After 40 years of gracing our screens, Tom Hanks knows a thing or two about a thing or two (film and television, namely). That includes an adjacent working knowledge of criticism of both mediums, especially the former — so we should trust him when he says movie critics are "cocksuckers," right?
In the latest episode of Conan O'Brien's Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Hanks made this declarative observation jokingly while discussing the optics of films succeeding or failing. In the actor's mind, there are four "rubicons": first is simply finding a script you love; second, when the movie is done a year and a half later, you decide whether you think it was executed well; third is when the critics weigh in; and fourth is how it does at the box office.
"Then, a ton of time goes by, when none of that stuff matters anymore, and the movie just exists exactly as it is outside of loser-winner status," Hanks explained. "And that's when this stuff comes around where it's like, this thing that didn't work back then kind of does work now — or just the opposite: a thing that was huge back then is a museum piece and doesn't really speak to anything."
O'Brien then brought up 1996's That Thing You Do! and the fact that the actor — who also made his debut as a screenwriter and director with the feature — was disappointed with how it was received when it initially came out. The film has since taken on cult classic status.
"Let me tell you something about these cocksuckers who write about movies," Hanks said, adding, "Can I say that?" He continued, "Somebody who wrote about it [said] that, 'Tom Hanks needs to stop hanging around veterans of TV,' 'cause this is just like [it's] shot on TV and not much of anything. You know, that same person then wrote about the 'cult classic' That Thing You Do!, same exact person."
The actor concluded, "All you need is 20 years between now and then, and it ends up speaking somewhere. But you know, that's the thing we all signed up for. That's the carnival; that's the contest."
While our nostalgia obsession is definitely not un-problematic, it's great that we can reappraise art — and change our minds about things in general. You can listen to the full episode of O'Brien's podcast below, which also sees the host admit to thinking that The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live both only had a "couple more years" left after he stopped writing for them.