Henry Winkler says the strain between him and Tom Hanks traces back decades, to a job he lost before the cameras had barely rolled.

On "In Depth With Graham Bensinger," Winkler walked through his brief, bruising stint directing "Turner & Hooch," the buddy comedy that paired Hanks with a very large, very drooly dog. Winkler didn't last long behind the camera. Less than two weeks in, he was out.

By his own account, the problem was him. "I, at that time being insecure, I talked too much and I gave them direction," Winkler said. He wanted takes redone, thought that was simply the job. It wasn't received that way. "I [did] what I thought was my job, and I wanted to do it over again, and apparently that pissed them off," he said.

He didn't take the firing well either. Winkler has described being devastated at the time, the kind of professional gut-punch that doesn't fully leave you.

What's odd is that Winkler and Hanks go back further than that film. Hanks appeared on "Happy Days" as a guest star before he was Tom Hanks, back when Winkler was the show's biggest name as Fonzie. So when Bensinger asked where the tension actually started, Winkler didn't point straight to the firing.

He brought up something smaller and, in its way, pettier. During a "Happy Days" retrospective, Winkler's team wanted to use 60 seconds of Hanks' old episode. They never got the clearance. "We did a retrospective of 'Happy Days,' and we wanted 60 seconds of Tom Hanks in his episode, and we did not get permission for that," Winkler said.

Two separate grievances, one on each side, and neither man apparently in a rush to hash it out directly.

Winkler isn't pretending he's landed on a tidy conclusion. Asked how he feels about the whole episode now, he said he's "still working" on his perspective, which is a more honest answer than most celebrities give in these situations. It suggests real, ongoing discomfort rather than an old story he's simply recycling for a podcast circuit.

What came through in the clip, though, was an openness to fixing things. Winkler didn't sound bitter. He sounded like a man leaving a door open, in case Hanks wants to walk through it.

Neither TMZ nor Bensinger's team has said whether Hanks has responded, or whether the two have spoken since the interview aired. For now the ball, such as it is, sits with him.