film / tv / politics / social media / lists celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / politics / web / celeb

chet-haze.jpg

Tom Hanks Joins the Rest Of Us In Asking His Son To Stay Off Social Media

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | June 11, 2015 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | June 11, 2015 |


True story: For a very long time, I thought that Chet Haze was a fictional son of Tom Hanks that Ashley Burns or Vince Mancini over on FilmDrunk had completely made up. It made no sense to me. Tom Hanks’ son is a cocksure rapper who speaks in hip-hop lingo and regularly drops the “N” word? It’s not even the mild-mannered nice son from a previous marriage. It’s the son of Tom Hanks and collected, composed Rita Wilson.

How does that even happen?

For years, I kept seeing Chet Haze mentions cropping up on Twitter, and I just assumed that Vince and Ashley’s meme had caught fire, and this fictional character they had created had taken on a life of its own, with his own fake Twitter account.

The longer this went on, however, the less I was able to deny the reality. Chet Haze is real, and so is his Twitter account, and as of recently, he doesn’t like to be called Chet Haze anymore. He’s Chet Hanx, bitches, and he loves black girls and lives by his own rules.

If you’re like me, you probably think that this has got to be Tom Hanks’ worst fucking nightmare. The nicest guy in Hollywood has a peeled scab for a son. Worse, he regularly makes an ass of himself in social media (in fact, he recently had his Instagram account deleted for a few days before it was reinstated) and creates such a fuss that sometimes it’s awkward when Tom gets asked questions about his son. (In a Nerdist podcast not too long ago, Chris Hardwick asked about his son, and Hanks offered a sheepish, almost apologetic response (I’m paraphrasing): “Oh, he’s doing well. He’s making a new record. We’re, uh, very proud of him.”

Anyway, TMZ got up the gumption to ask Chet Hanx what his folks thought of his social media exploits, and Chester basically said that his parents don’t approve, but what the hell do they know, right? They’re OLDS.

Asked if his parents are cool with his persona, he said, “they don’t tell me what to do anymore, because, like, I’m grown, you know what I mean?”

He went on to add, “my parents, they be telling me just to stay off social media period. Even before this [incident] happened, they would be like, ‘don’t be on Instagram so much,’ but they’re the old generation. We’re the new generation. We do things differently now. Either you’re gonna get it or you’re not gonna get it.”

That’s right. Chet is in the new generation, where it’s apparently cool to trash hotel rooms and drop the N-word because, you know, “hip hop isn’t about race. It’s about the culture you identify with. And can’t no one tell me what I can’t say.”

Uh huh.

By the way: Tom Hanks has nearly 10 million Twitter followers. Chet Haze has 17,000.

So yeah, you keep ignoring your Dad, Chester. He has no idea what he’s talking about.