I Hate Tom Hanks
I hate Tom Hanks, he's just nice. That goody, goody veneer just rubbed me the wrong
way for so long now. “Bosom Buddies”, B.S., he's not my buddy. Paul Newman was good with an
edge. But not Mr. Hanks, ever such the every man hero, every man but me.
He always plays the idol underdog. The man who made the world better. Plus to further
compound my nail in his affable coffin, interview upon interview everybody loves Tom Stanks.
So my personal rebellion, beyond tattoos and dyed hair that became shaved head, out of
necessity due to hairline in retreat (all of which are no longer counter-culture signifiers), was to
publicly disdain Tom Hanks.
Anger is hard to untangle. Dislike is a comfortable path to walk. A grumpy groove of
grief, enmeshed in my personal identifiers, ever after Philadelphia and what should have been my
undying embrace of a man who championed my life, eternally entwined in the gay narrative.
Doubling down on his TV role as a cross-dressing straight man, I in turn doubled down on my
antipathy and fed well on eighties diet of self hate. Unlike Cher, Tina and Bette, Tom was “The
Man” to me. Everything no man ever is. The biggest lie ever propagated and of hopes dashed.
No man is that nice, especially not me.
A League of Their Own was Penny Marshall, so I can be forgiven for my appreciation of
Georgia Peach Geena “Louise” Davis and the female empowerment popcorn
confection. Movies like Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Castaway far better play into my passion
project monologue, nightly at the bar where I worked, of Tom Hanks disdain. Those characters
all seemed hell bent on pushing the image of “I'm a better person than you.” Person now rather
than man because Tom Hanks had by this point transcended single gender admiration.
Tom Hanks's wife, Rita Wilson, produced my big favorite Greek wedding movies 1 and 2,
yet that love connection between she and I did not translate to her husband. It maybe softened
my opinion, a bit. Then Tom Hanks starred in Larry Crowne with my Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts
who cracks the every person code in my mind, from Mystic Pizza to Sleeping with the Enemy. A
Steel Magnolia may have cooled the hot metal rage I held for Tom Hanks, but not a great deal.
Fairly imperceptibly, to be honest, I barely noticed this cooling off.
Now five years into my prison sentence, there is a state facility movie channel with no R-
rated movies. That's a lot of TomHanks showings. And Terminal broke me.
I now see it was me. Standing in my own way. I missed so much good because of my
own stubbornness and self-sabotage; not the affable Tom Hanks. I was strong willed not to
conform or change. I missed out on the joy of Tom Hanks, my sweet baboo, that sweet baboon.
Now I am locked in prison and if I want to watch the “state movie”, that prolific f*ck nut
(sorry, old habit) is in the most movies made in recent history that are not rated R. But I have
started to unlock my myriad tangle of misperceptions of other people, including my own self
hatred. I still don't like like Forrest Gump or Apollo 13 and probably won't ever relax enough to
watch a Tom Hanks centric film like Castaway when the state shows that too (and they did).
But that is not Tom Hanks, it's the writer, the director and the endings. Endings are hard to
write. I am scared of how my own life story is viewed and will end.
Although his previous work needled me because it was nice, the state broke me. But
then again in prison, with a lack of choices, Cindy Crawford in Fair Game channels escapism and
commands a scene like Sigourney Weaver on stage in Chekov. Where Mila Kunis in Jupiter
Ascending seems like Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. It's all about perceptions. Hopefully they
show Philadelphia before I max out.
Tom Hanks has a joy I never knew. But I have two more years to learn to unquestioningly
accept and love him and myself before I return to the outside world.
Hopefully a more loving and accepting man. And writing endings may be hard, but
predicting them is impossible.