The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece

by Tom Hanks

Making movies is complicated, maddening, highly technical at times, ephemeral and gossamer at others, slow as molasses on a Wednesday but with a gun-to-the-head deadline on a Friday.

“Franchises become cruel masters. I don’t want to work for a cruel master,”

The so-called Summer of Love had been vaporized by many, many social ills, primarily the war in Vietnam, a nation roughly the size of California on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Bob pondered the lives of such folks and, for a flicker of a moment, envied the regularity of their days, their routine, the expectations that, at the end of any day, could be judged as met.

but sometimes caution belonged in the wind.

“Jesus,” Bob said to himself, not meaning the Lord or any plan for his life.

“You wrote too many scenes, too many characters, too many pages, and not enough conflict.

(Why is one film a pleasant cruise yet others are cage-matches?)

If you had any friends—or, more precisely, the time for friendships—a phone chat could be nothing but pleasantries.

“Like they say in the Canadian navy, ‘There’s no life like it.’”

a stressful job done by vulnerable human beings—all cracked vessels, all fraught with insecurities, all in high-pressure careers of continuous, make-or-break moments.

“Making movies is about solving more problems than you cause.”

“The protectors of our freedom are unknown soldiers—the men and women who don’t get rich or famous or celebrated. It’s a sad comment on our modern times.”

Knitting and sanity go together.”

“They told men what was what when men controlled what was what.

She’s never felt the mortal, simple joy of drifting off to sleep, into the realm of the spirits where time has no measure and dreams carry her away.”

“In the Blur the great and the horrible will happen side by side.”

“Ride the river like a fallen leaf.”

“take a cutting of your own from this flag and keep it somewhere special. When we have all been wrapped from the Cardboard Carnival, finished our lives of artistic struggle and physical labor, and we are up in movie heaven, we’ll sew the pieces back together and remember all we went through in these days to come.”

No words were exchanged or needed. Caesar was dead. They had a republic to save.

As a grande dame of the theater once told me, ‘There is no substitution for familiarity with the text, so learn your goddamn lines.’

God gives you some sweetness in life, the devil gives you a sugartooth.

“Living life is being on a ship at sea. Course corrections are constant.”

“My dear heart,” he’d told her. “Do as the great ones do. Show up and tell the truth without concern

“Painting rivers,” Stella explained. “Want to know how to spend all your life savings and live hand to mouth? Riverscapes.

a parting that would last forever.

Wren, well, she doesn’t just look at you, she searches you.

“Once back, Bill makes the movie all over again. Prep is Diplomacy. The Shoot is War. Post is the Occupation.

curiosity fuels you and passion carries you along. Lose either one and you’re done.

a carnival made of cardboard.

when she says, “This won’t end well … for you.” Firefall comes back with “Let’s not talk till we’re done.” Women were going to swoon, and men were going to use that line to close the deal. After that, as Dace would have said, it’s all a Frenchman in a hotel room on the Côte d’Azur.