Former ‘Buddies’ and Still Pals

The zippy, nostalgic comedy “That Thing You Do!” marks not only Tom Hanks’ feature film directing debut. It’s also his on-screen reunion with actor Peter Scolari.

Hanks and Scolari got their big breaks 16 years ago starring in the ABC comedy series “Bosom Buddies.” Scolari’s Henry Desmond and Hanks’ Kip Wilson were junior copywriters at a New York ad agency who dressed in drag in order to get a room in a women’s-only hotel.

Hanks, 40, of course, went on to become one of the most popular film actors around, winning back-to-back best actor Oscars for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump.” Scolari, 42, has appeared in numerous sitcoms and TV movies and is best known for his Emmy-nominated role as the fast-talking yuppie TV producer Michael Harris on “Newhart.”

Throughout the years, Scolari says, he and Hanks have remained bosom buddies.

“I can’t begin to tell you,” Scolari says. “It’s a distant second to me to talk about our professional relationship and what we do as actors to where we are as friends. We have been through a lot. We have seen each other go through quite a number of changes and dramas and tribulations.”

This year has been particularly difficult for Scolari. “My marriage has broken up,” he says. “Tom has just stepped up and out of his very full schedule and life to stay in touch with me and make sure I am doing OK.”

In Hanks’ movie, Scolari plays Troy Chesterfield, the obnoxious host of a fictional TV variety series, circa 1964, on which the rising pop group the Wonders appear. Hanks is featured as Mr. White, a record executive who has signed the group to his label.

A scene that’s not in the movie, Scolari reports, is one in which “Tom and I are casually noticing each other backstage as the Wonders are performing--giving each other different kinds of odd looks like, ‘Who is this guy?’ ”

The scenes, he says, “were Tom’s idea, so the reason they’re on the cutting-room floor is certainly a good one. It just didn’t move the story along. It was very inside--the Bosom Buddies looking at each other.”

Critics have remarked that Tom Everett Scott, who plays the group’s drummer, is a dead-ringer for a young Hanks. Likewise, Steve Zahn, who is featured as the Wonders’ giddy guitarist, bares more than a passing resemblance to Scolari.

“Somebody congratulated me on how wonderful I was in the film,” Scolari says. “I said, ‘I am not in it that much, how sweet of you.’ They thought I was that splendid 26-year-old actor.”

Scolari and Hanks had fun fooling around for the audience of extras while filming at Studio 10 at CBS Studios in West Hollywood.

“We don’t have any set materials,” Scolari says. “We would grab microphones and make stupid comments and see how it goes.”

Back during their “Bosom Buddies” days, the two would perform the same type of patter on talk shows.

“We never rehearsed anything,” Scolari recalls. “But we had absolute confidence we could go out and do these shows. We appeared on ‘Merv Griffin’ together on election eve in 1980. I juggled and Tom narrated.”

Griffin, Scolari recalls, was taking them in “all the wrong directions as though we were comics. After I juggled, Tom felt on the spot so he said, ‘I do Superman.’ He just went off into the wings and then dove flat onto the floor basically, landing on his chest and hips with his arms completely extended. It was funny, but when we got off stage and I said, ‘How bad?’ He said, ‘I’m hurt.’ He was braver than I.”

“That Thing You Do!” is actually the second time Scolari has been directed by Hanks. Three years ago, he appeared in a Hanks-directed episode of Showtime’s film noir series “Fallen Angels.”

“ ‘Fallen Angels’ was, for Tom, really an apprenticeship in terms of camera, so he wasn’t really concerning himself with performances,” says Scolari, who has directed episodes of “Newhart.”

“Clearly, in ‘That Thing You Do!,’ Tom not only did mounds and mounds of homework, he put a fantastic team around him. I am so impressed by the performances he got out of these actors. By the time he got to the end of the film he was in a groove with the actors.”

Scolari says as actors, he and Hanks have always “enjoyed a shorthand. It was even more so in this case by the end of the film.”