Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994 TAG: 9401200002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In the new film, ``Philadelphia,'' Jennet Conant wrote in an article in the current issue of Esquire, Hanks plays a successful lawyer who sues his firm after he is fired for being gay and having AIDS.
Hanks, anxious to break out of the romantic comedies he has been doing since ``Splash'' made him a star almost 10 years ago, eagerly pursued the role.
``I have spent voluminous amounts of time,'' he said, ``discussing the philosophical aspects of where I am, what I want to do, the nature of being a power in the industry, being a commodity, having momentum, having cachet.''
He said when he was in repertory theater in the late '70s, he played a variety of roles and reveled in it.
The actor figures he once was probably as much of a closet homophobe as the next guy, and he cautions that it would be a mistake to make too much out of the fact that he comes from Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay area.
``When I was growing up outside San Francisco, I was probably at my most naive,'' he said. ``I was shocked, eventually, to find out that one of my high school teachers was gay.''
From the beginning, the filmmakers and studio executives knew it would be hard to sell an AIDS movie to a country with large and sometimes boisterous pockets of homophobia. The movie's central focus now is the odd coupling of the gay client, Hanks, and his straight lawyer, played by Denzel Washington.
``I didn't want to scare off moviegoers, I wanted to pull them in,'' said director Jonathan Demme. He said he was open to any suggestion that would help broaden the appeal of the movie.
``In America, men are taught to be afraid of being sensitive or open to other males who are gay,'' he said. ``It's hard for us to go to the box office with our girlfriends to see a movie about two men being affectionate.''
The Denzel Washington character begins by asserting he doesn't know any homosexuals and wouldn't like them if he did - and he does not emerge a changed man.
``He's not going to be the grand marshal of any gay-pride parade,'' Washington said. ``We didn't want a rah-rah, everything-is-wonderful ending, because that ain't the way it is.''
Hanks prepared for his role by losing 30 pounds, getting his hair thinned and reading a lot of gay literature. He pointed out that in many respects, his character, a young, urban professional, is much closer to his experience than that of, say, Jimmy Dugan, the failed, alcoholic, tobacco-spitting coach Hanks portrayed in ``A League of Their Own.''
``One of the things I talked about with Jonathan is that we were not dealing with people's understanding of AIDS from the first days,'' said. ``My character has not been to three memorial services for friends of his who have died; he's been to 300. What happens is not a shock.''
by CNB