Tom Hanks Opposes Censorship of Old Books: ‘We’re All Adults Here’

Actor Tom Hanks has come out against censoring old books to appease modern sensibilities, saying “we’re all grownups here.”

Promoting his upcoming novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, Hanks told NBC News he refuses to censor something that some might deem offensive.  Hanks said:

I’m of the opinion that we’re all grown-ups here. Let’s have faith in our own sensibilities as opposed to having somebody decide what we may or may not be offended by. Let me decide what I am offended by and what I’m not offended by. I would be against reading any book from any era that says ‘abridged due to modern sensitivities.’

As Breitbart News has chronicled, several books, from Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories to Roald Dahl, have been given modern “updates” to appease certain sensibilities.

Artists, including left-leaning ones, have on the whole opposed such efforts. Director Steven Spielberg, for instance, even expressed regret over his past decision to censor his beloved masterpiece E.T. by removing the guns from federal agents during the climactic bike chase scene.

Steven Spielberg has blasted the woke trend of revising old works of art — including movies and books — to appease modern sensitivities, calling it a form of "censorship." https://t.co/n2Gvqu3KYa

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) April 27, 2023

“Nobody should ever attempt to take the chocolate out of Willy Wonka! Ever!” Spielberg said. “For me, it is sacrosanct. It’s our history, it’s our cultural heritage,” he continued. “I do not believe in censorship in that way.”

Spielberg called his own self-censorship a “mistake.”

“That was a mistake,” he said. “I never should have done that. E.T. is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through.”

“All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like, and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there. So I really regret having that out there,” he added.

Steven Spielberg on editing work after the fact: "It's our history. It's our cultural heritage… I do not believe in censorship in that way" #TIME100 pic.twitter.com/1dOEm8HPLk

— TIME (@TIME) April 25, 2023

Oscar-winning writer/director Martin McDonagh also lamented plays he previously wrote have been subject to censorship.

“In the last two or three years, yeah, I’ve had theaters ask me to change words in my plays from 20-25 years ago and refuse to put the plays on when I say no. And that’s dangerous,” he said this year. “It is much more problematic now than it has been for many years.”

“Only in the past few years have I had theater companies refuse to do my plays because they don’t like some of the wording in them,” he added. “And that’s for an established writer, who sells tickets.”

Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed on Tubi, Google Play, YouTube Movies, or VIMEO On Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.