Tom Hanks, the novelist
My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. One of the most beloved movie stars of his generation has written his first novel, A Conversation Custom Made for Our Man in Hollywood, Ben Mankiewicz. Where are we right now? We are on about as famous a back lot as you're going to get. Just another ho-hum day in Hollywood. A tour of Paramount Studios with Tom Hanks. It looks real.
It's impossible to believe that these aren't real. Take your hands and just block off the sky. And honestly, that's a city street. Today he's revealing some show business truths. Once you're on the lot, you can walk around. You can go almost anywhere. I'm going to tell you something right now.
Don't put this on. Of course, keep it on. There are signs that are always around sound stages. This is a close set. Nonsense. Anybody can walk onto any set, any time they want to. No one is going to say, hey you, come back here.
Hanks took me to sound stage 25. It looms large in his history. Oh my lord, look at this. I don't need you to worry for me because I'm all right. This is where Hanks taped Buzzing Buddies with his co-star Peter Scallari. The show ran just two seasons. Peter and I had the first two dressing rooms right next to the hair and makeup thing.
Buzzing Buddies going off the air was not because you were going on to bigger and better things. No, no. We got fired. You got fired. Yeah, we got fired. As losing that gig, things have improved. He's now a two-time Best Actor Oscar winner, a producer, director, one of the two or three defining stars of his era.
And 43 years after his first film, he knows the audience. Movies are this one-on-one relationship. Movies are made for one person and one person only, and that's the person that is viewing. We all have our own memories that are connected to a specific film that if we think about it, we can remember where we were, what theater we saw it in, or maybe what weekend it was when we happened to see them on TV. It's like as personal as reading a book. Now Hanks is combining the two with his first novel out this week, the making of another major motion picture masterpiece. And action, Tom.
When I was born, my mom named me Forest Gump. It's the story of the process, often spectacularly messy, of bringing a movie from the page to the screen. I had never read a book that captured the movie making experience as I experienced making a movie. Hanks' novel tells an epic story from actors and agents to teamsters and gaffers. I think anybody who works in an office or on a construction site, even just a supermarket, might think that the efforts that they put into their job are far removed from what goes into the making of a motion picture. It's actually much the same. Who causes a problem? Who's got an interesting idea? Who can make things happen a little faster? The end result is just different because you get a movie at the end of it.
Getting a movie completed well, says Hanks, means following the text, which is much more than merely the script. And by text, I don't mean not just your dialogue, but the entire movie. Because actors always get, are you going to be in here? Are you going to get a shot? Where's the camera going to be? What's the shot going to be? The dude just behave, all right? And everybody else will make that happen. Because otherwise, all your performances end up looking something like this. You know, it's like, dude, no one turns and looks that way at the horizon. No, no, no, no. No.
This is what I used to do. I'd go into the mirror and I'd say, here's what I want to do. Here's what I want to do with this thing. I want to go like this is what I want to do. You know, oh my God, could something be more, more, more artificial? No, but I tell you, I'm sitting here next to it. I'm like, it's pretty good. Not bad.
That's right. The novel is, of course, a work of fiction. The stories are inspired by Hanks' experiences on roughly 100 movies, including an early hit, Splash, directed by Ron Howard. I was incredibly intimidated because I'd been on two years doing Booze and Buddies in which our whole job was to be funny. Our whole job was to be flashy, say funny things in a funny way. Splash had two legendarily funny cast members, Eugene Levy and John Candy. Do you think we're going to steal the mermaid? What are we going to do, father and half and put her in a briefcase? I operated from a place of, here's what my job is to be as funny as these guys.
And it was not a great read through. And Ron Howard, my boss, came up to me and said, I know what you're trying to do. I know what you're trying to do. And you can't. You can't do that, Tom. We won't have a movie. He literally said, we won't have a movie if you do that.
And I thought I was going to get fired that movie. He said, your job is not to be as funny as John and Eugene. Your job is to love the girl. All right. And that penetrated. Like you heard that. Oh dear.
It ended up being part of the first lesson in an ongoing doctorate in understanding what the movie is, of knowing the text. The funny thing is, it delivered a million passengers over 40 years in the air. Everybody involved in a movie, from the director to production assistants, has a job. As an art form, it's entirely collaborative. A word that gets Hank's thinking about his old friend Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed Sleepless in Seattle. Aren't you going to read any of these? No. Because this is not how it's done.
I much rather just see somebody. I like it. Get a feeling about them. I was cranky. Why were you cranky? Without realizing it, I was cranky because she was a woman writing for a man. Now, how often has that been the opposite of a man writing for a woman? Thousands. You know, millions of times.
Eventually, I came around. The problem with this, Nora, is that you're a chick and I'm a dude and dudes don't think that way in these circumstances. She says, well, how do men fake in that circumstance then? I said, he wouldn't say that. He'd say, diddle-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-da-da. She said, well, let's put that in the movie then. That had never happened. It happened in ways, but never as specific as this.
Because she, indeed, literally took what I said and put it in the movie. Afterwards, I said, that actually worked out great. He says, well, you wrote that? I said, no, I didn't write that. I just complained. And you guys wrote it down. He says, that's what writing is. Down there was taxi, Laverne and Shirley, and happy days.
So what of motion pictures? Does this novel mean we'll be seeing less of Tom Hanks, the movie star? Is there a scenario where you think, oh, I'm going to basically stop acting. I'm just going to write? No. Dear God, no. There is an aspect of how long you can actually, I think, do it and be part of the cultural zeitgeist. Does that make sense? Sure. Where you become too familiar or the accountants become so overbearing. But there is nothing that is more fun.
Coming to work and putting on clothes and pretending to be somebody else for a living, that's a blast.
CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, tom hanks, novelist, film, ben mankiewicz, the making of another major motion picture masterpiece, ron howard, nora ephron