Tom Hanks Goes on NSFW Rant Against Movie Critics

Tom Hanks went on an NSFW rant while talking about movie critics on the Monday, Nov. 5 episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. Asked by O’Brien, 61, about his 1996 film directorial debut, The Thing You Do!, Hanks, 67, shocked fans by calling critics “c—-suckers” while recalling one critic who initially panned the movie.

“Let me tell you something about these c—suckers who write about movies,” said Hanks, earning a surprised laugh from O’Brien and his co-hosts before asking, “Can I say that?” The former late-night host joked, “My father writes about movies, and his name is C—sucker.”

Hanks continued that one critic who reviewed The Thing You Do! when it came out wrote that “Tom Hanks has to stop hanging around on with veterans of TV because this is just like it’s shot on TV, and it’s not much of anything.” Hanks said that the same person later called the film a “cult classic,” lamenting, “All you need is 20 years between now and then, and it ends up speaking somewhere.”

Despite his strong words, Hanks eventually admitted, “But that’s the thing we all signed up for. That’s the carnival, that’s the contest. I got faith in that. That’s okay.”

The Toy Story also explained that how a film performs at the box office also is an important part of its legacy. “Then a ton of time goes by when none of that stuff matters anymore,” he said, “and the movie just exists exactly as it is outside of loser-winner status. Thumbs up, thumbs down. And that’s when this stuff comes around, where it’s like that this thing that didn’t work back then, kind of does work now, or just the opposite, a thing that was huge back then is a museum piece and doesn’t really speak to anything.”

Currently, the Oscar winner is taking a walk down memory lane while promoting his film Here, which also stars his Forrest Gump co-star Robin Wright and their director Robert Zemeckis. The movie, based on a 2014 graphic novel tells the story of a couple across decades through the point of view of one particular room. The movie, which had a $50 million budget, made $5 million in its opening weekend and has a 36% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.