I had to, I had not choice.
From an article on Yahoo! news:
In 1994, Tom Hanks won his first of two back-to-back Oscars for his performance in Philadelphia, in which he played a gay man seeking justice after he’s wrongfully terminated by his employer for having HIV. The actor explained in an interview with The New York Times Magazine published Friday that he understands why he could never play that role today.
“Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now? No, and rightly so,” Hanks said. “The whole point of Philadelphia was don’t be afraid. One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy. It’s not a crime, it’s not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity. Do I sound like I’m preaching? I don’t mean to.”
Philadelphia is one of my favorite movies.
It is one of the best legal dramas ever made, and one of the very few ones that doesn’t have rape or murder as its central legal issue.
I honestly stack it up as the To Kill a Mockingbird of its era as a legal drama with civil rights as the core plot point.
Tam Hanks did a fantastic job in that film.
This bullshit from Hanks about it no longer being acceptable for a straight actor to play a gay character is both a shame and something that feels like he’s trying to keep himself and Philadelphia from getting canceled.
Hanks should have more spine than this.
Fuck Hollywood and fuck Hanks if they can’t defend a great movie from an ignorant and destructive ideology of identitarianism.
I wonder how he feels about, e.g., a black person playing Anne Boleyn.
.
Oh wait, no – I don’t care about how he feels about that. The whole point of an actor is to play a role, to pretend to be someone or something he or she isn’t. That’s, literally, the job.
I used to enjoy Tom Hanks movies. Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and others were my favorites. Then I saw the below film clip, and all I can ever see in his movies is his smug face shilling for HRC.
https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/tom-hanks-slams-donald-trump/10153999244302217/
You don’t have to go very far in Hollywood to find people who hate(d) Trump, or shilled for Hildabeast. Or in the music industry. I would hope that a guy like Hanks would respect someone else’s views even if different than his. No way to know for sure, but as far as actors go, he is far from the worst (think Mark Ruffalo). I try not dig too deep with actors or musicians I like because then I won’t be able to much of anything.
*won’t be able to enjoy much of anything*
Let’s see. He wasn’t gay. He wasn’t an astronaut. He didn’t storm the beaches at Normandy (nor was he ever in the army). He might have been a bosom buddy, but don’t ask don’t tell on that score. As far as I can tell, he’s been inauthentic in every single role he’s ever played.
In other news, the Captain was really a captain, Gilligan wasn’t a first mate, and the Professor wasn’t a professor. But Mary Ann was delicious, so we got that going for us.
the captain WASN’T really a captain. Dang.
Fuck Tom Hanks for “Mazes and Monsters”.
By his definition, a gay person can never play a straight character. Wonder what he thinks about that.
Brought to you by the same people who applaud a black man playing Hamilton.