Tom Hanks isn’t always pleased with his own work.
The actor discussed his own viewpoint on judging films, telling The New Yorker, "Let’s admit this: We all have seen movies that we hate. I have been in some movies that I hate. You have seen some of my movies and you hate them."
He continued, sharing his opinion on how people judge movies in general. "Someone is going to say, 'I hated it.' Other people can say, 'I think it’s brilliant.' Somewhere in between the two is what the movie actually is,” he said, which he described as “Rubicon No. 3” from his five-point Rubicon list that is "crossed by anybody who makes movies.”
He then described the remaining four Rubicons, with the first saying yes to watching the film. The second is seeing the film and realizing, “It either works and is the movie you wanted to make, or it does not work and it’s not the movie you wanted to make."
The fourth Rubicon is the film’s commercial performance: “If it does not make money, your career will be toast sooner than you want it to be. That’s just the fact,” he explained.
Hanks said the last Rubicon is time. He offered It’s a Wonderful Life as an example of a movie that become more treasured over time, rather than immediately at its 1946 release.
He also named his own movie, 1996’s That Thing You Do!, which he wrote, directed, and starred in.
"I loved making that movie," Hanks said. "I loved writing it, I loved being with it. I love all the people in it. When it came out, it was completely dismissed by the first wave of vox populi. It didn’t do great business. It hung around for a while, was viewed as being some sort of odd, kinda quasi-ripoff of nine other different movies and a nice little stroll down memory lane."
"Now the same exact publications that dismissed it in their initial review called it 'Tom Hanks' cult classic, That Thing You Do!' So now it’s a cult classic," he continued. "What was the difference between those two things? The answer is time."
