Reaching for the Stars – and Paying the Price

The Plot Thickens

TCM Podcasts

Tv & Film, Film History

4.8 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Tom Hanks researches his role, nobody recognizes how wrong he is for the part. There's more immediate pushback against the casting of Bruce Willis, since his part was written as British. But the hardest decision comes when the director insists that a Jewish judge be played by a Black actor, to soften the film’s racial tensions.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Sherman McCoy was 38.
0:02.2	He was supposed to look like a waspier aristocrat,
0:05.2	tall with a round majestic chin.
0:08.8	He was the main character in Tom Wolf's novel,
0:11.2	Bonfire the Vanities.
0:13.0	Sherman was rich, arrogant,
0:15.1	the 1980s version of the 1%.
0:18.5	He was a Wall Street guy who assumed the world owed him everything.
0:22.9	Tom Wolf called men like Sherman
0:25.1	the masters of the universe.
0:27.4	I am a master of the universe.
0:30.2	I deserve more.
0:35.6	Believe it or not,
0:37.0	Tom Hanks was cast in the movie role.
0:39.4	Not exactly the part you'd peg him for.
0:44.9	Tom Hanks was likeable.
0:46.4	He was a comedy actor.
0:47.7	He falls in love with a mermaid and splash.
0:50.7	And Biggie played a 12-year-old boy in a grown man's body.
0:54.8	Even Tom Hanks was nervous about playing Sherman McCoy.
0:58.6	And he said as much in a TV interview.
1:00.8	Why would you be intimidated?
	...

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