Tom Hanks: A Life In Pictures

[Applause] I take it well I was rubbish thank you thank you very much thank you it's all welcome to bastard and indeed your life in pictures but how many comedy is it as a background for an actor who later become a dramatic actor - I mean how important I mean how good a grounding do you think it is well because it's such a [ __ ] yeah pardon me but you know because you are it is either funny or it's not so it's the epitome of sink-or-swim the chops that you develop in comedy are the chops that you will not be slaved to but they will serve you in the in other aspects of storytelling there is a timing to it there is a pace there is the supreme task of give-and-take with whoever else you are therefore acting within the scene and not to start the antic parade but here's one the very first job I had which was in splash was with wood Ron Howard we I had been doing a comedy television series and got fired from it went off the air and I was desperate you know to be funny again quite frankly and the very first read-through of the other script the screenplay had all the actors and John Candy and Daryl Hannah and Eugene Levy everybody was there all the key department heads and I was operating from the task that had been mine when I was on the TV show which was to score which was to kill which was to take the lines and get laps at the table and I did it you know like flopsweat mercilessly trying to get laughs around this table and it was terrible and I didn't get any laughs and I felt like I had failed and Ron took me aside that day right after that reading and he said look I know what you're doing because I've done things you want you're trying to be funny you're trying to score that's not your job in this movie your job is to love that girl and if he hadn't said that you know he could have bought it he could have fired me that day to tell you the truth but he had done TV and so he knew what the things I had fallen into so he cut me some slack god bless the boy so after Splash came big where you're playing a boy who instead of transported into into the body of another but actually had attracted the attention of a number of straight actors who were interested I gather in you know that just the natural challenge of doing that I had read somewhere that dinero was once he was involved in it for a while that was one of those things where the studio changed hand in Salida entire the entire slate shifted yeah it's kind of nice hey yeah that's right yeah sorry Bob you know and then of course along comes Sleepless in Seattle which changes romantic comedy I think do you think you in what way you said it I I don't know I don't know that was a you know that was Nora Ephron who wrote that with her sister Delia she you know she landed on this concept of hearing somebody's voice on the radio and the the fact that they never see each other and they don't really know who each other are that was the structure of a screenplay and and the filmmaker and the conversations I brought to I was very I prose probably very cranky with Nora at the beginning of that because I kept reading us analysis this kid that's a kid that's a kid he's got a kid it's a kid scene the kids the guy the kids a catalyst it's just a kid yeah the kids movie and she said no you have to be a dad and then I said well then you have to write it like a dad which I'm taking a joke but actually sometimes we did it come down to words like that and she says what do you mean I said you're a woman you're a mother you're basing this on your experience with your boys I'm a man my relationship my boys is nothing like this for example she wrote a scene where Sam was going to go off for a romantic weekend with this other woman that Jonah didn't like her and so he was trying to he didn't want it so he was throwing a fit and in the screenplay Sam the father did not go because he didn't want to disappoint his son that was in the screenplay and I told No I said that is such horseshit you let me get this straight a man has not gotten laid in four years and he's got a shot to get laid this weekend and he's not going to go because his son doesn't like the girl I got no way that kids going to the sitter and I'm going off and get laid I'm that same yet you made some adelphia uh yeah yeah boy we're blowing through this career piece yeah yeah no no well sadly it has actually derivative Oh would ya but so you made Philadelphia which okay so we're now looking back 20 years and 93 yeah yeah 93 yes and at that point how radical because it's always pointed out as you know how radical was it to play a game oh and here's what was radical about it it came out and it was it was it entered into the National zeitgeist literally a third and a third and a third a third of the reaction was this is a groundbreaking movie a third of the reaction was this is nothing but a tepid potboiler that doesn't really touch upon the subject that it pretends to touch upon and a third said was from essentially the the gay segments of the world that said this movie has nothing to do with us and what we have been facing and for three weeks the first week it came out and then it was forgotten the second week but it was still playing and the third week the great of gay activist Larry Kramer who I have since met and talked to about this very thing he wrote the most devastating negative article that said why I hate Philadelphia so he came out and had it very very I mean it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't loaded with vitriol it was just his opinion I was so strong that overnight we became controversial and everybody then had to go and see the blow not everybody but enough people had to go in and see the movie and way in what we thought of and that actually brought in a ton of those very Americans who thought I don't know anybody who's gay and AIDS hasn't touched my life so it ended up being a touchstone as the cinema can do so Academy Awards in Philadelphia followed the next year by another Academy Fargo so Forrest Gump who rightly or wrongly is nearly always one of the first title film titles that is it yeah every time I walk into somebody's living room for the first time they all say son of a gun Forrest Gump and while living elevator rides with people I can't believe Forrest Gump in the same elevator as I am I get it I get it it's worthwhile so how did you settle on Forrest Gump on the stunts the voice okay in casting of the young Forrest had a particular dilemma in which bob says what do you think we should do and we talked about it for a while and there were a number of you know it's a hard role to cast a lot of professional actors a lot of professional kid actors and and we I don't know where it came but we we realized that Bob you will never get a kid in order to recreate something that I come up with you know theoretically what has to happen here I think is you've got to cast a kid and then I follower that kid goes and young Michael Humphreys came from this part of Tennessee that is literally really more of a part of whatever state is below Tennessee what does it Arkansas and Mississippi I don't know but he had this accent he had this way of speaking that I I would engage him in conversations with a with a tape recorder and just get this weird kind of cadence that it we were we were we - we were together we were it was in South Carolina we were riding out to see the house that they had built the set of the the Gump house was an out of real house and we're just in the car and I was saying so so so so Michael what is it what does your father do and Michel said mama my dad makes grease and I said how do you make grease he said I don't know but they use it in lipstick and modal and I said well that's interesting well um he says he said to be can I tell you what my favorite movie of yours is they said sure what is it well I like all of your films but my favorite is Dragonette so taking him and everything that came out of Forrest was based on him the way he he held his hands you know this opposite way and the way he just kind of had this it all came from little little Michael Humphreys you retained with wrong hood for police 18 yeah yeah I wanted to make Apollo 13 even before Ron did because I'm the space geek and I knew the story and what I thought it was going to be fascinating than Ron and I met at some point I didn't I said I'd like to do it my only thing is is that do you think that anybody would buy me as an astronaut and accomplished astronaut because astronauts are like they are and you know Roger ramjet cartoons or the Fantastic Four or the right stuff you know they're chiseled and they're American this that and they're fit and and Ron said well I I think it would be okay well thanks for that vote of confidence wrong but then in the course of doing it I met Jim Lovell and I thought I am exactly like Jim Lovell Jim Lovell is funny he's a family man he's very proud and very competitive as far as what he does and what the only difference is he's really good at flying jet planes and he wanted to be an astronaut for the same reason I wanted to would want to be an astronaut he will read this ad one day it says somebody is going to go to the moon and I said well someone's going to go to the moon I'd like that to be me so that ended up Apollo 13 opened up an awful lot to me because I stopped being self-conscious is whether or not I would could could bear the physicality of being some guy who does something as amazing as fly to the moon because turns out bald-headed guys flew to the moon you know next you worked with beans builders oh yeah yes oh god yeah this is the beginning of that sure I mean you work with Steven Spielberg on a number of occasions but this is Saving Private Ryan yeah and obviously you don't say what with the moment Band of Brothers in terms later are producing but at that point we're Saving Private Ryan was there the feeling that you wanted to give the whole experience of World War two damage we go at it in a different way to present it in a different way to have a different than in fact yes because I had look I've always been a student of it it goes back to in high school KTVU channel 2 reran Thames television the world at war narrated by Laurence Olivier and I went to school the next day asking everybody did you see it last night did you see it and they were uh what did you not watch the world of war last night you idiot it was fantastic was it was the best non-fiction his best entertainment I could possibly imagine so I've been a student of it and there had not been anything other than genre movies made about World War 2 in Ghana no 20 years so when when sailing Private Ryan came around and the script was very much completely in flux and when Steven takes over a script that's really just a blueprint for the movie that that he's going to make particularly with as much visual cinematic elements to it as at that I knew about it and desperately wanted to be involved and would Steven called me and said hey look there's a script called Saving Private Ryan I of it I know I'm one I like that and we talked about it I said look with your abilities and and in motion picture the science of making movies now you we you could really blow the lid off of what everybody's concept of the world war to me will no longer just be a caper movie or a genre movie you will be able to address you know so many specifics that it will be a tactile experience for the audience as opposed to an intellectual one or you know a stroll through history and that's you know Stephen did that in spades in the course of the movie and it was it was it was an experience man I could I can only tell you and you managed to you have this was a great slate of films whereby you can do something like The Da Vinci Code films and angels adventure yeah you know great big big scavenger hunt films I was calling geological scavenger hunts because the critics a little bit iffy about everything say that I don't hate everything well you know the the The DaVinci Code book was like this hitting like everybody knows like what why is everybody on the planet reading this book it is because it's fun because there's a fun scavenger hunt and likewise yeah I do but there might be another one and Dan Brown it's you know he stumbled on to this you know yeah wrong it's essentially like doing a Sherlock Holmes movie you know you do have to do research in order to understand what the heck you're you know what you're really talking about when I when I would read the books or read the screenplays I'd do it with Google right next to me because you're sitting in a safe so you could go on and see what the picture was and see their artists references of it and get the history of the you know right there and it ends up kind of like being it's kind of like it's like taking a great summer course in art history making those films and you know you get to run around it's a catch a run around the you know Piazza del Popolo at three o'clock in the morning in Rome and some guy says for you I open for you for you I open come sit eat for you I sorted the food oh good for you for you and that's like 3 o'clock in the morning they're making making pasta just for us this is not a bad gig at all so as we gather speed on this journey through your career and annum it's really freefall now it is really criminal velocity so let's say on your head I think we're going to be done in four and a half minutes we like something some gravity yeah yeah hold on we are moving towards a couple of real characters you play one is Walt Disney and the other is Captain filling Oreo yeah I was actually going to do Walt Disney first I'll tell you what I put in our way because the interesting thing in all of this first of all Walt Disney never been played on screen before I learned by Walt Disney you know yeah now with this an issue was it an issue was that mean you have to be very careful the things about the reputation of what is naked no actually we wanted to and the problem was in the current atmosphere of pressure in films like for example Walt Disney died of lung cancer he smoked three packs a day can we show him smoking in a major motion picture these days no way in hell it's just this kind of like thing that has happened that real people can't smoke if you are smokey it's like madman you make me get comment how much everybody smokes let me tell you something about Walt Disney you go back and you see all these photographs of him like on sets or on you know where Disneyland is being built and he's he's pointing like there he's pointing like there he's pointing like there with two fingers he was pointing with two fingers because he had a cigarette in between them and they airbrushed out the cigarette that's why he's going like this everywhere so we had we had a scene in in which now in the film you see me putting it out so you don't actually see it lit in my hand but you see the definitive putting out of a cigarette knee and I think wall that even says you know I don't want everybody to see me smoking because I don't want anybody get you know take a bad habit which was true he didn't want anybody outside his you know the world of Walt Disney's to see him smoking but he Richard Sherman of the Sherman Brothers you know he said he always knew Walt was coming to visit you because you could hear him coughing at the end of the law you get though about in the film as well is there a little line maybe even in the film was like sort of apology for having taken Mary Poppins and made of it something oh no no no and in fact Mary appealed Travis hated the movie yeah yeah I was making it for you and went on hating it for years it did not like Walt Walt was a guy that you know he'd win and they'd he'd move on you know to the next thing because he always had you know five years of movies in the pipeline and he was building Walt Disney World in floor at the same time so he just wanted to charm everybody call him by the first name wish everybody luck and then move out of the way and and mrs. Travers did not let that happen well that's a great it's a great saving response is a great hint to traditional filmmaking if you yeah yeah you made in a kind of rather lovely retro traditional on it already and it's on film yeah yes there's a real horses in it so it could not be more different in that sense from captain Phillips which is so much in the moment that kind of immersive storytelling we're talking about working with Spielberg and what you wanted to do with Saving Private Ryan but in the sense this is even taking this even one step further is it putting you right inside the experience for the duration of the film is all this there's a tiny bit of preamble and then you are absolutely in it sir yeah that that's Paul Paul Greengrass we we had you know so much of this is a look I'm lucky in that I'm invited into mostly I'm invited into the process early on and it's always like let's you know let's make this movie together and so long philosophical discussions but and also very pragmatic discussions with Paul about literally how to make the movie because no matter what was in the book and what's a discrete play we are going to get to the place the plot is there we know what the plot is but what's the procedure and what's the behavior and it is shaped in this case by the real ship that we were on and it was you know clumsy and hard and Paul wanted wanting to examine the the graphic reality of not only kind of like piracy but also commerce I mean those those ships are ugly rusty unglamorous things to go through but to be a captain on board is is the most complicated job you can imagine I was I was talking to two rich Phillips I asked him about the romantic thing it said rich how often do you ponder the horizon and you know breathe in the fresh salty air and thing you know thank God for God's great ocean he said Tom I haven't done that for 35 years you know but then you have what's the hardest thing you know what's what's the deal about being the you know being a cap and he says would you I'll tell you one property the human the human behavior said what do you mean is I got to deal with three unions there's three unions on board a ship there's 20 members of the crew three unions that means overtime that means a pay scales that means complaints that means a coffee breaks the length of them that means Union rules that were busted I'm going to I'm going to file the grievance against Marist corporation that's the kind of stuff that rich Phillips has to has to deal with and you can incorporate that burden into the guy provided Paul Greengrass is going to give you the moments in order to explore those things other than just the plot and the shot in order to move the story on and that was the way we did it all Paula you know Paul because he's a documentarian and it took me a while I ran into Matt Damon who had done three films with Paul I said so what's the scoop and he said you'll rehearse for a long time and then you'll finally shoot and the first take is a disaster because everybody's talking on top of each other and everybody's trying to get their beat in but don't worry it'll settle down and you'll get it and he does not stage the action as much as he captured it after the fact so we would do we would shoot long takes some times longer than the magazine could hold we completely stopped seeing the cameras after a while because we would have 14 15 18 minute takes it would just go on and on and on and on and on and then we would stop and we would figure out what knew had been impacted in that and incorporated at the next one and incorporate in the next one so as actors we had this flow from beginning to end that was not that was not truncated it was not abbreviate it was not like a section and I oftentimes I learned really quick I'd go over to Paul and say are you going to get that little bit and me and Shane are doing at the at the charts that he said we got it already I said when did you get it about two takes ago and I said I know I didn't notice and that's just that's this the way he did spin it's you know it's it's extraordinary to be in the midst of it because as an actor all you have to do is behave all did things like in this film we did not meet the Somali actors and then the day came where we shot the the hijacking and they came onboard the bridge we had never met them they came roaring on loaded for bear pumped up their veins sticking out their teeth scared they were the skinny as scary as human beings we'd ever seen and there was a there was bonafide hair standing up on the back your neck fear for the better part of 40 minutes you know for you know four or five takes and which everybody just read geared up and then we you know we had 15 minutes in order to figure out what we're going to do next and we finally said hey how you doing nice to meet you and what a bark out up de Sade him so I can't believe I'm making a film with Forrest Gump thank you so much we have expired our time I'm all artists are hope I didn't talk too fast or too much thank you thank you very much thank you I really enjoyed you [Music]

Channel: BAFTA Guru

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Keywords: BAFTA, BAFTA Guru, British Academy Of Film And Television Arts (Award Presenting Organization), creative, career, film making, TV, gaming, actor, advice, movie, movies, movie making, Aug 26, 2017, tom hanks, tom, hanks, interview, funny, saving private ryan, toy story, big

Id: qt4fU0HRrAY

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2017