Forrest Gump/Sleepless in Seattle/Toy Story/Cast Away/Philadelphia

Tom Hanks Chapter. Philadelphia for extra Denzel points. Honorable mentions: a league of their own and a bonus Denzel one, man on fire.

Here’s the link to his imdb page https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000158/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Look for yourself and tell me if you find a miss. Yeah, his newer stuff plateaued a bit, but once you set a high standard you’re more than entitled to plateau a little ie his role in Elvis. Movies with Tom Hanks have always been especially valuable to him for a variety of reasons. “I don’t know what it was, but I just pay attention more” Guy thought to himself. He seemed like a wacky father figure to me, just like my Dad. The father of father figures. The movies listed above have had some sort of influence in my life. You can also substitute Bruce Willis for this category and have a similar list of movies. Just more bullets. Hell, let’s look at all the names of the character he played → John, Joe, Ernest, Butch, James, Muddy, Korben Dallas (this one gets his last name too) Harry, Malcolm, Jimmy, Joe (again). I’d have a beer with each of these people on name alone. Think of all the wisdom you could learn from a guy like Korben Dallas. I bet he’d help you find your Fifth Element too. But back to Tom Hanks. This is how Guy saw himself in those films:

Toy Story (1995 — Great year for film)
Guy was fascinated by this movie. Toys coming to life when humans aren’t watching? Sign him up. The premise is simple and easy to follow. Toys come alive, one toy gets jealous of a brand new toy who threatens his place in the toy caste system which will divide his owner’s attention, therefor the toy wants to get rid of the new toy, the toys fight, then the toys save each other. Then they become friends, and all the toys get along. The toy caste system is normal again. Tom Hanks voices the cowboy aptly named Woody. He’s also the jealous toy. His best line is the recorded message he says when the string behind him gets pulled.“I got a snake in my boot,” he says on command and when he looks under his boot it says his owner’s name, Andy. “That’s how love works… right?” Guy would ask himself. It actually kind of does.

Forrest Gump (1994 — Great year for film)

Guy liked to walk/jog/run for whatever reason. It just got his heart pumping and cardio was a good challenge for him. It made him feel alive. It’s truly the only moment where he felt like his only competition was himself. He was not running against anybody or anything (at least physically, mentally he was running from everything). He ran races. He ran a couple of (half) marathons. He’s done a 5K. Really, he saw himself as a sprinter who grew into a long-distance runner. So where did he see himself like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump? Well, Tom Hanks had a weird thing about him. And it wasn’t what was going on in his mind, but the world around him. And through “dumb” luck Tom Hanks stumbled into the middle of some of the major and monumental moments in American history. Guy felt like he lived his life just like that. “I’m always in the moment but I’m never the moment,” (even when he is, he never saw it that way) he thought. Guy also thought the Jenny arc was cute but sad, but for some reason he always wanted to meet a Jenny. It would turn out that Guy would meet many Jennys. “That’s how love works… right?” Guy would ask himself. It’s not.

Cast Away (2000 — Great year for film)

Guy read a book called Hatchet one time, which is about a kid who jumps on a plane to see either his mom or dad, he doesn’t really remember that part but all you really know is his parents are split, and the plane crashes. The pilot dies and the boy survives based on a backpack on the plane that has a hatchet in it. He ate some berries, caught some fish, and eventually, he got found. Guy thought this book was much better than the previous book they read which was Island of the Blue Dolphins. Guy’s teacher thought it was appropriate to show the class Cast Away. To put it simply, Cast Away is about Tom Hanks who works at FedEx. He jumps on a last-minute flight in a cargo plane that crashes due to turbulence. He survives a plane crash on a deserted island, manages to survive for many years with the will of love in his heart manifested in a locket and a volleyball, and gets back home (somehow) only to find out the Houston Oilers turned into the Tennessee Titans. And his wife remarried. Tom Hanks is also not used to sleeping in a bed so he sleeps on the floor. When at a very literal cross roads, Tom Hanks walks down the road.“That’s not how love works… right?” Guy would ask himself. Well, not always.

Philadelphia
(Bonus points, Denzel Washington appears again! I told you 1993 is a great year for film)
Guy saw this movie as a young adult off the premise that if you put Denzel and Tom Hanks in a movie you will get nothing short of magic. He was right. Let’s start with the Tom Hanks angle. He’s a (closeted) successful lawyer who gets diagnosed with AIDS. His superiors find out and blackball him out of the business which makes the virus worse if you think about it. Tom Hanks decides to fight against it, not only for the sake of himself but for the sake of what he believes is just. He goes to every lawyer in town and no one even wants to touch him let alone have a sit down with him. Purely because he’s HIV positive, nothing to do with his character or his successful dedication to his career. So his last stop is some smooth-talking lawyer named Denzel Washington. This man can sell ice to Eskimos. If you needed volcano insurance in the tundra, he’d be the guy to sell it you. At first, Denzel turns Tom Hanks away because he doesn’t deal with gay people let alone someone with AIDS. Then Denzel thinks about all the times he’s been turned away because of his race. Purely because he’s black, nothing to do with his character or successful dedication to his career. Denzel decides to help him. They beat the case at the expense of Tom Hank’s life. He succumbs to AIDS. “That’s how love works… right?” Guy would ask himself. It’s-it’s complicated.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993 — I’m telling you it’s a great year for film, you should check it out. Think of it like this, any year before September 10th, 2001 is arguably a great year for film mainly because after 9/11 American cinema decided to make films that center around distrusting the government and relying on heroes to fix it and saving the world by blowing shit up ie Bourne Supremacy, Eagle Eye, Hurt Locker Mission Impossible, Super Hero movies, you name it. Bowling for Columbine is informative, Jarhead is okay, and Team America: World Police is said to have swayed the 2004 election. This also is when Tarinto makes it big in this era so it’s not all bad. What does suck is how big-budget worldwide films like to appease China. Tap into the Asian market they say, yeah we’re tapping in all right.)

This movie was on Guy’s list for a long time and he never made time to watch it. He listened to this radio host who would hype it up saying it’s a must-watch movie. “A Meg Ryan classic!” the host would say. So Guy watched it and couldn’t stop watching. It was really something to put on in the background as he looked at the other screen in his hand. He put the other screen away and his eyes were locked in on the movie. Witty, hilarious, sad, cute, wholesome and loving. He especially loved how meta the movie is and how it quotes other movies to say how love is true in movies but not in real life. Tom Hanks has a kid and seeks his soul mate through various random signs. Through close miss after close miss, they eventually get together. There’s a lot more to the story but think of it as the most unlikely likely love story movie ever. It made Guy cry a couple of times. “That’s how love works,” Guy told himself. It’s not entirely true.

Ultimately, Guy liked to think he learned a ton of life lessons from these movies. “Stupid is what stupid does,” “WILSONNNNN!” “To infinity and beyond” (oh did he like this one the most). Really he paid more attention to Tom Hanks films because he saw his Dad in them and there was always an underlying story of love. A love that he may or may not have seen to the fullest extent in his home life, but these movies were lessons in how to emulate love and how to feel loved. He thought that was the right way to love when let’s be real, it’s not. Oh did he like to think he learned so much, but what he took from it were witty one-liners he passed off as his own that impressed random girls at bars who thought he was smooth. Until he froze up of course. They were similar to the one-liners he learned from his Dad though. Life lessons left and right that were catchphrases to live your life by. “Put bacon on a biscuit, we’re burning daylight!” A John Wayne line that Guy’s Dad learned from his own Dad, Guy’s Grandpa, but Guy had zero interest in John Wayne. He liked the one-liner when he heard the quote on the local rock radio. On a side note, Guy’s Dad’s favorite Tom Hanks movie is Joe Versus the Volcano. The scene with the full moon in the background is iconic. Guy took his Dad’s one-liners as jokes as Guy thought he knew better. To some extent he did, to a large extent he did not.