Tom Hanks hasn’t taken too many wrong turns throughout his illustrious career, but one 1990 black comedy directed by Brian De Palma was definitely one of them. A dark satire adapted from Tom Wolfe’s acclaimed bestseller about New York’s money men, H๏τ on the heels of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, co-starring Bruce Willis, and directed by one of the best talents to come out of New Hollywood, ought to have been a surefire winner. Warner Bros. certainly thought so, ploughing $47 million into The Bonfire of the Vanities. Yet the movie turned out to be anything but that.

After starring in a distinctly mediocre selection of releases following his breakout role in the 1988 comedy movie Big, Hanks was onto an outright loser by taking the lead part in De Palma’s box-office bomb. The Bonfire of the Vanities could have pushed his career over the edge into an interminable downward slide, after it made less than a third of its money back and was torn to shreds by reviewers. No wonder, then, that the actor who rarely has a bad word to say about anybody gave a scathing ᴀssessment of the movie back in 2001.

Even Tom Hanks Agrees That The Bonfires Of The Vanities Is One Of His Worst Movies

Hanks Felt The Film Failed To Connect With Its Audience

When Oprah Winfrey interviewed Hanks, she asked him if he regretted starring in The Bonfire of the Vanities (via OPRAH.) The actor’s answer was categorical: “Only because it’s one of the crappiest movies ever made!” He went on to elaborate, more equivocally, that he needed to go through the experience of making it to understand what not to do as an actor.

Hanks felt that De Palma’s movie failed to chime with the “national consciousness” of Americans, and that he couldn’t strike a “core connection” with its audience in his role as callous bond trader Sherman McCoy. He even recalled that members of the public had told him that his film character wasn’t the one from Wolfe’s novel. For all of Hanks’ incredible range as an actor, it does seem like McCoy is the one character he was born not to play. He wasn’t convincing in the role to say the least. But the problems with how Hanks played McCoy were far from his fault alone.

What Went Wrong With Brian de Palma’s The Bonfire Of The Vanities

The Movie Became A Pastiche Of Its Source Material With 3 Horribly Miscast Leads

It wasn’t just Hanks’ performance in The Bonfire of the Vanities that was lacking. He’d been miscast in the role, and Brian De Palma fundamentally changed the character from the Sherman McCoy of Wolfe’s novel to suit the actor he’d chosen. With none of the cold-hearted cruelty that underpins Wolfe’s savage depiction of Wall Street’s monied classes, the movie version of McCoy is a likeable if shallow victim of the system he’s bought into. In this way, Hanks effectively plays a buffoonish caricature who garners too little ill-feeling from the audience to drive the movie’s plot.

In fact, all three lead actors were horribly miscast in The Bonfire of the Vanities. Melanie Griffith was far from the ideal choice to play femme fatale Maria Ruskin, and Bruce Willis was completely wrong for the part of Peter Fallow, an alcoholic British journalist with a rapacious wit, rumored to be based on celebrated intellectual Christopher Hitchens. Fallow’s lines actually had to be completely rewritten to work for Willis, who repeatedly clashed with De Palma on set. As a result, the character in the movie is nothing like the one in the book, and Willis’ performance leaves a lot to be desired.

Griffith, meanwhile, was bad-mouthed by many of the film’s crew, who claimed her appearance was inadequate for the role of Maria. The actor had breast enhancement surgery part-way through production, which was allegedly related to the negative comments she received after being cast in the role. In the end, Griffith’s plastic surgery was gratuitously exploited for The Bonfire of the Vanities, including in its cartoonish trailer.

The production generally displayed a questionable atтιтude towards its female actors, with Beth Broderick forced to shoot one scene in which her character pH๏τocopies her genitals during an excruciating nine-hour filming session. It’s no wonder that the final result seems more horrifying than amusing. Overall, The Bonfire of the Vanities ends up being more pastiche than satire, coming across as a movie with no real substance or weight to it, which runs entirely contrary to its skewering source material.

What Other Cast Members Have Said About The Bonfires Of The Vanities

Bruce Willis And Morgan Freeman Have Nothing Nice To Say About The Movie

In retrospect, it seems that no one involved in The Bonfire of the Vanities regards it with any fondness. Perhaps its cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, would be the sole exception. He was responsible for the movie’s brilliant single-sH๏τ opening sequence, that a camera filmed facing backwards on a moving steadicam, and oversaw a stunning but ridiculously expensive magic-hour sH๏τ of a Concord plane landing in New York. Otherwise, many of the film’s key names and faces have shown their complete distaste for it, including Willis and supporting cast member Morgan Freeman.

“I was miscast,” Willis admitted, in a 1996 Playboy interview with David Sheff. “One problem with the story, when it came to the film,” he added, “was that there was no one in it you could root for, ” (via Playboy.) Freeman was more blunt about it when he spoke to Entertainment Weekly in 2001. “I knew that movie wasn’t going to work,” he said. “I don’t think Brian De Palma had a clue.” He even suggested that the director hadn’t read Wolfe’s novel, and admitted that he himself still hasn’t seen The Bonfire of the Vanities. It’s hard to think of a more damning criticism aimed towards a movie by one of its stars.

Sources: Entertainment Weekly, OPRAH, Playboy