Tom Hanks hops on scooter back to college for new film

Everything changes. Tom Hanks took his own experiences to create the man at the heart of Larry Crowne. Tony Earnshaw reports.

Tom Hanks is a man with clout. A lot of clout. He can do anything. He acts! He produces! He directs! He’s among the top three of America’s favourite modern stars. He earns $50 million per movie.

Nudging 55, Hanks has enjoyed the kind of success most stars can only dream of. He holds the record (with Spencer Tracy) for back-to-back Oscar wins as best actor, for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. His name on a movie means millions. He is, for all intents and purposes, The Man.

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Fifteen years after making his directorial debut on That Thing You Do! the story of the rise and fall of a ’60s pop group, Hanks is back with Larry Crowne. In this tale of a middle-aged blue collar worker who loses his job and goes back to college, he co-stars with Julia Roberts. It’s a double act made in Hollywood movie heaven.Hanks’s inspiration for Larry came directly via his own experiences at junior college.

“This was in the mid ’70s, and there was a sensibility of flux. In my class, there was somebody who was middle-aged, somebody in his fifties, somebody who was just back from Vietnam. I became friends with almost everybody in class, and I found this rich life experience amongst them.

“Out of my experience in junior college came this character of Larry Crowne. He has his life completely altered by the fact that he gets fired. They let him go under the pretence that he couldn’t advance because he didn’t go to college. So what does Larry do? Much like when I was out of high school, thank goodness, there’s a place called junior college, where nothing is expected of you except what you put into the day when you drive to campus.”

Audiences will enjoy the dual star wattage of Hanks and Julia Roberts, who previously acted together in Charlie Wilson’s War. Roberts was drawn to a story that she called “charming yet topical” and a character who is bored, frustrated at home and in the workplace, and who drinks too much. She describes Mercedes as a woman who “has pickled herself into this cocoon of an unhappy life”. Larry Crowne, aka Hanks, provides a distraction.

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It’s clear that Hanks and Roberts are members of a mutual admiration society. She to him is “pitch perfect”. He to her is “happy, buoyant, present. He has it down. He can shape-shift from acting to directing. It’s pretty impressive.” It’s a love-in. But it comes across as rather more than simple studio guff.

I’ve met Hanks several times. I saw his puppy-dog enthusiasm for Apollo 13 in 1995, saw more of it for That Thing You Do! two years later, soaked up his knowledge of World War Two when he arrived in the UK to promote Saving Private Ryan and then witnessed from afar the pasting he received for The Da Vinci Code.

What Hanks does well is personal projects. His career is littered with them. Most of his hits have been of that variety – from the aforementioned Philadelphia and Forrest Gump via Cast Away, Road to Perdition, the Toy Story series, the epic TV show Band of Brothers and The Green Mile.

For a long time Hanks was untouchable. Then he made a few bombs and it started to fall away. He’s still popular, still capable of opening a movie, still a box office draw. But the films are slightly different these days.

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On Larry Crowne he serves as actor, director, producer and co-writer. His cast represents his own personal repertory. Hence we see ‘70s blaxploitation queen Pam Grier alongside Star Trek’s Mr Sulu, aka George Takei (Hanks is a Star Trek nut). Co-writer Nia Vardalos was the star of the Hanks-produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It’s like a gathering of old friends. And Hanks appeared to have fun. Giving his fellow actors an exercise, he asked them all to select a topic and speak about it in front of everyone else.

“Larry’s first class is like speech class for boneheads,” says Hanks. “I’ve taken classes like that in junior college, you think you’re going to die the first time you have to do them. But by the end of the semester, it’s the most fun class you’ve ever had.”

Hanks claims it was a perfect bonding session. You can do such things when you’re an A-list double Oscar-winning movie icon. My favourite Hanks story from Larry Crowne is about a scooter. In the film Larry swaps his gas-guzzling SUV for more modest two-wheeled transport. Hanks and his producer partner Gary Goetzman were scouting locations when he found the perfect scooter in the car park of CSU Dominguez Hills in California. Hanks left a note for the owner explaining he was making a film and wanted to use the scooter. The owner, a middle-aged man who had recently returned to college, was initially more than a little sceptical. And who wouldn’t be? After he Googled “Tom Hanks and Larry Crowne,” he called the number on the note, still convinced it was a wind-up. It wasn’t. Seduced by Hollywood star power and the Hanks charm, he allowed his 1983 Yamaha Riva 180 to be cast in the film.

Like I said, Tom Hanks has clout. He’s The Man. And he rides a scooter.

Larry Crowne (12A) is released today.