Tom Hanks Career: A Urinary Morality Play

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Everyone assumes that directors and writers decide what happens in a movie, but many times the movie star is the most powerful person involved with the project. For instance, when Jim Carrey wanted to make a movie about his favorite number, The Number 23 hit theaters across the country. A much more entertaining abuse of this star power occurs when huge movie stars decide they look awesome doing something, and proceed to force that something into every movie they make. For instance ... #5. Tom Hanks' Career is a Urinary Morality Play Most movie stars use their careers to build up enough credibility to avoid urinating onscreen. Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller each had a couple piss gags early on, and then they got successful. It's just not…show more content…
Any ideas?" If it were just these two iconic moments, it would be easy to dismiss this as a mere weakness for the poop joke's more penis-y cousin. But Gump wasn't the first Hanks character to pull the "'I've gotta pee.' --sneaks off to explore secret house" gambit. In The 'Burbs, Hanks uses the same excuse to investigate the home of his creepy neighbors. How Tom Hanks lets a room full of adults know that he has to pee. And in the art-house movie Road to Perdition, he uses his overactive bladder as a spidey-sense when he escapes a hit man by excusing himself to take a whiz. OK, this is still The 'Burbs. The footage of Hanks grabbing his penis in Road to Perdition wasn't nearly as funny. When Tom Hanks is actually urinating onscreen, you can be sure that something thematically significant is taking place. In A League of Their Own, it establishes his character's central conflict as a man who refuses to accept people without penises into the locker room. In another early comedy, The Money Pit, his literal pissing contest with a statue is the central symbol of his character's…show more content…
"Imagine that! Being able to just pee right in the ocean!" There are also meaningful pee scenes in Saving Private Ryan (while the other soldiers talk about missing their mothers, Hanks reminisces about a kid who used to piss Vs on everyone's jackets) and The Terminal (his character must wait for an important phone call despite having to pee, like, super bad). But Hanks' crowning achievement has to be The Green Mile. In 1999, Tom Hanks was arguably as big as any movie star had ever been. He was coming off of Oscar-wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, plus Apollo 13 (nominated for nine Oscars) and Saving Private Ryan (nominated again for Best Actor). Following in the footsteps of great actors like Daniel Day Lewis, Hanks chose a character with a crippling physical affliction for his next role in an Oscar contender. Unlike any character other than Beavis and Butthead in that episode where they forgot how to pee, that physical affliction was painful urination. Well there's your problem right

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