geoff: You could be forgiven for
not knowing about the new
blockbuster film knightshade.
That's because it's a fictional
film at the center of a new
novel, starring, or make that,
written, by Tom Hanks.
This is Tom Hanks first novel
and earlier this week he talked
with Jeffrey brown in New York
about it and his own love of
making movies for our arts and
culture series, canvas.
Jeffrey: Take a blockbuster
film, one starring, say Tom
Hanks.
>> I wonder if my wife will
recognize me.
Jeffrey: We know Hanks, and
perhaps the famous director but
, what of all those names in the
credits?
One day Tom Hanks the author
realized he had a story to tell
about them.
Tom: My editor said you should
write a novel next and I said
you are right, I should.
What should it be about?
[Laughter]
He said you live in a pretty
rarified world that would be an
interesting thing to read about.
Everybody assumes they like
movies and they know how movies
are made.
Isn't that something to write
about?
I sent you are exactly right and
right at that moment, kind of
the book landed in my head.
Jeffrey: The making of another
the result the making of
another, major motion picture
masterpiece -- part send-up, all
love letter to an industry.
Where does your ambition come,
to write a novel like that?
Tom: Well, I can't help it, I
wake up with stories in my head
and I wake up with questions
that I want to ask of people.
Jeffrey: Hanks draws on what he
knows from his storied career.
A two-time Oscar winner, for
Philadelphia in and Forrest gump
1993 a year later.
Some 100 films, from the
youthful big, through saving
private Ryan, tomorrow recently
a beautiful day in the
, neighborhood, which brought us
together in 2019.
Hanks is a world-famous star.
But one who loves the process
and the stories of people behind
it.
Tom: I do this thing like when
I'm watching, particularly an
old movie, right?
A movie made before 1959, and
there's a crowd scene and it
takes place at night and they
shot it on the backlot of
paramount, ok?
Jeffrey: A place you are
familiar with.
Tom: I am familiar with.
I shot bosom buddies on the
backlot of paramount.
If there is a taxi and a bus and
pedestrians every single one of
, those people showed up from
their apartments, their houses.
They had to get there had to be
, put in wardrobe, they had to
be told what to do.
They had to stand around and
wait.
They had to drive on the thing.
They had to do all this stuff.
And at the beginning of every
shot, there is a moment of
controlled chaos.
Quiet, quiet, quiet.
We're rolling, we're rolling,
we're rolling.
Background and action.
That has gone into every single
shot in motion picture history.
The mechanics of that to me is
as fascinating as those, kind of
like documentaries of how it is
made.
How is it made?
Well, it's made over a long haul
with very particular tasks that
have to be solved.
Jeffrey: The novel follows the
making of: The making of a film
in 2020, filled with rich
characters, including director
bill Johnson chapter headings
, direct from the film process
itself, even pages from the
fictional screenplay.
But Hanks goes further, to give
us a big story that begins in
1946 and and made up comic book
which would lead to the made-up
film decades later.
Tom: Comic books were the
original versions of storyboards
for motion pictures.
So that now when you read
storyboards particularly the
, comic book at the end.
This would literally be like
these storyboards that you would
see closeups of eyes, something
like that, somebody floating up
like that.
The script gives you an example
of description of what you're
, going to see, but the
storyboards are actually what
you are going to see.
Jeffrey: And the novel is a form
of telling us how that works.
Tom: Exactly.
Jeffrey: In 2017 Hanks published
a book of short stories titled
uncommon type.
We spoke then about the move to
fiction.
And now, with the more ambitious
storytelling of a novel, about
how it differs from his work in
film.
As novelist, you are the
storyteller.
Tom: As novelist I get to do the
whole shebang and I get to get
into the heads of the people and
the motivations of the people
and the weaknesses of the
people, as well as the
strengths.
A lot of time actors are given
way too much credit for the end
result of the movie that they
are in.
But in fact, we shot that one
day.
We twisted ourselves in a knot
in order to give unto the camera
something that was ephemeral
only and logical only unto
ourselves.
And then a director and a
screenwriter and an editor and a
whole phalanx of people ended up
taking that and sometimes
twisting it around just enough,
you know, moving it around, so
to become something a little
different than what you brought
to it.
And I could walk you through any
of the movies that I've been in,
in which on the day that I shot
it, I was just trying to carry
an idea from one room into the
next.
But in the final moment of the
film, with the rest of the
story, with the other
performances, with the cut, with
the score, it has become a much,
much, much more important
building block in the movie than
I ever anticipated.
Jeffrey: The making of a movie,
as we see in your novel, looks
like a series of plans and then
accidents piled on top of each
other.
[Laughter]
When you look at the arc of a
career, how much planned, how
much accident, how much
serendipity?
Tom: In the younger days, I
actually thought there was a ton
of stuff that you could control,
you know, or you could make
happen and you could force
manifest into it.
Like, I'm going to wear it like
this, I'm going to say it like
this, and I'm going to make this
decision, and this movie will
impact that movie.
The fact is, you begin at square
one every time.
Nothing you've done up to that
point warrants anything that you
can assume is going to be in
the palm of your hand going into
it.
You can only show up on time.
You can only know the text to
-- I don't mean just your own
dialogue, I mean know the
material that you're making.
Jeffrey: You still really feel
that?
I mean, after the success, Tom
Hanks walks into, and that says
something for the film?
Tom: Look, I will tell you this:
Sometimes there's a number of
people that can walk in and
allow the thing to be made in
the first chance.
I'm going to, I'll drop my own
name like I'm a big shot.
They get in and say we got Hanks
!
We're going to get financing, we
got Hanks!
Jeffrey: That's how I feel right
now, I got Hanks.
Tom: Oh, ok.
But then once you start doing
that, you realize that, well,
you got the financing.
But that doesn't guarantee the
output.
It doesn't necessarily warrant
the theme of the movie that you
make it good enough in order to
withstand people's attention for
two and half hours, better about
110 minutes.
I find the 110 minute movie is
an awfully good movie.
Just under 2 hours.
Jeffrey: You planning to keep
writing?
Tom: Oh, yeah, yeah.
I don't know what, but I'd like
to consider myself to be a
writer with a day job.
And the day job is pretty
glamorous sometimes.
Jeffrey: Tom Hanks returns to
his day job in June in the film,
asteroid city.
For the pbs newshour, I'm
Jeffrey brown in New York.
Amna: There is much more online,
where Tom Hanks talks about the
writers strike and the changing
economics of his industry.