The writer on page is much like the actor on screen: an affable, easy hang. Don’t know that SPFX is short for “special effects” or that an EPK is an electronic press kit? Hanks helpfully footnotes the text with definitions, explainers and diversions into film history (including a memorable anecdote on the making of “Casablanca”). The book is riddled with filmmaking lingo and factoids. “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece” is by a film lover, for film lovers – a book for anyone who’s ever watched a DVD with the director commentary turned on.
No crewmember is too small to escape the notice of Hanks’ pen as it sketches out loving backstories for the writers, drivers, coffee-fetchers and problem solvers who keep the motion-picture machinery humming. Hanks is, little surprise, skilled at creating characters. Or Ynez Gonzalez-Cruz, a gig driver for an Uber-like company whose punctuality and problem-solving skills elevate her from chauffeur to collaborator.ĥ books not to miss: Tom Hanks pens a 'Motion Picture Masterpiece,' Andy Cohen's 'Daddy Diaries' Behind the sparkling white teeth, cut abs and designer apparel of mega-watt movie stars and billion-dollar blockbusters is a crew of persistent, patient professionals like Allicia “Al” Mac-Teer, whose no-nonsense competence promotes her from a hotel reception desk to a Hollywood producer’s chair.
The stars of Hanks' story aren’t, well, the stars. “For all the actors in the cast and every member of the crew,” Hanks dedicates the novel, which generously dispels of movie-star mystique in his account of the making of a Marvel-like superhero blockbuster that takes its inspiration from a Vietnam War-era indie comic drawn by an artist who, as an impressionable child, was imprinted by an encounter with his estranged WWII veteran uncle.
The two-time-Oscar-winning A-list actor whose career spans four decades and includes starring turns in blockbuster films as big and different from one another as “Saving Private Ryan” and “Toy Story” knows how the cinematic sausage is made.Īnd so the actor’s first novel, “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece” (Knopf, 448 pp., ★★★ out of four, out now), is accurately titled, as over the course of 400-plus pages Hanks charts the production of a film, from the inception of its source material to the development hell of planning the shoot and straight through the detail-oriented tedium of post-production. As the adage goes, “Write what you know.” And if there’s one thing Tom Hanks knows, it’s movies.
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