Cast Away

Cast Away

In my version of Cast Away, Tom Hanks was cast away from his early film “Bachelor Party” by digitally removing Hanks from every scene. The video was then printed to tape, inserted into an altered sleeve, and placed on the shelf next to the other copies of Cast Away at a local Blockbuster. Whoever rented this copy got to see, not the film “Cast Away”, where Hanks’ character is removed from society and stranded on an island, but our Cast Away; where Hanks is entirely removed from his earlier film and stranded on a display island in a Blockbuster store.

In this work, the Hollywood celebrity is examined as a franchised product and transmutable media. Hanks has starred in diverse roles such as: “Bosom Buddies”, “Splash”, “Bachelor Party”,“Forrest Gump”, and “Cast Away”. Through his success, he has also become a quintessential celebrity/star. However, the more popular the star, there lies a proportional degree with which suspension of disbelief is impossible. Indeed that is often the lure for Hollywood cinema: a chance to see our favorite stars, in yet another role, where the actor will be inseparably linked to the character they are assuming. By removing Hanks from this film,the concept of celebrity as cultural index is expressed through omission, while also jokingly patching Hanks’s career through revisionist history.