Tom Hanks & Robin Wright Share What it Was Like to See Their Teenage Self Again

You could spend the rest of the night here. I could spend the rest of my life here. Thanks so much for being here, y'all. I'm so excited to talk about this movie because I got a little insight from Paul as to how the process works where you can film a scene and then you can literally go look at the monitor and see the younger, older version of yourself. What was it like the first time you saw like that teenage version of yourself again? It's one thing to see it, the photographs, the renderings and stuff, but when we started actually doing the tests and we had to add that dimension of motion, we had to move. That, oh, well, we have our work cut out for us. Yeah. But thankfully, we had cinchers, girdles, super duper like packing tape to tape up our sagging necks. Yeah. And ears. And ears, yeah. They attack your ears down. Ears grow big and slide down the side of your face as you, I mean, everybody starts looking like Lyndon Baines. I had them do this, the visors that I've got going now. Oh, really, yeah? Yeah, I had them do a little like invisible, just to open your eyes more for in the early 20s. But like you were saying, it was harder to play the 35 to 38 year old. Why is that? Because you'd had kids. The stress of being a parent, it's the hardest thing you'll do. Marriage, economic problems. You don't get nearly the exercise. You don't get. Your metabolism starts slowing down. You hit 34, 35, 36, and you don't start processing food the way it affects the gravity. And you only have a little potbelly. Yeah, your gravitational pull on your thing, you know. Because, you know, I think we're in pretty good shape for that. I would say so. I think I'm in better shape now than I was when I was 36 years old. Because I was eating crappy food, and I wasn't doing anything except trying to get out of bed and sit on a couch. That's all I was doing when I was 38. So I guess it's just a relief when you show up to set, and it's one of the scenes where you're playing an older version of yourself. Like, is it easier to play an older version of yourself? Well, I don't think so. No, I think it's that middle thing. That was the tough part, the 30s, funnily enough. But no. We had, there were some sections where it was just us. I mean, it was just standard hair and makeup and a costume. It was like a, phew. We could just be us. We got reprieved today, you know. I just get to come here and be myself. I could release my core. It's like, hmm, I'm going to put real important thought in what shoes I wear, because that's the only thing that's going to affect me today is how my feet feel. You know, when an actor or performer's preparing for a role, sometimes you want to go back and look at, if you're playing a biographical figure, you want to study footage of them. Did y'all go back and watch some of the old movies? Like, did we put on Princess Bride and Splash and stuff like that just to see how it used to look? No. That's too painful. The hardest part is watching the old stuff, isn't it? I don't, I mean. I don't. I don't want to go back there. I mean, because number one, they haven't changed. I mean, I saw them when they came out. Yeah. You see them once and, you know, they're the same thing. And then I never remember stuff I did. I always remember the stuff that other people did. I remember other people's lines. I don't remember mine. Yeah. You know, but we had so many references to us. Look, the way this works is they scrape the internet for every image of you at whatever age it is. And then they composite that in this super, super fast computing. So we saw these representations of our stuff as young. And then one, I looked like my son, or I looked like my dad, you know, between the two of us. Right. Then I'd say mission accomplished, right? I guess so. Yeah, yeah. What was the first day on set like when it's you two and it's Robert Zemeckis and you have, you know, the crew and you have that little, you know, Forrest Gump reunion 30 years ago. Was it magical or was it just like, no, we're just here to work? No, it was just like, what's your line? What? As I was saying. Oh, yeah. That's what it was. It was just like, oh yeah, we're back here again. We're back then. Hey, you know, that's sort of what we talk about. Well, here's the point of it. You know, and we just pick up where we left off. That conversation we had in 1998, I've since learned a few things or I'd like to continue along with it. You overuse this word, but it's the luxury of ease. We are just so, we're just so easy with it. And we've been through, we know how to make movies now. We know how to just get to the red dot as we say a little bit. Is there a room that you can think of in your history where you just want to go back there one more time and just take a look or maybe see what it's up to now like we see in the film? Wow. So many of the things in the room that became our room up here, right? It was his parents, then it became ours. So she redecorated. There were so many textures, fabric, upholstery. I was like, oh, that reminds me. I remember the shag, carpet, the things that brought you back to the seventies. There was the scene where Zsa Zsa, the daughter is coming in and she's taken off. We can't believe how she's dressed and when she's going to come back. I love that scene just because of the way you and I were sitting in our places. I got the TV going on. I got that Shlomil thing and she's over on the couch. Shlomil, Shlomil. Yeah, over on the couch where when you're that age you spend about 40% of your time at home sitting in that one place. Life magazine. Yeah, exactly. And we didn't have to move. We just had to look up at her the way people, I thought that- 10 o'clock, curfew. That was luxurious. We just had to be old folks sitting on the couch complaining about their daughter. I can do that. Oh yeah, we've been there before. So my last question is actually about my mom and I need y'all to predict the future for me. So my mom's doing great, active as I am. She's got tickets for the movie already. When she sees the movie, she's been kicking around the idea of selling our family house for the last couple of years. So after she sees the movie, is she going to be more inclined to make that sale or is she going to say, I don't think I'm ready yet? You go first. I have a prediction. I don't know your mom, but I'm going for my personal thing where I think I'd be like, I don't want to let it go. Really? Okay. Because it's the energy that's in there and all the people that lived in that house after. It's all those energies. So it's whether your mom still feels that energy. Is it still pulling you? All right. Contrary. First of all, Robin, good to know you as always. You're so wrong. You're absolutely wrong. I'm going to say your mom is going to say, it's time for me to pass this on to the next family. My history will always be right here. Our history will always be right here, but it's time to get the other folks to pass this on to the other set of family and move on to their presence. Not the future, their presence. I'd like you to meet Margaret. Nice to meet you, Margaret. Nice to meet you, Mr. Young. So I'm thinking of all the questions I want to ask you and it really boils down to like life advice because watching you in this movie, you've lived an entire life. So is it more fun being young or being old? At the age of 53, I feel like there are things that I just don't care about any longer. I don't get embarrassed easily. You know, all of the huge feelings that you have as a kid, the terrifyingly big feelings that you think I'm never gonna feel different and it's just not true. You do. And so there are lots of things I love about getting older and being in my 50s now. You're just centered, right? And so if you're a 50 something centered person, what's it like to watch yourself on screen as a young man again? Is that true? Well, that was crazy. That was like an existential moment of madness like because it's happening in real time. And so you would do, I'm playing 23 and I come and I look at the monitor and there's me as my age now and there's me at 23 and that one looks more real to me. It's already there. It's happening in real time. Wow. And it looks more real to my brain than me at my age. You're like, that's me. It's crazy. So you have that to act off of, I guess, because you get to look at yourself and now you sort of the proof is in the pudding and like, oh no, we're pulling this thing off. So I guess my next question is, is there a room that you had in your life that you can relate to this room where so much happened and there's so much history there, a room that you wish you could go back to? For me, what it really, my daughter, Jennifer, my last kid was born in our apartment on the West side of Manhattan. And when we packed up that house to move to our beautiful house in Brooklyn and it was the right decision, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Leaving that space where my daughter was born and it's the last thing I did as I left was just go and look at the space in this room where that life began. And that was for sure hard to leave. Yeah, I mean, you think about an apartment too and how many lives go in there. Yeah, unbelievably. You kind of had an interesting role because you get to play the father to Tom Hanks, America's dad. You're America's granddad, congratulations. I'm America's granddad, thank you very much. How's it feel? Right. Telling Tom Hanks what to do, that's a good job. Yeah, I got to chew Tom Hanks out. In fact, the first scene was me chewing Tom Hanks out and I guess he's 17 or 18 and it was really a weird feeling. And then we went back and we looked at the monitors and watched some playback and it's young Tom Hanks. It's 18-year-old Tom Hanks and it looked really appropriate and real. And so it was fantastic to play around with. And then he's helping you in your adult age, so I guess in your elder years, what's the best part of working with someone like a Tom Hanks? Tom is so playful. He has such a great idea of a sense of story and where the story's at. Being able to just play in those scenes where he is, yeah, I guess I'm now living on the sofa, I guess, the sofa bed and he's taking care of me and it's a relationship that a lot of people will recognize. And Tom's just really a playful actor and has always, my experience working with Tom, I've worked with him a number of times now and he's incredibly generous and playful and so that's what that was like. So do you have to have a lot of stuff, because I'm a moron when it comes to the VFX of it, anti-aging and stuff like that. When you, do you have to wear anything? Is there anything you have to do as an actor? Because I'm just curious, like you just go do a look at the monitor and you see your younger self through the technology versus playing someone like Vision where there's a lot of post-production that you have to do to look like that character. In this, with the older makeup, it was traditional prosthetics and stuff and my extraordinary prosthetics team and a lot of work that you can't see going on in the costume to sort of round the neck off and things like that, amazing work. With Vision, it's similar in that I have a lot of the makeup on. A lot of it is caught in camera and then augmented. Okay, so it's sort of the similar, we get to, and you're getting back into the mindset of Vision? For sure, thinking about it, I've been thinking about it a lot. All right, last question for you. My mom is currently considering selling the house where we grew up in. Our family house for the last 30 years. Should I take her to see this movie? What's this movie gonna do to her? Is this gonna sway the decision one way or the other? Do you want her to sell the house? I don't have a dog in the fight, I promise. Like I love the house, but I want her to be happy. I want her to be happy. Okay, well then take her to see the movie. Okay. You don't have a dog in that. If I don't have a dog in the fight, then I can just take her to see the movie. Okay, and what's your prediction? Sell or no sell? She'll sell. She'll sell, but like a couple of years time. Time sure does fly, doesn't it? Sure does. I'm so impressed by your filmography, obviously, because you look as far back as Roger Rabbit or Forrest Gump, Polar Express, where you've sort of been on the cutting edge of new film technology and really found like, oh, this is the right time to utilize this brand new thing. So in making this film, what gave you the confidence that, oh, we can pull this off as well as we did, as far as the de-aging goes in particular? Okay, well, obviously we did a lot of testing on the de-aging to make sure it was gonna work. So that was simple to do. When you see it and you go, okay, it's getting there. It's gonna work really well. As far as the concept of the movie, you never go with any movie. And all I can do is go with my instincts. And I felt like it could be a really interesting and compelling movie to make. Yeah, it was so interesting talking to Paul and then Tom and Robin about how they could literally shoot a take and then they can go watch it on the monitor and it's already rendered as their younger selves. I mean, as a filmmaker, that's gotta be such a nice sort of arrow to have in your quiver. Yeah, it's nice. I mean, it wasn't finished. It was very rudimentary and very glitchy, but you could get a sense of what they were gonna look like. And it helped them improve their performance because they could look at it and go, oh, I see, I gotta act a little more youthful here. Not acting young enough or old enough. Right, so you didn't have to wait and hope. And while looking at it and hoping that, well, in six months and millions of dollars later, let's hope we were right. So it was very helpful. Was there one particular time period in all the vast history that we cover in this one spot that you saw as the most challenging from your perspective? Challenging to shoot? Oh no, they were all, I mean, every, well, all movies are challenging to shoot, but no, I had fun with all of them. I think they were, I enjoyed doing them all. I mean, there wasn't one that was any more difficult than anything else. So no, I don't think I can look at anything and say, oh, that was really tough. No, it was all, it was all, they're all tough, but it was good to do. Was there a room in your history that you look back on and you say, oh, if I could just, if I could go back in there and just see, what this one space has become or what it was, because I think every viewer watching this movie is gonna bring their own memory of that space for them. I'd never actually pondered a specific room. I always, when I travel and I go to, if you go to like Italy, for example, and you're staying in a house that might be 600 years old, I think about whether or not, oh my God, what about all the families and lives and people who pass through these walls that are still standing? I think of that, but it wasn't until I read the novel that I thought, okay, well, this is one specific view, but sort of, and then what would happen in this one fly on the wall thing that we're looking at? It's a credit to the movie and how sort of wrapped up I was in it that I didn't really, it didn't dawn on me until about halfway through that I'm looking at Tom and I'm looking at Rob and I'm thinking, and I'm like, oh, this is a Forrest Gump review. We did this 30 years ago. And I'm just curious, like how close did you ever get to wanting to go back in that world, if at all, or is there gonna be a right time to revisit the world of Forrest Gump with the technology that we have now to sort of put people in any time period we want? No, I have no interest in doing any continuations of any of my movies. I think Forrest Gump just is Forrest Gump and it can just be what it is. It's pretty perfect on its own. My last question for you is just because of, you go back to the 80s and again, what a pioneer you've been, not just in making great movies, but utilizing the newest technology available and really perfecting it. Where do you see the next sort of plateau being in terms of filmmaking and incorporating technology? What's the next step, do you think? I don't know, I have no idea. I don't really think about it much. I'm sort of a guy who just comes in on the wave of what's happening. Having made movies about the future, I've learned that it's pretty impossible to predict the future and the reason is is because we always underestimate it.