Tom Hanks: The Nomad

Year 17, Day 181 - 6/30/25 - Movie #5,064

BEFORE: June is over, but the Doc Block continues until August, so really, I'm just getting started. Here are the format stats for June: 

16 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The United States of Leland, Cut Bank, One More Time, At Close Range, Five Nights at Freddy's, 57 Seconds, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Boomerang, Mr. Church, A Thousand Words, Imagine That, Ezra, Faye, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, Personality Crisis: One Night Only

5 watched on Netflix: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Luckiest Girl Alive, Incoming, Old Dads, Nonnas

1 watched on iTunes: The Apprentice
3 watched on Amazon Prime: The Fall Guy, Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!, Tom Hanks: The Nomad
3 watched on Hulu: Daddy Day Care, A Complete Unknown, Brats

1 watched on Tubi: Valerie

1 watched on a random site: Fade to Black

30 TOTAL

Kevin Bacon carries over from "Brats" via archive footage. This doc seems to be ALL archive footage, nobody was interviewed and that's usually a very bad sign. Anyway I was a little worried about the connections these last couple of days, but they seem to be solid, so I'll post the July links tomorrow. I'm still in job slowdown right now, waiting to hear about this new gig, so I've got lots of time on my hands. 

THE PLOT: From humble beginnings to acting as some of the world's most iconic and notable characters, Tom Hanks has picked up a reputation as "America's Nice Guy", "The Everymand" and a nomad of the arts. 

AFTER: I kind of need to come up with a term for this kind of thrown-together, half-made doc, since the term "mockumentary" is already taken, for a fake comedy doc, what can the term be for a poorly-made, probably unauthorized, knock-off type of documentary? "Knock-umentary"? How about "schlock-umentary"? Whenever we want to dismiss something, the "schl" prefix is always a good one. So like the Bob Fosse one, this is hereby a "schlockumentary", and the bad news is that we're going to see much more of this once A.I. gets a solid hold in the marketplace. One day soon you'll be able to type "Tom Hanks documentary" into an A.I. engine, and it will combine his Wiki page with his IMDB filmography with some stock footage and BOOM, you've got a 45-minute doc that you can sell to Amazon Prime in just a few minutes.  

OK, maybe this took some doing, maybe someone had to watch hours and hours of interviews with Tom Hanks on the red carpet or went through the "Entertainment Tonight" archives, I can't be sure. But everything that's ever been filmed or recorded is currently being digitized into some kind of archive somewhere, so prepare for many more films like this coming in the future, for which no actors are being compensated, no set personnel are being paid, even script writers will be left out of the deal, because why pay someone to write dialogue or narration when the internet has already done that for you?  

Just think how easy this was to make - find out the name of the high school Tom Hanks attended, and just put that name on the screen with generic footage of a high-school hallway lined with lockers - it doesn't have to be the RIGHT high school, because who cares? Nobody's going to research that and call the filmmakers out for not doing proper research.  And sure, mistakes may get made, like here since there was no photo available of Tom getting married to his first wife, they just used a photo from his wedding to Rita Wilson - all brides look alike, right?  And hey, we got half the picture we needed, so let's just run with that. If you watched this and didn't pay close attention, you might think he married the same woman twice - but does that really matter?  

And of course, there was no budget for clips from "Saving Private Ryan" or "Sleepless in Seattle", but again, it's not like that's important, just run some footage of the actual D-Day, which is probably free, and maybe some photos of the Seattle skyline, that'll do. And then even if they did run footage from "The Bonfire of the Vanities" or "Saving Mr. Banks", it's not the clips that you might think or even recognize. Probably they're outtakes, which maybe cost less?  And then for films like "Volunteers" or "Splash" or "A League of Their Own", you know, a cast still photo would probably be fine, and again, those are probably FREE on the internet. You can tell the filmmakers probably blew their whole budget on 3 seconds each of footage from "Philadelphia", "Forrest Gump" and "The Road to Perdition".  

Then, for some reason, they have interview footage of Chris Farley and Tom Arnold talking about how great it was to work with Tom Hanks - but I can't find any indication they ever co-starred with Hanks in a movie - are they talking about being on "SNL" or some comedy special?  Who knows?  It's great to know that no researchers were harmed in making this schlockumentary.  And then if there are events mentioned that no footage could possibly exist of, like Tom's family moving from state to state when he was a kid, again, who cares? All driving footage looks the same, so as long as we have a car on a road and scenery is being passed by, that's all that's needed to make the point.  Even the choice of footage from the ceremony where Barack Obama awarded Hanks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the clip is of Obama talking about D-Day, and I think he knows the difference between an actor being in a film about that and the real thing (the current President, I'm not so sure.). So how do I know that clip came from that event, or from a different one?  Nobody double-checked anything, that's the feeling I get. 

Really, this is almost a complete waste of time, I guess AmazonPrime must be really desperate for material if they're running stuff like this. But that's the streaming wars, I guess, someday a better documentary about Tom Hanks will be made, but until then, we can get the jump on Netflix and Hulu by running this one at little cost.  You know, I could just not count this one, and try to forget I ever watched it, as long as I don't post about it, nobody will ever know and look at that, there's enough cross-over that the chain will just stay unbroken due to a different link than I had planned. But no, I need to warn people about the growing threat of cookie-cutter documentaries that are being made with almost no effort and definitely no research. 

Directed by Angelica Butcher

with archive footage of Tom Hanks (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Glenn Close (ditto), Rob Howard (ditto), Barack Obama (ditto), Meryl Streep (ditto), Tim Allen (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Wes Anderson (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Tom Arnold (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Bono (last seen in "Wham!"), George Michael (ditto), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Austin Butler (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), John Candy (last seen in "Once Upon a Crime..."), Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Wendy Crewson (last seen in "Death Wish"), Walt Disney (last seen in "The Real Charlie Chaplin"), Michael Clarke Duncan (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Aaron Eckhart (last seen in "Midway"), Chris Farley (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Will & Harper"), Sally Field (last seen in "Norma Rae"), Michael J. Fox (also carrying over from "Brats"), Jay Leno (ditto), Jackie Gleason (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Alexander Godunov, Melanie Griffith (last seen in "Shining Through"), Colin Hanks (last seen in "Whatever It Takes"), Jeremy Irons (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Elton John (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Jude Law (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Chris Makepeace (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Pat Morita (last heard in "Mulan II"), David Morse (last seen in "Disturbia"), Paul Newman (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "Faye"), Charlize Theron (ditto), Bill Paxton (last seen in "Term Life"), Elizabeth Perkins (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Julia Roberts (last seen in "Ticket to Paradise"), Peter Scolari (last seen in "Dean"), Tom Everett Scott (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Letters to Juliet"), Gary Sinise (last seen in "A Midnight Clear"), Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Emma Thompson (last heard in "Men, Women & Children"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Conclave"), Liv Tyler (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), Julie Walters (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Denzel Washington (last seen in "The Equalizer 3"), Bradley Whitford (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "Sly"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Henry Winkler (last heard in "Scream" (2022)), Robin Wright (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Robert Zemeckis (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Catherine Zeta-Jones (last seen in "Side Effects")

RATING: 3 out of 10 U.S. states lived in after his parents' divorce