With his submarine thriller "Greyhound" set to debut on Apple TV+ Friday, Hanks has some fun at the corporate giant's expense.
From his publicity tour interview with the Guardian's Hadley Freeman:
Hanks doesn’t just star in Greyhound, he also produced it and wrote the screenplay, adapting it from C S Forester’s novel The Good Shepherd. “My ego has run rampant, Hadley, and it’s all over the picture!” he hoots. Hanks has written films before – the 1996 paean to 60s bands, That Thing You Do!, and 2011’s Larry Crowne. But Greyhound has been an especial labour of love for him, one he sweated over for almost a decade, and it is one of those sweeping war movies that really should be seen on the big screen. So the change in plans has been, he says, “an absolute heartbreak. I don’t mean to make angry my Apple overlords, but there is a difference in picture and sound quality.”
Apple TV+ is having a similarly negative impact on Hanks’ appearance in this interview. Even though he is in his office, “the cruel whipmasters at Apple” decided the background needed to be a blank wall, presumably so nosy journalists like me wouldn’t spend the whole encounter snooping at Hanks’ bookcases. Against the eerily empty backdrop, he looks, Hanks rightly says, as if he’s in “a witness protection programme. But here I am, bowing to the needs of Apple TV.”
Cue the video:
My take: Apple is the kind of corporate overlord whose chain a guy like Hanks can pull with impunity.
The other kind of reading is “pulp fiction”, mysteries, (space opera) Sci Fi, and misc stuff that I read on the exercise machine. Those I get as ebooks, BUT I find Amazon to generally be cheaper for that stuff. In part, it’s easier to find ebooks cheap on Amazon. It’s a damn shame Apple didn’t get that agreement with publishers to not exceed other bookseller (i.e. Amazon) prices for Apple!
He’s not pulling Apple’s chain: He’s lashing out.
Look, I get it. Mr. Hanks has been locked up for months, and he’s frustrated that a project dear to his heart is being released into vacant theaters. But to vent on Apple? Extremely misplaced resentment.
He owes Apple an apology.