Podbit · The Rest Is Entertainment
Executives told Hanks that nobody would see Apollo 13 because the ending was already known. He pointed out that by the same logic, nobody would ever rewatch Star Wars, Casablanca, or Citizen Kane — and made the film anyway.
Where this was said
At 16:40 · chapter starts 14:15
Listener Neil Anderson flags the 'frankly ridiculous' graphic of Tom Hanks's 1990s run and asks whether Hanks knew at the time that he was in the middle of something once-in-a-generation. Hanks says no — he was simply fascinated by each subject as it came along. But looking back, he's willing to make a sweeping claim: the 1990s may have been the last great decade of cinema, a rare alignment of artistic daring and matching economics that the franchise era has since foreclosed. [1] — Tom Hanks "The 1990s as cinema's last great decade: Tom Hanks argues the 1990s may have been the last great decade of cinema, combining artistic darin…" 14:38 He's blunt about what happened next: sequels and franchises took over. He imagines, with dark comic relish, a version of his career in which he'd be here defending Forrest Gump 12. He didn't make sequels — outside Toy Story — and he argues that's precisely why those films still hold up. Most strikingly, he reveals that studio executives told him no one would see Apollo 13 because they already knew the ending. His response: in that case, no one would ever rewatch Star Wars, Casablanca, or Citizen Kane.
The 1990s were the last time artistic ambition and box-office economics aligned in Hollywood. Hanks argues that window is closed — sequels and franchises have replaced the one-off originals that defined an era.
Tom Hanks argues the 1990s may have been the last great decade of cinema, combining artistic daring with matching economics, before sequels and franchises took over.
Avnish grew his solo business to $25,000 per month in just 15 months without spending a dollar on ads. His entire growth engine was built on community posts in Reddit and Facebook groups.
One well-crafted post in the right community took Avnish from single thousands of users to tens of thousands. This wasn't luck — it was a repeatable part of his 5-step playbook.
Most founders chase paid ads and influencer deals, but Avnish's growth came entirely from knowing where his users already gathered online. Dominating Reddit and Facebook groups — for free — was his entire strategy.
Spend 80% of your landing page design time above the fold. The hero section is the only thing most visitors will ever truly read, so it needs to deliver your full message instantly.
The dominant mobile monetization flow is simple: free download, onboarding, then a hard paywall that blocks all features until the user pays or starts a trial. It's unskippable by design — and that's exactly the point.
Switching PuffCount to a hard paywall and requiring a free trial before any feature access sent conversion rates soaring to 20–25%. One structural change to the payment flow — no new features, no new users — transformed the business.
Vasco is so confident in YouTube that he'll personally PayPal $500 to anyone who posts for 45 days and doesn't make $5,000. This isn't hype — it's a distillation of his own experience growing an AI app to $70K/month using nothing but daily videos.
Vasco's AI app went from zero to $70,000 a month in just two years. The entire growth engine was YouTube — one video a day, nothing fancy, no expensive tools. Most of his users came directly from the channel.
People buy from people they know, like, and trust. YouTube is the only platform that builds all three at scale — and Vasco's $1M business is the proof of concept.
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