Behind the Scenes with Tom Hanks, New Yorker Radio Hour

Tom Hanks has been a constant presence on the American movie screen for forty years. He has played a mermaids boyfriend, an astronaut, a soldier on D Day, an agent, an AIDS patient, a castaway, and a strange, innocent character running across Americaamong dozens of other roles. Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor two years in a row. Now in his sixties, Hanks has added another line to his résumé: novelist. The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiecean overstuffed, often funny, work of fictioncaptures what hes learned from forty years in the business. Hanks describes the process of moviemaking as equal parts chaos and monotony. If anybody who we call a noncombatant, or a civilian, wants to visit the making of a motion picture, they will be bored out of their skull, he tells David Remnick, insisting that its impossible to know on set whether a production will be a masterpiece or a flop. You do not know if it is going to work out. You can only have faith. Ha