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Dudes Chatting — A Tom Hanks symposium: After a cold open in which Sonny airs his real-life grudge against Anthony Weiner (who mocked his name at a congressional baseball practice, sparking years of imagined "revenge"), the guys mount a career-spanning appraisal of Tom Hanks. JVL maps the distinct phases — early comedy (Splash, Big, Turner & Hooch), a failed first pivot to drama (Bonfire of the Vanities), and the 1993-onward "Oscar-bait streak" (Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan) that he finds "stultifying," preferring the looser Catch Me If You Can. Sonny defends the serious stretch and cops to loving Forrest Gump while conceding every criticism of it; Vic favors ensemble Hanks and reminisces about Bosom Buddies, That Thing You Do!, and Hanks's early TV. Two running debates: whether Hanks has ever made an action movie (they can't find one — Road to Perdition gets ruled a thriller), and dream-casting him as a straight Nick Fury or a young Commissioner Gordon. Also touches Box Office Mojo's cumulative-gross list (Hanks #3, behind Harrison Ford and Samuel L. Jackson) and the Family Ties "very special episode" with Hanks as an alcoholic uncle. Closes with the show's recurring Corrections bit (JVL owns his "Star Wars Troopers" slip from ep. 1; a listener flags the omission of L.A. Confidential) and Vic's trademark trivia question that he doesn't know the answer to.
Reviews: Inferno (Sonny) — the third Ron Howard/Dan Brown film is "not a very good movie," twisty in predictable ways and "talk, talk, talk"; even Tom Hanks "cannot save it," though Irrfan Khan is terrific.
Box Office: Inferno imploded so badly it was out-grossed by the second weekend of the new Madea movie.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00This week, on a very special episode of The Weekly Substandard, can Tom Hanks save Inferno? Which is better, serious Oscar contending, funny goofy, or rom-com Tom Hanks? Also, has Tom Hanks really never done an action movie? Meanwhile, Jonathan admits he hates the smell of bourbon. I throw out trivia questions, but do I have the answers? And Sonny Bunch gets Wiener off his chest. I bet that's a relief. All on this week's episode of The Weekly Substandard.
Guest00:00:30Are you crying? Rogers Hornsby was my manager, and he called me a talking pie about pizza. And that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game. And did I cry? No, no. No! No! And you know why? No. Because there's no crying in baseball. There's no crying in baseball! No crying! Wilson! Wilson! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!
?00:01:06Wilson! Wilson!
Vic00:01:10And they said it wouldn't last. Welcome back to The Weekly Substandard, a podcast on movies and pop culture for nerds like us. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan Last and Sonny Bunch, if that's his real name. I say this because before we get into our symposium on the great Tom Hanks, I think, Sonny, there's something you wanted to get off your chest.
Sonny00:01:32Well, now that Anthony Weiner's back in the news... By the way, everyone who hasn't seen the documentary Weiner should go out and stream it right now. It's fantastic. It's the best documentary about politics that I've seen in some time. But the reason...
Guest00:01:47You guys are doing this again? Oh my god, I told you. Oh, I gotta go. This is terrible. This is unbelievable. This is ruining the brand! The Weekly Standard!
Vic00:01:57Sorry, we don't know who that was who just said that.
Sonny00:02:00I thought that we were keeping all the crazy people out of the podcast booth.
JVL00:02:04The great leader has promised Vic and I can have 30 minutes to clean out our desks after we're done today.
Vic00:02:11Anyway, so before we were so rudely interrupted, as you were saying...
Sonny00:02:14So, when I was an intern slash year-long fellow at the Roll Call newspaper, which is a Capitol Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C., one of the first big exciting things I got to do was go cover the congressional baseball game. Now, before the congressional baseball game, you have the congressional baseball practices where the Democrats and the Republicans get together on local fields and they go out and they hit fungo bats or whatever you do, take grounders, pop flies. And so I go out there to cover it, you know, get some color, got to get some color. That's what the young kids do, they get the color. And I go up to all the, you know, congressmen who are out there, I'm covering the democratic practice. And, you know, I say hi, you know, I'm with Roll Call. Let's tell me about baseball and how much you love it and how great America is, because this is journalism. And I went up to Representative Anthony Weiner from New York. I said, hi, Representative Weiner, I'm Sonny Bunch with the Roll Call newspaper. And he just kind of stops in his tracks and he looks at me and he says, Sonny Bunch? It's a ridiculous name. Was he laughing? No, he's like totally stone-faced and kind of like, you know, he has like that kind of, uh, shit-eating grin on his face that he gets. And he, he, he just like, he's like, that's a ridiculous name. And I'm kind of stunned. I'm, I'm just like, I'm taken aback a little bit because I'm used to getting, uh, made fun of for my name because it is a ridiculous name. He's right. Anthony Weiner's not wrong. He's just a dick. Uh, but like, so he, and then he, and then he kind of stops and I think he realizes he's gone a step too far because he says, well, you know, I can say that because my name is Weiner. And so I just want, I just want him to understand that every terrible thing that's happened to him. Over the last five years has been karmic retribution for that moment. This is all payback. This is me getting my revenge. I catfished him dozens of times. I, I have plotted and emailed and sent terrible things to the news media outlets. Uh, and it's all because he made fun of my name at one time.
JVL00:04:18He had a lot of repressed feelings at that time because we didn't have social media as fully then as we do now. So he was dealing with a lot of things. Right.
Sonny00:04:26So this was like 2004 or 2005. So no 20s. No Twitter. No, no, I mean, I guess it was Facebook. Barely. Oh, yeah.
Vic00:04:34You can imagine what it would be like today if you had Twitter of that thing. It would just, you would have gone viral. No.
JVL00:04:38Yeah. Can I just say that when the very first Anthony Weiner scandal that broke, I, my, literally the first thought that came into my mind when I saw the very first story of it was, geez, that guy's in amazing shape.
Vic00:04:53Were you receiving his texts, Jonathan? Is that right?
JVL00:04:56No, I just, I'm saying, and then when the, when the latest batch came out, and I was and, you know, most of us here, now all of us here are in a family way, and we know what it's like to try to find time to go to the gym and to be, like, you know, on the wrong side of 40. Well, I guess you're not on the wrong side of 40 yet, Sonny. I am still on the right side of 40. You're on the right side of 40. And so this guy's, like, 50 years old, he's got a kid, and he's just, like, stacked. He's, like, screech on steroids, and I just, I just have grudging respect for all that.
Vic00:05:23He does kind of look like Dustin Diamond a little bit. That's true. Yeah. He has Dustin Diamond's hair. Sonny, what were you going to say?
Sonny00:05:28Well, I was going to say JBL. So you are just taken aback by the six-pack. Is that, is that, is that it? Or are you, are you a guns guy? He's the gun. No, he's the gun. Okay.
JVL00:05:37He's got the guns.
Sonny00:05:38All right.
JVL00:05:39Muscles. And, you know, hairless, like, way hairless. Well, he certainly grooms. Which I did think to myself, hmm, it's a little suspect, but. And the boxer briefs, you were noticing that, you said. I didn't even, you know, my eyes didn't even get down there, Victorino. Eyes up here. Eyes up here.
Vic00:05:53What I found fascinating is, you know, for anyone who speaks German, you know, I-E sounds like E and E-I. Sounds like I, so that's why Einstein is E-I, Steinway E-I. And for some reason, even though he is, you know, W-E-I-N-E-R, he insists on himself calling himself Wiener. Right. And so, he's sort of, you know, he's the gift that keeps on giving for headline writers, especially at the New York Post. And I've been compiling them over the years. It's only been a few years, actually.
Sonny00:06:21Victor, what's your favorite?
Vic00:06:23Well, there's so many to choose from, Sonny. More recently, there was the one just the other day was Happy Halloweener. And after that, remember when the whole thing came out again, and then Huma decides she's leaving him. And of course, the post headline was, Huma cuts off Wiener. You had to see that one coming, but so to speak. And when it started, when it started, the whole controversy erupted. Kristol really is going to kill all of us. He doesn't listen after. After he hears his own voice, he stops listening, so it's okay. When it first happened, I believe that one of the first headlines was Wiener exposed. And then it was Wiener's rise and fall. And then there was the moment where they asked President Obama, what do you think he should do? And he said, I think he should. If I were him, I would apologize. Oh, so you would apologize. And Anthony Wiener hasn't apologized yet. That led to the headline, Obama beats Wiener, to an apology. But it was basically, they just left it as Obama beats Wiener. And that reminded me-
Sonny00:07:19Obama beats Wiener in like 48 font, and then two apology in like six. No, you had to turn the page to an apology.
Vic00:07:26To an ellipsis. Yes. But it reminded me of the obit. I had clipped out from the post that is on my cork board, which is the Ike Turner. When Ike Turner died, the headline was, Ike 76 beats Tina to death. As in, he beat her to the race to death. That's what they meant by that. What are you thinking about? So, and anyway, pop goes to Wiener. You know, I mean, there's just- Okay, I'll say- Really terrible. The worst, New York, I couldn't believe this actually. Even for the New York Post, I would say worst headline they had was Wiener's second coming. And that just is what it is. But, you know, honestly, we're probably, when this is all over, we are going to miss him. You know-
Sonny00:08:07I'm going to miss this podcast. This was a lot of fun. After this episode.
Vic00:08:09It was a lot of fun for two weeks. It was an amazing run. This is-
JVL00:08:13Thanks to all of our Doring fans. Yeah.
Vic00:08:16When Wiener shrinks from the spotlight, you'll be sorry. So, but we were speaking of meltdowns, Sonny, and I noticed that on the box office, Inferno had a meltdown. Yes, Inferno. Oh, what a beautiful transition. Isn't that a good transition? I worked two days on this. Thank you. So, what happened?
Sonny00:08:37Victor, thank you for transitioning to the main issue that we're here to deal with today, which is the implosion of Inferno, which did actually, it did so badly at the box office that the new Madea movie, in its second weekend, did a higher box office gross than Inferno. So, Inferno is the third movie in the- Dan Brown's series of films. You know, the first was The Da Vinci Code. The second was Angels and Demons. Now you have Inferno.
Vic00:09:05There were things- And these are all movies directed by Ron Howard, right?
Sonny00:09:08All directed by Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning director of- He has won an Oscar, right, for A Beautiful Mind? John?
JVL00:09:16I can effort that while you talk.
Sonny00:09:17Okay, thank you. So, if we can get our fact checker on that. The Ron Howard, who was great, who I like a lot, you know- I love Ron Howard. Great director, great voiceover guy. For Arrested Development, probably most famously, amongst this group of friends anyway. Inferno is not a very good movie. I've seen it. It's really kind of- It's bad in the way that a lot of these- That all three of these now Dan Brown films have been. That it's like twisty and turny in ways that you totally see coming. And it is just talk, talk, talk, talk. Here's an interesting thing about Botticelli and Dante in the 13th century Italy. I don't know. I don't care about any of that. It's boring. Irfan Khan is fantastic in it. I will give Irfan Khan that. But this is, of course, the Tom Hanks show. And it is- I guess it's- It is a movie that he cannot save. And that is rare. Which is a big deal. It's a big deal. Because Tom Hanks can do just about anything. You know, he's a guy who got to start making funny movies. He transitioned into the serious prestige pictures. And now he kind of- He bounces back and forth. But, you know, the thing that I've always loved the most about him is, even in the serious pictures, he brings a dose of comedy. Even in the comedy, he brings a dose of pathos. And, you know, he really is one of our great living movie stars.
Vic00:10:40Were you distracted at all by the hair? I mean, I don't know. Did he have to have that kind of hair? Is that how hair is described in the book?
Sonny00:10:47In this movie, they have ditched the awful mullet that was so prevalent in the first two films, I guess.
Vic00:10:56I guess he was supposed to be described as an- Indiana Jones-type character, right?
Sonny00:11:00Yes, a professor of symbology at Harvard, Victor. I don't know if you are familiar with the field of symbology.
Vic00:11:07No, that would have been my major. I should have chosen instead of international relations. Not a real major. Jonathan.
JVL00:11:16Ron Howard did win Best Director and Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind. Okay. Correct?
Vic00:11:21Good. Well, nailed it. We were thinking about, you know, what you just mentioned, though, Tom Hanks and sort of the, you know, Tom Hanks and the funny Tom Hanks and where we sort of fall into this, and I'm curious about that. But I'm also curious, you know, whenever I hear people complain about Tom Hanks now, oh, I don't watch Tom Hanks movies because it feels like everything has to be an Oscar contender. Everything is so serious. What happened to the old Tom Hanks? What happened to Bachelor Party Tom Hanks and Money Pit Tom Hanks or whatever, Bosom Buddies Tom Hanks? When did that happen? When did all of a sudden, you know, by, I mean, he's the one who chooses these scripts. He's the one who chooses these scripts, obviously, and he has a very good sense of what's going to be a big picture, a blockbuster. But when did that turn happen when all of a sudden every movie had to be a serious Tom Hanks? And it's not every movie, but you got that sense. And I'm wondering, you know, when he stopped making the Turner and Hooch films, was it Philadelphia or what?
JVL00:12:15It was 1993, actually. So when you look at Hanks' career, it's divided into some very distinct phases. In the early phase, he starts with Splash. He's done Bosom Buddies before that. He's into comedy. His comedy is actually his characters. He's playing the same character in almost all of these. A guy who, again, is kind of a jerk and has a little bit of pathos to him, but is doing funny. And so he's in Splash in 1984, and he is moving then very, very quickly. By 1986, he's already trying to turn into dramatic work. And so he does Nothing in Common and Every Time We Say Goodbye, both of which flop. And so he goes running back to comedy again. So he does Dragnet, Big, The Burbs, Turner and Hooch, Joe vs. the Volcano. Then, in 1990, he makes his run back into serious movies again with Bonfire of the Vanities.
Vic00:13:05And that was a mistake, too, though. That was a mistake.
JVL00:13:07Actually, one of the two or three best books ever written about Hollywood is a book called The Devil's Candy by, I forget. I want to say Julie Salmon's the writer, but somebody else could look up that. Oh, no, I'm dealing with the computer. I'll look that up. It's called The Devil's Candy. It's about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities, and it's unbelievable. You should have, if you're into that sort of thing. You should go and read it. But then he comes rushing back by 1993 to Philadelphia, and that then begins the string of Oscar bait movies. That's the streak. That's the streak he does. Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Toy Story, Saving Private Ryan. And you remember, like in this, The Green Mile, Castaway, in every one of these movies that came out, there was the whispering of the time. Oh, it's another Tom Hanks movie. This could be an Oscar-worthy performance in an impossible way. It's an important movie. And I'm a little ambivalent on Tom Hanks. He's wonderful. I think Tom Hanks is great and everything. He's a national treasure. But on the other hand, I found that period of his career kind of stultifying because he couldn't just do interesting movies with interesting stories. Everything had to be super important and have a message. And so I've been happy to actually get out of that phase of his career to where we are now. And what I think actually helped him was Steven Spielberg, who did Catch Me If You Can. Catch Me If You Can with him, which is probably my second favorite of all the Hanks movies. And I think it's one of the only two Hanks movies that really is going to hold up over time. And that got us into the— I think Sonny's ready to interject. Yeah, that's right, Sonny.
Vic00:14:41That was a Sonny Bunch snort.
JVL00:14:43That is— Let me ask you this. Sure. If I were to ask you 20 years from now, I said to you, hey, Sonny, let's go watch a Tom Hanks movie, what are you going to reach for to pull off the shelf?
Sonny00:14:56Well, I might reach for— I might reach for one that's already more than 30 years old, Big. Big is a great classic comedy. It's very funny. It holds up well. It both encapsulates a time period, the 1980s, when everybody's wearing their big, dumb shoulder pads and their absurd outfits, but still manages to kind of capture that—the kind of awkward whimsy of youth transported into a large person's frame. I would also say a movie that is also already 20 years old, Saving Private Ryan, which I don't know. I don't know what your beef is with that, but it seems to me that the first Spielberg-Hanks collaboration is much better than the second.
JVL00:15:37So I like Saving Private Ryan. Vic and I saw Saving Private Ryan together. This is one of the weirdest movie experiences of my life. Vic and I went to a critic screening of Saving Private Ryan at 10 o'clock in the morning. And then, this was back when I was doing movie reviews, I had another critic screening at 7 o'clock in the evening. Oh, right. For something completely different.
Sonny00:15:54There's something about Mary.
JVL00:15:55So my day was bookended by Saving Private Ryan. And there's something about Mary. Two great movies, by the way. Two great movies. The two great films of the 1990s. I don't know that I... Saving Private Ryan is a movie that anybody ever really needs to go back and revisit. Like, it is a big, sprawling, searing kind of movie. I know there are people who actually don't like it. I actually liked it quite a bit. But it's sort of so intense that I don't know that anybody ever needs to go back to it. Does Big really hold up? It's probably been 10 years since I've seen Big. I remember the last time I saw it, I thought, ugh.
Sonny00:16:28Big holds up for me anyway. I mean, I saw it probably three or four years ago just in a... Just randomly it was on TV. I was like, hey, wife, would you like to watch one of our great stars in one of his early roles? One of our American...
Vic00:16:40That's a no-lose proposition to ask, you know, your wife or your girlfriend to watch Big. Because I know my wife always talks about the scene where he is grown up and he's missing his classmates and he sees the kids playing in the leaves of... It's like autumn. Oh, there's leaves on the streets and there's some song that they're playing. I don't even remember what the song is. And it brings tears to her eyes because it reminds her of when she was a kid. But I was going to say what I also like about Big is it's just a solid cast. And a lot of the movies he does, you know, he's helped by. I mean, yes, he carries a lot of the weight, but he's helped by a solid cast. And Big has Robert Loggia, who I absolutely adore. John Heard, who is great. And I think it's Elizabeth Perkins is the love of Elizabeth Perkins. But I love John Heard. The lovely Elizabeth Perkins.
JVL00:17:25That's right. But this is how big a... So, BoxOfficeMojo.com, one of my favorite sites, which has, like, every bit of data related to BoxOffice you could possibly want. It has actors ranked by their lifetime cumulative grosses. And Tom Hanks is number three on the all-time list. Behind, could you guess? You could probably guess the first one, but not the second one. Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford, number one. Sam Jackson, number two.
Sonny00:17:54That's such a cheat, though. That's like saying Orlando Bloom should be number one. Is he number two because he's in The Lord of...
JVL00:18:00Is he number four? A cheat is that number 15 is Stellan Skarsgård, whom I love. I think Stellan Skarsgård is a wonderful, wonderful actor. Because he's in the Avengers movies. Because he's in a bunch of interesting movies. Pirates of the Caribbean. He's in Pirates of the Caribbean and the Avengers movies. Right, right. So that was number two.
Sonny00:18:14But this is my point about... The Hunt for Out October. Sam Jackson should not be on this list because Sam Jackson was in Goodfellas, and he gets the BoxOffice gross for Goodfellas, even though he has, like, six lines in that movie. I mean, I'm sorry. That's just ridiculous.
JVL00:18:26I'll take Sam Jackson over Tom Hanks. I'll take Sam Hanks every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Just as an actor.
Sonny00:18:32Well, that's a separate question from me. Oh, he's speechless. First off, Sam Jackson is not exactly, you know, Daniel Day-Lewis. We're not exactly... I think this is the second week in a row I've mentioned Daniel Day-Lewis. He's playing Sam Jackson in just about every movie. I mean, even in The Phantom Menace and all the ridiculous prequels, he's playing Jedi Sam Jackson. He's not exactly disappearing into the room. I remember... Jurassic Park. Hold on to your butts.
Vic00:19:01Hold on to your butts. I remember right after around that time, he did Pulp Fiction, and he became so famous for Pulp Fiction. And then he did a movie with Geena Davis, I believe it was called The Long Kiss Goodbye. Yes, Rennie Harlan. Yeah, Rennie Harlan directed. And that was a movie where Sam Jackson played Sam Jackson again. He thought it was the same guy from Pulp Fiction. Right.
Sonny00:19:22No, Sam Jackson is very good at playing Sam Jackson. I would say the most impressive I've seen... Sam Jackson recently was in The Kingsman, which is actually... He is great in The Kingsman. Which is a very underrated movie, and he is very good in it. And I remember people actually being kind of upset, because he did interesting things with the character. He played it with kind of a lisp, and he was doing, you know, et cetera. But, no, I like Sam Jackson. I think Sam Jackson is great. Samuel L. Jackson, we're not really on Sam Sonny, you know, kind of term. I bet you are. Me and Sam, we went to the bar. We had some shots. Did you interview him one time? My God, no. For Black Snake and Long? I would love to interview Samuel L. Jackson. I bet he's a lot of fun.
Vic00:20:04Jonathan, you had asked about Famous, if you were to be asked what Tom Hanks movie to pull off the shelf.
JVL00:20:10For me, the signal achievement of Hanks' career is actually Apollo 13, which I think is a movie that is so classic that it will be watchable for forever.
Vic00:20:21It makes you feel good about America, Apollo 13. And even this thing, you want to talk about, you know, sticking to the details. And how everything is very exact. When they asked people who were there at the time and involved in the Apollo missions, they said the one complaint they had was Jim Lovell's Corvette was red, not blue, or blue, not red, whatever it was. I mean, that was it. You know, everything else, exactly the same, including this little, the character of Gunter Wendt. And Gunter Wendt, of course, was head of the, you know, he was on deck. And he was the scientist that was making sure that everybody in the movie, see him, and he is being outfitted in the, all the astronauts put on their uniforms and the whole thing. He's making sure everything is secured tightly. And Jim Lovell or Tom Hanks says, you know, I wonder where Gunter Wendt. And that guy, that's a real guy. He was part of, just on a tangent here, he was part of the German team of scientists, as they were, that, you know, the leftovers from. Where did they come from, Vic?
JVL00:21:20Oh, they came from Germany in the 1940s. What were they doing before?
Vic00:21:23He was not a scientist in that war, shall we say. We're not even getting into those. He was in the Air Force. I believe they called it the Luftwaffe. Oh. But he was, you know, he was a, he was a, he was a plane guy. He was a mechanic.
Sonny00:21:34He was a, he was a mechanic. He was a mechanic. He was just keeping the airplanes in the air that were bombing.
Vic00:21:40No, this is not like Wernher von Braun, which, you know, has been joked at. What's the joke about Wernher von Braun? I forget which show it was where they talked about where he says, oh, I just launched these rockets. I don't know where they land. I, you know, that's not my department. Hilarious.
JVL00:21:52Any event, Jonathan.
Sonny00:21:53Nothing like some Nazi.
JVL00:21:55Yeah, but just to close the loop on the, how big a movie star he is. It is interesting to me when you look at his filmography, that he's done this with only ever once being in a franchise. And that franchise is the Dan Brown franchise, which is a really fourth tier level.
Sonny00:22:11Yeah, which is really strangely, like not a very successful financially franchise, considering how many copies of those dumb books have been sold. Correct.
JVL00:22:19He has never done an action movie, which is, which must be a choice. I mean, the guy's done like 81. He has 81 film credits, 47. Feature films, I think. Never done an action movie, which has to be by choice.
Sonny00:22:32Does Saving Private Ryan not count? I mean...
JVL00:22:33No, I would think that is like a historical war picture. And the closest he's come to playing a villain is Sherman McCoy in Bonfire of the Vanities. What about Road to Perdition? And really, that's more of an anti-hero. No, in Road to Perdition, he's an anti-hero
Sonny00:22:47because he's taking care of the kids. Is Road to Perdition not an action movie? I mean, is that more of a historical drama again? Are we... I don't think of it as an action movie.
JVL00:22:55Do you think of it as an action movie? Well, there are... Is Road to Perdition still as an action movie?
Sonny00:22:58Right. No, I mean, there are action sequences in it, but, I mean, it's a movie that has like four real good shootouts. I mean, it...
JVL00:23:06Well, I mean, I would classify that more as a thriller than... Yeah, I'd say more as a thriller than an action movie.
Vic00:23:13Let's not get distracted by this. And you like serious Tom Hanks, Sonny, or funny Tom Hanks?
Sonny00:23:18So, as long as we're admitting embarrassing Tom Hanks loves, I will say that one of my favorite Tom Hanks movies probably top five, maybe top three, is Forrest Gump. I realize that this is not a very cool,
Vic00:23:35quote, air quote, cool thing to like. I used to look up to you until now, so...
Sonny00:23:39No, but I am totally... I totally... I understand that schmaltzy... Do you cry when you watch it, Sonny? I might tear up a little bit when he's talking to Jenny's... When he's talking to Jenny's gravestone about how their son is so great. You can really learn a lot about life from that movie, can't you, Sonny? A little bit, a little bit, a little bit of tears, a little dusty in Sonny's house. No, I realize that it's schmaltzy and manipulative and totally overwrought and Pulp Fiction should have won Best Picture that year and blah, blah, blah, blah. You can take me down the entire, like, decision tree of why this movie is bad and I will agree with every step of the way, but it's still... I find it tremendously affecting because I'm a woman. It was where you were at that time.
JVL00:24:24As Woody Allen once said,
Vic00:24:26the heart wants what it wants. Do you remember when Jenny tries to commit suicide and she gets up on the balcony?
Sonny00:24:34Jenny, who is the embodiment of, like, everything that is terrible with America. About those decades. Like, she is, like, it's very... It is a very interesting movie and I, like, I don't disagree when people call it, like, vaguely misogynistic because it's, like, every terrible thing that happens in America from, like, 1960 to 1990 or so is represented in, like, the one strong female character. It's like, you know...
JVL00:24:55She's Eve in the Garden of Good and Evil. She is just absurd. She's absorbing the filth of America within her.
Sonny00:25:00I am... I personally kind of prefer serious Tom Hanks myself. I am... I really like... That stretch that JVL so denigrates from 1993 to 2005 or so is probably my favorite stretch of Tom Hanks movies where you have, you know, Saving Private Ryan. Philadelphia doesn't do it for me, but Apollo 11.
Vic00:25:2313. Apollo 13. They all blend together. You know, what's the difference? That's a correction for next week.
Sonny00:25:27There you go. The, you know, like, that whole kind of... That thing you do, which is, like, kind of... I like that thing you do. Which is... I don't know if that's really serious, Tom Hanks, but he is kind of serious in it. Right.
Vic00:25:38And that thing you do, of course, he directed that movie. He directed that, right. And it's about a Beatles-esque band in the 60s trying to make it big, but, of course, being swallowed up by the industry. And you have the different... And it was a great cast, by the way. Ethan Embry was in that cast as well. And Steve Zahn and Tom Everett Scott I believe was the drummer. Son Shades. And then Tom Hanks plays their manager, if I'm not mistaken. And then they break up because the other guy has that... That's the one guy whose name I forget right now is the lead singer, and he is the one who has the attitude problem, and he wants to be taken seriously as a musician and not just be a one-hit wonder.
Sonny00:26:16Being taken seriously is so overrated. It's much better to be a joke. How would you know? How would you know, Sonny? This is why I strive for jokedom.
Vic00:26:24And, Jonathan, you are a serious... Tom Hanks. You like them when it's a little bit of both or something like that.
JVL00:26:30Yeah, my preference is for the Tom Hanks of Catch Me If You Can, where he is sort of... All of his comedy comes just from being put upon. It's not written as comedy, but he plays it as comedy. He's the Carl Hanratty who is the IRS or Treasury Department who's following around Leonardo DiCaprio. I love everything about that movie. Hanks is great. I like him when he's almost in the more of a supporting... Almost... It may be FBI. Put that in corrections next week, too. Almost the more... What's the word I'm looking for? Almost more of an ensemble, you know, which is Apollo 13. It really is an ensemble cast. Right. And so is Catch Me If You Can.
Vic00:27:09Well, Christopher Walken, I think, is very important to that movie. Yes.
JVL00:27:13Oh, the father.
Vic00:27:14Yes, the father. He's fantastic.
JVL00:27:16You know, I found myself, as we were thinking about this show, wishing... Boy, I wish there had been a Tom Hanks in a comic book movie at some point. I don't mean Road to Perdition, which is like a graphic novel. Serious graphic novel. A serious comic. But Tom Hanks as, like, the Riddler. I'm kidding. I wouldn't want him as the Riddler. But I was thinking through interesting Tom Hanks choices, and I think he would have been a very interesting young Commissioner Gordon in a Batman movie.
Vic00:27:43Oh, for a serious sort of... I love Gary Oldman in this commission.
JVL00:27:47I can't picture anybody else but. Oh, no, but I could see Hanks doing Commissioner Gordon. All right, really quick trivia.
Vic00:27:53I bet you know the answer. In the original Batman with Michael Keaton, who played Commissioner Gordon?
Sonny00:27:57Billy D. Williams.
JVL00:27:59No. Billy D. Williams is Harvey Dent. Harvey Dent, yeah, yeah. It's the Irish, Irish, oh, help me. Jack Pounds? No, it was Charles Durning.
Vic00:28:09No, it was Charles Durning? No. No.
JVL00:28:12Well, you can't ask trivia questions.
Vic00:28:13What's the point of asking a trivia question? I didn't have the answer. This is ridiculous. I didn't have the answer. I'm asking. I have a question.
Sonny00:28:20When you're driving down the highway with Kate next to you in the car, Vic, do you, like, sometimes grab the e-brake and just pull it? To stop the momentum of the show.
Vic00:28:31So I would say. Because there really was momentum on this one.
JVL00:28:34What I came up with, what I really would have liked to have seen Tom Hanks, believe it or not, to bring us back to Sam Jackson, I would have liked to have seen the Tom Hanks version of Nick Fury on the screen. This is, again, nothing against Sam Jackson. I love him. I love him as Nick Fury. I love his character. It's great. He has the Marvel Ultimate Universe version of Nick Fury. But I think Tom Hanks would have been a really neat, straight Marvel version of Nick Fury. He would have played the character differently and would have been kind of cool.
Vic00:29:02Yeah, he would have been more earnest. I don't know. I don't think I would have liked that. I just can't picture, and I certainly can't picture Tom Hanks now as a superhero. Not in the shape that he's in. It's weird.
Sonny00:29:12He definitely has to be kind of one of these peripheral characters, like an Uncle Ben or, you know. But, I mean, he's actually too funny to be Uncle Ben even. I don't, in the Spider-Man universe, great responsibility.
JVL00:29:25In the what universe?
Sonny00:29:26Spider-Man universe. Spider-Man has his own universe now. Yeah, I guess. I guess.
Vic00:29:31Well, it's a matter of not being distracted by certain actors because you're thinking the entire time, oh, my gosh, it's Tom Hanks in this movie, and you want to forget about that. And that's why, I mean, but it takes a lot of skill, obviously. And some people pull it off and others don't.
Sonny00:29:45I could see him being a good J. Jonah Jameson.
Vic00:29:48Yeah, I could see that, too. I could see that.
JVL00:29:49Because he used to be able to do, he hasn't done, like, full-blown outrage.
Vic00:29:51But it would be angry comical. Even when he's angry, you'd still be like, okay. But that's right. It doesn't blow up in Charlie Williamson.
JVL00:29:57He has this war. He does a little bit of a steam take where his face gets red.
Vic00:30:01Even when he gets angry again, it's still.
Sonny00:30:04But J. Jonah Jameson is, like, kind of a comic, a humorous and also angry character. I mean, he's a ridiculous figure. He is a figure of fun.
Vic00:30:14And it was perfect for J.K. Simmons. That was a great J.K. Simmons role. To play that role. And, again, I even like this. I'll tell you what, even the early stuff that Tom Hanks did, I first saw, he was interesting. He was introduced into my world.
JVL00:30:28How many times did you see Splash in the theaters?
Vic00:30:30Oh, no. You know, I was, believe it or not, Splash was 1984. I don't know if I saw it more than once in the theater. I saw it a lot at home. I think we had it on tape or we must have taped it off of HBO.
JVL00:30:42Well, your parents were only taking R-rated movies back then. That's right.
Vic00:30:46You weren't allowed to see PG stuff. Splash was such light fare. We'd rather go see. We saw, when I was a kid, my parents took me to see To Live and Die in L.A. And that was awful.
Sonny00:30:55Really?
Vic00:30:56Yes. They did this. I was probably, what, 12, 13?
JVL00:30:59Friday the 13th when you were five.
Vic00:31:01A guy gets his head blown off in the beginning of that movie. A lot of things happened in that movie. And the shotgun by Willem Dafoe. And the part that my parents didn't want me to see was the sexy. Oh, no, close your eyes. You know, that's the part. Don't look at that part. Everything else is okay.
Sonny00:31:12Vic, this is America in a nutshell, right? This is why the MPAA, if you use the F word twice, it's an R. If you, you know, if you, but you can shoot a thousand corpses as long as there's no blood. It's a PG. It's minimal. It's minimal. Whatever.
Vic00:31:27But no, I was going to say. See, even before that, when I was a kid, the first time I'd seen Tom Hanks was Bosom Buddies. It came on, it was night, it was from, it ran for only two seasons, the 80 to 82. And it was on ABC. And it was part of the ABC lineup, believe it or not. It was, they threw it around a little bit on Thursday night, Friday night. And sometimes it was the lead into shows like Barney Miller or Taxi, I think. And Mork and Mindy. I mean, it was a powerhouse on ABC. And actually, Hanks was on the Jimmy Kilmer. And Jimmy Kimmel showed him a poster from ABC that was the, you know, the hot ABC Friday night, you know, countdown. And it was the four shows. And it was Mork and Mindy and Taxi and Barney Miller and Bosom Buddies. And they were the kids on the block, you know, him and Peter Scolari. And he jokes about when you drove onto the Paramount studio lot, everybody, you know, everybody, the famous people had names to their parking spaces. But Tom Hanks, of course, and Peter Scolari, they just had numbers. But he said, on the other hand, there was Judd Hirsch, you know, or Pam Dauber, who was, you know, Mindy from Mork and Mindy. And the most you would get was, you know, a nod from Donnie Most, who played Ralph Malfin Habities, at the commissary. He wouldn't even, they wouldn't talk to him. He said, they wouldn't even talk to you. And those guys were at the top of the food chain back then. That's what's insane. Those guys were at the top of their game. But I guess because he had done Bosom Buddies and is part of that world with ABC and Paramount, that they then made him do a crossover. And he had a cameo. He had a cameo appearance on Happy Days. And it was ridiculous. And he played a guy who was avenging, you know, a slight that the Fonz had, you know, committed to when they were eight years old. And you could tell the crowd recognizes Hanks from Bosom Buddies because they went wild for him, even though he was technically a bad guy on the show. And then Happy Days in those days, you know, just everybody laughed. Anytime, you know, anytime a character walked in, you would have to clap, you know. And the same thing with Tom Hanks. And they loved that. But as a result, I imagine that by being contrived. Connected with Happy Days, he was then connected to Ron Howard. And Bosom Buddies ended in 82. And then Splash was 84.
JVL00:33:36Can we talk, while we're talking about his TV career, just for 30 seconds about what I think of as the apotheosis of garbage TV sentimentality, which is the very, very special episode of Family Ties starring Tom Hanks as Uncle Ned, who has a drinking problem.
Vic00:33:53You know what I was so relieved by, by the way, Jonathan? Do you remember that? I do. And I get confused. Because there's another episode where there's an uncle who's the molester to Mallory. And I was like, I hope that wasn't Tom Hanks. And it wasn't Tom Hanks. It was another actor. Look what happened. He chose that role. And I don't know what happened to that guy. That episode.
JVL00:34:09Sonny, are you old enough to remember this?
Sonny00:34:11I am aware that these are things that were on TV. Is that your question? So we used to have these things called televisions. And you had little dials on them that you had to turn. And rabbit ears. Is that like the flat panel on my wall?
JVL00:34:22You would put a nickel in then, and you would stream the video for 15 seconds at a time, and then put another nickel in. Anyway, so for younger viewers out there, there was a show called Family Ties. And on it, it starred the girl who is the real-life sister of Michael Bluth.
Vic00:34:41There you go.
JVL00:34:41That's what it is. And one of the – it was just a normal sitcom.
Sonny00:34:46That is esoteric. I don't know if people are going to –
JVL00:34:48Justine Bateman. That a normal sitcom, and then they, every once in a while, would do like this suddenly non-sitcom, very special episode with a message to you at home. And Tom Hanks was on as an uncle who was visiting the family who had a drinking problem, and it was like super serious and dark, and he hit Alex B. Keaton, Michael J. Fox, and they were trying to drink straight alcohol, rubbing alcohol at one point. The entire thing was so horrible that even as an eight-year-old, you could watch it and think, this is cloying and wrong.
Vic00:35:26Do you have any other thoughts? Much like this podcast. I think I'm exhausted.
Sonny00:35:31Let me finish my drink. Now that we've talked about the alcohol, let me finish my drink. I can't believe you guys are drinking this garbage. It's so good.
Vic00:35:39I believe it's called bourbon. Everybody, I've just outed Jonathan. He thinks that bourbon is garbage. If you can smell this, it's not bourbon. Send your angry tweets to Jonathan Last, please. Don't send them to us.
JVL00:35:49Did this cost you $7 at the package store? No, this was like a $21. This is Old Grandad.
Sonny00:35:54Old Grandad, 114 proof. Does it have a built-in sponsor in the plastic bottle? You know, the problem with people who think that drinking is a problem is that they can't appreciate the finer things in life, like a fine bourbon burning the back of your throat.
Vic00:36:13I know what you're saying, Jonathan, and that's what the kids are saying before they get older and then they appreciate things, you know, so I understand that.
Sonny00:36:18I remember when I was growing up and, you know, everyone wanted their Coors Lights, and I was like, let me drink my Yingling.
Vic00:36:24That's what the cool kids are drinking. Yeah, or my Thai. It's okay.
Sonny00:36:29It was actually just sugar water. I didn't drink alcohol.
Vic00:36:32So can we move on to corrections? Sure. Okay. So last week on the pilot episode of The Weekly Substandard, Jonathan last said something, and he was wrong, and I'll just leave it to Jonathan to straighten things out. We did two things wrong.
JVL00:36:50The first is, as my pal Jason O'Connell reminded me over email, we left out in our long discussion. of adaptations, L.A. Confidential, which is one of the best film adaptations ever, adapted from a James Elroy novel. Curtis Tanson, who recently passed away, directed that, and another movie you and I saw together at the Uptown.
Vic00:37:13Was that social or was that professional? I can't remember. A little bit of both.
JVL00:37:19The big mistake is, when we were talking about Tom Cruise last week, I was talking— I was trying to make the joke for The Edge of Tomorrow that the elevator pitch for it was Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day. And I said, not once, but twice, Star Wars Troopers, which is not, in fact, a movie, and which makes me sound like more of a blithering idiot than I already am.
Sonny00:37:49I mean, frankly, that is deeply embarrassing.
JVL00:37:53PolitiFact is very upset about this, but we have issued a retraction. And we'll try to do better next time.
Sonny00:37:59Another funny thing about that commentary track, if I remember correctly, is that he spends a decent amount of time not quite attacking his actors as being terrible. He highlights the criticism that these are all kind of wooden actors, and he says, well, maybe that was kind of the point. Maybe I knew what I was doing when I made this, like, you know, Nazi-era knockoff propaganda film and cast it with attractive young people who couldn't actually act.
Vic00:38:25By the way, we're talking about the Nazi thing. I believe. Neil Patrick Harris looked very much like Heinrich Himmler in the end of that. Remember the black trench coat?
JVL00:38:32He's fantastic. That movie really is an underappreciated classic. With the great Michael Ironside, like the peak of his Michael Ironside-ness, everything about that movie is actually pretty great and rewards rewatching.
Vic00:38:44Okay. Well, on that note, I see that our glasses are just empty, and that means it's all the time we have for this week's episode. Thanks for listening to the Weekly Substandard. Until next time.
Sonny00:39:27I'll just read the punchlines. I have a question. Does stony silence translate on podcasts?
JVL00:40:27I have a story today that showed that in Wisconsin, they believe that there are 1,200 voters who are transgender who do not have their new genders accurately reflected in their identification, and they're concerned that these people may be turned away from the polls and disenfranchised. You know what this is? And so if Hillary Clinton loses the election in Wisconsin by 1,200 votes, we'll know. And I would like to say that you're hateful. I would like to say that you're hateful remarks about my identification will be part of that.
Sonny00:41:03Excellent. So was that okay?
?00:41:06I think we're done.
JVL00:41:07I'm sure it's fine.
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