Fame and respect as an actor doesn’t mean a star’s every film has been a hit. Just ask Tom Hanks, who names one of his own films as the worst movie ever put to screen. The film with that backhanded honor is The Bonfire of the Vanities, directed by Brian De Palma.
Actually, this designation proves several times over a talented actor’s resume won’t be made up entirely of successes. That’s because it features a star-studded cast, including not just Hanks but also Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, and Kim Cattrall. So, what doesn’t Hanks love about this film?
Heading to the bonfire of vanities was an uphill trek
On paper, The Bonfire of the Vanities has all the ingredients for critical acclaim. The 1990 film was a screen adaptation of the best-selling ‘87 novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe. It boasted a budget of $47 million, of which it made… $15 million back. Hanks would give it that price value or less.
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Part of the problem, Hanks argues, was his inability to relate to his character, Sherman McCoy, an amoral Wall Street banker who helps his mistress cover up the murder of a Black teenager she hit with her car. The end result had Hanks saying of the film, “It’s one of the crappiest movies ever made.” Speaking with The Oprah Magazine in 2001, Hanks also admitted that because he could not relate to McCoy, even “bullsh—ing his way through” was not doable.
Lessons in the lesser things
Ultimately, though Hanks doesn’t have a glowing review for The Bonfire of the Vanities as a film, he does see value in the experience it gave him. “Yet if I hadn’t gone through that experience, I would have lost out on something valuable,” he shared. “That movie was a fascinating enterprise from the word go. It was bigger than life, and for some reason, it had a huge amount of attention on it.”
He continued, “I can go to Germany, even now, and people will say, ‘How come you don’t make good, gritty movies like The Bonfire of the Vanities anymore?’ They have no concept of what it meant to be an American and have that movie enter the national consciousness. Bonfire taught me that I couldn’t manufacture a core connection.”
Did you see the movie, and do you agree or disagree with Hanks?
