美国国家公共电台 NPR--Tom Hanks has starred in dozens of movies. Now he's written a novel, too（在线收听）

Tom Hanks has starred in dozens of movies. Now he's written a novel, too

Transcript

The numbers speak for themselves: More than 100 movies in over 45 years of acting. Now Tom Hanks is drawing on all that experience to craft a story in a very different medium. He used some of the pandemic slowdown to write a novel. Titled The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, it tells the story of a comic strip that becomes a multimillion-dollar superhero movie.

The book spans seven decades, starting in 1947 when a U.S. Marine who served as a flamethrower returns from fighting in World War II. The uncle makes such a strong impression on his 5-year-old nephew that he makes him the superhero in a comic strip; eventually, that comic becomes the foundation of a blockbuster movie franchise, set in the present day.

Tom Hanks has written a first novel, drawing on his decades in the movie industry.

Alfred A. Knopf

The novel explores every step of the making of a movie: from a difficult leading actor, to eccentric writers and countless behind-the-scenes workers. Hanks says fleshing out the details was not hard for him. "I've got anecdotes galore," he tells Morning Edition's A Martinez.

All the actions and characters in his novel are drawn from the real-life experience of making a movie, he says. And he purposely focuses not only on the stars, but on the people working behind the scenes.

"If someone is going to ask me what is the surefire way that I get to Hollywood, I would have two answers," Hanks says. "One is as Bette Davis said, take Fountain [Boulevard]. But the other one is to solve problems."

Ultimately, Hanks hopes to challenge people's perceptions about how movies are made.

"Most people think that a movie reels out like a Broadway play does or a performance of an opera. Everybody knows exactly what they are, where they need to be, how they need to do it," he says. "But movies are a long series of accidents that you don't expect, as well as, occasionally, something that goes off exactly as you planned. It's all things all at the same time."