Tom Hanks’ favorite scenes star family, friends
Tom Hanks recounts an unforgettable movie moment. The scene: not a Hollywood set but a bottlenecked L.A. freeway.
Coming home from Disneyland with his family, Hanks was driving, with his friend Rob Reiner riding shotgun. A brood of restless young children filled the backseat.
A tour bus pulled up next to Hanks’ car in the bumper-to-bumper jam.
“This was before iPhones and iPads,” Hanks recalls. “I happen to look up and I see the movie they’re showing is ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’ I said to Rob, ‘Oh, my God, they’re showing ‘Sleepless.’ Rob goes, ‘Oh, my God, our scene where we talk about tiramisu is coming up! There we are!”
Hanks spotted a guy half asleep with his face plastered to a dirty bus window. And he couldn’t resist.
“I started leaning on the horn. It’s me and Rob going, ‘Here we are! The guys from the movie!’ Bus guy looks up. He’s shocked,” Hanks says. “The point of this is: Does this moment mean anything or does it mean everything?’
“To me, it’s about just capturing those moments that just make you laugh so hard with your friends and loved ones. It just feels so good,” he continues.
At age 67, the Oscar winner is branching out as the author of a recent bestselling novel, “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture.”
He’s also behind the scenes — as an executive producer along with Gary Goetzman and Steven Spielberg — on a World War II epic called “Masters of the Air,” debuting Jan. 26 on Apple TV+.
The limited series is based on Donald L. Miller’s 2007 book “Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany.” Starring Austin Butler, Callum Turner and Barry Keoghan, the series revolves around airmen who risk their lives with the U.S. Army’s 100th Bomb Group.
“I hope people will come away saying, ‘I didn’t know that,’ as we honor these brave men and women,” Hanks says.
Hanks, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Rita Wilson, offers his good life tips:
A crucial lesson
“Learn what not to do. It’s important. As an actor that’s a long list that I’ve only learned in the last few years. That’s how long it took, but it’s never too late,” he says.
Write what you know
Several years ago, Hanks fielded a stunning question. “An editor asked me, ‘Would you like to write a novel?’ and I said yes!” He said, ‘You could always write what you know. You happen to work in an industry that’s pretty interesting. I think people would like to hear more about it,’” Hanks shares.
Find the right time
The quest to discover his prime hours each day led Hanks to a particular window. “For me, I haven’t written anything good after 3 in the afternoon, but those hours from 5:30 in the morning until 11:30, busted up into 25-minute stretches with a five-minute rest, are good,” he says.
Be patient
Hanks recalls that one of his classics, 2000’s “Cast Away,” took eight years to go from idea to screen. “That was a six-year gestation period. In life and movies, prep can go on for a very, very long time,” he says. “Waiting can be relentless, but if you do see it through, it can be pretty sweet.”
Learn from failures
“At 3 in the morning, there will be a movie of mine that I wish I could take back,” Hanks acknowledges. “You thought it would be good, but it wasn’t. The money was not enough to go through that hell. You might have met some good people, but the movie does not work, and you know you were terrible in it.
“You loathe every fiber of your being when you see a particular scene from that movie. Yet I will stay rooted in my seat and watch it again. I will tell myself, ‘Let me see that scene I hated again.’ Failure is part of the learning process.”
Read, read, read
“I fell in love with reading at 11,” Hanks says. “Two of my current favorite nonfiction books, one is a novel called ‘1939,’ about a woman and a day she spent at the 1939 world’s fair. What you get to do is go to the fair through the uncynical eyes of 1939. The other book I love is by William Manchester, called ‘A World Lit Only by Fire.’ … It’s amazing how human beings just trying to live their lives back in 1923 or during the Middle Ages remind you of the human experience now.”
Find ‘the one’
Hanks met Wilson in 1980 on the set of “Bosom Buddies,” and they got married in 1988. “I knew I had fallen in love and things would be profoundly different from that moment on,” he says. “You hear about that sort of thing, but I’m here to say that it happens. You just gotta be lucky enough to stumble across it. I’m a lucky man.”
One last thing
“I will say to myself: ‘Made it through yesterday, doing OK today, got a pretty good shot at tomorrow,’ ” Hanks shares. “That’s a place where we can all live in the trinity of yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
