THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.201 - TOM HANKS

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Adam talks with American actor and writer Tom Hanks about his new novel The Making Of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, as well as why it's important not to walk out of films, favourite drinks, dogs, whether an AI Tom Hanks will be as good as a real Tom Hanks, working with Wes Anderson and other important stuff.Conversation recorded remotely on April 18th, 2023Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenADAM AND TOM ON ZOOM PICADAM LINKSTAPE NOTES LIVE WITH ADAM BUXTON - 19.00, May 24th @ THE PODCAST SHOW LIVE 2023 (TICKETEK WEBSITE)LIVE AT THE EMPIRE WITH ADAM BUXTON, SINDHU VEE, SPENCER JONES, CHLOE PETTS - 19.30, 16th June 2023 (SHOW AND TELL WEBSITE)IDLER FESTIVAL TICKETS - 7th-9th July 2023HANKS LINKSTHE MAKING OF ANOTHER MAJOR MOTION PICTURE MASTERPIECE by Tom Hanks - 2023 (WATERSTONES)ASTEROID CITY (Directed by Wes Anderson) TRAILER - 2023 (YOUTUBE)THE BILL SIMMONS PODCAST (TOM HANKS EPISODE) - 2021 (THE RINGER.COM)Genial host Bill Simmons conducts an excellent talk with Hanks about the first half of his career including particularly good insights about two of my favourite Tom Hanks films: Cast Away and Big.THE DEVIL'S CANDY PODCAST - 2021 (TCM THE PLOT THICKENS WEBSITE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, Adam Buxton here. If you're listening to this podcast for the first time, welcome. Thanks so much for giving it a try. You may not want to hear the long version of my intro and instead get straight to my conversation with Tom Hanks. If that's the case, then skip forward nine minutes. while we spoke. My name is Adam Buxton I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this that's the plan. Honk honk honk honk hey how you doing podcats Adam Buxton here reporting to you from a big pile of

garden clippings and old bits of wood last year's Christmas tree is here. And at some point there will be the annual bonfire. And we'll burn effigies of Marvel characters that we're bored of and dance around naked and sing and laugh. I don't know exactly when that'll happen, when it gets warmer.

But I just added to the pile, don't tell my wife, my wife, I just added an old wicker chair that has been hanging around for so long and it's totally knackered. Maybe my wife imagines that one day someone's going to repair it, but that is never, ever going to happen.

It's never happened before in the history of furniture in Castle Buckley. I don't understand why she thinks it'll happen with the wicker chair, the ancient wicker chair, which no one ever sits in. Even if you were able to repair it, it wouldn't even be worth it, really. It's not even a nice one, you know what I mean? It's not

like a fancy... It's an old crap wicker chair. You know, yes, repairing things, good, definitely repair things. Don't just toss things away if you can avoid it. But this chair will never be repaired. away if you can avoid it. But this chair will never be repaired. So I've popped it on the bonfire pile and I've hidden it with some branches. So if she were to say, oh my God, what's happened to the wicker chair? I can say, oh, I know where it is. I'll get it. Just you stay here. But obviously I'm hoping that's not going to happen, and I don't think it will. How are you doing anyway? Very nice to be with you once again, podcats. Actually, I'm here on my own today.

My dog friend Rosie is at home. It's really a dreary day in mid-May 2023. The last few days have been incredibly thunderous, torrential rain. The countryside out here in Norfolk is looking rather beautiful because of all the rain. More wildflowers and a greater variety of wildflowers this year everywhere than I've ever seen before. of wildflowers this year everywhere than I've ever seen before. So it's quite great in that respect, but as far as actually wandering around and being able to go for walks, it's been a bit tricky. So Rosie has decided not to come with me today. But she's doing pretty well. And I hope you are too. Because it's been a while since the last podcast.

Technically, I'm on a hiatus, back for a proper run in September of this year, 2023. But I've been taking some time off to concentrate on a few things, including trying to write a follow-up to Ramble Book. Some progress there, but it's not quite finished. And I've also been trying to record some music. But listen, if you're interested in hearing how I've been getting on with both the music and the book, I've got a few live events coming up in which I will be sharing some of my efforts

in those areas. I'm particularly excited about playing a bit of the music I've been working on at the podcast show live in London this month on Wednesday the 24th of May where I'll be talking to the DJ John Kennedy for a live episode of his excellent podcast, Tape Notes. It's going to be quite a small audience, all wearing wireless headphones, in order to create a kind of immersive, intimate experience as John and myself investigate some of my recent logic sessions and sound files. There's a link for that show in the description. I'll say more about a couple of other upcoming shows at the end of this episode.

But right now, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 201, which features, as you well know, an interview slash conversation with American actor and writer Tom Hanks. Hanks facts, Tom was born in 1956 and grew up in California, USA. He went into acting after studying theatre arts at college. And after a few years of service in American TV sitcoms, Tom was cast in his first film, Splash, directed by Ron Howard, in 1984, in which he played the lead opposite Daryl Hannah,

who was playing a lovely mermaid. Since then, Tom has absolutely not stopped doing movies and TV shows, both as actor and producer, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, I'm thinking. And of course, he has won the Oscars, two of them, for Best Actor, once in 1993 for Philadelphia, directed by Jonathan Demme, and another one for 1994's Forrest Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis, 1994's Forrest Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis,

with whom Tom also worked on the film Castaway, my favourite in 2000, and the computer-generated Uncanny Valley classic, The Polar Express, Joe Cornish's favourite in 2004. Hot chocolate, hot chocolate. That's Joe's favourite bit in the Polar Express. Outside of movies, in 2016, Tom was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Barack Obama, acknowledging not just his good films, Obama almost certainly a massive fan of the Da Vinci Code, but also Tom's environmental and social justice efforts.

He was an outspoken proponent of same-sex marriage in his home state of California and has been a long-term advocate of war veterans and their families. I got the opportunity to speak with Tom because, as you may have seen recently, he's been out promoting his first full-length novel. A few years back, he wrote a collection of short stories inspired by his love of vintage typewriters. That was called Uncommon Type. The novel, published this year, 2023, is called The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. And it charts the life and times of a diverse cast of characters that play a part in making a big Hollywood film. My conversation with Tom was recorded remotely back in April of this year.

And as well as talking about Tom's book and the challenges of movie making in general, I put some important questions to him from members of my family about drinks, dogs, and AI. We didn't talk much about Tom's film work, but there were passing references to That Thing You Do, the 1996 film that Tom wrote and directed about a pop band making it big in 1960s America. And with reference to dogs, the film Finch, released in 2021, about a man played by Tom in a post-apocalyptic world who, knowing his time is short, builds a robot voiced by Caleb Landry-Jones, to look after his beloved dog Goodyear when he's gone. As you will hear, Goodyear in the film was played by Seamus.

Not my podcast producer, you understand. He was asking for too many treats. But a dog actor called Seamus. We also talked briefly about Tom's recent experience of working with director Wes Anderson on his film Asteroid City. I'll be back at the end for more Solo Waffle, but right now with Tom Hanks. Here we go.

Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this Then concentrate on that Come on, let's tune the fat And have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat And find your talking hat La, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la, la Hello, Tom. Nice to meet you. Pleasure, Adam. And where are you right now? Are you in your home in Los Angeles? Yeah, I live in Los Angeles. I'm sitting in a room that's dedicated to microphones and screens. Okay. Nothing other than a spare room with a desk and a lamp and the appropriate plugs. Good. And is this the beginning of a long day of talking about the book? No, I have it sort of scattered about. It's interesting to talk about a book because

people sort of like choose to talk about a book because people sort of like choose to talk about a book. This is a bit more of a sort of like a series of curated conversations about something that requires more than showing up, if that makes sense. It does. Yeah, yeah. And do you think that there's an appreciable difference between talking about a book rather than a film? Is it a more enjoyable and civilized world to promote a book than it is to promote a film? You bet. Promoting a movie is you're in competition with everything else that's out there. As well as you're in competition with everything, anything you've ever done in a motion picture.

competition with everything, anything you've ever done in a motion picture. It's like talking about a movie, you end up talking about your entire history. Why this one as opposed to that one that you did? And what did you do on that one that is like what you did here? And how is this one different from the 19 other movies that you made? Or the one that I saw that you made in 1994 that I liked? Talking about a book is kind of like talking about a house that you built that people have come and taken a tour of and say, I like where the windows are. And how did you choose these bathroom fixtures? It's a different experience. And I have to say that they don't necessarily cross. If it has been the case, I could count on one hand the amount of people I've talked about. My day job, the maker of motion pictures, they never ask about anything I've written.

The first question that is sort of by rote when you're talking about motion pictures is, so why did you choose to make this movie? Because I'm a professional and that's what my job is. So why did you choose to make this movie? Yeah. Because I'm a professional and that's what my job is. And there was something about it that is fascinating. But there's all these other sorts of extant reasons that you want to make a movie. The pay is good.

The people are great. Sometimes you're going to be intrigued, certainly by the interaction of the other filmmakers. You're going to be part of a big, huge undertaking. And it's an ensemble and it's a collaborative effort. But that's a different reason to go to work. Writing something, the question really is, why does anybody get up every day for five years and sit down and try to make sense out of thoughts and words on paper? Why does anybody want to do that? And the answer always is, is because I can't help myself. And I don't think any writer can. You know, I'll mispronounce the name. Who was the writer of The Kane Mutiny and The Winds of War? I'm going to say Herman Woke or is it Herman Wook? Herman Wook. Well, he kept writing into his late 90s, into his hundreds. He could not not get up in the morning and sit down and try to get something out of his head onto paper.

And I get that. The storytelling process is one that I am always attracted to, even if it is just sitting down with somebody and asking them how they do their job. just sitting down with somebody and asking them how they do their job. There is a story in that give and take that I think is fascinating because I can't help but want to sit down and examine the human condition. And if I get to do it in a movie, great. That's an instinctive desire as well as an instinctive thrust. I don't really think about it. I just do it. Writing, however, in order to examine the human condition, that requires instinct, sure, but then just a ton of work that goes along with it. And you have to be impelled by the enjoying of the process in order to do the work because then the question is,

So, Tom, why did you write a novel? I haven't the slightest idea other than I had to. Does that make sense, Adam? It does make sense. That was going to be my first question. I wasn't going to ask it in that accent. No, I wasn't going to ask that question. But the thing that jumps out, though, is that both in this book,

The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece, that jumps out though is that both in this book the making of another motion picture masterpiece and in the short story collection uncommon type there are many elements that are clearly things that you've had experience of you feed your experiences of making movies into those stories and you do into this book as well and there are also subjects there that obviously interest you and have been associated with you over the course of your career space travel world war ii growing up in a divorced house yeah there you go yeah yeah there's that there yeah yeah yeah so is it safe to assume that those themes in your books are the ones that preoccupy you most? Well, we all examine the journey that we've been on.

I can very easily and have recalled very specific moments of driving across the country by myself when I was 20 years old. Now, that's 46 years removed after the fact. But I think anybody who writes anything that might, is the correct pronunciation Ramona Clef or Ramona Clay? I can't Well, that depends on how fussy you are about whether you should pronounce French words in the original French. Okay. Yeah, there you go. Ramona claire, a monarch. If we are a storyteller, we start from two perspectives, I think. One is, here's what I have, excuse me, three perspectives. Here's what I have observed, right? Here's what I have seen other people do in circumstances. Here's what I've learned from making all of these choices myself, both right or wrong. And also,

here's where I've been. And likewise, in the current novel that I'm talking about with you, how did I end up here? How did any of us end up there? How did you end up here? Tell me the story of how you got, you ended up here. And maybe that will shed some light upon my own understanding of this. The adage is write what you know. Yep. But then you come up with other writers that I continually find myself reading. Some of them are fiction or nonfiction based or true stories. And what they're writing about is what they're curious about. I have gone on to many, my day job of making movies is I come in knowing an awful lot of what I want to do. But I also come in often with just the same, exactly the same amount of wondering, how are we going to do this?

And somewhere in between there is the perspective that comes, that you end up exploring when you're writing something um not in the first person but in this case by way of through a a third a third person narrative of of a writer who is writing about the making of a motion picture who is um who does not know how movies are made right so you've got this journalist character jo Joe Shaw, at the top of the book. He gets the job of documenting the making of the film. Well, he's sort of a journalist. He's actually more like he's a teacher. He's a guy who teaches film studies. Right. But the director, Bill Johnson, reads his memoir and is sufficiently impressed or intrigued that Joe Shaw gets the job of writing about the making of this film.

And it reminded me of Julie Salomon's book, The Devil's Candy, which was about the making of Brian De Palma's adaptation of Bonfire of the Vanities, which you, of course, were in. Yeah. And was that a book that you ever read? Yeah, I read it. And I thought, well, yeah, this is accurate enough. That's actually kind of, yeah, that records sort of like what went down. And I think from a journalistic point of view, Julie Solomon actually did capture the one damn thing after another aspect of making a movie.

The thing that ended up being fascinating by is that, you know, in the United States anyway, that movie was a disaster, box office-wise, critically, every aspect of it was. And so The Devil's Candy and her work sort of became, here's the chronicle of the making of a disastrous motion pictures. Here's all the stuff that goes wrong. But it could have been any movie. It could have been a movie that came out great. It's only ex post facto that it has, you know, an editorial slant to it. That's a good piece of journalism.

And it's a good piece of, you know, encapsulating both the time that the movie was made, but also all of the expectations that come along with that. At the same time, that book does not, and no book does describe or capture how a movie is made, except one day at a time, one shot at a time, one damn thing after another at a time. The best record of what it's like to make a movie

comes in a movie, and that would be in Troffaut's Day for Night, which in French was called the American Night because the process of shooting Day for Night is called American Night in France. And it's a fascinating movie, and it's fraught with incredibly volatile people who are working at their wits' ends,

and some things are very simple and other things are a riddle inside a box wrapped up in too much paper. And there's just no way in order to tell what is going to work and what is not until it all comes out. Joe Shaw is still an outsider. He does not know the process of making movies. The best he can do is show up and ask individual folks, how did you get this job? And every one of those stories is a saga all into itself and worthy of a memoir all into itself. Yeah, that's right. And you establish early on that Bill Johnson, part of the reason he wants to work with this guy, part of the reason he allows him into his world which must be a I mean I was very impressed uh reading the devil's candy that Brian De Palma and everybody else involved with Bonfire of the Vanities was happy to welcome a journalist into

their environment like that I can't imagine that sort of thing happening now uh well actually now everybody posts all the time about the movie that they're making. But yeah, Brian, Brian even said, oh, this is Julie Solomon. She's going to write a book about the making of the movie. And I thought, oh, that's a deep throw. You know, good luck with that, you know. Right. Well, maybe she had a conversation with Brian De Palma that was similar to the one your journalist character has at the beginning of your book with the film director character, Bill Johnson. And Bill Johnson asks him, what movies do you hate? And they established that he doesn't hate any movies.

He's got a more positive outlook than that. He's not a hater. He sits there and gives a film his best shot. He wants them to succeed and and you're making the point that bill johnson is impressed by such a refreshingly positive attitude about films well that actually establishes uh rules of the road that most people do not adhere to because i think part of the fun of going to movies is when you hate something and all you do is rag on it forever and why it's wrong and how it's stupid and how it didn't work. And that's kind of a, you know, that's a lovely stirring of a vitriolic pot that makes, you know, going out for coffee after seeing a movie, you know, a lot of fun but yes what what joe understands and i think what anybody who actually

makes a movie uh for a living uh and runs the risk of both um uh ridicule and glory when it comes down to putting out your artistic process is everybody knows that what is the most miraculous thing about every motion picture that has been made is that it was made. The odds are against you making a good movie, but because the odds are so stacked against you being able to make the movie at all. It's hard work. It is an artistic, collaborative ensemble effort in which you have to trust not only your own abilities and your own direction, but you have to trust other people to bring their same game. And there is the rub. When that much trust and good faith and hard work and time is all brought

together, Joe Shaw understands it. Look, don't take those efforts lightly. Don't dismiss it as being worthy or unworthy, as a waste of time or not. They have a conversation of, you know, what movies do you hate? What movie have you walked out of? And Joe says, and I agree, oh, don't walk out of any movie because the worst thing that's going to happen is you'll have to wait until it's over. But what you'll have at the end of it all is an understanding of,

look at all the hard work, look at all the noble undertaking that these people put into it. And you know what the worst thing you can say about a movie is? Is this, well, that didn't quite work, did it? That alone is, that's damnation. Yeah. Then I'm speaking from somebody who's done an awful lot of that. I've made plenty of movies

in which everyone knocked themselves out. And at the end of the day, no one can deny that, ah, well, that didn't quite work, did it? And what is the recompense from that? What do you do after you learn that lesson? Well, you try to you start up and try to do it again and make and tell a story that does work. That's all you can do. Do you get frustrated, though, with the kind of critical climate it seems that everyone is so crazily passionate you know like passion is a good thing obviously it's nice when people care but um sometimes online people tend to go over the top about movies i suppose it's understandable because a good movie is such a great thing right it's something that makes life seem a bit more meaningful

and you can have a bit of a holiday from the world without feeling guilty about it. Yeah. But a bad film sometimes, especially if it's a bad film that seems to be sort of ticking boxes, either with things that they think the critics are going to appreciate

or with things that are going to make money, then people sort of feel slapped in the face, don't they? They just sort of think, well, this is an affront to what movies could be. And there seem to be a lot of those kinds of movies being made in the last 20 years or so. Is that fair? Well, there always has been. There's always been movies like that made. It's not just been in the last 20 years or so. Is that fair? Well, there always has been. There's always been movies like that made. It's not just been in the last 20 years.

I mean, you know, watch your average night of Turner classic movies and you'll see somebody who took a shot on something that did or did not work. That's always been the case. I think I have read the best and the worst that anybody could possibly say about my efforts. And so when it comes down to critics, honestly, who cares?

Because they do not take into account anything other than up to that very minute. And I'll tell you right now, every movie ends up being a third and a third and a third, even if they're ballyhooed or even if they're just dismissed. A third of the people seem to like it, a third of the people are aware of it, and a third of the people hate it. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Because I can tell you, the weirdest things happen because of time

is that someone, and I get this all the time, someone will say, I was in a hotel room and somebody told me about it, and I watched this movie that you made 17 years ago that no one ever saw. And I got to tell you, it was one of the most important things I'd ever had. I really needed to see that movie. And that's the power of the cinema. So the movie comes out and it is a thing.

It's taken as something. It either is, you either get good reviews or bad. The next thing is how it does financially. And that's a business thing. Because if the movie does well, they will ask you to do another movie. And if the movie does not do well, you'll be dressed in sackcloth for a while, you know, until you prove yourself to be bankable. But the most important thing, it is actually what determines the art of motion pictures inside the arts and science of motion pictures is what time does to the film. There are movies that were completely dismissed

when they came out and now are revered as timeless classics. Brilliant motion pictures that really did alter the art form. Just as there are movies that came out 50 years ago or 20 years ago or 80 years ago that were huge successes and are so locked in time

as to be captured in amber and captured in amber. And they don't mean anything to us right now, other than a bit of a museum piece. That is the fate of anybody who makes motion pictures. That's what you're wrestling with. But, you know, a great example of this, I think, is everybody might know this. There was sometime in the 70s, I was at my mom's house and my two brothers were living with my mom at the time they were still in school and uh there was this movie that was going to come out on pbs public television here in the united states and the only reason we wanted to watch it was because back then pbs was the only place you could see a movie without commercials there was no cable

you know everything was chopped up for commercials. So anytime you saw a movie from Bridge Over the River Kwai or Casablanca, it was always chopped up for commercials. So on PBS, they hit, well, there'll be no commercials. Oh, let's watch this movie. And the movie had been locked away in a rights struggle. The studio had gone out of business and the people who are responsible anyway. So it had been locked up in a vault, and no one had seen it ever for the better part of 25 years. And the movie was notorious for being a disappointment in the box office when it came out. In fact, even though it had big stars in it, even though it was made by A-list directors and writers,

and even though it came out at a time and sort of competed with everything else that was in the marketplace about 1948, 49, it was dismissed as an also-ran, a movie that did not live up to its promise and was promptly forgotten until it was released. And that movie was It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed and all that. And you tell me, is there a better Christmas movie or a better movie about Americana or a better movie locked in a timeless place that we can all react to? And that's what happens over time. The racehorse results are forgotten and actually they become moot. What is left is the quality of the story as captured, as told by the filmmakers, and that's the only thing that matters.

Tom, I have some important questions here for you from members of my family. Okay. All right. Put these wisely, otherwise you'll have to answer for how you put the questions. Yes, exactly. This one is from my son, Nat. He he is 18 and he is on a year out at the moment about to start college in september but before then he's doing some uh intensive carousing and he would like to know what your favorite drink is i'm not a i'm not a big drinker, but of late, I do mix. I will have a Diet Coca-Cola with a shot of champagne in it. Wow. I've never heard of that before. Yeah, we call it a Diet Cocaine around the house,

Coca-Cola and champagne. And it came about as a joke. We were at a thing, and I was having a Diet Coke, and somebody opened a bottle of champagne ceremoniously. And I said, a shot in my drink and they did and I tasted it it was kind of delicious and everybody had to agree uh they all tasted it and said oh this is going to actually hey dad that's pretty good so that that's outside of a of a well-drawn beer that's what I will have I don't know if diet cocaine is it's not really on brand for tom hanks though is it diet cocaine well you got to look at the you got to look at the spelling c

o k a g n e that's how i yeah well that's quite esoteric um i like the sound of it though i might have to have some diet cocaine give it a shot you, it's like a good thing for in the afternoon. Yeah. It's a good thing in the afternoon. All right. Garden party. And what are the proportions? Is it like having a Bellini?

You just have a little bit of diet coke? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to say, you know, five-eighths of a glass of diet coke with some ice in it and a liberal shot of champagne. Okay. So it's mainly the diet coke and then it's got a bit of champagne. Yeah some ice in it then a liberal shot of uh okay so it's mainly the diet coke and then it's got a bit of champagne yeah well that is a very it's for the type two type the type two diabetics around the world yeah that's what we can share with okay good thank

you that's not the answer i was expecting um frank who is 20 years old he wants to know if you've written a song uh i wrote a number of the songs that were in That Thing You Do. I wrote Loving You Lots and Lots, and I wrote Hold My Hand, Hold My Heart. And I also wrote the theme to the Hollywood Television Showcase. Mike Piccolrillo, who was our music arranger, I would call him and leave messages on his voicemail. I'd say, Mike, hey, Mike, Hanks, listen, I think the theme to the television show, the Hollywood television showcases goes a little something like this.

So, yes, I have written songs. Very good. Okay, well, on to a couple of questions from my wife. Let's wrangle these. This is the first question from my wife. My wife. And it's the more sentimental of the two. It's fairly straightforward.

Have you got a doggy? You know, we did. And we had a series of dogs. You know, we did, and we had a series of dogs, and they brought such love and magnificence into our world that when we lost our last one, just due to the vagaries of time, we vowed not to get another one until we were so settled that we would never have to leave it. And our travels are so much that we're literally not home long enough in order to have the same love affair with a dog. So we're holding off on that investment of our hearts until we know we're going to be in one place for at least a few years at a time. Yes. And what kind of dogs did you have?

They were a shepherd. They were a shepherd mix. They were white and they were a shepherd mix they were they were white and they were uh beautiful and um um if i if i start talking about monty or cleo too much or juno i'm going to start crying on your podcast they were just most magnificent they were they they proved to me that there was such a thing as the, as the soul. They were magnificent creatures. Yeah. Good, good friends. I hear you.

Well, some of that love comes across in Finch. Oh gosh. Yes. Seamus. Oh my Lord. Seamus the dog. I believe that we had to fight to give Seamus,

um, above the title building in Finch. Cause there was really, there's only three people in the movie. There was me and Caleb Landry Jones. I played Finch and Caleb played Jeff the robot. But the other character was the dog named Goodyear and portrayed by a dog named Seamus.

And I saw the movie and he was just buried in the closing credits at the end. I said, you can't do that. Seamus needs to have a word with his agent. Well, no, actually. But the only way to bond with a dog on a film is to spend an awful lot of time with that dog. Now, I'm not the dog's trainer. And he was very close to his handlers and his owners.

And they're all fabulous people. And they were all very sharing of Seamus with me. But the only thing you can do is have that dog look you in the eye, scratch his belly, stick a tennis ball in and out of his mouth a couple of times, and have him get to know you. And there's moments in the movie that is literally, it's, yes, it's Finch playing with Goodyear, but it's also Tom playing with Seamus and Seamus playing with Tom. Okay, other question from wife in no way related and a little bit more about the way the world is now,

talking about the world becoming a murkier place. Are there, my wife is a lawyer. Oh. And she is interested to know whether you have placed legal restrictions on who gets to use ai in order to recreate a tom hanks performance when you are no longer acting well this is something that is literally part and parcel to what's going on in the realm of intellectual property rights right now. This has always been lingering.

The first time we did a movie that had a huge amount of our own data locked in a computer, literally what we looked like, was a movie called The Polar Express, which we made back around the year 2000. And we saw this coming. We saw that there was going to be this ability in order to take zeros and ones inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. Now, that has only grown a billion-fold since then, and we see it everywhere. And I can tell you that there is discussions going on in all of the guilds, all of the agencies, and all in the legal firms in order to come up with the legal ramifications of my face and my voice and everybody else's being our intellectual property, because your wife is a smart lawyer, because she has put her finger on what is a bona fide possibility. Right now, if I wanted to, I could get together and pitch a series of seven movies that would star me in them, in which I would be 32 years old

from now until kingdom come. Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deep fake technology. Because look, I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that's it. But my performances can go on and on and on and on and on. And outside of the understanding that it's been done with AI or deep fake, there'll be nothing to tell you that it's not me and me alone. And it's going to have some degree of lifelike quality.

And that's certainly an artistic challenge, but it's also a legal one. Sure. But I think people will be able to tell because what will be missing are the unique choices that you made as an actor and as a person that produced certain performances. Without a doubt, without a doubt, people will be able to tell. But the question is, will they care? Yeah, they will. I think you might have more faith in the human condition than others. There are some people that won't care, that could create lies that would be taken as absolute truths

by anybody who read them and decided to believe them as opposed to examine them. And that guy, his name was Gutenberg and he invented the printing press. This is a super attenuated version of that printing press. AI, deepfake, anything will be able to lie just as well as they can go ahead and be able to tell

the truth. And there are going to be some people that are going to put huge stake in what is authentic and what is not, just as there is going to be a ton of people that ain't going to care. I will care. I saw, though, that The Real You has been working on a film that's coming out quite soon, I think, with Wes Anderson. Yeah, a film called Asteroid City. We shot it, I think, two Octobers ago, and it's going to be premiering at Cannes this May. To work with Wes Anderson is to be rewarded for everything you've ever had to do. No one works harder on a film than Wes, and no one takes care of his ensemble

better than Wes Anderson does. And I will also say no one expects more from his ensemble than Wes Anderson does. You've got to show up with the goods. And what it is, it's a fabulously supportive and convivial atmosphere. At the same time, it's like you're there for one reason and one reason only. No, actually, there's more than one. It's to hang out and have a good time, but it's also to bring that extremely vivid and hardworking

imagination of his to life. It was at the time. And I think anybody leaves working with, with Wes on a movie. I think everybody leaves with this conversation with Wes, Wes, anytime, anywhere, just let me know.

And I've heard that from other actors who've worked on films with him as well. But why is that? What is peculiar about working with him? Because it is play. It is play. At the same time, it is engineering. His storytelling is so precise and there is so much fidelity in it. And what you get to do as an actor is have it down, show up, have an idea and let it fly. And then when you're

not actually filming, it seems like a kind of actor's holiday camp. Oh yeah. You all stay in the same hotel and you all have dinner if you wish at the same time, you know, kind of like a la familia. There's, you know, sometimes there's eight people having dinner together. Sometimes there's 28. Everybody's talking. If people don't have to work the next day guitars come out people start singing it's part of being uh you know in the circus um it's like being you know under the under the tent the support tent at Cirque du Soleil or something everybody's part of the show and everybody is welcome to come on and talk and laugh and share their enthusiasm. So if the guitar comes out and people start singing, are you going to sing a song? And if so, what?

I have a one party trick that I will wait until everybody else who's good at it does it and if their pause comes along I will get in and I will sing the green green grass of home by Tom Jones the old hometown still this thing yeah yeah pretty and I can I you know it's pretty simple cordage on the guitar if you have to play it yourself I took a trip down the river of time I took a trip took a trip down the river of time I packed some things for my trip down the river of time I packed some things for my trip down the river of time I took a camping chair and a fancy camera so I could sit and take pictures from my chair of the river of time of the river of time time time time time time i also made sure i had my laptop there so i could use my photo manipulation software and tweak

the river of time time time time time oh the river of time do we do the river of time. Do we do the river of time? Ooh la la la. It's long and covered in slime. Ooh wee ooh. The river of time. So Tom, I wanted to take you back, take you back to those wonderful days at the beginning of 2020, everyone's favorite year, when you and your wife, Rita, were the first well-known people to be diagnosed with COVID. And in that first wave of pandemic anxiety, as all that started to take hold and, you know, there was a weird combination of, oh, this is all kind of a novelty, especially when the lockdowns happened and everyone suddenly was confined to their homes

with a great deal of anxiety. And there was an episode of the New York Times podcast, The Daily, where they put out a profile of you and your career. And it seemed designed specifically just to cheer people up. It was like they were acknowledging, okay, everyone's pretty freaked out now. Here's something that'll just make you feel a little more grounded. And it was just a profile of Tom Hanks. And it was very, you know, it did the job. I didn't know that. All right, I'll search that out. Okay. Yeah, it was good. It calmed me down as I sat outside on my camping chair and listened to it under the stars. Well, remember that when that first went down, everybody was anticipating, you know, a few weeks.

You know, I remember I think the vice president of the United States even announced in some newspaper, this will all be behind us by Memorial Day. Yeah, over by Easter. I think the Vice President of the United States even announced in some newspaper, this will all be behind us by Memorial Day. Yeah, over by Easter. And that certainly wasn't the case. We were literally six days away from beginning shooting with Baz Luhrmann and Austin Butler. We were just about to start shooting Elvis, the movie, in australia and when we we've when we began feeling punky um and in the next morning we were whisked off by people in hazmat suits in order to in lockdown the original version of uh

of covid um we were there for about three days in which we were being observed and when our temperatures didn't spike and our lungs didn't fill and um our bones our bones didn't crack uh we were released um but that that original covid we were very sick but we were not um we were not at risk per se and yeah i guess we we we i we've just we said we should probably put this out so that in case there's any questions of why we're not shooting the movie yet, everybody will understand and won't be left down to speculation. by the clinicians at the hospital what was going to happen early in the beginning of it, even before we had COVID, when it was just showing up. We had a talk with the people who actually were in the hazmat suits that put us in isolation. They said, here's what's going to happen. And they spun out the scenario that at the time sounded hideous, but in retrospect was 100% accurate of how it was going to spread, how many people were going to lose their lives, what it was going to do,

what other disease it was going to be like, and what the nature of that sort of virus was going to be. And it always seemed to be countered with, oh, come on. No, no. We'll be back in production on June 15th. We'll be back in production on June 15th. We'll be back in production on July 15th. We'll be back in production. And by the time we got back into production, there were so many safety protocols that were put in. It was a bit of a miracle that we were able to still make the

movie. And yet, even then, some people got COVID and some people were still very sick. Yeah. And at times like that, when things are bleak and the New York Times podcast puts out an episode that's just a profile of you designed to cheer people up because it's positive Tom Hanks. Do you feel a pressure to continue presenting a positive front or other times when you're just staring into the abyss? No, there's no there's no pressure whatsoever i uh i look because i'm attracted to what i'm attracted to and i i'm i think the the opposite would happen if i was if i was like hey maybe i

should do this instead well then that's going to be a contrary you won't be authentic i think the the only pressure i have is to be try to be um true to my uh true to my own interests and every now and again throw deep and throw some caution to the wind and do something that I'm still going to be intrigued about with the hope that, you know, folks will still come along. If you start trying to live up to some degree of expectations that folks that might have of you, I think, I just think you're doomed. As Richard Pryor once said on a, he came a uh on i think it was a dick cabot show or

something like that and the first thing he said oh hey good to be here hope i'm funny and finally tom i want to ask about getting older i'm 54 now there you go you're smack dab in the middle of it baby you're in act three scene two two of any Shakespearean drama. Okay, good. I hope so. Well, I'm always interested to ask people my age or older what they feel the compensations of aging might be. Oh, you have to exercise less, but you have to exercise regularly. Okay. You know, you read those kind of things of, you know,

every magazine comes up and they have pictures of these people that are doing all these actions. Here's the five steps that you have to do. Here's 16 steps to make you fall. You know what you have to do? You have to get a good walk in. You got to get some activity, a half hour every day. That's it.

You don't have to do anything more than that. Watch what you eat. You know, what is it? Somebody said, eat real food, not too much, mostly plants. That pretty much allows for everything. That allows for, you know, a healthy salad and a diet cocaine, don't you think? A little diet Coca-Cola with some champagne in it. You know, you could do that.

All things in moderation. I think that's what you realize. You could put that together. And by the way, I've been trying to live that way since I was 42 with varying shades of success. So don't follow my example. Just listen to what I say. That's a different thing. What happened when you were 42?

What was the watershed? Oh, my God. I realized that my metabolism had seized up about six years prior and the rest of it was my responsibility. I couldn't count on physics anymore. I had to start taking care of my physicality. That was a bitch. And it took me a while to figure out how to do that. You're talking, look, I have type 2 diabetes, which is, that's a lifestyle disease.

That's based on what I ate and what, more important what i did not eat you know so you got to start maintaining the temple a little bit here you know you got to scrub the tub and tile grout every now and again you got to weatherproof the roof every now and again you know sure well i mean i always had you down to someone with amazing self-control i suppose because of the transformation that you went through for Castaway. That process of putting on weight and then waiting a year and taking the weight off while you were doing Band of Brothers. Well, yeah, but that's for a finite chore. I can't do anything regularly every single day. If you were going to say, what do you do every single day?

I stumble out of bed every single day. And that's about it. Everything after that is, you know, I got, I got to be on my game. Uh, that kind of stuff is like, that's, that's a task that I will say I'm, I'm task oriented. I can say, what do you need me to do? And for how long do you need me to do it? Boom. I'm right there. I can do that. But when it comes down to the blank canvas of how I live my life, oh damn, more often than not, I'm a frigging disaster. What can I tell you? This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website I see success, yes success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional.

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with Squarespace. Yes. Wait. Continue. Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Tom Hanks. Don't know if you realized talking to me there, but yeah, it was. I'm very grateful to Tom for his Tom time and to the Tom team for arranging the conversation.

There's a link in the description to the book, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. And there's also links to a couple of the other things we spoke about, including the podcast version of that book that I mentioned briefly towards the beginning of our conversation, The Devil's Candy, about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities, featuring a lot of good archive and interviews. good archive and interviews, and hosted by the author of the original book, Julie Salomon. And if you're a fan of Tom Hanks and his films, then I've also put a link to a podcast on which he was a guest that I really enjoyed, where he was talking about a lot of his movies, including great stories about Castaway and Big with an American sports journalist, I think he is, called Bill Simmons who does a podcast out there where he talks to a lot of actors and celebrities. But I thought it was a really good and interesting series of anecdotes

that he got out of Tom Hanks. I listened to it before I spoke to Tom, and I also listened to a few other podcasts that he's appeared on, and I got the impression from him that he was a bit fed up of just going through all the movies that he's been in before and rattling through the same old anecdotes again and again, which is why I kind of stayed away from asking him more about those films. But if you found it frustrating that there wasn't more Tom Hanks movie chat, then yeah,

I recommend that Bill Simmons podcast. It's a really good listen. Link in the description. What else have we got there? Oh yes, well, there's links to those upcoming shows. What else have we got there? Oh, yes. Well, there's links to those upcoming shows. Tape notes live with me talking to John Kennedy and playing some of the music that I've been working on for this album that at some point I will put out, which is far from finished.

At one point earlier this year, I thought, yeah, it's pretty much finished. But I don't know. Maybe I was a bit drunk or something. It's not finished. Needs quite a bit more doing to it, I think. But I don't know. I find it very hard to judge.

So it'll be interesting to see what you think of some of the things I've been working on. So that's May 24th, 7pm at the podcast show live at the Business Design Centre in London. I'm also headlining a great bill at the Hackney Empire on the 16th of June 2023. Chloe Petz, Sindhu V, Spencer Jones. He's into lots of very creative visual tomfoolery. Live at the Empire, along with me, on the 16th of June. What will I be doing? Well, about 30 minutes is the answer, but I think that will include some reading, a bit of reading of book bits shorter book bits as well as some recent videos that I've been making I've been playing around with some footage from the coronation last weekend

I'm also excited to be appearing at the idler festival this year which runs from the 7th to the 9th of July in in hamstead's fenton house and garden my show will be on the friday 7th of july at 7 15 until 8 p.m i'll be reading a few things that i've been writing for ramble book two and maybe some older bits and taking the odd question if you have any questions elsewhere in the festival you've got writer Irvin Welsh. He's going to be in conversation with Idler editor Tom Hodgkinson. There's comedy, once again, from Sindhu V. Sally Phillips is there.

Arthur Smith. Ben Pope. There's music from Arthur Jeffs of Penguin Cafe. As well as dancing. Picnics. Workshops. Philosophy. Beekeeping. Singing. Ukulele, harmonica, bibliotherapy and agony-anting at the Idler Festival. Link in the description.

For a more music-related festival experience, what about joining me at Blue Dot this year? It's happening at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester between the 20th and the 23rd of July. I was there last year doing a Best of Bug show, which was great fun. And I think I'm going to be in the same tent again. Hope so. They had fantastic big screen and great sound. And this year I'm going to be doing the David Bowie Bug special because I think they've got a few Bowie-related events happening and I'll be there on the Sunday night. Music performers at Blue Dot this year, it's a good line-up.

You've got Grace Jones, you've got Pavement, you've got Roisin Murphy, you've got Leftfield, you've got Black Country, New Road, Tanarawan and many other class acts. For those of you unfamiliar the Bug Bowie special is a show that I've been doing in various forms since 2013. We first did it or a version of it at the David Bowie is V&A exhibition or at least as part of the opening of that exhibition and Bug is this music video show that I host occasionally at the BFI South Bank and this Bowie special includes some of my favorite Zayvid music videos and Bowie-related YouTube comments. Bits of animation made for the show.

And other Zayvid-related nonsense. Hope to see you there at Blue Dot. Link in the description. OK, now it is freezing here. It was freezing the last time I spoke to you. Back on Christmas Eve 2022. Still freezing. Now that it's May 2023 out here in norfolk but i'm not complaining we've

had some nice days and other than that what can i tell you um rosie is doing okay she well she had a she's had a few big operations this year on various bits and pieces now that she's a more mature dog and she had the hysterectomy there she was spayed I like to say hysterectomy though because I think it's more respectful to a woman dog but I said that to someone the other day and the woman I was saying it to looked at me a little askance, as if I was being disrespectful. I don't know, it was just like I was worried that I was, that she, you know. So I don't mean that disrespectfully. In fact, I mean it respectfully to Rosie, but not disrespectfully to women.

Yeah, is that clear? No, I don't think it is. Okay, let's move on. But Rosie, poor old Rosie, that's a major operation for a dog of any age. I was very sad to go and, A, drop her off at the vet, which she is familiar with now and doesn't like. She starts quaking when she gets in there. She starts quaking when she gets in there. And then picking her up and she's all dopey from the anaesthetic and then gets home and just is so sad.

Like, why has everything gone terrible? And she's got the cone, the plastic cone, in order to stop her worrying about the station. She can't see properly because of the cone. Her peripheral vision's knackered. She's stumbling around, bashing into things. She gets so tired and fed up with bashing into things that sometimes she just stands rooted to the spot in the middle of a room,

just thinking, I'm not even going to bother moving. There's no point. Nothing is fun anymore. It was awful. And also because of the general level of... Oh, hello. Just because of the general level of sadness in Rosie's life and annoyance as well,

she kind of transferred it to the rest of us. And she kept on jumping up in the night, jumping onto the bed and just making it absolutely clear that she was not happy so when she started feeling better which was quite quickly i think she was fully recovered within about two weeks as they say most dogs are that was a great relief and the day the cone came off party time as for me yeah pretty good trying to write trying to do my stupid songs uh i had an exciting expedition to prague with joe lysett i was on an episode Travelman. I don't know when that's going out, maybe later this year. And that was really good.

Hadn't been to Prague before. What an amazing city. And we had a good time and I recorded a few bits and pieces with Joe, which I hope will be part of the new run of the podcast, which, as I say, should start in September later this year. There is a possibility I might plop out another bonus episode before then, so please make sure you're subscribed to the podcast feed in order that new episodes plop directly into your podcast app thanks very much

thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his peerless production support peerless I started getting emotional when I was thinking about the peerlessness of his production support couldn't do it without you Seamus thank so much. Thank you so much to Helen Green. She does the artwork for this podcast, beautiful artwork. Thank you to ACOS for their continued support with all things podcast related. But thanks most of all to you. I've missed you. Thank you for coming back. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to being with you on a more regular basis from September.

Until then, shall we have a cold springy hug? Come on, mate. Look after yourself. And until the next time, we share the same outer space. Take care. I love you.

Bye! Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Nice, take a pint with me, thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Nice, take a pint with me, thumbs up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe.

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