Hacker Cinema
Big
1988 · Film · 104 min
Directed by Penny Marshall
When a young boy makes a wish at a carnival machine to be big, he wakes up the following morning to find that it has been granted and his body has grown older overnight, but he is still the same 13-year-old boy inside. Now he must learn how to cope with the unfamiliar world of grown-ups, including getting a job and having his first romantic encounter with a woman.
1 positive2 negative10 neutralfrom 13 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
15 comments on Hacker News
OP needs the walking piano from the movie "Big". That'll give them a workout.
"Big" is a 1988 American fantasy comedy-drama film staring Tom Hanks as Josh Baskin, an adolescent boy who makes a wish to be "big" to a magical device which then transforms him physically into an adult.
This is basically how I see Truss.
Americans might be more familiar with FAO Schwartz, an iconic, up-market toy store formerly with a flagship in New York City on Fifth Avenue, which featured in several films including Big (starring Tom Hanks).
The company has been through several ownership changes and bankruptcy in the past quarter century, and was at one point in fact owned by Toys "R" Us. Since 2016 it's been owned by ThreeSixty Group, of which also presently owns Sharper Image and Vornado.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Schwarz>
You don't think Robert DeNiro is an actor? While he's fairly typecast, he doesn't really play the same person in every film.
Tom Hanks plays.. Tom Hanks. He had one divergent role as Forrest Gump, but otherwise, the actor that played in Castaway feels like the same guy that played in Big.
I wonder I've never heard anyone say anything about "Big", directed by Penny Marshall and released in 1987. The main narrative thread in that film is unambiguously about a corporate executive who grooms and repeatedly rapes a pre-adolescent boy. It was hit with audiences and critics alike.
I relate to u/pitched on getting sucked into Diablo 2 and missing out on other experiences. I’m still growing up emotionally, and back then I was basically a child, like Tom Hanks in the movie “Big”, and also in graduate school. I missed out on: making more/closer friends, making more connections with people (networking towards career options, etc), physical exercise (I was active but needed more training for my core; this is clear now as I age), emotional maturity, reading books (always been a reader thanks to my parents reading to me a lot, but Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft put a big dent in time spent learning from authors), practicing music (“It’s Never Too Late”, book by John Holt on learning cello later in life), practicing other art, writing letters to friends and family, … the list goes on, and those are the main ones off the top of my head. I tend not to stray into regret about the time I sunk into these games, and instead to reevaluate how I spend my time and attention in the present moment. In looking back, it seems I was hiding from emotions, from unresolved adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and those game pass-times made it easier to avoid facing my fears (or failure, of being vulnerable, and more I may not yet be aware of). I graduated largely thanks to a couple caring friends who saw my potential and invested in me. I try to be open enough these days to be helpful to others with whom my life experience resonates, so that they might be more-aware of opportunities as they arise, and more-able to switch gears and go.
Yeah because everyone knows you go all the way to 9 like you are slapping the piano keyboard in movie Big.
I suggest you watch the movie Big.
Bingo. Besides, people are scared by humans capable of doing tasks much faster than previously thought. When in doubt, sandbag!
See also: the scene in the film "Big" when grown-up Josh Baskin (Tom Hanks) gets the lecture from a Co-Worker (Jon Lovitz) to slow down his data entry as to not get everybody fired by going at a leisurely pace.
Anybody else get flashbacks to the Tom Hanks movie Big where using the mentality of a kid renders all the focus group and marketing analytic charts, well, kind of irrelevant. "Who wants to play with a building?" correlates to "Why don't I just squeeze this weird Capri-Sun pack thingy into the cup?" pretty nicely to me. Neat to see this, kind of humorous in a non-catastrophic way. It's not like the machine catches fire or explodes. This is...just life.
I played the A-section for Heart and Soul (the song from the movie "Big") and its response was enough to tell me it was not going to be playing actual duets.
I'd be interested in a version that has learned accompanying portions to many popular melodies. If I could play the right hand part of a piece and it played the left hand I'd be very impressed -- also this would actually be useful software for aspiring pianists.
Didn't the movie 'BIG' also have prior art?
I seem to recall that near the end Tom Hanks character 'designs' an electric comic book that looked a lot like a tablet computer.
And in 1988 Tom Hanks, in the movie Big, described a interactive, digital comic book.
I think the films being referred to were more along the lines of "how to spend your millions", "what it's like to show off your superbowl ring", or commercials where sports stars are asked "What are you going to do now?" and they respond "Go to Disney Land", as if these somehow indicated HOW to win. The films you're referring to are the proper ones to watch to, as you say, study the problem area and come up with winning strategies. It's not watching movies like Big to find out how to become an executive at a toy company or Gung Ho to determine how to run an auto manufacturing plant.
It's amazing how quickly things change. Paul mentioned the 70s as a heyday for big organizations, but I remember this going well into the 80s. You can see it in the culture. Remember how many movies were made that glorified climbing the corporate ladder? "Working Girl" with Meg Ryan, "The Secret of My Success" with Michael J Fox, "Big" with Tom Hanks. Those are just a few. There was an entire hollywood genre of climbing the ladder - movies that made it seem that making presentations with little arrows going up and down on a chart was the apex of human achievement.
I was in my teens during the latter half of this decade - I'd guess that at least half of the people who read hacker news are too young to have seen them when they came out. If you do watch them now, they'll probably seem as quaint as "Hair".
Don't ask.