Did Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington deserve Oscars for Philadelphia

Anthony Hopkins should have won for The Remains Of The Day.

The Remains of the Day is arguably Anthony Hopkins’s best performance.

IF Anthony Hopkins had been nominated and won for Silence of the Lambs - a 16 minute performance - as Supporting, he would have won for Remains of the Day.

However, given that did not happen, I am glad Hanks won for Philadelphia.

1991 was a weak year for Lead Actor though, you can see why they went Lead. Without Hopkins it probably would’ve gone to Warren Beatty for Bugsy or Nick Nolte for Prince of Tides.

Hanks is better in this than his win for FGump (a movie that has aged like shit), but Hopkins is masterful in ROTD. Once Hanks won the globe for Philadelphia there was no looking back. Voters couldn’t resist giving him the Oscar playing an AIDS victim, when AIDS still was everywhere in the national headlines. They were never going to give it to Washington, when Hanks dominated the film. Philadelphia overall is a so so film, which was admired more for its message than the film itself. In fact, every actor in that category-Fishburne, Day Lewis, Neeson and especially Hopkins did better work than Hanks.

Tom Hanks is a terrible dramatic actor. His work in Bachelor Party was more deserving of an Oscar.

No. And awarding to someone because the Industry "likes" them happens more often than not.

They deserved a rock hard cucumber up the ass

Washington’s performance in Philadelphia was largely charisma driven.

He SHOULD have won Lead the year before, for Malcom X. The Academy giving Al Pacino a pity Oscar for Scent of a Woman was reprehensible.

No.

Another vote for Hopkins. Extraordinary performance.

Hanks' was a social justice nomination, before there was a name for it. There's no explanation for his winning that Oscar. Or, for Gump. Maybe Hanks is a star, but I'm not sure he could be considered a serious actor. Maybe an accidental actor..

OP, this was the first time I experienced anything close to a 'Sophie's Choice" moment. "The Remains of the Day" has ALWAYS been one of my favorite books – it won the Booker Prize, and Ishiguro of course later won the fucking NOBEL for literature – and of Hopkins' many, many, MANY astounding performances, this is my own favorite as well.

That said: "Philadelphia" is unequivocally a landmark film in queer cinema, though the fact that it took Hollywood a full DECADE to make an A-lister movie about AIDS is of course absurd. Both Hanks & Denzel fully deserved Oscars for it. I meet gaylings all the time who think "AIDS is over," though I always make a point of explaining why that's not the case even with PrEP and HIV inhibitors. "Philadelphia" is essentially a time capsule at this point, but it's important for future gaylings to see just how callously people with AIDS were once treated, despite it being common knowledge that it's impossible to transmit except via blood.

I'd also argue it was Hanks's best role, though I"m guessing most would pick "Forrest Gump" instead (which is also great, but obviously in a far different way). Unlike Hopkins, Hanks has only had about four truly superlative ones. (Hopkins, meanwhile, had four superlative films between 1991-1993 alone!)

r10 I'd say Saving Private Ryan was Hanks' best role.

Another vote for Anthony, who also had Shadowlands in the same year

Tom Hanks is not a good actor nor was this a good performance. Of course Hopkins should have won. Forrest Gump was even worse, a charicature with a, too me, horrible message. I was twenty at the time i saw it when it came out but was already able to recognize what a shitty thing it was. I like r9 description of Hanks as an accidental actor. Now he apparently is an accidental typewriter. Ugh

[quote]Warren Beatty for Bugsy or Nick Nolte for Prince of Tides.

Movies that were both complete SHIT.

[Quote] a charicature with a, too me, horrible message.

And even more horrible spelling.

r13 I was in high school at the time and even at that young age I thought FG was a steaming pile of shit. I didn't understand the hype around it. It was an awful film.

It would’ve been a bad look for Denzel to win for playing the homophobic lawyer instead of Tom

1994 was just an awful year.

No. But I disagree with people on Forrest Gump. I watched again recently and it is a very good film. Better than Pulp Fiction.

Never saw the movie. Lost too many dear, valued friends to watch a couple of straight guys mimic and exploit them.

r20 it was a different time.

True r21. A simpler, stupider time.

r22 WTF did you want? An openly gay actor to play a role in a major motion picture in fucking 1994? Keep dreaming. Philadelphia was an important movie with an important message, in the context of the times.

Jesus, not everything can go your way all the time.

I remember my mom and her friends going to see Philadelphia and being touched by the message.

She was rooting for it at the Oscars (And yes, we always the Oscars together because I was gaaaaaay little boy).

That film needed an everyman like Hanks. And it’s well done. I don’t get the hate.

I think "Philadelphia" was a marvelous film. But in post-AIDS time I fear it could be dismissed as a soapy and melodramatic TV movie.

Tom was good but not really Oscar worthy.

Hanks was less deserving than DDL In the Name of the Father and Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day.

So he basically won so Hollywood could pat itself on the back.

[quote] So he basically won so Hollywood could pat itself on the back.

It happens more often than you think.

Demme's gimmick of having the actors look at the camera is first year film school student crap.

R25 to be honest, it was that when it came out.

1993 - No real effective treatments, the death rate climbing yearly...It may have been the peak year. I don't know anyone who denied its impact at the time. The criticism by gay men centered mostly on the lack of physical intimacy between Hanks and Banderas, and the loving family. I think the first is valid, but it would have been just another trope to have him disowned or no contact with his parents and siblings. It's not a perfect movie, but the good outweighs the not-so-good by a mile. I'm a big fan of putting movies in the context of their times.

Even at the time I found "Philadelphia" to be overheated tripe. It is so maudlin and set the "Gays Make the Best Victims" trope which still exists today. The writer of "Philadelphia", Ron Nyswaner also wrote "Fellow Travelers" and one can observe he has not moved out of his "gays = tortured victims" style of writing. I dislike when gay writers can't let that shit go a little.

Denzel is a talented actor but he took too many lazy roles. When he's into it, he's hard to beat. He was superlative in Malcom X. He was good in Philadelphia. He deserved the oscar he won for his intense performance in Training Day. He was the stand out in Glory. On and on I could go but I have no quarrel with his achievements.

Just curious, r33, what DO you enjoy?

r35, I enjoy less maudlin depictions of gays where they aren't tortured victims, you know, more like average human beings.

Such as, my love?

R33 is one of those gays that reject anything emotional as "tripe." Familial devotion to a child pr a sibling? "maudlin." Losing your beloved? "sentimental trash." You probably thought the father saying his last goodbye to his son was mawkish. Everything is contrived to tug at your heartstrings.

What a sad person to not allow himself to feel.

[quote], Ron Nyswaner also wrote "Fellow Travelers" and one can observe he has not moved out of his "gays = tortured victims" style of writing.

In the 1950s gay men actually were tortured victims you idiot.

R38, loves badass BRO gays! Fucking bitches and roundhouse kicking pussies at the bar!

Lost your boyfriend to a plague in 1988? SUCK IT UP! We’ve got asses to kick and box office dollars to make!

r40 are you retarded?

What R1 and R2 said. The Remains of the Day may be his best performance. And I think he blew the top off the screen in Silence.

Oh shit, my bad, I meant R35!

Nah, not retarded r42? Are you? You have a lot to say in that one Glenn Close thread.

Like a lot.

R10, I would argue it’s not so much a landmark in Queer Cinema so much as it is a landmark in Hollywood Cinema. It’s not really a film for gay people, we weren’t the target audience. It was made for a general, mainstream audience. Hence, there isn’t anything queer about it.

I remember seeing it opening day and as the final credits rolled I just thought, “Now I know how women and black people feel.”

I’ve told this story before and it’s true: I was working at the Four Seasons Hotel, Chicago. This was about a month or so after Hanks had won the Oscars. There was a convention for pig farmers in town and I was waiting on a large party of them for breakfast one morning. Someone asked one of the other guys what he did the previous night. He said, “I stayed in my room and ended up watching that Philadelphia movie.” There was total silence at this table of like 8 or more pig farmers. And then the guy said, “It was pretty good,” and the other men kind of nodded or said, “Hmm.”

I was standing there and I thought, “Well, there ya go, Jonathan Demme. You reached your target audience.”

The Neil Young song at the end was superior to Springsteen's which won the oscar. I like both guys but that's my opinion.

Honestly, I thought (then and now) that the video/song “Streets of Philadelphia” was more powerful and haunting than the film itself.

[quote]You probably thought the father saying his last goodbye to his son was mawkish.

R38 the entire movie was a contrived pile of shit. They should have given the project to a better director. The film was as cliche ridden as Steel Magnolias was.

And that farkakte scene with Beckett swirling about the darkened room while he listens to Callas.

[quote]This is "Andrea Chenier", Umberto Giordano. This is Madeleine. She's saying how during the French Revolution, a mob set fire to her house, and her mother died... saving her. "Look, the place that cradled me is burning." Can you hear the heartache in her voice? Can you feel it, Joe? In come the strings, and it changes everything. The music fills with a hope, and that'll change again. Listen... listen..."I bring sorrow to those who love me." Oh, that single cello! "It was during this sorrow that love came to me." A voice filled with harmony. It says, "Live still, I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. Is everything around you just the blood and mud? I am divine. I am oblivion. I am the god... that comes down from the heavens, and makes of the Earth a heaven. I am love!... I am love."

Dear fucking god.

Sarah Beckett: Well, I didn't raise my kids to sit in the back of the bus. You get in there and you fight for your rights, okay?

Andrew Beckett: Gee, I love you guys.

Christ on a fucking crutch.

I have never thought that Denzel Washington was a great actor. He's fine and does s good job. But, he never truly disappears into roles. To me, he's always Denzel no matter what role he does.

[quote] The writer of "Philadelphia", Ron Nyswaner also wrote "Fellow Travelers" and one can observe he has not moved out of his "gays = tortured victims" style of writing. I dislike when gay writers can't let that shit go a little.

I didn't know that! But it explains why "Fellow Travelers" was so retrograde. I like period pieces but that one was too much in these precarious times.

I agree that for the tine Philadelphia was an important movie. I also agree that it wasn’t a good one, it compromised a lot but it did what it had to do. I saw it when i was 21 and gay and it didn’t particularly speak to me, but was probably important for other ressons, as mentioned above.

It's very cliched and watered down but i think it was for the reason the poster upthread mentioned. It was geared for a mainstream audience. No major studio would probably make the indie version of that movie. It was a total "movie". The Jason Robards mustache twirling homophobe villain was pretty ridiculous.

We HAVE BEEN PUT ON NOTICE!

NOBODY who wasn't completely validated as a QUEER person by the movie "Philadelphia" can feel anything at all!

Well! What movies DO WE LIKE?

[quote] The Remains of the Day is arguably Anthony Hopkins’s best performance.

Maybe it's the one that touched you the most. Personally, I prefer him in Silence and The Father.

Agreed, R49. I don’t get the “Denzel Washington is one of our greatest actors” praise. I’ve never found him to be particularly charismatic either, even in films like Mississippi Masala where people say, “Oh, he’s so fine, so charming, so sexy!” I never got that. But I don’t see a lot of his films either. I liked him in Fences, thought he should’ve won the Oscar for that - note, he was playing a very stubborn character. I admire him for his film and theatre work but he’s never been a draw for me. I didn’t think he was anything in Philadelphia.

Also, as we know, he was the one that advised Will Smith never to kiss another man on screen so, there’s that.

A good friend of mine -- a straight man -- recently did his Master's thesis on whether or not films actually can change people's opinions or ideas on a particular subject. I attended his graduation presentation.

He did a study on "Philadelphia," and he found in his research (and this stunned me) that the film -- with its all-star cast, including two Hollywood favoritees, Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington -- reached people that otherwise no one or no thing could have, and that there was a positive effect. Demme and company managed to move the needle among the general population of this country towards greater acceptance and understanding of gay men and the disease that was wiping us out. He found that before the film many claimed to know no gay men or anything who had died of AIDS and so the film was actually educational for many.

The net result: Acceptance of LGBTQ people started to go up in surveys and polls, and those numbers continued to rise. And he had solid research to back up his findings. (I did take notes on all this, but it's in a notebook somewhere and I'm not going to dig it up just to make a DL post.)

The film is important in this regard, and it's easy to forget or downplay what things were like then, but it did make its mark, and for the better. For that reason alone, I'm thankful for everyone involved (including Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young) for participating and making the film a Hollywood success.

This is what Larry Kramer said about the film upon its release. He was wrong in that it was a box office hit and while I agree with him about the quality of the film, he was also wrong in that ultimately it did change people’s minds. Not immediately and not collectively but it contributed to a shift in thinking.

This was the famous pull quote from the piece (which I remember using in a film pitch at the time):

[quote] I fervently believe that the first decent movie in which a male star like Tom Hanks makes love, in a bed, naked, with another male star, like Tom Cruise, in the same bed, also naked, and they embrace and they talk to each other in an adult fashion, doing the same things straight lovers do in every single movie, TV show and commercial, it will make a fortune.

r46 Bingo!

I might have given it to Neeson for Schindler's List. Movie star performance and he carries it from start to finish.

Forest Gump is better than Pulp Fiction, R19? I can accept maybe Castaway is better than Kill Bill Part 1.

Or: That Thing You Do is better than Hateful Eight.

[Quote] "Philadelphia" is unequivocally a landmark film in queer cinema

What about Longtime Companion?

Philadelphia was queer for the 1.5 seconds that Quentin Crisp was on screen. Otherwise, not exactly a Paris is Burning type queer landmark.

I remember Hanks' nauseating disclaimers at the time he was doing press for Philadelphia, along the lines of "Yes, it WAS so very courageous of me as a SUPER STRAIGHT man to take a GIANT leap of faith to look at the SCARY gay world!! Thank GOD my SEXY wife Rita has been here to keep me grounded and safe from the SADNESS that comes from this terrible TRAGEDY! Rita, you BEAUTIFUL thing, come here and give me a BIG SEXY KISS!"

Thank god they didn’t make him touch Antonio Banderas.

r64 That was pretty typical of the times. Not excusing Tom Hanks, but they were all like that way back then.

R66, it seems to me that Hanks was way over the top proclaiming his straightness. In the 80s and 90s I don't recall Banderas, Aidan Quinn, Rupert Graves, Colin Firth, Robert Downey, Jr., or any of the straight actors in Longtime Companion needing to take it to that level when discussing their roles as gay characters.

With a friend I saw "Philadelphia" when it released, and yes, Hanks deserved the Oscar. A very sympathetic role well portrayed, at a time when people with AIDS were shunned by society. God awful time for many gay men.

Hanks’ makeup team deserved his Oscar.

Small anecdote - I had a straight female co-worker at the time who saw the film and she liked it - but her BIGGEST take-away was at the very end when it showed Tom Hanks' character growing up and the family photo montage.

She said - I never thought of gay people as having or being part of a family before. As insulting as that was to hear, that was an important step for her and for a lot of straight people who saw the film.

Hard to believe it was 30 years ago!! It really did change a lot of people's attitudes - and trust me, it still wasn't good back in 1994. It's like a different world compared to today.

[quote]and trust me, it still wasn't good back in 1994. It's like a different world compared to today.

It was fucking awful back then. I was in high school at the time and I think I still have some PTSD.

Hanks won over Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson and Lawrence Fishburne. Go figure.

Hanks won back to back Best Actor Oscars, the second being for Forrest Gump. The only one other actor to do that was Spencer Tracy.

I was also in high school in ‘94 and nobody was out. It was Ryan White time.

[quote]Hanks won back to back Best Actor Oscars, the second being for Forrest Gump. The only one other actor to do that was Spencer Tracy.

DL fave Luise Rainer also won back-to-back Oscars as best actress.

When Luise Rainer was still alive she was a running joke on Datalounge.

[quote]Hanks is better in this than his win for FGump (a movie that has aged like shit

Only to radical "woke" liberals, who despise anything that celebrates Americana.

Although FORREST GUMP is critical of late 20th century U.S. history.

It just doesn't outright villainize America and beat you over the head with the message like the "wokes' like to do.

However, the film remains popular with most audiences.

And it's very well-made.

Maybe you should venture out of your far-left "woke" bubble.

Anyone who uses the word “woke” not once but three times in what they think is both a meaningful and derogatory way is in a bubble all their own, probably masturbating and playing with their own faeces.

/BLOCKED

R67 doesn't "recall Banderas, Aidan Quinn, Rupert Graves, Colin Firth, Robert Downey, Jr., or any of the straight actors in Longtime Companion needing to take it to that level when discussing their roles as gay characters."

Apples and oranges. Which of those actors was playing his gay role in a big-budget, major-studio release? Which of them had already established himself as a movie star, with one Oscar nod already to his name?

Clutch those pearls if you must as you evaluate 1993 from the vantage point of 31 years later, but it's certainly understandable to me why Hanks spoke that way. Times have changed.

(Full disclosure: I loved PHILADELPHIA at the time and love it still for exactly what it was and is -- an old-fashioned Hollywood message picture-slash-tearjerker. Also, I don't think that anyone in this thread has mentioned that Demme had just made SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, a huge hit that won him an Oscar -- but also came with its share of controversy from LGBTQ+ people that thoroughly embarrassed him as a big old liberal from way back. No wonder he bent over backwards to make his new picture as warm and fuzzy as possible.)

[quote]When Luise Rainer was still alive she was a running joke on Datalounge.

They were mostly "So young!" jokes based on the fact that Rainer died two weeks shy of her 105th birthday.

Only if they had had full on, penetrative sex on camera with each other.

No pearls clutched, R79--I'm stating that those actors I mentioned didn't bring their own sexuality into the conversation to the extent that Hanks did. I watched those Hanks interviews in '93 and thought back then too that he didn't need to bring his own sexuality into the conversation nearly as much as he did. The movie's budget or Hanks' number of prior Oscar nominations shouldn't enter into it.

My point, R82, is that the actors you named didn't have nearly as much at stake as Tom Hanks did in that very different era. I too wince when I see his interviews around the time of PHILADELPHIA's release, and I wouldn't be surprised if he did too. But he would have had entirely different -- and far greater -- pressures to deal with than anyone you named.