-Our first guest tonight is an Academy Award-winning actor
you know from films such as "Forrest Gump,"
"Philadelphia," "Castaway," "Apollo 13," and so much more.
He stars in "A Man Called Otto," which is in select theaters now
and is playing everywhere this Friday.
Let's take a look.
-So press in on the clutch and give it a little gas.
Slowly let out on the -- oh, you're not in gear.
[ Horn honking ]
Look, don't -- you don't have to turn the key.
-Aah! -Go!
-Just press -- -Oh, my God.
[ Horn honking ] -Press on --
-[ Speaking in Spanish ]
-Slowly let out on the clutch and press on the gas.
[ Horn honking ] Now you listen to me.
You have given birth to two children.
You learned a new language.
You will have no problem learning how to drive.
My God, the world is full of complete idiots
who have managed to figure it out,
and you are not a complete idiot.
So clutch, shift, gas, drive.
-Please welcome back to the show Tom Hanks, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
You're excited. -I'm very excited by --
I'm very excited by The Strokes, man.
It's not often you -- how many guitars are in The Strokes?
-Two guitars. -Two guitars and the drums.
There you go. That's all you need, baby.
That's Cream, man. That is Cream, as in the Eric --
You know. -Yeah, yeah.
The old Cream, not the -- -I'm so excited about this,
that just for -- okay.
You're gonna have to make a decision.
-Here is one lottery ticket for the Powerball.
I have one more. Now, this is worth $2 billion.
-Right. -One of these will be yours.
The other one will go to the band.
-Okay. -Which one do you want?
-Oh, interesting. -Are you feeling lucky?
-I'm gonna take this one. -All right!
-And I'm gonna give that one to the band.
-All right. -It would be such --
You'd think it'd be a burn if they won,
but I would be so happy 'cause they'd have to split it.
-Oh, that's right. [ Laughter ]
Now, the other thing -- They would have to split it.
But I think The Strokes' drummer should get just a little --
-Yeah! -Yeah.
I think a little bit more, yeah. -Just a little bit.
-[ Laughs ] [ Applause ]
But you do -- if you win, you still gotta swear
you're coming to work the next day, pal.
-Yeah. -You know what? We all gotta --
-Nobody gets to take it off just 'cause they win
the Mega Millions. -Not good.
-Hey, you know what I think is really funny?
And I want to stress this is a choice our show makes, not you.
As I was introducing you and I was saying things like,
"You know him from 'Forrest Gump'" and --
you know, that's helpful, I think, for some actors,
but I don't think our audience needed to hear those things.
I don't think, if I hadn't mentioned "Forrest Gump,"
Tom Hanks would walk out, and they'd be like,
"What do I know him from?" [ Laughter ]
-All right. You know, very kind of you.
It's very nice. Thank you.
Thank you. I have to blame home video
for the familiarity because, you know, between --
between VHS machines and DVDs, man, you get to --
you all grew up with me one way or another.
-Yeah. -Am I wrong?
"All right. We're going out," and you know.
-That was a good era. The VHS era
was a good time to get started. -Wasn't it?
Wasn't it fabulous? -Yeah.
It's crazy to me the idea of --
I just -- the amount of movies I watched 15, 20, 30 times.
It was so easy for me. Like, when you were growing up,
were there movies that you watched over and over?
-But you had -- they had to land, you know?
They had to be on channel 5 or something like that.
And they were always edited for commercials.
I remember the first time I saw "The Maltese Falcon,"
it was only like 47 minutes long because they just cut out
huge storylines, you know? -Yeah.
-There was, what, Archer and Spade?
There was no Archer in it, was just Sam Spade.
So you had to deal with that. But I -- The -- The --
There was a time when I predicted
at, like, New Year's, I predicted that, in the future,
we will all just have a box on our TV,
and from that box, we can watch anything we want.
We can watch documentaries from 1952.
We can watch Edward R. -- We can all watch old episodes
of "The Dick Van --" watch any movie that we want to.
And I thought it would be there. I just didn't realize
it would each -- it was gonna cost us
10 bucks a month for five different subscription services.
-Yeah, exactly. [ Laughter ]
-I thought it was, "Well, you pay a buck
for each thing, and that works out."
I didn't realize you would have to have passcodes,
an accountant that you had to pay for.
-Yeah. -You know, nine different
remotes of menu, outputs, you know.
-Do you ever have that -- I have this point with my kids,
who are obviously a great deal younger than yours,
where they'll get really excited.
I'll say, "We're gonna show you a movie,"
and maybe, let's say, it's on Disney+.
And we'll sit down, I'll turn it on,
and it'll need the password again,
and I will just say to them,
"It doesn't have the movie you want."
-"We're not gonna have it." [ Laughter ]
-"Disney+ is broken today." -We can't --
"They decided that you are not allowed
to watch this movie tonight." -Yeah.
-"So let's play 'Clue.'" -Yep, and there we go.
-Pull out the "Clue," and it's Colonel Mustard
in the study with the lead pipe. -So you --
There's a wonderful scene where you're teaching someone
to drive in this film. Now, again, your kids are older.
You've gone through this. Were you good --
Did you actually teach your children how to drive,
and were you patient? -Well, okay.
You've got youngsters, so you put them on the lap.
You go to a big vacant lot. -Uh-huh.
-You let them steer around, and you control the pedals.
-Okay. -Or, you know, you're coming up,
somebody's got a -- "Hey, it's a quarter mile from here to there.
Sit behind, and I'll shift for you and all that."
Then they get into where they are sitting actually
in the driver's seat, and you're riding shotgun,
and all you say is, "What are you doing?
What are you doing? What are you doing?"
-Yeah. -"What are you doing?
No, no, no, no. Easy, easy, easy. Easy!
Turn left, left, left!" [ Laughter ]
"I'm absolutely -- No, turn that down."
That's the other thing. "Turn it down!
Turn it down!" -See, I'm glad to hear
you're like this because I feel that is the future for me
just based on I'm trying to teach them how to ski,
and the instruction that I usually give
is something along the lines of "Just ski!"
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
"Go down. Go down. -Look, do what everyone else
here is doing. -Pole, plant, pole, plant.
But, look, in all reality,
here's how we're gonna teach our kids how to drive.
Sit down. Enter your destination.
[ Laughter ]
Take a nap, and that's -- and they will get there
at some point. -You -- a very cool thing
in this film, you play Otto in present day.
Your son Truman... -Yes, my son Truman.
-...your actual son Truman plays you in the flashbacks,
and this is, if not his first role,
certainly his first major role. Were you excited for him?
-I was -- It's an intimidating process.
Marc Forster, who directed it, he said, "Why do we have to have
a look-alike for you to play the young" --
He's from Switzerland, all right?
-Yeah, I got it. I think we were worried.
We're like -- -He was not interrogating us.
He was actually suggesting a better way
in order to make the movie.
"Can't one of your kids come on and play you?
I think Truman looks very much like you."
I said, "Well, you'll have to talk to him."
So, he actually is a member of the -- proud member of
Local 600 of the New York City camera union.
So he actually -- he's actually --
he's actually loading film on episodic TV today.
-Oh, my God. -He's a renaissance dude.
And I said, "Look, if you want to do this,
you know, understand you got to fight
self-consciousness like crazy.
There's only one way to do it.
Show up, know your stuff, let go, and ski!
[ Laughter ]
-There you go. "Why can't you ski?!"
-"Why can't you just ski?!"
And he did it okay. -I thought he was great.
I have a lot more to ask you.
We'll be right back with more from the great Tom Hanks.