reply, click here.)


If Hanks really was arguably the best actor in a film last year, then why not give him the award? A major reason that the Oscars are so meaningless is that the awards often don't go to the best in a category; past history, politics, and sentimentality all too often influence a decision which should be based solely on the content of the past year's films. I'm sorry that great actors in the past may have gotten stiffed by the Academy's reluctance to give anyone a third award, but surely any movement to give the best actor award to the person who was thought to actually be the best actor that year is a step forward for the integrity of the Oscars.

I didn't see Cast Away, but I thought Geoffrey Rush in Quills was phenomenal. And I think Rush is at an unfair disadvantage because he did a magnificent job playing a distasteful character, while Hanks s sympathetic character is sure to garner more support from Academy voters regardless of the actual quality of his performance

--Daniel Simon

(To reply, click here.)


Let's face up to a few things here. An Oscar vote is more than a tribute to a single performance in a single film. As Oscar history has shown us, Oscars can be used to:
(a) Pay tribute to an actor for his or her long and wonderful film career
(b) acknowledge a "little" film for its overall merits
(c) Pay off an actor who has been snubbed or overlooked many years in the past (called "the Bonnie Raitt factor")

When a film wins at the Academy Awards, that translates into money. People go and see the film, if they haven't already. My concern, therefore, is that a win for Hanks will promote a descent performance in a very sub-par film. Is Cast Away the quality of feature we want Hollywood to offer us? Personally, I found the post-island portion of the film to be extremely poorly written, with much plaintive soap opera dialogue and emotionally hollow moments.

Why don't we throw the wealth around a little this year? A vote for Rush or Harris might draw attention to small, finely crafted pictures that could really use the bucks. It could send a nice little message back to screenwriters: Give us the good stuff.

--Bigskyjeffrey

(To reply, click here.)

(2/22)

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