0:33

This is talk easy. I'm Standford Goso.

0:37

Welcome to the show today.

0:51

I'm joined by the one and only Tom

0:54

Hanks. Since breaking out in Bosom

0:56

Buddies in nineteen eighty, Hanks

0:59

has become something of a national treasure,

1:02

a permanent fixture in American

1:04

life. Steven Spielberg, who directed

1:06

Hanks in films like Saving Private Ryan

1:09

and Catch Me If You Can, once

1:11

said, if Norman Rockwell were alive

1:13

today, he would paint a portrait

1:15

of Tom. And that tends to be how

1:17

many think and talk about Hanks, the

1:19

prototypical American, the everyman.

1:22

And yet when you think about it, Rockwell's

1:25

paintings and Hank's performances

1:27

are guided by a similar spirit

1:30

to observe and reflect not

1:32

just the world as it is, but

1:34

as it could be. Through the nineties,

1:37

he tackled big social themes like women's

1:39

equality in the League of their Own, the

1:41

AIDS epidemic in Philadelphia,

1:44

the sixties in Vietnam, and Forrest

1:46

Gump capital punishment in

1:48

The Green Mile. Come the turn

1:50

of the century, Hanks plays not an

1:52

every man but the best of man,

1:55

a fearless editor in the Post, a

1:57

pilot who somehow lands a Broken

2:00

Plain on the Hudson River in

2:02

Sully Mister Rogers

2:04

in a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. After

2:06

four decades, two oscars

2:08

and countless films, Hanks's curiosity

2:11

has somehow not faded

2:13

away. If anything, Hanks,

2:15

who actually turns sixty

2:18

seven years old today, is more

2:20

interested than ever in telling new

2:22

stories about how and why

2:25

we move through the world. As

2:27

evidence, you need only to look at his

2:29

latest two projects, Wes Anderson's

2:32

Asteroid City, in which he plays

2:34

a supporting role in his debut

2:36

novel, The Making of another major

2:38

motion picture masterpiece. The

2:41

book is a love letter to both movies

2:43

and the people that make them, and

2:45

if you'd like to check it out, you can now find

2:47

it at your local bookstore or wherever

2:50

you get your books. As you'll

2:52

hear in this conversation, Hanks

2:54

himself has an incredibly vivid

2:57

memory, often telling stories

2:59

as if they're well scripted scenes from

3:01

the movie of his life, the first

3:03

of which is how this novel came to

3:06

be before we dive into his

3:08

California child childhood, the film

3:10

that made him want to be an artist, his

3:12

early years as an actor, trying to make

3:14

it, and so much more as

3:17

you can imagine. This episode was

3:19

a long long time

3:22

in the making, and so I want to thank

3:24

him at the top for making the

3:26

time to sit with us. And

3:28

I want to thank you wherever you are,

3:30

whoever you are, for pressing play

3:33

and listening to this very special

3:35

conversation with the Man, the

3:38

myth, the legend, mister Tomiks,

3:56

Tom Hanks, What a pleasure to have

3:58

you here. How are you doing. I'm

4:00

alright, Sam, It's nice to

4:03

be chatting with you. We're just kicking

4:05

off the week long. Let's not

4:07

work until after the fourth of July.

4:10

Am I your last work obligation?

4:13

This is not worked? Okay? Good? This

4:15

is what we do all the time, you know.

4:17

Down at the office, all we do is lean in each

4:19

other's doorway and say,

4:22

hey, I read this goofy thing yesterday.

4:24

I saw this crazy nutty thing.

4:26

Is it? What do you think of that? Do you have any opinions

4:28

of it? That's all we do. We don't do any real work

4:30

at the office. We just compare

4:33

opinions and then try to decide if it's

4:35

going to be pizza Thursday or not. You

4:37

know, it's funny you say that because I have read

4:40

a funny goofy thing recently, and

4:43

it is your debut novel, the making

4:46

of another major motion picture masterpiece.

4:49

You got it, don't forget masterpiece in there,

4:51

beautiful correction, it's called the making

4:53

of another major motion picture masterpiece.

4:56

Yes, yes, keyword there, And that's what

4:58

this conversation is going to be, by the way, It's

5:00

just a masterpiece in the making. And

5:03

I want to start here because, as I understand it, you

5:06

are someone who wakes up

5:08

every morning with quote stories

5:10

in my head and questions

5:12

that I want to ask. So as

5:15

you woke up each day over these pretty

5:17

turbulent past few years, yes,

5:20

what were the stories and the

5:22

questions that you wanted

5:24

to work through in the novel? There

5:27

is nothing more interesting,

5:29

And there is no better way to

5:33

turn a stranger into an acquaintance than

5:35

asking them how they do

5:38

what they do for a living and why

5:41

even if people hate their jobs. That's

5:43

hours of conversation there, man. And

5:46

when I took on this task,

5:50

I woke up over the last five

5:52

or six years trying to figure out what the

5:54

verbiage, the more common language

5:56

is going to be that would somehow

5:59

communicate this odd

6:01

way of making a living so the stories

6:04

that I wanted to tell when

6:06

they were focused on writing the book

6:09

are not that different from the ones I just

6:11

wake up with the in the generals, how

6:13

does anybody get by in this cuckoo

6:16

world when it's just one damn thing after

6:18

another, No matter what the theology

6:20

is or whatever the formula is, they so

6:22

rarely take into account the basic human

6:24

condition of wanting to have significance

6:27

and connection and sincerity in presence.

6:29

And that's what I did, and I

6:31

will say that's what I do in preparation

6:33

to Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. You

6:38

you saying the title of the shows,

6:42

it's very strange. Can I

6:44

just can I do you have those interstitials?

6:46

Can you just run with this and just say in three

6:48

two one you're listening to Talk Easy

6:51

with Sam Fragoso? Can you just put

6:53

that in every now and again? We've

6:55

never done it, but if we were

6:57

to start doing it, it would be

6:59

with you. Although I think you have to tag it at the end

7:01

saying this is Tom Hanks. So maybe

7:04

you want to do you want to do another take of it? Oh, okay,

7:06

I can do that. You want to do that? I mean, I hate to

7:08

direct you, but but okay, sure, ready

7:10

and action. You're listening to

7:12

talk easy with Sam Pragoso. I'm

7:15

Tom Hanks and we'll be right back.

7:17

Wow, I'm never gonna

7:20

have to do a mid role

7:22

interstitial again. You just

7:24

save me hours of time? Did

7:27

the next year you go? You

7:29

know the thing that you're hitting on about,

7:32

there's nothing more interesting than talking to someone

7:34

about how they do. What

7:37

they do is basically the

7:39

premise of this show. And so I want to sit

7:41

with an early passage in the

7:43

book okay, that explains how

7:47

films are made. I

7:49

have your book right here. Do you have a copy

7:51

near you? Hold? One second? All right?

7:54

No, wait a minute, here, wait a minute. Rather

7:58

than having to go somewhere, how about if I

8:00

just buy one right now? How about that?

8:03

That would be kind of helpful, wouldn't it?

8:05

Does the money go right back to you?

8:09

Well? The problem

8:11

is as yes it does. But that's

8:14

the problem I've spend it. So I've

8:16

already spent it on the book.

8:18

So one second, one second, and

8:22

there you have it ready?

8:24

All right? Making movies as complicated,

8:27

maddening, highly technical at

8:29

times, ephemeral and gossamer

8:32

at others, slow as molasses

8:34

on a Wednesday, But with a gun to the head,

8:36

deadline on the Friday.

8:39

Imagine a jet plane, the funds

8:41

for which were held up by congress, designed

8:44

by poets, riveted together by musicians,

8:47

supervised by executives fresh

8:50

out of business school, to be piloted by

8:52

one of these with attention deficiencies.

8:55

What are the chances that such an aeroplane

8:57

is going to soar? There

9:00

you have the making of a movie, at

9:02

least as I saw it at

9:04

the skunk Works. What

9:07

that is is a description of how

9:10

a civilian, meaning somebody

9:12

who has never made a movie before, if

9:14

they were to visit the

9:16

set, they went honest to say what is

9:19

going on? And the

9:21

skunk Works, of course, is a reference to

9:24

test facilities where a lot of experimental

9:26

aircrafts were built and crashed, killing

9:30

everybody that was on board and dashing the

9:32

hopes of everybody had anything to do with

9:34

the building of it. As you are reading that, I

9:37

was thinking about all the films you've made

9:40

over the last forty years, and

9:42

now it's a miracle that

9:45

any of them turned out as

9:47

well as they did. It is I

9:49

think all movies are some kind of miracle. You

9:52

know. It starts at the very beginning. I

9:54

heard long ago that George Lucas

9:56

said that all movies are binary.

10:00

They are either double zeros and

10:02

they do not work, or they're

10:04

zero one and they work. And

10:07

that divide begins

10:09

at the inception of the movie

10:12

in the brain of whoever first

10:14

comes out with it. Hey, you know what I think would

10:16

make a good movie, And then

10:18

every step of the way that is

10:20

always a coin toss between zero

10:23

zero and zero one everything about

10:25

it. The movie has made so many different times,

10:27

and you start fresh every single day. I've

10:29

been incredibly fortunate

10:32

because you know, I'm look, I'm gonna say, I think

10:34

I'm probably batting, you know, in the high three

10:36

hundreds. That's the Hall of Famer. Well,

10:38

you know maybe that excuse me, not did I say three hundred.

10:40

Excuse me, I'm going to take that back. I'm gonna walk that

10:42

back. I think I think I'm batting

10:45

like two ninety five, and if I have a good enough

10:47

season, maybe I can get to get above three

10:49

hundred. It's a huge alliance

10:53

of collaborations that go

10:55

into it, and that's why

10:58

long term directors always work with the same

11:00

people, because they can finish each

11:02

other sentences. They know the type of stuff that they're

11:04

going to get. As Bob Zumachus

11:06

once said to me when we were sitting on

11:09

a park bench in Savannah, Georgia,

11:12

wondering if this story of this goofy

11:14

guy was going to meet anything, and he just said,

11:16

we're walking a minefield, Tom,

11:19

We're mocking a minefield. We have no idea

11:21

if we're selling the seeds of our own

11:23

destruction. And that sounds

11:26

pessimistic, but actually it's not. It's

11:28

actually incredibly pragmatic

11:30

to understand that all you can

11:32

do is follow your instincts and

11:35

not walk away satisfied with

11:37

what you have. I think a

11:39

lot of the days ending up making a

11:41

movie as you sort of want to upchuck behind

11:43

the stage door because you don't

11:46

think you really nailed it well. I

11:48

promise that we will get into all

11:50

of that up chucking in a

11:52

little bit. But you know,

11:54

in both this novel of yours and your

11:57

latest film, Asteroid City, there's

11:59

a kind of nesting, dull structure

12:01

at play. And while the book in the movie

12:03

are certainly different, they both

12:06

seem bound by this love

12:08

of storytelling, which I think

12:10

for you begins like most things,

12:12

at the beginning. You're born in Concord,

12:15

California, nineteen fifty six. By

12:17

the time you're five years old, your

12:20

parents divorced and become what you've called

12:22

pioneers of the dissolution laws

12:24

for the state of California marriage

12:26

dissolution laws. Yeah.

12:28

Yeah, my parents got divorced

12:30

when one of them had to up and establish

12:33

residency and renown Nevada, which

12:35

my dad did for six weeks, and

12:38

one night he showed up, and three

12:40

out of the four Hanks kids were hustled

12:42

off to go live in Nevada with a

12:45

whole new group of very nice

12:47

folks, as I recall, for the better part

12:49

of three years after that. Well,

12:51

by the time you're ten years old, you've

12:54

lived in ten houses in

12:56

five different towns with two sets

12:58

of families. And it's around

13:01

then that you begin taking trips

13:03

to and from a small

13:05

northern California town called red

13:08

Bluff, where you'd visit your mother.

13:11

Now, was it on that Greyhound

13:13

bus in the window seat

13:16

where you discovered this passion for

13:18

storytelling? I discovered

13:20

the escape of being

13:23

completely alone for

13:25

a big chunk of finite time. A

13:28

bus ride from Oakland to red

13:30

Bluff took somewhere between four and

13:32

five and a half hours. I might have had

13:34

a couple of comic books. I might

13:36

have had a pen and a notebook, but mostly

13:39

what I had was a window seat that looked

13:42

out on the entire

13:44

passing human condition. I

13:46

would look out that window and

13:49

saw moments

13:51

of humanity flashby.

13:54

We might pass a car

13:56

that would be loaded with a family and

13:59

they'd have, you know, pillows and blankets

14:01

and food all around. And we'd pass trucks,

14:04

and because the Greyhound bus was up

14:07

high, we could I could see into their cabs,

14:10

and I could see burly guys with mustaches

14:12

or incredibly skinny guys smoking cigarettes.

14:15

I can see things dangling from their

14:18

mirrors. We would pass pretty girls

14:21

in volkswagon beetles who

14:23

would be talking and waving their hands with

14:25

each other and they couldn't see me. And

14:27

I would see the countryside roll by,

14:30

and sometimes it would be city corners in places

14:32

like Valeo or Sacramento, and other times

14:34

it was just lonely clapboard houses

14:36

that would be out on a piece of land, and

14:39

there might be a wading pool in the front

14:41

yard that was kind of gone to moss. There might

14:43

be kids, bicycles or boats,

14:45

up on blocks, and so I would

14:47

get all these kind of gestalt moments

14:49

in which naturally I would

14:52

envision the longer stories, the backstories,

14:55

and what was coming down the pike for all

14:57

those people. Where they going? Where

14:59

does that guy live? Who lives in that house?

15:01

How can there's no kids in the pool right now?

15:04

I did that four times a year between

15:06

the ages of seven and seven

15:09

teen. So I racked up a lot

15:11

of downtime by myself, and I didn't

15:14

look upon it as a chore or it was never boring.

15:17

It was actually always fascinating with

15:19

all those stories you moving

15:22

outside the window, living

15:25

in the world as a young preteen, in

15:28

and out of different schools and towns. You

15:30

said before that you would unleash what you've

15:32

called some sort of inner charm

15:34

monster when meeting new classmates.

15:38

Was that some sort of self defense

15:40

mechanism, and if so, why did

15:42

you feel you needed to employ

15:45

something like that. Well, it certainly

15:47

was a self defense mechanism, but it was

15:49

also combined with I had

15:51

no fear walking into a new classroom,

15:54

no fear none, I had

15:56

no problem outside of sizing

15:59

it up pretty quick. Essentially,

16:01

once I said something out loud that somebody

16:04

reacted to then it was

16:06

Katie barred the door. I was fine, and

16:08

I was fun. I was outgoing, I

16:10

was loud. I never

16:13

wanted to skip school because there

16:15

was action there, and I think I developed

16:17

some sort of chops. Remember Jay

16:19

Leno used to have this thing he said,

16:21

I was always a comic. I wanted to be a comic,

16:24

you know. And it's like I'd be funny in school

16:26

and the teacher was a, well, mister Lano, if

16:28

you are so funny, perhaps you'd like to get

16:30

up and entertain the class. And so said

16:34

yeah, so you know, I said fifth grade. So

16:36

I got up. I did a solid ten minutes, you know.

16:38

So that's kind of like the way

16:40

I looked at it. There was action at school. Did

16:43

you have any uh material

16:45

that you would do in front of classmates?

16:48

I would take stuff that I would take stuff, funny

16:51

voices, take stuff that my brother would

16:53

do in the quiet of our own home and take it to

16:55

school. I remember one point I did. We

16:57

were briefly going to the same class and he heard

16:59

me say something that made everybody laugh

17:02

that he had said the night before. They

17:04

said, hey, that was my joke. But he

17:06

didn't have the courage to do it in front of everybody,

17:08

and and I did. You know, look,

17:11

I just wanted to have a good time myself. I just

17:13

wanted to experience joy. And if

17:15

that meant spreading it as well, then I'm your

17:17

man. I heard that you would even

17:19

take your brother Larry's tape

17:21

recorder and record different

17:24

sort of bits on there for him to find

17:26

later. I'd do stuff. I

17:28

do stuff. It's coming,

17:31

the tidal wave is coming. We

17:33

recommend that you all get to high Land

17:36

as quickly as possible. People,

17:38

it's coming, the tidal wave is

17:40

god. I would do that, you know. Just part

17:42

of it was just to hear my own voice, but also

17:44

to write the material. You know, they

17:47

gave you a sad card right then and there. I'm

17:49

certain of it. All they should have. I should

17:51

have been doing voiceovers even back

17:53

then with my squeaky voice. And

17:56

also it was, you know, a Craig Real to

17:58

real tape recorder. This was a miracle who

18:00

had tape recorders in their house. He had to be a rich kid.

18:02

I don't know where my brother even got this, For all

18:04

I know, he shoplifted it from some cheap

18:07

electronics store, you know, trying

18:09

to pinpoint the beginning of your love of storytelling,

18:12

but I want to try to identify the beginning

18:14

of your desire to be an artist,

18:17

which I think happens. And around thirteen

18:20

years old, you're lying in bed

18:23

trying to fall asleep the night

18:25

before you go to see two thousand

18:27

and one A Space Odyssey in the theater

18:30

that was it. I viewed it all as a very

18:33

romantic quest, the idea of sailing

18:35

across space and space suits and

18:37

helmets. I was not enthralled

18:39

in the adventure of it as much as I was

18:41

sort of like in the beauty of it. And

18:44

I had actually seen this book prior

18:46

to seeing the movie itself. Is called the Making

18:48

of two thousand and one a Space Odyssey, which

18:50

I couldn't understand because I hadn't seen the movie

18:52

yet, but it had photographs in it of the making

18:55

of the movie, and knowing

18:57

that I was going to see it, and I understand

18:59

in nineteen, I'm going to say this was

19:01

sixty seven. I guess sixty

19:03

seven, sixty eight. The movie came out

19:05

in sixty eight, Okay, so this is

19:08

in the fall of night sixty eight.

19:10

We went down to the cinerama domes.

19:13

It was a big deal and had lobby displays

19:15

and what have you. And it was the first time I was in a

19:17

theater where I noticed that the

19:19

sound system was the most advanced

19:22

I had ever heard. It wasn't just coming from

19:24

the screen, it was coming from all around us. And

19:26

it was actually an overture. So

19:28

I walked into the theater and it still

19:31

lit up, but Legetti's overture

19:33

is playing. And when it

19:35

began, I was used to

19:38

movies as they had always been John Wayne

19:40

movies and Kirk Douglas movies and movies that you saw

19:42

in Charlton Heston. You know, movies

19:45

had dialogue, and they had bad guys and protagonists.

19:47

You never really there was a very very little

19:50

iron ear mystery. Everything was

19:52

spelled out for you. And here this movie unspooled

19:55

and there isn't a word of spoken dialogue

19:57

until about twenty seven minutes into it,

20:00

when a lady says, here's your

20:02

level, sir. And prior to that, we

20:04

saw the entire history of human kind

20:06

played out via Stanley cuber

20:10

Vision. Now that was I'm thirteen,

20:13

and I see finally an understand

20:15

that cinema is this combination

20:17

of light and image

20:20

and performance in procedure and

20:23

behavior, and I

20:25

was able to figure out that what we

20:27

were looking at was man learning

20:30

how to use a tool in

20:33

order to beat his way into getting

20:35

what he wants. And then

20:37

from that comes the greatest time cut

20:39

in the history of cinema, in which a bone

20:42

is thrown up in the air and when it comes down,

20:44

you're thirty thousand years into the future

20:47

and man has conquered space and it's

20:49

flying to the moon like it's relatively routine.

20:52

And I can't say that I understood

20:54

any of that movie when I saw it, but

20:56

I knew that it was great, and I knew that it had

20:58

blown the back of my head off as far

21:00

as consciousness wise. But I

21:03

reveled in every small,

21:05

tiny detail of it

21:08

so much so that I went back

21:10

the next week by myself

21:13

in order to see it again. And I've been

21:15

looking at it ever since, because

21:17

there is a story about as big as you're

21:19

ever going to get. That

21:22

that is that is

21:24

still nothing more than odd

21:26

dialogue. I mean, there's no narrator that says

21:29

and it was at that moment that moonwatter

21:32

real life. There's nothing like that in there.

21:34

The only the only supers

21:36

are, you know, beyond the infinite.

21:39

That's there's there's nothing in there that makes it

21:41

easy for you to comprehend what's going

21:43

on outside. After you saw

21:45

the movie, you said, once I

21:47

started asking this question, how do I find

21:50

the vocabulary for what's rattling

21:52

around inside my head? Yeah?

21:55

That the thing about being an actor

21:57

is you're speaking with somebody

22:00

else's vocabulary, but it goes through

22:02

the sieve of your own consciousness. I

22:05

gravitated to acting because I

22:07

could get up in front of people like it was nothing at

22:09

all. Other people can't do that, you

22:11

know. I realized that that was a difference. And

22:14

the vocabulary of

22:17

communicating ideas by

22:20

way of the first, of course, the words of

22:22

a playwright. Well, it's one thing

22:24

to learn the dialogue, but it's something totally different

22:26

to understand what the heck you're saying at

22:28

the same time, what it is

22:30

that you're trying to communicate. In some ways,

22:32

all you need to do is trust the language.

22:35

But something else happens that I learned

22:37

about seven years later, when I was

22:40

twenty and found myself

22:42

doing Shakespeare. Dan Sullivan,

22:44

who at the time was directing us at the Great

22:46

Lake Shakespeare Festival got mad at all of

22:48

the professional actors in the room because they were hung

22:51

over from a party the night before, and

22:54

he said, look, you guys have to show up

22:56

on time, and you have to know the text, and

22:58

you have to have an idea.

23:01

I understood showing up on time, because we

23:03

get yelled at if we were not up on time. That's

23:05

true. I didn't have a lot of lines to learn

23:07

because it was pretty much Caring Spear and only

23:10

had really one scene as an actor, but

23:12

nonetheless you had to know that guy. But

23:14

the thing that he said about and have an

23:16

idea that was new.

23:19

I thought, we're told what to do, we're

23:21

told when to move, we're told what No, no, no. He

23:23

was actually saying, you have to come in with

23:25

something grander than is what is just written

23:27

down on the page. And I

23:29

didn't even know how to do that for another fifteen

23:31

years or so, but I understood that

23:33

that was the difference between doing

23:36

it professionally and doing

23:39

it for the Parks Department. You

23:41

had to do You had to do something

23:43

more than just read the play and learn the lines.

23:45

You had to study some aspects

23:47

of human need and human

23:50

behavior and the particulars. I'm

23:52

going to tell you right now. I played Fabian

23:55

in twelfth Night, and Fabian, I

23:57

believe, is the worst role ever written

23:59

in Shakespeare. And he is in one

24:01

scene in which he and somebody

24:04

else sits in a tree and laughs as Malvolio

24:06

reads a fake letter, and Fabian

24:09

and has this line. The worst line

24:11

in Shakespeare is this line, Souter

24:13

will cry out on it, though it be as

24:15

rank as a fox, Sam

24:18

Fragoso, do you have any idea what that means?

24:20

Souter will cry out on it, that would be at rank

24:22

as a fox. Sam Fragoso doesn't.

24:25

I'm not sure what it means either, But

24:27

our was instructed to say it as though it was

24:29

the funniest retort you could

24:31

possibly imagine saying, and we

24:34

had to laugh our asses off after the

24:37

story that you have to come up with the idea

24:39

that you have to have in your pocket, has to be

24:41

able to make sense out of saying a line

24:44

that bad. So that's you at twenty

24:46

years old. I want to understand

24:48

about the ideas and questions rattling inside

24:51

your head, looking for a vocabulary,

24:54

a vocabulary of what it

24:57

was, the vocabulary of

25:01

of playing it by ear if that makes

25:03

sense. I think I

25:06

not loneliness. Well, I

25:09

filled up loneliness by being that guy

25:11

who happily walked into the room I

25:14

did. I mean, but there's a combination

25:16

between being why are you lonely?

25:18

Are you lonely because no one has paid

25:20

attention to you? I can't say that was the case.

25:22

I think I was. My loneliness came about

25:25

because of confusion, because no one ever

25:27

really explained to me where we were

25:29

going or why. Outside of

25:31

a couple of teachers and the parents of friends

25:33

of mine, I'm not sure anybody

25:35

ever put a shoulder a hand on my shoulder

25:37

and said, you know what, this has nothing to do with you,

25:39

and you're going to be okay, and all I have to do is trust

25:42

your instincts. I just figured

25:44

out that I had to trust my instincts.

25:46

I knew people that would rationalize

25:48

away any possible move

25:51

or anything that I can't do that because I have

25:53

a job, or I can't take this gig because of

25:55

that. I was a bit of a blank

25:58

canvas when it came down to people

26:00

coming up to me, particularly at the Great Lake

26:02

Shakespeare Festival, in which people

26:05

were telling me based on

26:07

their observation of me. They

26:10

said, Okay, if you want

26:12

to be an actor, here's what you need to do. I

26:15

never addressed the first part of

26:18

their advice, which is, do I want to be an

26:20

actor? Is it even possible to be an actor? Who's

26:23

an actor in this world? Well they were,

26:25

and they were telling me you are too,

26:28

and so here's what you need to do. You need to

26:30

go to New York City.

26:33

Going to New York City is the only things that Gene

26:35

Kelly and Debbie Reynolds did in motion

26:37

pictures. I didn't go to New York City. I was from

26:39

Oakland, for goodness sake. Maybe I'll get drafted

26:42

or something like that. But so the

26:45

vocabulary is looking forward to was I think

26:47

the vocabulary of options beyond

26:49

the ones that were immediately around

26:51

me. I realizing that, oh I

26:53

can do that. The vocabulary

26:56

of saying, well, let's see what's going to happen. Well,

26:59

here's a little bit of what happened.

27:01

I'm going to do an abridge run through here

27:03

for us my fascinating

27:05

life. You bet, bring it on.

27:07

I'd love to hear it. So

27:10

you do move to New York City After

27:12

a formative run at the Shakespeare

27:15

Festival in Cleveland. Then

27:17

you do two seasons of Bosom Buddies

27:19

in Los Angeles where you're kind

27:21

of doing a riff on Tony Curtis from

27:24

Some Like It Hot. Yeah, Yeah, fair

27:26

enough. You then get a big break

27:28

and Ron Howard splash,

27:31

followed by a string of films

27:33

that I'm not going to pass any judgment

27:35

on whatsoever. By

27:38

the time nineteen eighty

27:40

nine rolls around, you said once

27:43

that I had experienced enough bitter

27:45

compromise that I had overcome.

27:48

There was stuff that should have destroyed

27:50

me, what should have or

27:53

could have destroyed you that

27:55

didn't any one of those jobs

27:57

coming to an end quite frankly,

27:59

how I blundered into being put on a TV

28:02

show with Peter Scullery. I have no

28:04

idea, but I'd bow down in hubble submission

28:06

to divine providence our dear Holland

28:08

Taylor. And Holland Taylor, I mean Holland

28:11

is still one of my dearest friends on the planet Earth.

28:13

Yeah. We lost Peter last

28:15

October, unfortunately, my

28:18

bosom buddy. And then when

28:20

it's done, you have

28:22

to put it all behind you and never

28:24

ever look back on that as being

28:27

the be all and end all, you can have to only

28:29

look at it as the vehicle

28:31

that got you to this morning. There

28:33

were money issues that I had

28:35

by that time. I had a family. When

28:38

Bosom Buddies was over, I had two kids,

28:41

and there was no guarantee whatsoever that

28:43

I was going to be able to keep my

28:45

house. I had a sense

28:47

of responsibility that was really always

28:50

about what do I have to

28:52

do and be and

28:54

what do I have to create in order

28:57

to get the

28:59

next job? And

29:02

an awful lot of that comes down to

29:05

two things. You have to do.

29:07

You have to wait, and

29:09

you have to be ready. And

29:13

a lot of people can't wait, and a lot

29:15

of people can't be ready. Somehow I

29:17

was able to do both those things. But you

29:19

know, look, this all happened for me ridiculously

29:23

fast, and there was all sorts

29:25

of serendipity that went into

29:27

it, not the least of which

29:30

other people not taking jobs.

29:32

I mean Ron when he directed

29:34

Splash, he was just getting started as a director.

29:36

He was Opie cunning Hand. He'd been on Mayberry

29:39

and Happy Days, and he

29:41

wanted to be a director. And who in the world was

29:43

going to trust him? And so that everybody who

29:45

was really an a lister at the time would have wouldn't

29:47

give him the time of day, and

29:50

he had a movie to make, And so I

29:52

came along, and I had waited and I was

29:54

ready. The bitter compromise

29:56

then comes around to that

29:59

same challenge of am I creating

30:01

art? Am I being authentic? Are my

30:03

ideas good enough in order to propel this along

30:06

and make it unique? And all the rest

30:08

of the world catches up your life, believe it

30:10

or not. San Fragoso is one damn thing after

30:12

another, and you don't know if you're stepping

30:14

down into a bear trap it's going to you know, clamp

30:17

down on your leg and give you blood

30:19

poisoning, or if you're skipping through a field

30:22

you know to over where you're your

30:24

car is parked and you get to go home well

30:27

through bear traps and maybe

30:29

not so great films. Let

30:32

me tell you something about being not so great

30:34

films. I'm a two ninety five hitter

30:36

without a doubt. That means, you know, it struck

30:38

out a lot, a lot of pop flies, a lot of ground

30:40

outs, but you never

30:42

stop. You never you Every day you

30:44

learn something, and granted sometimes

30:47

what you're learning is what not to do, but you

30:49

also experience those moments in which,

30:51

holy cow, that happened without my even

30:53

having to think about it, How was it that that

30:56

came down the pike? And all you do

30:58

you try and try and try, and you work and

31:00

you work and you work, and if you're smart, you don't let

31:02

your own personality get in the way

31:04

too much. And if you're lucky enough,

31:06

you have somebody that comes around and says to you, why

31:08

don't you know, kock it off? Why

31:11

do you concentrate on the work at hand? If you consider

31:14

yourself a professional, It's like you gotta have You

31:16

got to have those people in your lives too. You

31:18

know when you were mentioning that you were referencing the am

31:21

I making art? Am I being the artist

31:23

that I want to be. I get the sense

31:25

that that really came into focus for

31:27

you after you're nominated for

31:29

Big and eighty nine, then you make a league

31:32

of their own, and after that you

31:34

have this conversation with

31:37

your agent, Richard Lovett in the

31:39

early nineties where you say

31:41

what I said, I don't want to play.

31:43

I don't Now I'm going to use a word here

31:46

that has two different connotations,

31:48

and I'm doing the non anatomical

31:50

version of it. I said, I don't want to play pussies

31:52

anymore. And by that

31:55

I meant there was a whole school of economic

31:58

motors, of types of movies about

32:00

the goofy guy, you know, was trying to fall in love

32:02

and he has advances again, and I that was coin

32:05

of the realm in an awful lot of development in

32:07

motion pictures, light common these Sometimes

32:10

they were good movies, but more often not they were you

32:12

know, they were just kind of like Grade B, kind

32:14

of like passes, almost a

32:16

type of formula that I always thought there was enough

32:19

stuff in there in order to make it worthwhile doing.

32:21

But I also just said, look, I'm an actor and they're

32:23

asking me to be in a movie,

32:25

and I believe my job as an actor in movies

32:27

is to make movies. And so I threw myself

32:30

into stuff again and again, because hey, I can

32:32

show up on time. Hey, I'll know what the text

32:34

is. Said, Hey, I got some ideas for these moments.

32:36

But the truth is, what did we say at the beginning of this

32:38

fabulous talk? We said, movies are buying

32:40

arry they're either double zeros or

32:43

they're zero and one.

32:45

I wish you can't change it after the fact,

32:48

you just really can't.

32:50

So Number one, I got older. Secondly,

32:54

I ended up having more kids. I met

32:56

Rita in a movie and we've

32:58

been married for over thirty five

33:01

years now. But in order

33:03

to be Joe DiMaggio, you had to start

33:05

having a different type of demands

33:08

of yourself. You had to stay

33:10

out on the field a little bit longer, and work a

33:12

little bit harder, and also say

33:15

a word that is very, very very

33:17

hard to say. Sometimes you had to

33:19

say no. Saying yes

33:22

to something is easy. You'll make a lot of

33:24

money, you'll get to work with somebody great, you get to go

33:26

shoot somewhere and they'll pay you, and

33:28

you'll be done and it'll come out and be fun. It's very

33:30

hard sometimes to say no in

33:33

that this is not going

33:35

to scratch the itch

33:38

that I am feeling, and in order to maybe

33:40

to stay on pointed, this isn't going to teach me

33:42

in a new vocabulary. I wanted

33:45

to be a different type of actor, and I also

33:47

wanted to be a different type of artist that

33:49

would start bringing even more

33:51

to that binary formula double zero

33:54

or zero one after

33:58

the break more from what will

34:00

be hold on Tom, I want

34:02

to take it. You're listening to Talk

34:04

Easy with Sam Prugoso. I'm Tom

34:06

Hanks and we'll be right back. In

34:26

that decade that follows, you

34:28

do say yes to a handful of projects,

34:30

and by my estimation, it's

34:32

one of the best decades and actors

34:35

had in the history of motion

34:37

pictures. From Philadelphia

34:39

to catch Me if you can No, I think it's true.

34:41

I think it's true. Yeah, And I want

34:43

to know at this point in your life,

34:46

which film best captures

34:49

your spirit as an artist

34:52

and a storyteller, that makes you go, this

34:54

is why I do the work I do.

34:57

I will tell you I would if

34:59

I had to. And by the way, this is a pressure.

35:02

I would never do this on my own, but I will.

35:04

I will do it for the sake of our talk. Sam.

35:07

It was castaway, hastaway,

35:09

completely came out of our own shop,

35:12

and it was an incredibly deep throw

35:15

from the get go because I read

35:17

a story about FedEx,

35:20

and I did not know this when I read this story, but

35:22

I didn't realize that jumbo jets filled

35:24

with nothing but letters and packages traveled from

35:26

the United States to Australia every

35:28

day across the vast specific and

35:31

the first thing I thought was what happens if one of

35:33

those planes goes down? And

35:35

from that came the story of

35:38

FedEx. I was talking with

35:41

Bill Broyles, he was one of the original co writers

35:43

of Apollo thirteen. We were talking about actually

35:45

another project and he said,

35:47

so, what else are you talking about? And I

35:49

said, well, I have this idea about a FedEx

35:51

guy and he crashes, and I only

35:54

have kind of like the first act in my head,

35:56

but the narrative would be hanging

35:58

around on him staying alive

36:00

with fire, water, shelter,

36:03

and food, and then whatever

36:05

else is necessary. And from that brief

36:07

conversation that was about eighty years

36:09

before the movie came out, so eight years

36:11

of working on it constantly. And

36:14

it also was a great trifecta

36:16

because I had the first

36:18

act, Bill had the second act, and we did

36:20

not have a third act until Bob Samachus

36:23

came into the picture and he said, well, you know what you

36:25

guys are messing here, And from that

36:27

came not only the movie

36:30

as it played itself out, but also the way

36:32

we made the movie. To answer your questions,

36:34

I would say that was a handmade

36:36

house that designed myself,

36:39

allied myself with a handful

36:41

of other people, and out of that came

36:44

that not just the zeitgeist of the

36:46

human condition that I wanted to examine,

36:49

but also the deep throw

36:51

of the type of movie and the movie making

36:53

experience that I wanted to have. We just no

36:55

one had ever made a movie like that before now

36:57

without Pirates showing up. It's

37:00

fascinating because this decade we're talking

37:02

about. After Castaway, you

37:05

are celebrated in two thousand

37:07

and two winning a AFI

37:10

Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of forty

37:12

six. You're the youngest

37:15

person to win this award,

37:17

and I wondered, what did it

37:20

feel like to be given a Lifetime Achievement

37:22

award when you're only halfway

37:25

through your life? Like they don't

37:27

tend to give out two Lifetime

37:29

Achievement awards. Yeah, I sort of said,

37:31

are you guys sure? I mean, I've

37:33

had a pretty good run here. But I

37:35

took it exactly as it was offered

37:38

that I think I had enough of a body of

37:40

work that if I had gotten hit by a bus the

37:42

day afterwards, would stand up on its own.

37:45

I took it as a very, very wonderful night

37:47

to get together with a bunch of people that I'd known

37:49

for many, many years. We had a wonderful party

37:52

right after that that you could only get in if you

37:54

had a personal relationship with me, and

37:57

I took it in that brand of spirit.

38:00

Hey, I've done enough good work

38:02

in order to warrant a pretty good clip package,

38:05

and at the end of the day, that's nothing to

38:07

sneeze. Almost in spite

38:09

of that benediction, You've

38:12

spent the last twenty years, writing,

38:15

producing, performing, playing

38:18

not the everyman, but instead,

38:21

I think the best of man, folks

38:23

like Sully the pilot who landed the

38:25

plan of the Hudson River, Ben Bradley,

38:28

the fearless editor of the Washington Post. Mister

38:30

Rogers, I'm not going to do an inch on

38:33

him. As

38:35

an armchair historian, as

38:37

you've called yourself. Do you return

38:39

to these figures because they fortify

38:42

in you the belief that truth

38:44

and decency matter? Do you return

38:46

to them because they refuse to have their

38:49

hearts calcified? Truth

38:52

and decency does matter,

38:55

not to everybody, but it certainly

38:57

does. But the roles that you're describing

39:00

right there, and also throwing Richard

39:02

Phillips from Captain Phillips, they

39:04

were all very good at what they did for a living. To

39:07

get back to them, what do you do for a living and what

39:10

do you like about it? How do you end up in there? But they also

39:12

faced a type of pressure that

39:14

would snap the spine of

39:17

lesser people, not just the landing

39:19

of the plane and Sully saving all those

39:21

lives, but then also everything that went along with that. After

39:23

the National Transportation Safety Board

39:26

was ready, was ready and wanting

39:28

to find something other than a

39:31

mechanical problem. He was fighting

39:33

for his life in his career, like certainly

39:35

as Captain Richard Phillips

39:38

did. What was offered by way

39:40

of playing Fred Rogers was

39:43

Fred Rogers seemed to be fighting a battle

39:45

against everybody

39:48

else in the world, particularly in the commercial

39:50

television business that wants to make money

39:52

off and sell them toys to kids. All

39:54

of those are some version

39:57

of people who wake up in

39:59

the morning, and because

40:01

of their chosen professions and because

40:04

of the mode by which

40:06

they sort of like the ethical codes by which

40:08

they live, they do have to fight in

40:10

some ways the never ending battle

40:12

for truth justice in the American way. And

40:14

that's a noble undertaking. To

40:16

me, it's what the great stories have always been

40:18

about. I don't think it's a far cry

40:21

from Hamlet to all of those people

40:23

or any of the other great heroes

40:25

of ongoing literature. Every

40:28

Jean Valjean has some version of a javert

40:30

that is, you know, chasing them down, and

40:33

jabvert is really good. And sometimes Javer

40:35

refugents the morals of everybody else in

40:37

the world, you know. But I'm fascinated

40:40

by people who stick to their guns,

40:43

that are actually viewing some version of

40:46

I can't live any other way unless I do it like

40:48

this, and so I have to do it like this, and in

40:50

that it's it's uncompromising, and I think

40:52

that there's a bit of a default setting of cynicism

40:55

that goes around there. In an awful lot of it, it says,

40:57

well, come on, stop being such a goody two

40:59

choose, And I don't view it that way.

41:01

I actually view it, well, what would you do in this circumstance?

41:04

That's what I always ask myself when I see movies.

41:07

What would you do? And I think that's the honorable

41:09

question that those roles, and I think

41:11

those movies ask in the spirit

41:13

of sticking to your guns. I have to ask

41:16

you something because as you're saying

41:18

this it's hard to square

41:20

away the hope you

41:22

have that I can hear in your voice

41:26

with the state of this country,

41:29

where we have pockets of people

41:31

throughout who've made it their life mission

41:33

to restrict bodily

41:36

autonomy, post dabs, to

41:38

strip rights away from LGBTQ

41:41

plus community, to dispose

41:44

of history that they render

41:46

inconvenient or self incriminating.

41:49

You've made work in some form or

41:51

another about all of these

41:53

subjects through the years. And

41:55

so I wonder as we sit here,

41:58

has your faith in

42:00

this nation and the people, and it hasn't been

42:03

shaken these past few

42:05

years. Have you been shaken

42:08

tested? Not so much

42:10

shake. Here's something that will

42:13

can, may always

42:16

happen. You can have your heart

42:18

filled with any type

42:21

of stereotypical prejudice.

42:23

You can be a bigot, you can hatele off in

42:25

a lot of people. You can feel as though a victim from

42:28

people who have taken advantage of you. You You could feel

42:30

stabbed in the back, you can feel as though you're

42:32

on the losing end of every proposition

42:34

that comes down. You can do it because of any

42:37

number of reasons and any number of people.

42:40

Now, cynicism,

42:42

that's part and parcel to the cultural

42:45

exchange that goes on, and

42:48

it seems to be a very very loud

42:51

at times, and we are always

42:53

in a massive flux. There has never

42:55

been a I spoke at a graduation

42:58

on too long ago, and I said, every

43:00

graduating class is graduated into the

43:02

most tumultuous times in the history of the world.

43:04

There's always so much that has to be done. But here's

43:06

what seems to us happened. For

43:09

the long course of things, It's

43:11

gotten done. I think eventually

43:13

Tyrant's fall. Sometimes they fall because

43:15

of laughter, sometimes fall because of gravity.

43:17

And I think at the end of the day, we do have a

43:20

process that is in place here in which

43:22

the vast majority of people that I

43:24

know and have come across give other

43:26

people a fair shake at the end of the day. At

43:29

sixty six, soon to be sixty

43:32

seven, Yeah,

43:34

do you still feel

43:36

the need and desire to

43:39

be a reflection of us, the good

43:42

and the bad? Yes? I

43:44

do, because I go back to what I learned at

43:46

the Great Lake Shakespeare Festival in nineteen

43:49

seventy seven. I

43:51

was backstage and I had to make an

43:53

entrance right after Hamlet gave

43:55

his advice to the players, and

43:57

every night I heard Shakespeare, by way

44:00

of Hamlet, say hold the mirror up to nature,

44:02

and that's my job. Human

44:05

nature is what we reflect back

44:07

to everybody. And some

44:09

version of that same question, what would you do

44:12

given the same circumstances. I

44:14

feel as though sometimes

44:16

you play a bad guy, but in that playing

44:19

of the bad guy, you do hold a mirror up

44:21

to nature, because there are some people that are

44:23

doing things for the wrong reasons that

44:25

can be construed as being given. There's a lot of Look,

44:27

there's an awful lot of stuff I don't bother with all

44:30

sorts of stories and movies that I that

44:32

hold no interest to me because I

44:34

don't necessarily buy the standard antagonist

44:37

protagonist dynamic of an awful lot of

44:39

stuff that's out there, but there is

44:41

plenty of other stuff where hey, people

44:43

have different motivations that they have to be examined

44:45

and they have to meet their natural ends and natural

44:47

conclusions. So I remain I

44:50

must say a type of artist slash

44:52

actor that I think that is job

44:55

number one when it comes down to doing any

44:57

story that I tell, any story that I'm

44:59

involved with, is that life is one damn

45:02

thing after another, and it's sometimes it's very,

45:04

very hard to say no.

45:07

It's very hard to do the right thing, but

45:10

there is some inner ticking clock inside

45:12

all of us that thing more off than not. In seventy

45:14

percent of us will turn to a

45:16

true north. You know you've

45:19

said my name, I think seventeen

45:22

times in this conversation.

45:26

I think it's been eighteen, Samfragos. Well,

45:29

in that reflection of us, Tom

45:32

Hanks, you've made it look so

45:36

goddamn easy, almost

45:38

like you're Joe DiMaggio.

45:41

Yeah, out there in center

45:43

field. I met Joe DiMaggio.

45:45

We were in a restaurant called Koco Pazzo. Rita's

45:48

mom was alive. We were having dinner with her and

45:50

some friends. I think are one

45:52

of our kids might have been there in a high chair. As a matter

45:54

of fact, are you asking me to confirm? You're looking

45:57

at me? And at

45:59

the major? D came over and he's excuse me, mister

46:01

Hanks. Joe DiMaggio was into

46:03

dining with us tonight, and he wondered if you might come

46:05

by so he could introduce himself. And

46:07

I was out of my chair before I said,

46:10

Joe Toman. So I went and dude,

46:13

Sam Fragoso nineteen, I

46:15

have I met Joe DiMaggio,

46:18

and he couldn't have been. He was very elegantly

46:21

dressed. He said, Tom, I always wanted to meet another

46:23

Bay Area boy because he knew I'm from

46:25

Oakland and he was from San Francisco.

46:27

And we started talking a little bit, and I said, oh,

46:29

what a plague. I sat down very briefly with him,

46:32

and at the conclusion of it, I

46:34

said, you know, mister, mister DiMaggio, He said,

46:36

oh, call me Joe. Say

46:39

you know. At one point someone

46:41

I read there actually this had been written about me,

46:43

some review that got a good review. And someone

46:46

says, hanks us like Joe di Maggio out there and makes

46:48

it look easy. And I said,

46:50

there has never been a greater compliment

46:52

than I've received, and saying that, like Joe

46:55

DiMaggio in center field, I made my

46:58

job look easier. And he said to

47:00

me, uh, yeah, it looks easy.

47:02

But then he held his hand over his heart

47:05

and he said, but it never was

47:08

any here, and

47:11

I understood exactly what

47:14

he was saying. He was that

47:16

guy, like I said, Joe to Maago. He

47:18

did the work, he did the wind sprints, he

47:20

showed up, he waited, and then he was

47:23

ready and in his own way, of

47:25

course, that was an extraordinary

47:27

moment and also a bit of a challenge.

47:30

Isn't it that he was not ready to rest

47:32

on any kind of laurels. He would just said,

47:34

dude, I worked my

47:36

frigging ass off in order to

47:38

make it look easy. And this I

47:41

understand. You feel

47:43

that. Oh oh

47:45

my, yeah, now here's the thing.

47:48

I love it. Look. I still come home

47:50

at the end of the day wondering, Man, I wonder

47:52

if we really got that or not. But

47:55

I feel as though I've done all the work

47:57

I can now. That being said, if they come back and

47:59

say, hey, we'd like to reshoot what we did, yes or

48:01

said great, because I'm like another shot

48:03

at it. You know, yesterday

48:06

I had a call with

48:08

our your friend Holland Taylor.

48:11

Oh you know Holland, Oh my,

48:14

from one dustmote to another desmoty

48:18

eight yeah, And I asked, what

48:21

is your shared connection? And

48:23

she wrote just the greatest thing to me this

48:26

morning over text, she said, Tom

48:28

and I we both celebrate

48:31

the infinitely tiny place we hold

48:33

in the universe and our moteness,

48:36

our status as specs makes

48:39

our marching gaily fourth and

48:41

the vast void sort

48:44

of majestic. She's

48:48

saying, the work we do is

48:50

noble because

48:53

we care so deeply. We

48:55

don't want to just do it right. A lot

48:58

of people can do this right, but

49:00

there was inside that, this

49:02

unquenchable, unstoppable, and

49:05

actually, I think, in a lot of ways, unaccomplishable

49:07

desire to apture something

49:10

in every line, in every moment in a

49:12

bottle that no one else could ever have

49:15

created or captured. It's an elusive

49:17

task and sometimes

49:19

it happens by accidents, sometimes it happens

49:21

by magic. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all.

49:24

But what matters is the

49:26

desire and the try. You

49:29

know, speaking of you,

49:34

sorry, can I ask that at

49:36

your age, after all you've done,

49:40

you still want to do it right, don't you. Well

49:43

It's like, no matter how old your kids

49:45

are, I want a long drive

49:47

with them to be a fascinating time

49:49

spent talking to one another. You

49:51

know, Yeah, I just wanted to I do. I still

49:54

want it to be magical and discoverable.

49:57

And look, I will tell you that I've worked with

49:59

people who have remained at the top

50:01

of their game, and I'll just say because they've passed

50:04

away, and I always think I'm going to be able to go to

50:06

New York and Tener with Mike Nichols and Nora

50:08

f One. They were all possessed by

50:10

their desire in order to keep doing

50:13

it, not just well, but keep doing

50:15

it magically, to keep capturing something

50:17

that no one else could, that only they saw. She

50:20

of course, isn't the acknowledgements

50:22

of your book, I wouldn't be a writer I

50:24

for it wasn't for Nora Ephron

50:27

told me that the work I was doing in preparation

50:29

for Sleepless in Seattle, in which I

50:31

was fighting and cranky and having suggestions

50:34

and wanting and always asking is this enough?

50:36

Is this enough? I don't get it. I don't get it. She

50:39

put in something that had come out in our

50:41

rehearsal process, she and her sister Delia,

50:44

And when it was done, she said, you

50:46

wrote that, And I said I didn't write that. I was just complaining

50:49

during rehearsal, and you put it in. He

50:51

says, well, that's what writing

50:53

is, isn't it. And so that

50:56

was And from then I

50:58

always would send her something and say

51:00

is this writing? And she would

51:02

always come back says, it is writing, but

51:04

you ain't done writing it, so get back to work.

51:07

My last question, mister Tom Hanks,

51:10

we're talking about specks

51:12

of dust, the passing of time.

51:15

What was that story

51:18

that you like to tell about Cecil B.

51:20

Demel about checking the gate?

51:22

Oh? Yeah,

51:26

when you use film, when you shoot on film,

51:28

not digitally, you're literally talking about

51:30

a physical process of when cellul lloyd

51:32

goes through the camera and

51:35

it has to go through and it goes through the lens and

51:37

where it passes in front of the lens and actually

51:39

captures the image as a photograph.

51:42

It goes through the gate of the projector.

51:44

And because it's film, because it's cellul

51:46

Lloyd's made out of petroleum products, it's

51:49

possible that part of the film can break

51:51

off and get stuck in the gate. So

51:54

you will shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot, and

51:57

when you will finally think you were done with

51:59

the scene, and this has happened on any

52:01

number of kinds, they will say check the gate, and

52:04

the camera operator takes it apart, pulls the

52:06

gate out, looks at it. They are oftentimes

52:09

is a splinter from the film that is in there,

52:11

and so they don't know if the image

52:13

is going to be a pure one. There could be a big hash

52:15

mark in there. It could be a scratch. They

52:17

say, no, no, sorry, They will call it a jam

52:20

in the gate. Now there's dust in the gate, they will

52:22

say, And they got to put the gate back in. And you have to

52:24

redo all of that magazine,

52:26

about ten minutes worth of film in order to recapture

52:29

what you did somewhere on the other

52:31

side. If you've worked your if it worked

52:33

like crazy, if you've made it look easy, and

52:35

you are done, you have to

52:37

say, okay, great print

52:40

that check the

52:42

gate. And this

52:44

set is sort of on tenter hooks. As

52:47

the first camera operator, the focus

52:49

puller, pulls the gate out

52:51

of the camera and looks at it, holds it,

52:53

has to hold it up to the light and loss of time will

52:55

have a flashlight and go around the periphery.

52:58

And when he says, all right,

53:00

the gate is good, that means

53:02

you're done and you get to move on. And

53:05

maybe you're done for the day, maybe you're done for the week, maybe

53:07

you're done for the entire film. But nothing is

53:09

finished until someone says the

53:11

gate is good. You're a lucky person if

53:13

you can say okay, I think we're done.

53:16

Check the gate. Pause, pause,

53:18

pause, pause, Wait the

53:21

gate is good. Okay, then you're

53:23

finishing and you get to go. You don't

53:25

want to have dust in the gate. Well, we have

53:28

looked back on a whole lot

53:30

of good work, a life lived,

53:33

movies that you made look easy

53:36

when I know it was not. And

53:38

I just want to thank you for leaning

53:41

into that vocabulary of loneliness

53:44

all those years ago, for making

53:46

meaning through all these performances

53:49

of yours, which in turn, I think

53:51

has given us a vocabulary and

53:54

language to better understand ourselves.

53:57

And I know there is no

53:59

gate in audio,

54:03

but I've checked it anyway,

54:05

and the

54:08

gate is good. Gate is good. You've been

54:10

listening to Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso,

54:12

I'm Tom Hanks. Join us again

54:15

soon for another episode of Talk

54:18

Easy with Sam Fragoso.

54:21

Hey, I enjoyed that. Thank you, my

54:23

friend, Tom Hanks. It's been

54:25

an honor. It's been my pleasure. Thanks

54:27

so much. I enjoyed talking to you. I truly did. And

55:25

that's our show. If you enjoyed

55:27

this episode, be sure to leave us five stars

55:29

on Spotify, Apple, wherever you

55:32

do your listening. If you want to go the

55:34

extra mile, sharing the program

55:36

on social media, writing a review

55:38

on those platforms. All of it

55:40

is really still the best way for new

55:42

listeners to find the show. I want

55:45

to give a very special thanks to speak to Holland

55:47

Taylor, Jody Lee, Leipz, Heather

55:49

Fain, Aaron Hartman, Christy

55:52

Ostler, and of course our

55:54

guest today, Tom Hicks. His

55:57

debut novel, The Making of Another Major

55:59

Motion Picture Masterpiece, is available

56:01

wherever you do your reading. If

56:04

you haven't seen him in Wes Anderson's Asteroid

56:06

City, he is maybe my favorite

56:08

part of that movie. The film is

56:10

currently in theaters in limited release,

56:13

will also be available on vod

56:16

later this week. If you'd like to learn more

56:18

about Tom and his work, or check

56:20

out our edited transcript of this episode,

56:23

be sure to visit talk easypod

56:25

dot com for more conversations

56:28

with other great actors, and check

56:30

out our talks with Michael Shannon, Michelle

56:33

Williams, Oscar Isaac Matthew

56:35

McConaughey, Laura Dern, Edward

56:37

Norton, Tessa Thompson, and of

56:39

course Holland Taylor. To

56:42

hear those and more, Pushkin Podcasts

56:44

listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

56:47

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56:49

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57:01

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57:03

com slash shop.

57:06

As always, Talk Easy is produced by Caroline

57:09

Reebok. Our executive producer is Janick

57:11

Sobravo. Our associate producer is

57:13

Caitlin Dryden. Our research and

57:15

production assistant is Paulina Suarez.

57:17

Today's talk was edited by Clarisse

57:20

Gavara and mixed by Andrew Vastola.

57:22

Our assistant editor is c J. Mitchell.

57:25

Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our

57:27

illustrations are by Christia Shadowing, video

57:30

and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak,

57:32

Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca.

57:35

I'd also like to thank our team at Pushkin

57:37

Industries, Justin Richmond, Julie

57:39

Martin, John Stars, Karrie Brody, David

57:41

Glover, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jordan

57:43

McMillan, is A Mellinavarez, Kira Posy,

57:46

Tara Machado, Maya Kanig,

57:48

Jason Gambrel, Justine lange letm

57:50

Molad, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob

57:53

Weisberg. I'm Sanfracoso.

57:56

Thank you for listening to a very special

57:58

episode of Talk Easy. I'll

58:00

see you back here next week with a new Talk

58:03

Until the Stay safe and

58:05

solo