Oh happy piano key tap dancing days!
Two of my favourite actors in the whole world, Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock – as opposed to the intergalactic ones but that’s a matter for another post entirely – appeared together on the October 12 edition of The Jonathan Ross Show in the UK to promote their respective new movies, Captain Phillips and Gravity, both of which are performing extremely well at the box office and generating lots of exciting Oscar buzz.
While promoting a movie can be an exhausting and grueling exercise, sometimes an actor does get to have some fun and never was more promotional fun had than when Jonathan Ross asked Hanks and Bullock to recreate the iconic giant piano dancing in FAO Schwarz scene from Big, released 25 years ago this year.
Now these two huge Hollywood stars hardly need to do anything more to be any more loved – both of them are wonderfully down to earth and refreshingly normal on just about every show I see them on – but they went ahead and danced out “Chopsticks” on a giant set of piano keys as they were asked anyway, Bullock in heels even, and looked like they were having a ball.
I love how Katey Rich of cinemablend.com described their willingness to throw ego to one side and simply have some fun:
“Hanks, a completely good sport in literally all circumstances and probably an all-time great talk show guest, is of course totally game to try and play chopsticks and then fake an elaborate piano performance. But when Sandra Bullock steps up and nails the song in some gigantic heels– that’s serious star power right there. Do they make Oscars for grace while standing on thin spikes of leather?”
So thanks to Hanks and Bullock being happy to put fun and accessibility over ego, this scene from 1988’s Big, where Hanks danced with Robert Loggia …
Became this amusing, fun-filled segment on the October 12, 2013 edition of The Jonathan Ross Show …
And here’s Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks being interviewed on the show …