- Twilight Man was kind enough to send us this article from the New York Times Magaine, which featured an interesting pairing of Tom Hanks and Ben Affleck chatting about film.
At 41, Tom Hanks is the biggest star of his generation: back-to-back Oscars for his lead roles in “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump”; total domestic box-office receipts in the last 10 years of $1.3 billion, and a reputation as a very nice guy.
Ben Affleck pretty much summed up the industry’s feeling about Hnaks when he strode inteo the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel and exclaimed, “When I told them I was coming to talk with Tom Hanks, they let me off work today.”
“They” are the people making “Armageddon”, a big-budget Bruce Willis-starring action moive with Ben Affleck, who is 25, will also star. He was the lead in “Chasing Amy” and co-wrote “Good Will Hunting”; now he is venturing into the world of megamovies for the first time. Hanks, who starred in “Splash” and never looked back, has in the 90’s known nothing but the studios.
“Don’t let them corrupt you,” Hanks teases, as Affleck settles himself onto a couch. “And end up like you? Never,” Affleck shoots back, laughing.
Both actors are easy with each other, as if they were old buddies. True to his reputation, Hnaks is funny and disarming; Affleck is ambitious but not smarmy. They are somewhat alike: comfortable with the spotlight and engagingly confident of their appeal.
Affleck : When you started, were Roger Corman films the only independent movies?
Hanks : Well, eveybody the was making, essentially, slasher movies, Knife-rack movies, where the girl is washing the dishes and she hears a noise. Right next to her on the counter is a knife rack and it’s got eight knives in it, and she goes off and looks around and says, Gee, there’s nobody outside. And then she comes back and keeps washing the dishes, and then you realize there are only seven knives in the knife rack. That’s how I started. Those movies were made for like $800,000. Which is to say, independents didn’t get the kind of respect back then that they do now.
Affleck : They have respect now?
Hanks : [laughs] Sure. Of course, independents are not really as independent as they used to be. They’re all owned by megaglobal corporations now. Partly that’s because things have gotten vastly more expensive — the average cost of a studio movie in 1980 was probably about $8 million. Ten million was an expensive movie.
Affleck : “Top Gun” was maybe a $14 million movie. And in ’97 dollars, thats $20 million, which now would be a modestly budgeted movie. “Top Gun” which made $177 million or something in this country. Do you pay attention to the business side of the business?
Hanks : I do in the same way I pay attention to how the Seahawks did on Sunday. Like a football fan.
Affleck : I think everybody is sort of fascinated by it. Haven’t you noticed an increasing sort of attention now? All the box-office returns are printed in all of the newspapers — it’s not just variety. And people get really invovled in it now. I don’t think that was the case so long ago.
Hanks : No. When I was growing up, I thought “Black Sunday” was the biggest hit of all time just becuase it had big ads. I had no idea how these things were made. And the rare movie would be brought up as an example of something. Like I always heard that “Cleopatra” cost a lot of money and didn’t make it back. I mean, that’s abot it. But now you can read in the Red Bluff Daily News that “The Peacemaker” only fell off 17 percent.
Affleck : The big home-run thing is the goal. Somebody says “Independence Day” made a billion dollars and you think, Well, that’s big news. Although you never hear Procter & Gamble saying, We sold baby powder to the tune of $290 million this year.
Hanks : Well, Procter & Gamble doesn’t have Will Smith.
Affleck : That’s true.
Affleck : When Matt Damon and I wrote a script, “Good Will Hunting,” we saw is a s a way in. But we never thought anyone would see it.
Hanks : But it was good enough. That’s really what the lifeblood of this whole thing is: there is nothing more valuable than a good idea.
Affleck : I want to write more screenplays.
Hanks : Well, you must have some time there on the set of “Armageddon.”
Affleck : A little bit.
Hanks : You’re sitting in your trailer.
Affleck : Yeah, I;ve has some time. Yesterday I didn’t shoot till 6:30 at night. Came in at 8 in the morning: all right, let’s go! It’s been 24 days and, on an independent movie, we would be done by now. On “Armageddon,” we probably shot a minute and a half of screen time. I didn’t say a line all week. And I have a big part. I mean, I’m the only guy there. You think of action films as frenetic and crazy and it’s actually much more boring.
Hanks : I have never made and out-and-out action film. And they are boring. I’ve talked to guys like Bruce Willis. Movie stars have a lot of friends hanging around on the set because there’s nothing to do. How long can you play video games in your trailer?
Affleck : You need an entourage. I’m trying to get an entourage. No one will be by entourage
Hanks : I’m going to hire you to be my guy, and please, bring a deck of cards. Becasue, man, we have hourse in which nothing goes on. You’re sitting there by yourself, somebody probably knocks on your trailer door to tell you’re released for lunch. By the way,the stunt guy just rolled off the wing of the ariplane — it looked really good.
Affleck : They say, Yeah, you just went through some fire. Oh, I did? That was really brave of me. I’m glad I did that. Am I doing it again?
Hanks : Are you planning to go back and forth between the independents and the studios?
Affleck : People tent to see this stark contrast between independent and studio movies, But “Dogma,” the next Kevin Smith movie, which I’m going to be in, has a higher budget than “Chasing Amy'” which cost $225,000 to get in the can.
Hanks : Wow. Isn’t that great?
Affleck : It was kind of great, except I was sleeping on Kevin’s couch. So, it’s like, you know, I’ve got to pay my rent. But you can’t make every movie that way. “Dogma” is a $5 million movie, and by Hollywood standards, that’s wildly low budget, but it’s kind of exorbitant for Kevin. It’s his “Heaven’s Gate.”
Hanks : [laughing] It doesn’t matter what the cost is. You feel an amount of responsibility anyway. I can tell you that me and Bob Zemeckis on “Forrest Gump” were looking at each other every day saying, Is anybody going to care? There are some photographs of me and him on the world-famous park bench there in Savannah, and we’ve got the script pages in our hands, and we’ve got the obligatory coffee cups, and we’re just sitting there looking at each other saying, What the hell are we doing here? Because you have no idea if the thingis going to work. Bob says, It’s a mine field, pal, it’s a mine field. Who knows id we’re going to step on something that’s going to kill us? But that’s the same is you’re making a little movie about two people in a car at a gas station. Who knows if anybody’s going to show up? Because it could still be good, and on one’s going to show up. That’s another thing that is gospel according to Zemeckis. “Movies are binary,” he says. “They’re either zero or they’re on.” Meaning, you don’t rate them between1 and 10. It either works or it does not work, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Except make another one. If you have that chance.
Affleck : The business is fickle. How many movies that are perceived as failures do you get before they stop giving you work? How many chances do you get before….
Hanks : Before you just drop off the face of the planet? You can still do stuff, it’s just that you aren’t goinf to be getting your big fee. But when it comes down to that mainstream, top-of-the-line, green-lighted, everybody-wants-to-make-it movie of the moment, where the studios are all jockeying, trying to get the people signed, well, you might not be able to be involved in that heady atmosphere. But there’s still stuff you can do.
Affleck : Do you sweat it?
Hanks : Well, sometimes you’re in there and sometimes you’re not. In an odd way, I think there are more people in that heady atmosphere now than there ever has been. And here’s the odd thing too: you’re only one movie away from being there.
Affleck : Really?
Hanks : You’re only one movie away from being there or being up on the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion — you’re only one movie away.
Affleck : So was “Big” that movie for you?
Hanks : It was “Splash.” I made this one thing that everybody else turned down, and based on that, suddenly I’m a guy that people want in their movie. That was it.
Affleck : Do you get offered everything? Would you do an independent film?
Hanks : Sure. I mean, I’m in a pretty good position. Because No.1, how much better can I eat? I mean, I’m doing fine. So that frees me up to do an awful lot of stuff. It’s never about money. It’s always about what the story is.
Affleck : Well, if you’re an independent and Tom Hanks wants to do yur movie, any major distributor is going to look at that movie. And then it’s not an independent movie, but it’s the exact same movie.
Hanks : So what’s an independent movie?
Affleck : Well, I guess the real definition of an independent movie is that it is financed independently. But what if your movie is financed by investors whoa re accustomed to investing in mocrochips? Well, it’s not Paramount or Warner Brothers, but it is Sun Microsystems, and they have ideas about how they think it should be, and so you’re getting notes from people like that.
Hanks : Really? I didn’t know. It’s hard enough to get this stuff done without having notes from Sun Microsystems. [laughter] “We feel that the character of Jasmine should be different. On page 30, could she say something about her father?”
Affleck : “Couldn’t the sisters take a shower together maybe?” [laughter]
Affleck : Mostly, I think there’s a difference between movies that are less expensive and therefore can afford to take more risks, and movies that cost more and, therefore, inherently need to appeal to a much wider range of people. And I think the conventional wisdom is that, in order to appeal to a wider audience, you have to have a few kind of prerequisites, like stars.
Hanks : Now you’re talking about the thing that I really does affect us all in the movie business — the marketing wing. In all honesty, it takes more precedence that other aspects of movie making. They want to make good movies, and they want to make to make unique movies, but you know what? There are guys who ran studios that said to Zemeckis, You cannot release a movie called “Forrest Gump” on July 8. You’re going to be killed. And the exact same thing was true of “Pulp Fiction.” Which was something that was sort of missed in the “Pulp Ficiton-Forrest Gump” superbowl of 1995. Which we won by the way!
Affleck : They both made money, they both won awards.
Hanks : You know that as soon as they start handing out those things, it’s all finished [laughter] You know, you get invited, it’s a great night, you dress up, your girl looks fabulous.
Affleck : You make a great speech. Your speech inspires a big movie.
Hanks : “In And Out.” That’s tremendous. I must say I have got some of the best reviews of my career for a movie that I wasn’t even in. But back to marketing. The audience is standing in line, and they have their $7 in their hands, and they’re standing in front of the sign that has, at the minimum, probably seven title on it. And they have to figure out which one of those movies they are going to see. That’s the thing that scares the marketing people to death. They want to be the only movie that evrybody wants to see. And, of course, that’s kind of tthe antithesis of the chaos of the free and open marketplace. Which, in fact, does allow independent movies to be made and viewed. The whole marketing thing is just something you have to overcome. And it is hard. You know, when the marketing wing has a very clear definition of what the movie is, and it is not the movies you think you made, that is a big, big problem.
Affleck : Did you know anything about marketing before you started acting?
Hanks : You’re tlaking to a guy who, in his first movie, meets a mermaid named Darly Hannah, and the next thing I know, man, I went off on a tear for probably six years of never not working.
Affleck : In “Splash” you get the girl. Have you found that studios want to put a happy ending on movies?
Hanks : No. There is no secret recipe for success. But, if you’re a studio and you’re going to be spending this vast, huge chunk of movie, you must have safety factors built in. Maybe one of those safety factors is the happy ending. In spite of the fact that with “Independence Day” millions of people are dead — the entire world — and still half the audience walks off laughing. Hah, hah, hah, hah! [laughter] Or they bet on an idea of the big, bankable movie star. But the thing is, the formula is inaccurate because the audience is hip now. People are incredibly hungry for that thing that is brand-new. They are. As soon as they get a whiff that there’s something brand-new out there, they will show up in droves.
Affleck : Which is only one movie away.
Hanks : You got it.
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