please welcome to the stage the president of the board of directors for BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center Jaime O'Donnell good evening and welcome to be MC C's Tribeca Performing Arts Center we are delighted to have the New York Times popular and significantly cultural conversational series times toss here tonight BMCC is the largest undergraduate institution in New York City serving 27,000 diverse students speaking over 100 languages the Tribeca Performing Arts Center is the longest performance operating center in lower Manhattan we've been in operation since 1983 over 30 years and continue strong I highly recommend you check out our website Tribeca packed org or go on to our Facebook or Twitter page to learn about upcoming programming we look forward to your return to our theater and support of our programming thank you and please welcome director of programming for times talks Michelle gray good evening everyone I'm Michele gray the director of programming for the New York Times live conversation series time stocks which pairs New York Times journalists with the brightest and boldest creative minds from the fields of film theater music art fashion literature and science I'm delighted to welcome you to tonight's event with actor screenwriter director and writer Tom Hanks here to discuss his love of writing the creative process and his debut collection of short stories uncommon type some stories described as surprising intelligent and heartwarming his latest literary endeavor is a must read not only for the millions of Tom Hanks fans but for anyone who loves good writing what ties them all together is that it they all feature a typewriter in some way this is not as particular or as random as it seems Tom Hanks has a collection of typewriters he has over 250 of them and many are beautifully photographed for the book as you'll see usually a typewriter only makes a cameo appearance in these stories though in a couple of instances the typewriter is really the star here to shed more light on the nicest guy in Hollywood is tonight's moderator Jennifer senior the new york times daily book critic please join me in giving a very warm welcome to jennifer senior and tom hanks [Applause] are you good girl how do you so everyone knows that Tom Hanks is the nicest man in Hollywood oh yeah I wrote about it in the New York Times it's 100% true he also now has the most acute case of carpal tunnel syndrome he signed all 1,000 you want it somebody here has the lucky book that has a little bit of Caesar salad dressing so there's a smudge you you you you win that extra prize there were Stonehenge's of him back there and he's really it's what they don't tell you about the Attic adding a book published is all this is I I think I have signed something to the in the realm of like 16,000 pages that go on the thing I know it's such a it's such a burden it's sad it's just a horrible burden but you know what they say in the publishing business a signed book is a soul book yes indeed or in the case of tonight's a signed book is a free book [Applause] I'm worried that that'd be you know when you see the grosses as we say in the in the might in my day job what do you see the sales reports I signed 16,000 books and we'll say 12,000 books have been sold well I saw in 16,000 what somebody's falling off here do you think anybody's really gonna return your book I do really think that's gonna well I think about books are they're actually they're you can use them as a coaster so I think you would keep it just for all the multitasking purposes that you could have you can throw them at your spouse that's right so thank you for doing that and I really enjoy I I really enjoyed your book so kudos so thank you so let's start with my first question I had which was um so you know Robert DeNiro did not write a book of short stories Dustin Hoffman didn't George Clooney didn't you did most actors don't do this right so I am wondering what kind of creative need this satisfied well I mean I know you've already read I think that's actually the first question that everybody asked now if I was just a guy who you know who's not known for in any of what if I wasn't a celebrity I don't think people wouldn't necessarily ask that question but it's the same answer which is a fire in the belly there's no other there's no other way to describe it ultimately I think I am frustrated by my day job because we have an office play town which is we like to call it the Playtone world headquarters Playtone galaxy of stars and we sit around we sit around all day every single day musing about themes that that need that must be examined somehow and sometimes it these themes are brought to us by another medium sometimes people come in and pitch them a lot of times it's just something that happened to somebody or or something they've read in the paper like the New York Times which has happened many many times and we end up having this discussion of how to turn that into a story that someone will pay to be entertained by and it's not it's never an interesting excuse me it's never an easy discussion because there are some stories that we hear a lot of times the nonfiction stories in which we listen to it we examine it we do our homework we read some more we find some more about it we say this cannot be a movie we make up and film with actors on a set somewhere it needs to be a documentary in which case we will try to make a documentary out of it there's other times where the theme is too large you can't compress it you end up having to cherry-pick the Magnificent details of it so it can't be a three-act movie that costs ridiculous amounts of money and then has to compete in the marketplace so then or it's it's a it's a series or it's a limited series there's a lot of places you can go with it but the the desire we all have and I think the reason I probably started the company is that I I have never been creatively frustrated by the limitations of what I do in my day job sooner or later if someone calls you up and you are waiting for the phone call that says would you like to help us make this story and I don't want to be at the mercy of that phone call I don't want to have to sit around and wait for it nor do i hat sometimes have to go and look we've had you know you'd think that I'm such a big shot that you think people would quake when I call them as yeah hey thanks Colin from Plato we're gonna do this thing about we're gonna do this thing about how you make golf balls you think is a fascinating story and I'm gonna play mr. golf ball that you hang up and you think well of course that well no they say no to us all the time because we cannot communicate how fascinating the theme is we cannot tell them a dazzling enough story but with a with writing on a page and like this I I will tell you that almost every story in here began is some core of a thing that I wanted to do either as a film or as a documentary or something or came out of projects that I did for example there's what you I'm gonna take what would everybody just read the book right now then we talk so you know there's a story in here that is it's called Christmas 19 to Christmas Eve 1953 community and it came out of the series we did Band of Brothers for HBO because we talked to oh well thank you thank you for the mercy applause I'll tell you why if you underground I'll take that to grown as a grown as is a good a good as a lab but we in talking to countless guys of actual veterans so many of them are dead now but when they were alive and they were they were willing to talk to us sometimes for the first time and we didn't we weren't able to get all of their stories into the series but there was aspects of them that you meet them and I just thought how did these guys how did these guys set up the railroad train around the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve you know 11 years after after the after Bastogne have they do it and that kind of like question I got to answer in one of the stories so the answer to your question is it there's just a fire in the belly in order to try to capture some other thing that I have either pondered or has a gift that has been given to me by somebody else in the forum that is an idea yeah I didn't mean to trivialize your your skills here the first journalist it seems like you've been like you've been holding out on us right this is something that you and I had the sense while reading it that these have been piling up for a while I mean there there are 17 stories in here well the the newspaper columnist you know yeah you can count that's a little bit right so let's make that one there 15 if you make that one right because Arthur so let's say 50 so I mean you could have done it you know yeah that's like 15 separate sandwiches you made when you could have made eight Sam I mean so I am assuming that these were piling up for a while right I mean you said some originated as a screenplay right okay okay so I guess I guess then my next question would be you're a busy man you know when did you have the time where what you did you have a process to do right in the same place do you what's your I think the goes fountain look I think one of the reasons I have a pretty successful day job is because I ID naturally have an American case of attention deficit disorder comes from watching knowing what time it was on TV and on the second commercial after love of life it was time to go to school true story actually the been um look I would I was I was puzzled by the entire process of this I wrote the one the first story that got any sort of attention was it's in the collection it's called Alan bean plus four and somehow it made it into the into the New Yorker and that the fact that I was able to have this this concept of four people doing this thing and it came out all right was it was the first time I was able to bridge that kind of like roundtable discussion of what a story is and how to find it and make it happen my make it happen myself I'd written screenplays which is a type of translating of story onto paper but only in the same way that drawing a design for a living room is like being an art it's like being a builder it was a it's a blueprint for what a story could be so I was satisfied that I could I had the wherewithal to sit down over a long period of time and do it but I everything else was an absolute mystery trying to make it all makes sense but I asked Peter gethers my editor par excellence and Esther Newberg which who is somewhere out there someone out there there you go let's hear it for that lady I said well how many how many stories does this got a beat and and Peter said 15 and I said well how long should each story be well however long they are and so I had to think about it for a while and I went through my head and I probably came up with 9 or 10 that that that I sort of wrote down titles for that were you know formed enough in my head from all these desires but they weren't sitting around there were only one was sitting around there's one one was sitting around which was the screenplay style of story stay with us I wrote that in the early 1990s for a potential anthology series that never got made in which we were going to take Greek myths and turned them into updated examinations of what they were so and it had to change quite a bit because the technology and the and my chops had changed it up but that's the only one that that pre-existed all the others just came out of mmm came out of this this they told you to do it and I will admit that that a number of them had I had been pondering for a while not necessarily thinking turned that turned that into a story well one little one there's one in here called welcome to Mars that is about kid going surfing with his dad on his 19th birthday and he witnessed he witnesses something that probably he was not meant to witness and that came about because I'm a horrible horrible surfer and I'm out of shape and I don't do it very well but there was one day in the dead of winter in LA we had a decent swell but it was so cold that the only guys that were out in the water were those kind of construction workers on their way to the job so there's a lot of rancheros and pickup trucks with power tools in the back and a guy you know changing into a wetsuit and going in so I was in a parking lot I was walking with my surfboard down to the beach and I saw a kind of nice sports car and a guy in a wetsuit was sitting in the passenger seat and a very attractive lady was sitting behind the wheel and I just thought what's going on there that that's there's something if I was a guy making movie that would be a shot we're giving this away well I know you're not gonna so there were III don't want to I didn't like say I gotta come up with stuff I had an awful lot of fun ideas in my head that I wanted to scratch out and the writing of it look it how many people here write one way or another see it's one damn thing after another you sit down you do it you know and you don't you try to sit down long enough you try not to get up until you know what's gonna happen next you try to put it away and not think about it for some time and other times you just you just you just get to it and I had for you excuse me when did ask her when did we start when did we start Esther three and a half years ago so I you know I applied myself for three and a half years and was still a year late I think everybody would have liked it but too bad a day job keep it in I really do are you like the rest of us where you write something and the next morning you wake up and you think then half of it is awful and you know you go all Beethoven on the division of a lot ago and there was some that I just went down the wrong tributary and threw it right out I was just because I did sound not make the cut no no no they all made the cut but there was some that I wrote half of them and said this ain't it this this is not this is not where it needs to and you came back and yeah and you and you can throw it out no one no one knows no one knows what was that is there one that was the heart like which was the hardest to birth out of all of those stories there one of which was a true breech birth yeah I would just want to know what was challenging about it to you okay because there was some that almost were fully formed in my head when I sat down but much like movies I always say this thing about you know motion pictures scripts particularly screenplays and then sometimes with the the final final film itself it's like it all has to be a full deck of cards there has to be 52 cards in this thing right and you either have 58 in which case you got to get rid of some or you only have 47 and you're missing some beats you got to do it and even though they had fully formed things I still had to get to 52 decks the 52 cards in the deck if I was can I can I take a moment try to figure out when was really the of all I'm asking for the of all and why it was a I mean I'm actually okay because I mean it's always interesting to see where people get stuck you know what does it there were there were two that was really hard that one was because the past is important to us oh that was a very success because that that requires about time travel and you with you you you can't take time travel light I had to work out in my head the entire logic and science and physics of the time travel in order to make it into the story and that but the good news about that is you get to kind of like make it up you know you can come up with things like what a molecular singularity yeah well how come we can't bring stuff back from back and well that's the molecular single but it all ends up becoming a logic that you adhere to and that winds up helping me because it's feared the story in a very specific direction emotionally there's one in here called a special weekend that that was about a little boy on its on its ninth birthday and because my parents were divorced when I was very young they pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California I mean they got they got divorced when man no but then in 1961 man only like only like Zsa Zsa Gabor got divorced in 1970 King it was just I was third of four kids and my baby brother stayed with my mom and we went off with my dad we just thought well anybody does some version of this and going back and revisiting it to get back into the head of a nine year old kid who just thought he's not he's it's not it's not a tragedy and yet there is a there's a difference between a nine-year-old celebrating his birthday with his mom and the mom who goes to take the nine-year-old kid to try to spend a special weekend with him man that was tough that was hard well let you read that story right I looked at that story and I have heard you described before I mean didn't you have like five divorces in your family altogether yeah wasn't it three into life yes five right we because my my mom found the her soulmate on her fourth marriage and my dad on his theory so but it all worked out and they got there eventually and they ended up being very happy they've had since passed away but there was just no doubt now would have been maybe a little bit better if they had done it when I was in fifth grade as opposed to when I was 42 but none and there was just no look I was there through all of their marriages and they were just even though I might have been at his cognisant at five as I was maybe at 14 but there was just no doubt that hey this ain't working with you and George mom maybe OTO maybe you ought to move on and so they they found it but again I this was not I was I was confused I will tell you that because our world did not reflect everybody else's world or what we saw on TV it was nothing but in a lot of ways it was very cool because we laughed a lot we moved a lot I never had a problem with vegan in new new school adapt you know I kind of enjoyed it and look what I do for a job for cryin to pretend to be somebody else yeah my my my siblings will disagree they say it wasn't that fun and we wouldn't have refused we were miserable I said well there you go look at the draw what are you gonna do okay every time I have heard you speak about this you say it was such generosity and you're very funny and all I could think is that right somebody else your siblings somebody would be in therapy for 40 years talking about this right and right I wasn't gonna go there but I was thinking but I was I was thinking that those stories might have allowed you to work this out in a way that's a little darker I mean it's rendered more darkly on the page right then you just say yes and I'm wondering if that's one of the reasons why is because you know you're you don't have to perform your way through that one you can work your way through well there was there was age it's funny because all of this stuff and forgive me but all of us become somber and of self-discovery and the more so no matter what your sort of writing and that was one because I realize it you know as a nine-year-old boy I actually had nostalgia for my former homes Wow you know you know well actually by the time by the time I was 10 I had lived in 10 different alright so and if you would asked us all we would all we yearn for the apartment on Buena Vista Avenue and Alameda because that's when my dad was not married and we got to do any damn thing we please and we grew up like feral children but but it was a blast because you know by the way my dad moved out of that apartment without even attempting to get his deposit back we had we had scarred that place so that the refrigerator was on its last leg oh it was it was a debacle with how many there were my there was three of us my older brother and older sister and my dad who worked in the restaurant business so he wouldn't he was gone all day he wouldn't even come home till 11 o'clock at night he was in there if you scrape the amount of burnt tomato soup off of the stove it would it take it was like would have been like an archaeological dig you know oh here's the first month they lived here oh now there's the second month they lived here it just keeps going down and down but he was in the restaurant business right what you know do you want it so I actually asked Tom Hanks to read it's another story about family dysfunction that I think is it's very well done 95 95 95 it's also just a nice example of what he sounds like on the page and I it's there are two stories that I thought sort of hinted at where he came from okay yeah right I mean and I don't know if your family looked like this but I thought it was another way were experimenting with yes Annelle that's the spirit I still thought that you wrote about it in a way that was extremely relatable so just to set it up this is a family that's going that camping trip they're starting in California they're doing a loop through Canada and it goes catastrophic ly awry and there will be lots of names of kids in here you don't have to pay attention to this just pay attention to the pathos of the parents and this is just let's do you think that Tom Hanks is all sunshine and wholesome different light there's something really interesting to me about this particular part I think you've just told the audience an awful lot about yourself baby I wanna be Simon I will pronounce it the the Yulin family is that okay all right you you double le in the trek was a long-planned Yulin family retreat and came off as promised for the first few hundred miles anyway then mom started sharing her opinions and insisting on behaviors she wanted to establish her rules of the road and began giving orders thus rang the opening bell beginning the first of what became many punishing rounds the verbal jousting escalating into full throated mean-spirited arguments that had to be won by the mother of the family Chris as was her want turned her about her turned her Abela snis up a few notches Doris righteousness devolved into deep crevasse silence punctuated with outbursts so fast loud and vitriolic as to be near Shakespearean Frank at the wheel sipping on his cold coffee or warming coca-cola acted as referee therapist fact-checker and cop depending on the point made or the offense taken Kirk as his defensive stance pulled out a pulled out book after book like he was a chain smoker with a carton of menthols for him the psychodrama faded into a background in not much different from the wheels of the camper humming across thousands of miles of asphalt they argued their way across Canada continued as they came south through the vast American Prairie the space so open so endless it was said to have driven some of the original settlers insane the Yulin family went certifiably Daffy in Nebraska when Chris bought pot from some guy living out of his car at a KOA campground mom wanted to call a cop and turn in both the dealer and her own daughter she went DEFCON ballistic when dad allowed no such thing by simply packing them all up and driving away fleeing the scene of the crime the camper went frosty like a bitter family Christmas in July no one talking to anyone while Kirk finished all of William Manchester's books on Winston Churchill by the time they turned due west and Tucumcari New Mexico everybody wanted off the road out of that truck and away from each other Chris retreated Chris threatened to hop a greyhound bus the rest of the way home but dad insisted that they do some camping in the desert which they did under protest Chris got high under the Stars Dora went on solo hikes until after dark and dad bedded down outside in the tent mom slept in a camper guaranteeing she'd be alone in peace at last by locking the door that was a problem as it cut off access to the bathroom thus ended the last family vacation for the Yule ins the last family anything for the u-men's [Music] Familia curve anybody familiar vacation your references there oh there they end up being epic man they end up being things you talk about forever remember that disaster yeah and you laugh I would do that oh yeah that's the vacation where I read a William Manchester's the last lion now I remember that that was a great vacation I love that you snuck that in cuz I know is one of your favorite history I figured there was something in there can I ask about another one okay great so the first one which I liked quite a lot three exhausting week three exhausting weeks so three exhausting weeks is about it introduces a these recurring characters they're all lovable the narrator is spectacularly underachieving he's the kind of guy who would be perfectly happy to do his laundry and he'd Coco Puffs during the day and watch you know hockey games it's that's a good day for him off investments right right right he's got the means to do it Yeah right and suddenly he dates this kind of whooshing lifeforce who suddenly has him going scuba diving and skydiving and packing to go to Antarctica um okay so I I read this and I thought you achieved fame fairly early you're very successful very good but this guy is so well drawn that I thought do you have an inner slacker oh dear God yeah can you tell me all about him I mean no okay so does he also do that well III I'm not nearly the slacker of that dude because I I have thing built into my day job which is its if you don't if you're not working on something if you don't have a job that is going to be shooting sometime that means you're really carrying around nothing in your head outside of whatever creative things are going on but as soon as you say yes to a job you're going to play a role well you start working on that you you end up clicking through a bunch of things from that moment until you're done shooting and sometimes that could be six eight months I mean sometimes you think oh I'd like to do your movie okay let's do it you don't get to it for a year and a half beat you preparing for that for a year and a half when that is not happening it's literally it's like what time is jeopardy are you you've got nothing is really expected of you outside of you know preventive dentistry no you got kids you got to look after them but our kids are all grown up and oh yeah and I got to go see the grandkids every now and again you got to go down to the office keep things percolating around there oh but but give me like a single two projects for the course of the day or the week and because I don't have to really do anything for the next eight weeks couldn't be couldn't be couldn't be happier okay so what if I squint at that that is you that you know what I will tell you this you know I had the the luck of I did a I did a Broadway show a few years ago and it's the greatest oh well thank you merci applause I'll cook up to the this thing that happens when you when you mount the show and you get into your second or third month you know we've done it enough weeks so that it has seeped into your DNA you have Sundays and Mondays off and if I could get a hockey game and two loads of laundry to do on those two days off it was the greatest way glamorous is that's just you know it's all you know the stork club and Martino it was a hockey game in the background and doing doing your laundry story seven martinis oh that may I ask you about stork Levin martini and there was there's another story in there that I responded to a lot which was about what was it called a junket in the city of all Junkin in the city of life if there's any story in this that is autobiographical it's the story of the press junket for a movie that that you go off to in Europe it is I will tell you if you read it every my publicist is here and she's gonna squawk how could you say she is fantastic but a press junket for a motion picture is the most appropriate thing that human beings have ever been put through it is merciless it is it is a level of corporate branding strategy to the degree of hackery and and they have they honestly think you have the stamina of an ox to drag this piece-of-shit movie across International Date lines and there's not a single soul you are not delighted to talk to it goes on forever until truly you cannot fathom words that are coming out of you okay see you have anticipated my crush I was not a completely different from talking about book Leslie Leslie guard of 42 West she would say it's true it's true but we take as all they care we can and she does Leslie's fantastic but you anted I thank you for that extremely candid reactions I'm doing it to imitate when you see a movie star talking about their film under they're dying inside they hate themselves the motion pictures they made is a bird even when they see it they don't remember any of it and they have have to examine it again and again and again so that they honestly don't have a single original thing to say about everything on God's green earth because they have just had to verbalize over and over again what it was like making the movie okay there's another story and there were publicists get it on the chin too but I I can't remember it now but I actually circled it and said oh my god twice I'll remember in a minute but but okay so yes you made being a movie star seems super unglamorous and unfun and unsexy at that outside of the fact that everything is paid for you would stay in great you know which was also it's it's in there that hotel room seemed really nice so here this this led me eight I had this question which was I once woke up in a hotel room on a press junket yes I don't know how long had been on the press junket yeah but I woke up and I was calling I couldn't find my wife that's a honey honey and I walked all through this suite where are you honey where are you I hadn't been with her in a week and a half like discombobulated I was and all I knew is that hair and makeup was coming at 8:15 and I would just did you know what city you are in I had no idea what Hemisphere okay so this this leads directly into a great you'll forgive me problems I know I'm not complaining no I I know and I know that you are not saying that your life is the same as a janitor's or a coal miners but I am really genuinely interested in what the tedium is in your life and I am no I am I mean I know what the tedious parts I wrote some of this on some press yeah yeah okay so that's interesting to know but I also it raises a bigger question for me because it's not every day that I talk to somebody who is as famous as you and there is the life that I imagine that you live and then there are the ground realities that I'm sure right that you negotiate every day and I think the gulf between like what I imagine and what you actually live is probably pretty extreme at can you maybe tell us a little bit about like what our biggest misconception about celebrity would be cuz that's a you just gave a great kind of you know pray see right there I mean it's an interesting question because I don't know if it's communicable I mean that honestly one of the reasons I wrote that junket in the City of Light was for that very reason yeah to say this is what it this is what it is this is what is expected of you sometime because everything else is fun look I'll uh I've loved what I've been doing ever since I figured out that you could go to high school and take a drama class instead of drafting or sociology count me I'll do that but everything else it ends up being a learned skill that unfortunately you only can figure out by getting your ass kicked over and over again and realized that these people do not have their they're not in they're not going to make anything easier for you now the acting you know the performing is that that's just that's an instinctive you know instinctive creative thrust that you follow without having to think everything else becomes some version of self-protection I mean look the you know we've been living I think in literally George Orwell's 1984 ever since they invented the iPhone and it said they invented a camera there's no such thing as a degree of privacy and so you have to start I think the biggest work that I that allowed to speak for myself the biggest work I think that that takes effort and requirement and philosophy and planning is the division between the private and the public yeah public requires this thing that you must adhere to because it's like being a celebrity is like walking around in a huge rubber chicken costume everybody says hey look at the doing the big rep or chicken costume you just know that they can do that yeah it's their right to walk up to the river jam on privacy it's like you know you got to deal with the ins and outs that everybody has in any sort of in any sort of realistic life dynamic in which case nothing that you have achieved helps you at all right that I'm not accept the money is fantastic no I mean you know money solves nothing money doesn't solve money does that make you happy but it solves all sorts of problems all sorts of things go away I have type-2 diabetes not to get outside but I got type 2 diabetes and I can pay to have good food made for me I could see a doctor and I can have all this kind of like stuff taking care of me and that's because I have a lot of money if I did not I would be in a really really difficult different situation than I am right Richard Greenberg the playwright had that line where he said it doesn't buy you happiness but it upgrades despair and that's I think what you're talking well you know yeah I think I think that if you're the type of person that wakes up at 3 o'clock in the morning and looks out the window get money and celebrity ain't gonna have anything that you're just kind of like bent to do that no matter where you are in the food so but the loss of privacy I'm really interested in this particularly because you are known as the nicest guy and it's totally true everybody loved it there if there was a word beside I know Dan did you notice it super gold she is a German chocolate cake Superman she I know I'm sorry let's go with that adorably mentions I'm always trying to figure out if I've done anything wrong you know but well you haven't disgraced yourself in any way that I mean which is already a little disagree we'll say you have disgraced yourself okay well here is here is the one burden though that I wonder about this which is so I know you spoke to my colleague Maureen Dowd about you know the ways that this may or might may not be an inhibiting label being called the nicest guy and you said look yeah it's not that I tolerate being shoved around I I will not I will not let you take advantage of my good nature right I will tell you that right and and and I think that that's okay but here's a more serious question which is and I get that but how about when you're feeling really um when you're feeling really sad or you're feeling really frightened okay so I keep thinking now about your wife about Reno yes and about how she has just had this really grueling and really frightening surgery for breast cancer and by the way I don't know she's not here yes she's actually tonight she's singing at the car cafe Carla awesome okay well really the dance the strongest most amazing woman I just thank her because her transparency on this is something you go read her on Facebook about the stuff go read her in people she's been amazing anyway I'm willingness to do that I thought was super humid so it was uh she talked about it was sort of news you could use you know double-check your pathology reports all that stuff was it's stuff that I think a lot of women don't know but going back to that um so okay so she's going through something really painful and really grueling and you are I'm assuming really scared and really frightened with her and then you go out into the world and people expect you to be Tom Hanks they expect you to be this sweetheart but what if you just want to be really well that's where the work comes in at the dividing line between the public and the private not having the flexibility to be sad well there's some times where you you you just force it but I mean know there is yeah it's like that kind of thing oh you know you can't go there yeah you can go there just go in just go go look what I'm and I'm not gonna go get yogurt with the grandkids go get yogurt with the grandkids and they might recognize you oh no they ready boys who cares but I don't I don't mean to be flip I it it is something that you make your peace with and it takes a long time sometimes for people to make your peace with it look I was I was if we're talking about such things Oprah I would say I was I was very lucky because nothing happened overnight for me I was I would I did three years of classical repertory theater and I came to New York and lightning struck and I got on this kind of show that no one really watched but lasted for two years and it's funny how years after the fact it becomes a cult classic Budweiser where the were those people well we just would have have but but that it was over a long period er at the idea I shudder for anybody who does a thing and then enters into the national consciousness in such a riotous way it is because I look I had I I it was like slowly climbing in altitude and then you come back down a couple of thousand feet you can breathe okay and you're not gonna get sickness and it for anybody that happens quickly the learning curve is so steep no wonder it just devoured some people yeah I can imagine again uptown problems but if you're not prepared for it if you if you don't have some degree of either grounding individually or the purpose to go into the business in the first place or a team around you that will just say dude we got to protect you here a little bit it you you know it's the the what is it the entertainment kind of like in what is it entertainment industrial complex yes makes mincemeat out of people that that have have difficulty with that learning curve I think might explain why people find it sort of miraculous that your personality and your authentic self is to some degree intact I mean that might be the reason Oh 21 but if people want to start lining up in the aisles to ask questions in about one minute we're gonna start doing Q&A I'll just wrap it up with this one with since Robin tanner oh and you know who a message will the owner of parking wouldn't that be great said the guy with the blue Hyundai the Japanese so the one thing I was thinking it right so are there things that you do just so that you can still feel like you were at 20 do you like to fill up your own car with gasoline or you know what I mean well I Drive a Tesla well I also have my dog is so old that she can't climb in the back of it so I have a Ford Transit van and yes I go to the gas station with that that it's extraordinary people want to know they want to know our people I can't quite make out I think people are standing in there I have the mics been distributed what's on the cards is there Facebook live question oh I'm gonna start asking you okay so and the only thing I would ask if you have a question for during the Q&A part is that you can only get an A if you ask a cute you have to ask a question you cannot actually it can't be a you know a declaration let me let me tell you something this is when you're on a press junket and I I don't want to turn this into my bitterness over press by all means to you but this is what it never happens so much with print media but it almost always happened when you're on TV and someone comes in they say so but now but now you're searching for da Vinci there's no question there not a single quick how do you feel that what are you know really that would how do you okay I'm not even so don't do that no no yeah the other thing that I've been told and they're very stern don't take advantage of the fact that he is the nicest guy please don't ask for selfies and please don't ask for him to read your screenplay or just or to sign anything else because he's son and did I mention he really did sign all thousand copies of the books that you've got tonight so just so those are the instructions from above and they all seem very reasonable you don't mess with a paper or record for you just yeah so I'm gonna I'll read from Samantha from facebook asks how do you handle self doubt and discouragement in your creative folks oh that you end up okay that's actually a great question because you can't do it if you have self-doubt you can't do it if you have self consciousness self consciousness is the death of acting high performing a role requires somehow you get past every aspect of observing yourself and what you're doing that means you cannot be sensitive about how you look in a hat or or the way your voice sounds you work on it and to change it and from that you trust a process that you have slowly learned over and over again of what to do knowing full well you'll discover what not to do but self-doubt is the same thing as self-consciousness you trust your own individual process to get you there and so you learn event and hope it just hope that it works out because there's also sometimes just pure serendipity ends up coming into coming into question I stopped seeing I stopped going to well do one the reason I enjoyed writing the book because every time I went back and read something I enjoyed it I could see what is this and and I was anxious to either embrace it more wholly or make a few changes here and there even though still now that it's published I read something and said why didn't I do this instead I stopped going to dailies on motion pictures a long long time ago because there's absolutely no objectivity when you go see it you could think it's great in dailies and you see it in the movie and it doesn't matter a whip it's you have to have some other you have faith in the serendipity and also the work that everybody else puts into it in order to shape its malleable up there it's not set in stone you have to just back away and offer up offered sacrifices to the great goddess película the goddess of all film and cinema Diane from facebook asks this is a good question in your extensive body of creative work what are you most and least proud of you know those superlatives are just so I know so easy to ask well how about what's most important you know what you think is your most important work maybe or I don't want to change her question we have to get well I think it ends up being the the long-standing connection you have to what you did and I think I'm lucky is that I remember no small amount of the process in order to get somewhere on a movie now it's not in every method sometimes I've seen stuff look I made some really crappy movies I know and there's been some times I'd look at it I don't I don't believe a single thing of what I said I see where it kind of works but periodically if you're lucky you get to like lay claim to trying to do something on no applause please I'm not this is a castaway was a thing we worked on for six and a half years and it came out almost exactly [Laughter] and and I am very proud that we got there the this I did when I played Chesley Sullenberger as soon as I met the man I thought this is going to be the hardest manifestation because he is absolutely nothing like me I am absolutely nothing like him and it's going to have to I was going to have to go to some other extremely controlled place he was so bottled up it was amazing that yeah and you're also working with Clint Eastwood who is you know he this is his direction yeah that's all you got that's all you got to work with it and then when you were done so you don't know that it's good that the joke is well which is my favorite child you know you can't you can't do it all you can do is remember the effort that you put into it and whether or not you got there so much it's so much of that I am very lucky because it as far as writing stories goes because my job is an actor is to provide all of this material I don't have to talk about it I just have to do it and they have to make it manifest and then they take it and do other thing writing fiction was the same thing I just had to make it manifest on the page then I handed it over to Esther and Peter and everybody else and said is this a thing if it was a thing they say yes we know and it ended up being surprisingly more of the same process than I anticipated and then all the decisions you know I didn't know what order they should be and Peter figured it out you know nicely yeah oh yeah you'll get to choose the typeface in the paper I said pick one I know about face what do you know about typeface you own 250 typewriters is well that's true I do most of them topeka touch face fair enough I do we have people queued up by okay um I don't think of you as a nice guy excellent well I think you probably are but what I do think you have as somebody who for whatever reason represents in your roles the bests in American values and that's why I think you were as popular as you are in fact my son tore me off the mountain Marcy to go see Saving Private Ryan go and we were 20 seconds from the top but he's a history teacher so you're forgiven but what would you say to the ten-year-old it's 14 year old 16 year olds who between your movies there's you can't make this stuff up what's going on today what do you say to the new generation of kids but we're looking at an adult world it's very infantile Wow first of all I'm going to do everything I can to dodge this question [Laughter] [Applause] no no IIIi understand what you're saying I can only do it with with with my own individual kids because we talk about everything at the same time justice I'm sure you do with with yours and I always fall back on history that I say we even we've elected not heads to elective office before we've gone often gotten involved in in hideous complications before I just finished I'm now reading you've all comedy Amadeus and I read sapiens just before that and I I go back to Ecclesiastes it's vanity of vanities all is vanity there's nothing new Under the Sun we have been here before so have faith in a couple of things number one is the long haul and number two is your ability their ability to distinguish what is right and what is wrong it's going to be hideous just at the same time it's going to be beautiful it's going to come up at different times but if you read some of the people that I read like read the read the is it the glory in the dream of the dream and the glory by William Manchester 1932 the 1972 it's like ripped right out of today's headlines so III look I I'm not trying to dodge the question nor am I trying to help you raise your children sir but I I I would say we've been here before if you if you are worried about the present read history and come to your own conclusions have you met him have you met Trump I will tell you the one time I met at that point a man who would never be President of the United States in 800 million years he was doing the Celebrity Apprentice no there was just the apprentice before the celebrity it might have been the first year and I was at a fundraiser for the motion-picture home just the night before either the Emmys or the Oscars and he was there and said hey Donald hey you're fired or something like that I said something like that - oh you said that to him yeah yeah was that destabilizer well they said so that's what everybody was yelling right now that was pretty much it cookie showed on cook the show that was it it was like Wilson so long yes that was a long time ago yeah you want to tell me with that brush go right ahead that's what I said to the future president um just to let you know my dad Louis next to watch is cast away every single my question is how do you prepare differently for a movie like Charlie Wilson to war versus selling and number two you should have been nominated for selling my crack staff is over there well there is no there is no there is no way of doing it you just got to figure it out luckily those two movies charlie was alive Charlie Wilson was alive he had this book and I was just trying to I wanted to I would just wanted to find out how he did what he did and how fantastic it was from a purely external police you would you would you'd see how they sound talk walk you there's things you can do physically in order to alter your gait and what have you with with mister with Sully it was I was just trying to find he both of these guys there were books about both events but the books end up being this other kind of translation of it that doesn't quite it's good for the screen screenwriter it's not necessarily great for the actors because you have to end up asking questions like you don't you wanna be a journalist this is what was that like you have to ask questions like when when did you feel it was over when did you feel a sense of accomplishment what was the pressure on you when these in these phone calls and you just it you you don't have enough time I mean I a lot of times I wish we had a year and a half to prepare for some of these roles and you just don't so you you just yeah you hope you hope and pray that you can capture you know one of their t-cells and planted inside you and and have you grow everything that you need in order to in order to in order to be it hi hi so I've been a huge fan of your work for years but what I really loved was when you came back to Broadway a few years ago I never came I did not come back to Broadway I came to Broadway because the first time I was around I've never had the opportunity to have a job that would allow me to come back to Broadway I did not get any jobs the first time what made you come to Broadway and what does a script have to what does the script have to be in order to get you to come back like what do you look for in a script to make you to come in because it's such a long commitment it's a yeah but it's a it's a lovely commitment and all honesty I think you go back to Broadway in order to be a pure type of actor again Broadway gives you this one thing and I didn't discover this until veep when the run I was trying to figure out why is it that I can't wait to get to the theater every day why is it that why is it I'm looking forward to doing the 120 second performance of this play when did when do I get to start phoning it in because I I can't I can't seem to I can't I always get kind of worked up and this is what it is you get to begin if you get to begin at this at the beginning of the story every night and you get to carry it through and as soon as you start the audience gives you something that you work off of they might need something to be laid out a little more specifically matinees for that play was lucky guy it was about the New York Daily News in the post and one that the matinee audiences were the New York audiences the people that do do they do not want to have dinner in Times Square they are there to take the physical record get the playbill of the show they saw and they were white-hot they were so far ahead of us at every turn what that play I did that because Nora wrote something that I thought was extraordinary and I wanted to work with Nora again and the idea of doing this play about a very specific guy who lived through this raucous time what I think was I thought it was just going to it was going to be a theme and a character of a guy who was not quite as good as everybody else but made more money than everybody else he was not Jimmy Breslin he wasn't one of the Hamill's he was Mike Mac Allari and he was a good writer he wasn't a great writer and yet he rode the wave and I thought that's a theme to examine and Nora and George Woolf who directed it out we all we all went bananas on then the Nora died and we didn't know whether we could go along and do it or not and we all just decided it let's do it and we'll just pretend Nora's here so the play has to bristle quite frankly you know it's got to be something that is why I don't want to be pompous but let me be pompous for a moment I'm not there I don't see myself as doing revivals because because unless you can do something like an incredibly brand-new different kind of like take on it I don't I don't know that I have anything to offer up to a revival per se not that they're like like you know I but there's like I just saw Laura Linney and the little foxes fantastic Denzel is doing the Iceman Cometh I'll be there for that there's a lot that it but as far as the the wherewithal that it takes to come and be on Broadway the life that you lead the you got to live like a monk and you've got to be dedicated to preserving everything for those eight performances a week it has to be something that throws that throws pretty deep and as long as the play throws deep and I have room for it in my life I'll do it but room for it in your life that's that's the key you know you don't do Broadway lightly you don't you you've got it you got to come in and and and be armed for there doesn't sound pompous it actually sounds humble to say that you're not gonna do something that you can't bring anything new to just doesn't a sense well but though you know check me in a year and guess what I'm doing I go see that it's a toe tap and usable that hasn't been done to hold down yes thank you and thank you for plugging in for the primitive dentistry that's very important I wanted to know if you typed the stories in the typewriter and white typewriters why you boys anything I was in Atlanta and I bought a new smith-corona electric select o matic you remember the select Ematic yeah we haven't even had the cartridges you typed oh I made a mistake take the cartridge out put in the correct ink cartridge type tied back back back back back KD ll put that gonna put the cartridge back into the title i typed about five pages of a story called a month on Green Street and then when stark raving nuts because you can't really write anything longer than a love letter or grocery list or some memos on a typewriter no cousin thing but I know you can't cut and paste but guess what you use it but I would I would write notes and I would write very brief kind of like you know reminders to myself on on it I use a typewriter every day I why'd you type today I tell you what I type today I typed up reactions to a movie that I saw yesterday so I would remember well why I saw this great movie that's gonna be coming out directed by Joe Wright and I'll be talking to Joe Wright in a couple a couple of weeks and so I I typed out my impressions and questions that I had about the movie and how we made it and what that would mean if we go into business together and you're gonna give it to him and you know I'll use it in order in your order to read Mike Mike Mike rad staff is here and they tell you I will drive them nuts with my typewriters at the office I have three or four they're all out there all margined to a certain thing for a certain type of piece of paper when you take if you're depressed or you know if you're happy no it's kind of like is this is this like an official letter or is this like a kooky thing or is this just a note and I travel with a typewriter wherever I go and I have one up to the house and I am now I'm trying to give away as many typewriters as I can because I don't when I croak I don't want my kids to throw the typewriter it's a lot of I have far too many machine typewriters typewriters are like there's a story about that guy who sells typewriters typewriters are like pianos they have to be played and if you have 19 pianos that means you have to play one piano a day yeah so but I find them to be the best and most clear way to communicate for the record I've said this before so forgive me if you've if you if you've heard it but no one throws away a typewritten letter I was actually it was at Nora Ephron's house and she had been on in a frame a thank you letter for a lovely lunch in Jamaica that was written by Ian Fleming he said the day when Jamaica of course nineteen you know fifty something who doesn't enjoy a fresh let's do it again and it in and I thought no one's gonna throw it there no one's gonna throw that so I like to fancy that anybody who uses a typewriter is creating a one-of-a-kind work of art that will last absolutely forever as long as you don't burn it you know and I hear you are a very promiscuous giver of typewriters to people I first of all I have a lot of great typewriters and I have a lot of really shitty time you'd be surprised at how often I pass off them and I will tell you this tell you this most of my typewriters are worth around fifty to sixty dollars but when I sign them [Laughter] they are worth as much as 50 or $60 it looks like we're out of time and I really can't think of a better note [Applause]
