The Forrest Gump stars were game to reunite with Robert Zemeckis for the technical experiment of Here. De-ageing? A static camera? They weren’t fazed.
It’s not exactly a Forrest Gump sequel, but the new movie Here does reunite the stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and the filmmakers – director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri – of that 1994 Oscar-winning favourite. Like the earlier film, the new one also travels across decades, with an unheard-of perspective.
In this case, though, the viewpoint is the camera’s: Here is filmed almost entirely from one locked-off shot, with a camera positioned in what becomes the living room of a century-old New England home. There are no cutaways or traditional close-ups; no montages or wide-angle transitions. It’s an experiment in cinematic formalism, inspired by Richard McGuire’s ambitious, genre-expanding 2014 graphic novel of the same name.
Although the story starts with the dinosaurs and travels all the way through the present day with different characters, it focuses mostly on Hanks and Wright’s boomer couple, Richard and Margaret, whose lives are, by turns, mundane and historicised in that single setting. The furniture and styles change, and with the help of artificial intelligence, the stars were also digitally de-aged.
“It really is about: Why do we remember the moments that we remember?” Wright said.
In a video interview this week from New York, she and Hanks spoke about what attracted them to the film (the answer was largely Zemeckis), the enduring appeal of Forrest Gump and what drives their choices now. The technical challenges of Here also energised them: There was no crafting – or saving – a performance in the edit; no way to cut around a missed mark except to redo a whole scene. “Tom and I, we’re so spoiled, we don’t ever want to shoot conventional format again,” Wright said of typical cinematography.
Early reviews have been mixed, with some critics balking at the visual conceit, and the de-ageing. Wright, 58, was having none of it. “It is so simple and beautiful and real and human,” she said. “We all have experienced something in this movie.”
Hanks, 68, pondered why cynicism has become, as he said, “the default”.
“I remain driven by this never-ending curiosity I have, about how it is true that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people,” he said. The response could be cynicism, he said, but only if you’re seeking “the lowest common denominator”.
The conversation, which was punctuated by Hanks’ impression of Zemeckis and by Wright’s laughter, also touched on the 2020 documentary “The Truffle Hunters,” which Zemeckis recommended. These are edited excerpts.
Q: The movie came together because Tom, you and Robert Zemeckis were talking about what was left to do in the world of film – is that right?
HANKS: That’s a good way of putting it. Bob and I talk all the time – like old war veterans, about various campaigns we’ve been in and life in general. The Truffle Hunters, I was enraptured by this movie because, No. 1, I love documentaries. And the idea of old men and dogs, and figuring out the entire economy of truffles in general, is pretty fascinating.
So much of that movie was shot in a locked-off tableau form. And there was something about how long they went on, and yet how invigorating all these scenes were, that stuck in my head. I said: I wonder how much of that you could get away with in a feature film. And he literally said, funny you should ask, and he showed me the graphic novel.
WRIGHT: I immediately saw it visually: those panels, those cutouts of another piece of furniture on that page, is going to lead me into what the next era is. I was like, “Go for it, Bob. If anybody can do it, you can do it”.
HANKS: Really, we were talking about the theme of impermanence and presence, and how you could tell stories about people who live thousands or hundreds of years ago, or 80 years ago, and they did not realise they were living in the past. I don’t know a lot of movies that are made about that topic. But Bob always has this other cinematic demand of himself, to do it in some form that no one has either bothered with or dreamed of or trusted enough. And that’s why I’ll follow Bob into hell if he’s got an idea, and see where it will lead us.
Q: How did you recalibrate your acting style for this?
HANKS: We did a week’s worth of a workshop in a hotel ballroom in LA. We locked off an iPhone, and we had approximations of the set. We had to just figure out the technical parts of, you know, walking into our own close-ups and being in our own two-shots. The studio executives were always saying, “You’re sure this is going to work? This has never been done before.” Well, who in the world do you think you’re talking to? Bob Zemeckis does nothing but make movies that have never been done.
WRIGHT: (On set, they felt) I don’t know if it’s going to work. Let’s go for it. And every single scene, sometimes we would nail it in three to five takes and then others, we had to do it 45 times. We had to rehearse and rehearse so that we all got in sync: you walked into your own close-up, but we still see the other character in the background. It was just a dance.
Q: Did you get to approve how you looked as your younger selves?
WRIGHT: No – they nailed it. Because it’s literally data they derived from interviews Tom and I did when we were 18, 19, 21; still photographs; stuff that is online. They deposit it into this machine, and they made us up to look 17 – we wore the costumes, we had girdles when we had to be young. For the ageing part, that was a little bit of visual effect added to prosthetics.
Q: Did you watch dailies? Or playback?
WRIGHT: There were no dailies because there was no coverage. We got to see immediate playback after every take.
HANKS: I will not watch playback on a standard movie because I am going to be the least objective about anything that I see.
But here, it was the most important tool we had to judge ourselves as 17-year-old or 37-year-old versions of ourselves. I had no self-consciousness about looking at the playback except: Are my shoulders in the right place? Do we have enough energy? Are our eyes actually, you know, focused the way they can be when you’re young – or burdened when you’re old?
WRIGHT: Tom’s right that we had to be very discerning of ourselves. Like, OK, maybe I need to think of something that is more innocent, that will take away the years of life that are in here. We were acting physically, raising the octave in our voice, to be a 17-year-old. But AI gave us the innocence in the eyes and the youthful skin. And got rid of the saggy neck.
Q: Your profession can be tough on people as they age. Did working on a movie where you see both your younger self and an older version of your character bring that into relief?
HANKS: I get that every time I walk past the refrigerator – all these pictures that go back 30 or 40 years. I know I don’t look like that anymore. And I’m comfortable (with that).
Q: The movie shows your characters get together, and, of course, you have co-starred before. Did you have to have any further conversation about what attracted them, what propels their marriage?
HANKS: I’m going to say no because –
Q: But she is nodding.
WRIGHT: We talked about it so much, though, Tom, when we were rehearsing: Who are these people and why he is so fixed on, “We need to stay in this house”.
HANKS: That, to me, was the precursor to the lines we were saying; it’s all there. Robin, maybe you and I were just, you know, fighting the way a couple would anyway, as we’re trying to figure it out.
Q: Were you concerned at all that these emotional moments might be overshadowed, for audiences, by the technical audacity, the de-ageing, all of that?
WRIGHT: I didn’t think about any of that. I just wanted to be in sync with Bob’s vision, and Eric Roth. You know, sitting around that table in LA, really talking about the full arc of these people and a life that they spent together. That’s the theme of this movie: What do you appreciate the most about these moments in your life, and why?
HANKS: The technical aspects, they have been in every movie I’ve made with Bob. In Forrest Gump, they said, isn’t it kind of creepy that you can be in the same room as John F. Kennedy now? Isn’t that diabolical in some ways? And I remember Bob saying: You mean we could lie on film? Well, guess what? You can.
With Castaway, there was no musical score for a big chunk of the movie. And some people said: How do you get away with that?
There’s all kinds of stuff that they say: Will movies ever be the same again because of this thing? And the answer is yes, of course, because in the sensibilities and I guess in some ways the morals of the filmmaker, it’s plainly evident what the final product is.
Q: Is Forrest Gump a project, or an era of moviemaking – or moviegoing – that you feel sentimental about?
WRIGHT: It’s a movie that I will always feel sentimental about, not only because it’s a great movie. Sentimental working with these guys because it was such a great experience.
HANKS: It is this extraordinary amalgam that stands completely on its own and never has to be repeated. And thank God we never bothered trying to make another one. Why put a hat on a hat?
Q: Do people quote Gump to you?
WRIGHT: Constantly. Do you get it?
HANKS: All the time. I get “Run Forrest, run” all the time. (In Forrest’s voice) “Mama always told me” —
WRIGHT: (In Forrest’s voice) “Life’s a box of chocolates.”
HANKS: “No, you idiot.” I get that sometimes, from Gary (Sinise’s character, Lieutenant Dan). I like to compare – that is like people giving me a nickel when they see me.
WRIGHT: Totally.
HANKS: Hey, here’s a nickel for you: I’m going to show you this quote that meant so much to us. I still get letters all the time saying, every year the family gets together, we do what we did back in 1995, when it first came out on home video. We all watch it, from beginning to end. Right now, someone is watching that movie from beginning to end somewhere in the world. And it’s landing with that same sense of comfort and familiarity.
Q: There are some different takes on Jenny, Robin’s character, including that she was punished for her choices – which were reflective of the choices of many young women in a generation that had social and economic liberty for the first time. She chooses a freewheeling life, and she dies. There is a sense that this is kind of an anti-feminist role. What do you think?
WRIGHT: No! It’s not about that. People have said she’s a Voldemort to Forrest. I wouldn’t choose that as a reference, but she was kind of selfish. I don’t think it’s a punishment that she gets Aids. She was so promiscuous – that was the selfishness that she did to Forrest. He was in love with her from Day 1. And she was just flighty and running and doing coke and hooking up with a Black Panther. And then she gets sick and says, “This is your child. But I’m dying.” And he still takes her: “I’ll take care of you at Mama’s house.” I mean, it’s the sweetest love story.
Q: Here and Forrest Gump obviously are not the same movie. But they do have some of the same undercurrents – social, cultural and economic shifts in the background. What matters to you when you’re telling stories that have that kind of scope?
HANKS: I can’t do anything unless I think it’s absolutely fascinating. I’ve got to feel like I’m signing up for the best undergraduate class in a subject, and our study plan is to make a movie about it.
Q: Is there an era that you would have liked to have lived in, that you didn’t experience?
WRIGHT: I would’ve loved to have been an adult in the ‘60s. What’s yours, Tom?
HANKS: I would have liked to have been in my 20s in the late 1940s, like New York from 1946 to ‘56. Radio was still huge. Movies were getting better and better; music down on 52nd Street. (Writer) Nick Pileggi, a friend of mine, said that he would listen to music on 52nd Street for $2, and just drink at the bar at 11 o’clock. Everybody from (Charles) Mingus to Dinah Washington to the Chico (Hamilton Quintet). And it wasn’t until TV came along and started altering everybody’s social practices that it began to slow down. If I could’ve turned 25 in 1946, I would have loved to have been in New York.
Q: When you’re in projects that take on this sweep of history, has it changed your own perception of time?
WRIGHT: (With Here) I feel like we’re talking sense about who we all are.
HANKS: Well, not because of the work I’ve done, but because of the number of birthdays that I’ve had. I’m 68, and I must say, I view time differently. I used to think a day was 36 hours long, and now I’m convinced it’s only 18. I never get done what I want. I guess I’m aware of being on the back nine – that time is a very, very finite thing. And to squander it, I think it’s a sin.
So I ponder everything that I do from a perspective of how many minutes do I have left. And this is not a morbid thing! I think I’m being liberated by the fact that this is all in my own power. How much joy and compassion and empathy am I going to take part in, and share at the same time? Let’s get cracking! Let’s go.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Melena Ryzik
Photographs by: Erik Carter
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
