Tom Hanks

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young.

Presenter0:02

Thank you for downloading this specially extended podcast of Tom Hank's Desert Island Discs for BBC Radio 4.

Presenter0:09

For rights reasons the music is shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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You'll find more than 2,000 editions of the programme to listen to and download at bbc.co.uk slash desert island discs.

Presenter0:38

My castaway this week is Tom Hanks. His work spans four decades of filmmaking, and his reputation both on set and in life marks him out from so many of your run-of-the-mill movie stars. The big box office returns, the multiple Oscars, the audience adulation. Yep, he's had it all. And yet, it seems he's managed to keep his head and his principles firmly intact. From Big to Philadelphia to Forrest Gump to Apollo 13 to Captain Phillips, and his most recent film, Hologram for the King, the golden thread that runs through each highly individual performance is his portrayal of a man grappling with the dark undercurrents of their emotional horizons. He learned the basic skills of acting as a child, not just as some stage school kid putting on a play, but coping with real life. By the age of ten, he'd already had a mother and two stepmothers and lived in ten different houses in five different cities. To survive, he says he was able to acclimatize himself to whatever social circumstances he was in, surviving by imitating the way he was supposed to be. He says of his work now, every time I take on a job, I lose sleep over the choices I make. I always wonder if I'm doing it right. I wonder if I'm fooling myself, if I'm coasting on some sort of prestige. The process of performing in a movie requires an awful lot of emotional investment, and that's the same no matter what. So welcome, Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks2:04

Sounds rather run-of-the-mill to me, but okay, all right, I'll take that.

Presenter2:06

But okay, all right.

Presenter2:08

Um, welcome to the show. You're aware, I think, that you're being cast away and you are one of very few of our castaways on Desert Island Discs who's actually had to really think about it, what what it might be like to be cast away.'Cause of course you made the movie.

Tom Hanks2:21

We did in fact wrestle with such things as these. We made Castaway Bob Zamekas and I talk, what would he miss the most? And outside of company, which he did not have, some sound other than the ocean and the air and the birds, yes, some man-made sound, some artistic presentation of something landing on his ear.

Presenter2:29

Uh

Presenter2:43

So it may be some degree of comfort then to know that you will have these eight disks with you today. What's been your basis for choosing the disks? What's been your premise?

Tom Hanks2:51

Part of it is the unspoken before and after emotional connection you have to each piece of music.

Presenter2:59

Oh, that is exactly what I want to hear from my guests.

Tom Hanks3:00

You remember where you were and what you were doing and what your place in life was every time you hear one of these pieces of music and you can see the people that you loved and the people have gone away as well as what you learned about yourself and your place in your life every time you hear these songs again. I must say every one of these songs is in my shuffle mode still on my iPod. When they come up by chance, I delight.

Presenter3:28

So we shall come to your musical choices in just a moment, but just that roll call of the you know, the two Oscars, the eight Emmys, the One BAFTA, the four Golden Globes, you're the youngest ever person to win a lifetime achievement at the American Film Institute.

Presenter3:40

I gave that quote at the beginning: the emotional investment. Being able to access that, you have to, I'm imagining, be sort of match fit.

Tom Hanks3:47

You know, it's funny because they are, there is an arc to the to the exercise. A movie is made in 12 weeks, more or less. And if you said yes three months prior, that means six months of your life is going to be spent trying to manifest these very specific emotional moments. The thing I've learned, I think, and I wish I didn't have to, is that you can't fake any of this stuff. As soon as you begin, you are 24 hours a day collecting little scratchings and ideas and notes of what might impact the moment when it comes. And some of that is your own life. Tell me about your first disc today then, Tom Hanks. What do we...

Presenter4:28

Gonna hear him why have you chosen it?

Tom Hanks4:29

All right, Dean Martin was the epitome of adult smoothness.

Tom Hanks4:35

Grown-ups in my life were divided into two very distinctive camps. The bigger camp was Frank Sinatra. The smaller camp was Dean Martin. And his television show in the United States was him in a tuxedo in a groovy apartment chatting with people over a piano and hearing relax a voo for the first time with Lean Reyno. There's a line in here that is the most unhip lyric I have ever heard in any song everywhere, which is, let's put on our sneakers and slacks and relax a boo. There's nothing more incongruous. Dean Martin doesn't talk about sneakers and slacks, but you could just see him there saying, hey, I don't care what the line is. Let's just lay it down and record the thing. Put on your sneakers and slacks and relax.

Speaker 35:25

Axe a boo.

Speaker 35:28

When you're too tense it's common sense to relax evo

Speaker 35:34

The more you earn, the less you learn to relax.

Speaker 15:40

We French you'll find are more inclined to relax

Speaker 35:47

Relax, relax, relax, relax every

Speaker 15:47

Relax, relax, relax, relax, eh?

Presenter5:52

That was Dean Martin and Lee Renault and Relaxe Vu. You were enjoying every single moment of that, Tom Hanks. It's highly uncommon for a man who has worked in movies as long and as successfully as you have to not have made a few enemies. Now I have trawled every single bit of archive article I can find, and nobody who's worked with you

Presenter6:11

Ever has a bad word to say about you. What are you hiding? There must be. Surely, I mean, there's something going on.

Speaker 16:16

Yeah.

Tom Hanks6:16

Surely, I mean

Tom Hanks6:18

Oh, you got to dig a little deeper.

Presenter6:20

Yeah, I'm

Tom Hanks6:20

I'm I'm disappointed in the BBC that they weren't able to come up with so much.

Presenter6:23

No, I mean it though, the nice guy thing. Do you hate the nice guy thing at any time?

Tom Hanks6:26

No, no, I will tell you this. I was very lucky because the first job I had as a professional actor was in the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. And I learned a very important lesson, and it was drilled into me by the other professionals in the company, that you had to show up on time, you had to know what you were going to say, and even if you did not like the people personally that you were working with, you had to respect their process. Because if anybody becomes a squeaky wheel, that means the show doesn't go on. And guess what? They could be fired. Anybody can be replaced. So I have always been able to come on to a set, I think, and give everybody their proper due.

Presenter7:09

Tell me about the man that you mentioned in your first Oscar acceptance speech. That was in 1993 for Philadelphia, of course. He was Raleigh Farm.

Tom Hanks7:17

Raleigh Farnsworth. He passed away not too long ago. He was my drama teacher, and I went to school for a full year before I even knew you could study something called drama. I didn't know that he was gay at the time. I just thought he was well-dressed. But there were plays that were specifically written for high school students, and they were horrible. They were hack pieces of nonsense.

Presenter7:17

I'll be fine.

Tom Hanks7:40

He made us read one of them. And I remember saying to him, This reads like something that is aimed at kids, like the Mickey Mouse Club is aimed at kids. And he said, You're absolutely right. And to have that kind of responsibility thrust upon us when you're only a junior in high school, 15, 16 years old, it raised the level of what we were working on.

Presenter8:01

Did he keep up with you and did you keep up with him throughout your career?

Tom Hanks8:05

I did. We would exchange notes every now and again. And when I was nominated for Philadelphia, I didn't think I was going to win. But I asked his permission to mention his name and to give him credit for all the aspects of who he was, not just, you know, a man, but a teacher. And he said to me on the phone, well, I think that would just be delightful. And so I had a chance to give him some proper.

Presenter8:28

It was the following year when you won your second Oscar, of course. Only one other person has done that in movie history. That was Spencer Tracy in the nineteen thirties. And and you said, and of course it was for Forrest Gump, you said of the movie's director, Bob Zumekis, you said he made a very special movie. He cracked some kind of code. What do you mean by that?

Tom Hanks8:47

Well, I never knew it, but Bob was making a movie about Vietnam America. I didn't know that. He was making a movie about how wondrous it was that despite one of the most tumultuous decades of our lives, with one of the great nadirs of our nation's history, our involvement in Vietnam, how that scarred us in ways that I didn't quite understand. And the fact that Forrest and Lieutenant Dan survived when Bubba did not, that was very, very palpable for him. And the survivor's sense, the fact that towards the end of the movie, Forrest is alive, Lieutenant Dan is alive, but all these other people have gone. And the idea that life goes on and so therefore it is forever hopeful, he landed, I think, in an unspoken dilemma that an awful lot of people were going through.

Presenter9:44

It is a fascinating idea that you would say that I you know, I didn't know what he was up to. And there you are starring in the movie. It it makes me think also of Paul Greengrass directing you in Captain Phillips, whereby he didn't always let you in on the secret. For example, when the Somali pirates came in,

Tom Hanks9:58

Okay, for example.

Presenter10:01

To your ship you had actually never met those actors before.

Tom Hanks10:04

No, he kept us separate and we could see the skinny African American fellows, you know, on the periphery of the crew. But we never had a moment where we had dinner at the beginning or a party that started. And it was a specific kind of like trick of his journalistic background.

Presenter10:20

Secure.

Presenter10:21

But that idea of trusting a director enough, I'm just the tool of the director. You've put in all the work you've put in. How comfortable do you feel being that person who doesn't necessarily always see the full pressure?

Tom Hanks10:26

You've got

Tom Hanks10:32

All right. It's funny that you should say that because our primary responsibility as actors is to behave properly.

Tom Hanks10:40

And it is very easy to behave that you are frightened when scary guys are coming in screaming at you and pointing AK-47 in your face. If so much of making movies is having the proper logical procedure and then displaying the proper human behavior at the same time, anything you can do in order to make that genuine is to be treasured.

Presenter11:03

Time for our second piece of music, Tom Hanks. Tell me about this.

Tom Hanks11:06

All right, this is one of those time and place moments. I don't remember the first blush of Ellness. I was too young. But by the time you get to 60, 61, 62, and all of your stepsisters are singing along to To Know Him is to Love Him, or It's My Party. You don't know it, but you're searching for that music that is going to be yours and yours alone. This is not one of their great hits. But to me, this was the birth of the Beatles.

Presenter11:37

Here's a place.

Speaker 311:39

Uh

Presenter11:39

Yeah.

Speaker 311:40

Uh Where I can go

Presenter11:42

Yeah.

Speaker 311:43

When I feel lone

Speaker 311:47

When I feel blue

Speaker 311:50

And it's my mind.

Speaker 111:54

There's no time.

Speaker 111:57

When I'm alone

Speaker 112:00

I think of you.

Speaker 112:05

And thank you.

Tom Hanks12:07

There's that concept of there being a place that is yours and yours alone. That even if you're seven years old and you're sharing a bedroom with your brother and your father, it's like there is a place, and it is just for me. And when I'm there, I won't be alone.

Speaker 312:14

Do you share?

Speaker 112:14

Uh

Tom Hanks12:23

I won't be lonely. Instead, I'll feel accepted and I'll be content. And I remember thinking that when I heard the song.

Presenter12:31

And that thought surely more germane to you as a seven-year-old than to most seven-year-olds, because just explain the circumstances of uh you know, let's let's talk about when you were five and then what's the one that's a good idea.

Tom Hanks12:40

Yeah, yeah, my parents pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California. He got out of the Navy and he was working in a coffee shop in Berkeley, California, and there was a cute waitress and they met and they got married and they had four kids and it lasted about 11 years or so. And somewhere in the midst of that 11 years, they realized they had absolutely nothing in common and broke up. And by the way, they both agreed. They both wanted away from each other. But my mom could not afford to have four kids. So my younger brother had just been born. And so my dad took the three of us and we ended up, he married another lady who was also a waitress in a coffee shop that he was working in. And that lasted for a couple of years.

Presenter13:25

You are always, in anything that I've read, incredibly uh generous about the circumstances of your parents and indeed their remarriages. But for you, as you speak, you know, the seven-year-old thinking, listening to the Beatles and saying there is a place, you were caught in the the crossfire and the complexity of a really difficult situation.

Speaker 113:34

Thank you.

Tom Hanks13:35

I'm saying

Tom Hanks13:43

Complexity more than crossfire. I never came across anybody that was abusive or angry to the point that they took it out on us. We were confused because no one explained anything to us. No one said, hey, listen, you guys are great.

Tom Hanks13:59

You haven't done anything wrong. Give us a couple of moments and we'll figure out what we're going to do. No one ever said that to us.

Presenter14:06

And so the ten houses in five years this was to do with your father's employment, right?

Tom Hanks14:08

Yeah.

Tom Hanks14:11

Yeah, he was in the restaurant business, was a very, you know, it's a very vagabond. He would quit in a moment's notice. Or my dad would get a phone call at 10 o'clock at night from a buddy of his who needs desperately a head chef. And my dad would say, I'll be there at 8 a.m. And we would pack up a car and we would drive from Sacramento to my aunt's house in San Mateo, California. My dad would start the next day. It's kind of like being a professional dishwasher for a living, you know? You got to wash those dishes, so off you go.

Presenter14:42

And I quoted again stuff that I'd read, you saying very eloquently that you learned you know, all kids are survivors of their childhood. We all are. We lear we learn brilliant coping mechanisms that often serve us incredibly well early on. But this idea

Tom Hanks14:54

Early

Presenter14:56

That you just had to kind of whatever was expected of you, that's how you would act. Can you explain a little bit more?

Tom Hanks15:02

Well, I was never intimidated by a new atmosphere. I actually saw it as an adventure. I kind of liked the fact that, boy, this schoolhouse doesn't look like anything like my old schoolhouse looked. And we're living in an apartment now with no lawn. And we had been in a 10-bedroom house out in the country. Well, you know, there's advantages to all this. There was an adventure. But I was, you know, I didn't have a problem being the new guy in the classroom. I could make friends pretty quick, size up who was good, who was bad. And, you know, I must say nothing wrong with being oblivious to everything that's going on when you're a young man. That, you know, ignorance is bliss. How much did you see of your mother, Jen?

Presenter15:37

There's

Tom Hanks15:37

I didn't see much of her until after my dad was divorced and they had made some peace between themselves. I think they had understood that life was a little bit better not being married to each other. And at that point, I started seeing my mom on a regular sort of scheduled basis. And she lived in a small town in Northern California, a farm town, Red Bluffs. And we were living in Oakland, as urban a place as you could possibly be. And so in the summertimes and on school vacations, I get to go up and be part of this kind of like, let's ride our bikes down to the river and go swimming. The county fair is coming. Let's try to go there some night. So I ended up having this rather perfect exposure to small town life that I thought was just as cool as big town life.

Presenter16:24

Let's have some more music, Tom Hanks. Tell me about your third disc. What's this?

Tom Hanks16:27

Oh dear I had never heard Dusty Springfield sing doodling.

Tom Hanks16:32

Until about five years ago. And when I heard it, my head exploded. The rhythm of this, and Dusty Springfield, who in my mind was always the most elusive, beautiful, older woman, definitely a woman of great experience, that for some reason.

Tom Hanks16:53

Stirred my loins in ways that I didn't quite understand. So that was when I was young. And so to hear this song, Doodling.

Tom Hanks17:02

The sophistication of its construct blew me out of my head. And I wish I, it's one of those songs I wish I had heard it when I was 12.

Presenter17:14

Using the phone boo, making a few calls, doodling weird things, using the booth walls, yeah.

Presenter17:23

Got me a big date, waiting for my channel. I'm putting his fine on, so he could look down. I am done procrastinating, cause I'm

Presenter17:34

While I'm waiting, doodling away.

Speaker 317:38

Uh

Speaker 317:41

Send the dial in a beginning

Presenter17:45

That was Dusty Springfield and Doodling. The downsides then of your life, Tom Hanks, this early life, I mean you play them down and undoubtedly you were a coper. And I've interestingly read you say before that the upside was the amount of freedom. You had a huge amount of freedom to sort of fashion your own existence. I'm wondering if therein lies the beginnings of your creativity as a young boy.

Speaker 118:02

Uh

Tom Hanks18:02

Demo

Speaker 118:02

Uh

Tom Hanks18:08

Uh

Tom Hanks18:10

Yes, because when you're eight and you're living, you know, in a big housing complex somewhere and there's a pack of people all over the place that you learn how to navigate yourself.

Tom Hanks18:22

I ended up seeing examples of human behavior and the human condition that impacted me. Some of my best friends were a Mexican family, and they ate frijolis, and their names were Jose, and they spoke Spanish to their mom. I had one teacher for second, third, and fourth grade, Mrs. Castle. Mrs. Castle was a taskmaster, but she was one of those brilliant teachers that could engage this adult attention deficit disordered kind of like eight, nine, ten-year-old's brain.

Presenter18:58

What do you think misses Castle saw in you?

Tom Hanks19:00

I think she saw an energy in me and an interest in me that other kids did not have. I chewed up school like a delicious meal.

Presenter19:11

And when did you begin to love history? Because it's something throughout your career that you have often come back to the the Great World War Two epic Saving Private Rhine, of course, and then with Steven Spielberg, you've executive produced much drama that has been based within the the Second World War.

Tom Hanks19:13

Something

Presenter19:26

What was it? When was it? Was it school time? It was.

Tom Hanks19:30

But I will tell you, it happened very specifically, and I was at home. Believe it or not, my dad and the love of his life, which was his third wife and my stepmother, they had to put up with me living with them. I was a last kid home. They were trying to live groovy lives on a houseboat, and they weren't home for a lot. So I had the run of the place to myself. And once a week, the local channel aired the Thames television series, The World at War. And the only stuff I knew about the war was from movies. And this was nothing but talking heads, newsreel footage, and, and here's the biggie, the voice of Lawrence Olivier laying out in prose a deeper perspective of what it was to be alive during those years. It was entertainment that was fascinating, was a story I didn't know, and it was enlightening because my dad was in the war. So he was hip to all this stuff. So every now and again, I'd ask him, Dad, were you aware of the Anschluss? Did you know when the agreement at Munich happened? And we would talk a little bit about it. He wasn't actually aware of it. But to have the perspective of my dad living in the world of this black and white footage of Lawrence Olivier explaining the war to me, it really altered my sense of how I could entertain myself in my spare time. And that was reading history.

Presenter20:50

Let's have some more music, Tom Hanks. Tell me about your fourth. What are we gonna hear now?

Tom Hanks20:54

Okay, this is the big Magilla here. I could not sleep the night before I was going to go see Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. I was going to go see science and technology and a vision of the future writ large. I was going to go see cool spaceships and guys walking on the moon. And then the main title came up, which was playing over the conjunction of the moon and the earth and the sun.

Tom Hanks21:30

I had never heard this piece of music before, and I'd never seen that image, which was like a God's eye vision of our solar system. I'd never seen that. And the combination.

Tom Hanks21:40

I don't look, I don't know if I'm an artist more than a collaborative craftsman, but when this happened, I realized, without being able to verbalize it, that cinema was nothing more than a collection of color and sound.

Tom Hanks21:57

And

Tom Hanks21:58

The end result is an emotional wallop that you might not be able to understand. And this is the wow moment of my life going from a kid trying to figure out what's interesting in this life to young man yearning to be an artist. How's that?

Presenter23:22

That was Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra, the theme to the film 2001, A Space Odyssey, played there by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karihan. And you said, Tom Hanks, that that was really the absolute identifiable moment when you were a young man yearning to be an artist. Did you then make a plan? Did you think it is acting that's for you? No.

Tom Hanks23:43

No, but then I started asking myself a whole different set of questions.

Presenter23:47

And what were the

Tom Hanks23:47

Those questions were

Tom Hanks23:51

How do I find the vocabulary for what's rattling around inside my head?

Tom Hanks23:57

Not long after this, I started going to the the theater, the American Conservatory Theater, by myself.

Tom Hanks24:04

to see plays that I had no idea even existed.

Presenter24:07

And you say what was rattling around inside your head. Are you able to articulate those feelings, having had the childhood you'd had by thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, what was rattling around inside?

Tom Hanks24:16

Uh

Tom Hanks24:22

What have you done to me?

Presenter24:23

I can only apologize.

Tom Hanks24:25

No, that's our no, no, it's all right because uh

Tom Hanks24:29

I put far too much thought into this list.

Presenter24:31

Okay.

Tom Hanks24:32

Um what it was was it was the vocabulary of loneliness.

Presenter24:39

And that comes up all of the time in every movie I watch you in.

Presenter24:44

But it always seems to come down to a man's struggle with loneliness.

Tom Hanks24:48

When I was 20, I was cast in a play that was guest directed by Vincent Dowling, and I went up and worked at his theater for three years in Cleveland. He was the man who said to me, you know, if you want to, you can be an actor, but it's not an easy choice to make. But at the very first rehearsal, he was talking about Chekhov, and he said, all the great plays are about loneliness.

Tom Hanks25:11

And it was a lightning bolt. I mean, I said, that's why I'm here. That's why I went to the theaters by myself.

Presenter25:18

Knowing what we do, having talked to you today about your story thus far, you may have had many more reasons than most fifteen year old kids to understand the feeling of loneliness inside and out. Did you try to talk to anybody at the time about it? Or that just wasn't in the landscape?

Tom Hanks25:33

Or that just wasn't

Tom Hanks25:35

I didn't have the vocabulary, quite frankly. I didn't know how to bring it about. The thing to do was always outside yourself.

Presenter25:36

Yeah.

Tom Hanks25:44

You join something. You know, you you volunteer for something.

Presenter25:47

Is this how come a twenty one year old, a young, aspiring, smart, relatively ambitious actor, finds himself, you know, married and suddenly with two kids? That's quelling the loneliness.

Tom Hanks25:58

Got it.

Tom Hanks25:59

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think it's like, well, one of the things that you have to do is you have to pull your own weight, you got to live up to your expectations, and you got to do the right thing. But whether or not you have the tools at your disposal in order to carry through on it is something very different. I had kids very young. My son, Colin, was born when I was 21, and my daughter Elizabeth was born four and a half years later. And by then, I thought I was rolling along with the natural order of things, and I thought I was progressing towards, you know, in some ways, my badge, my certificate of achievement.

Presenter26:26

But I

Presenter26:33

How on earth were you surviving financially by the time that you had a wife and two young kids?

Tom Hanks26:37

Piecemeal, bits and pieces. I mean, I had just figured out New York City with a wife and a kid when an offer came to do television in Los Angeles. So I found myself there working for actually a pretty good living wage.

Presenter26:54

And so the marriage did end and you had the two young children and then nineteen eighty eight comes and it sounds to me like that's a pretty good year because it is the year that you married the woman who's now been your wife for 22 years and Rita Wilson. Two more kids. You were then also nominated for your first Oscar. That was for big.

Tom Hanks26:56

Yeah.

Tom Hanks27:06

28 years me and Rita Wilson.

Tom Hanks27:13

Yeah.

Presenter27:14

Are those things a coinciden that everything kind of came together at that moment? Is that just coincidence? Or were you starting to feel like you could walk in your own shoes and fit them?

Tom Hanks27:23

I would say that by that time I'm 27, 28, I've experienced enough bitter compromise that I overcame. You know, there was stuff that should have destroyed me and it did not. Look, I got to tell you, having a kid at 21 was the greatest thing that ever happened because I didn't smoke pot. You know, I didn't go into drugs. I was not a party boy. I didn't drink too much. I went to bed at 10 minutes after 10. I mean, I did some idiotic stuff, but the sensibility, the rules were in place. And I'm not a cheater. You know, I like to play by the rules. But later on, you're 27, you're 28. You've actually learned what to say yes to with some more judiciousness. And you end up meeting that other person, man, woman, older than you, younger than you, that's it, oh.

Tom Hanks28:10

She gets it. Oh, guess what? I don't think I'm ever going to be lonely anymore. You know that song? And will never be lonely anymore? That's what I felt when I met my wife.

Presenter28:21

That's a great story, but it's not the next channel. No, you have to have the next channel. You have to tell me what the fifth disk is.

Tom Hanks28:22

No, it's nothing next to it.

Tom Hanks28:25

All right, this is the soundtrack for America. I saw this movie when I was a little kid because our dad took us all and I think he fell asleep while we watched it. And it was just a big, overblown Hollywood cinerama adventure. The next time I really listened to this was when I was driving across the country with four other people across vast expanses of the empty American West and Midwest.

Tom Hanks28:50

And Bill, who I was in the car with, he slid this into his tape deck and he said, hey, let's listen to America for a little bit. And this piece of music came up and I've never forgot it and it never fails to stir my soul.

Presenter29:38

Hold on to your hats. That was the theme to the film How the West Was One, composed by Alfred Newman and Ken Darby, played there by the MGM Studio Orchestra, conducted by Alfred Newman. Making movies and being a communicator of stories is what you do. And when people go to watch your movies, whatever it is about,

Presenter29:56

Hopefully, if they themselves can identify with the characters and identify with the theme, then in some way.

Presenter30:02

It helps to see their story or part of their story told and represented. You yourself talked about the process of beginning to want to act.

Presenter30:11

Has the process of making it helped what was inside? Has it been in its way a kind of way for you to deal with the layers of your early experience?

Tom Hanks30:18

Well, you know, in some ways I view it as having gone into the ministry. You know, it is. I mean, unselfishly, it's a constant exercise and self-examination. But beyond that, Shakespeare said you got to hold the mirror up to nature. And I think that's what our job is. We have to constantly capture human nature, how people behave and what they do. And it's when I can see and when I can capture when I'm working with filmmakers or screenwriters that are willing to forego contrivance in order to get to something real. That's the golden goose. You know, working with, like for example, Nora Efron in Sleepless in Seattle, we went round and round on that because Nora and her sister Delia wrote the screenplay. And I kept saying, you're women, you're moms.

Tom Hanks31:05

You're not a man. You're not a husband. You're not a father. You don't get it. And they would look at me like, well, what would you do? And I said, here's what a man and a father would do in this circumstance.

Presenter31:18

And they were open to that. Can you give me an example in Sleepless Insecto? I mean, it was, I remember specifically the time when your little son's brushing his teeth and you're widowed and the whole thing's rather sweet, and then you just stuff the cloth into his face and you do it really harshly. Now, I don't necessarily think a woman would have written that.

Tom Hanks31:33

The real specific moment was when I was trying to go away with the woman that I had had dinner with. And my son was saying, I don't want you to go with her. I want you to go with the lady on the radio. And Nora and Delia had written a thing where I was flummoxed by this crisis. My son won't let me go off. And I said, you guys are out of your mind. You know what a dad would say eventually? He'd say, hey, kid, I'm going away for the week. And you know why? Because I want to get laid. I haven't been laid in so long. And that's why now when you're an older man, you'll understand what I'm saying to you right now. So I don't care what you're upset about. Hold your breath until you turn blue. I don't care because tomorrow night, I'm going to get laid. Now, we didn't put that in the movie. We put a version of it in the movie. And pardon my language. But when they saw that, I said, okay, we understand what you're going through. And we put a version in there.

Speaker 131:42

I want your

Presenter32:33

That's not unlike that. Somebody that you've worked often with, and most recently in Bridge of Spies, of course, is Steven Spielberg. And I've heard that for many years.

Tom Hanks32:38

Yeah.

Presenter32:41

You sort of held back on working with them because actually, firstly, you were friends. Is that true?

Tom Hanks32:45

Is that true? Yeah, we met socially because our wives are friends and we have kids all about the same age. I had made a movie for his company, so I felt relatively comfortable around him as a professional, but I never worked with him as my boss. And the first time we did, we had to have a conversation about that very thing. We did Saving Private Ryan, and I had read it and he had offered it to me, but he brought it up first. He said, listen, we're friends.

Tom Hanks33:14

But on the set, I have to be able to tell you whatever I have to tell you, and I can't be worried about hurting your feelings. And I said.

Tom Hanks33:22

Dude, you're my boss on this and my job is to provide the motivations that you need for your shots. And the air was cleared and we hadn't, I had no problem having him tell me how stupid I was for my idea or vice versa, coming to work and saying, hey, you know what we might be able to do instead of this? And he was willing to listen to me.

Presenter33:42

And so we know what you and Steven Spielberg do when you collaboratively get together, but what do you do when you hang out? What do you think?

Tom Hanks33:49

Oh, we talk about movies? Yeah. Talk about movies and, you know, and new stuff. The thing is, look, I can never discount the fact that this is the guy that made close encounters of the third kind. You know, it was a big movie for everybody and also for me. But he is one of the most curious human beings I've ever come across. He thinks in cinematic terms all the time, and he takes in visual information in ways I'm not quite even able to comprehend myself until I work with him and I say, don't worry, guys, Stephen's got this.

Presenter33:50

Yeah.

Presenter34:20

Let's have some more music, Tom Hanks. It's time for your sixth piece. What are we gonna hear?

Tom Hanks34:25

Boy, I tell ya, now, remember when music videos first came out? Oh, yes. This should not have looked as good as it did, Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime. And it had these imagery of like David Byrne in that big suit just kind of like

Presenter34:39

Growing sleeve

Tom Hanks34:39

Yeah, and he's just kind of like floating around. And I remember thinking that for the first time, oh, this is an independent representation of a song. It's not just the song with some images cut to it. This is like literally a visual interpretation of Weird Dave's concept of the point that he's trying to make. And also, we ripped this off in the movie Hologram for the King, so I had to go back and re-examine it again. But this was a big song when it came out.

Speaker 135:05

You may find yourself living in a shot on shop.

Speaker 135:09

And you may find yourself

Speaker 135:11

In another part of the world. And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house.

Speaker 135:22

With a beautiful way!

Speaker 135:25

And you may ask yourself, well

Speaker 135:28

How did I get here?

Presenter35:38

That was Talking Heads and Once in a Lifetime. You said during that, Tom Hanks, that it also was a kind of date song.

Tom Hanks35:43

Oh, it was big. When I was able to finally go out with Rita as a regular guy, you know, because it was complex. Our first date as I'll pick you up, we'll have dinner, and then we'll go to the movies. It was the Talkie Heads concert film. We held hands. And, okay, this is how Goofy Life works. The director of that film was Jonathan Demi.

Tom Hanks36:08

who ended up directing Philadelphia. And the producer of that film was Gary Goetzman, who is now my partner at Playtone. So without knowing that, that was the Triple Crown, all rolled up in the same evening at the La Brea Theater.

Presenter36:22

Now, when you say it was complex, was it complex because of the level of your fame by that time? You mean you were completely.

Tom Hanks36:26

No, no, it was a level of my place in life. We had met and we really liked each other, but we had to put everything kibosh on it because socially I had to just get through an awful lot of stuff. One of it was I had to realize that just like my dad, I was a divorce guy now with kids. And that, you know, that took some analysis in order to get through.

Presenter36:50

The illusion of theme and the illusion of reading lots of papers.

Tom Hanks36:54

As opposed to the reality of fame?

Tom Hanks36:57

Would I Talk me about. Oh, you mean the way you think it's going to be and supposed to the way it actually turns out? Yeah.

Presenter36:58

Yes, what I

Presenter37:04

Yeah, actually, let's talk about that instead. That's much better than the question I was going to ask. Tell me about the illusion of pain.

Tom Hanks37:08

You know, I heard Bill Murray say a long time ago that there's no training program for it. And it's true. You learn as you go. And the only way you really learn is by getting your ass kicked, if I can say that. When you think that things are going to be a certain way and instead there's more pressure on you than you think you're going to be, or you just think that, well, who cares? I can say anything I want to. And guess what? You shoot your mouth off in a couple of ways and you're just saying something that's the truth. But because you are quote unquote famous, you are viewed upon as being an authority on something. I'm not an authority on anything outside of the best root beers or typewriters. I can tell you about typewriters. So you have to understand that there is a cachet, there is a gravitas that is in fact forced upon you, even if just because you were awfully good in that mermaid movie.

Presenter37:58

I gather you collect typewriters. I'm not going to ask you, but I do want to ask you, you know, you have said actors with opinions on politics are a dime a dozen. And yet, of course, people ask you your opinions on politics if you are somebody who's been.

Tom Hanks38:03

But I do want to

Speaker 138:10

Yeah.

Tom Hanks38:10

Some politics

Presenter38:12

Uh you describe yourself as an environmentalist. Is that fair? I mean, you know, I'm environmentally aware.

Tom Hanks38:16

I'm an Earth Day American, yeah. So, you know, I started recycling long before anybody. I had to drive an electric car long before people drove electric cars. Yeah.

Presenter38:18

Yeah, so

Presenter38:21

Blind people

Presenter38:25

You contribute to the Democratic Party, you have done in the past. I have, yeah. Can I ask you what you make of the the state of American politics right now?

Tom Hanks38:32

Yeah, every four years in America, it's built into our DNA and our calendar that the circus comes to town. The circus has been in town.

Presenter38:40

It's quite a show this year.

Tom Hanks38:41

Oh man, there's a lot of bears. There's a lot of bear acts. There's a lion tamer. There's a beautiful lady up on a trapeze. There's a bunch of clowns jumping in and out of cars. Who's going to win? Let me test my powers of clairvoyance. I will say this. Right now, there is a lot of credence and credibility is being given over to the mob.

Tom Hanks39:04

And I will tell you, by fact, the mob is really only about 28% of the people.

Tom Hanks39:09

And 28% of the people in America don't get to establish the rules. They get to yell, they get to complain, they get to demonstrate, they get to do all those things, but they don't get to rule. Somebody beyond the mob is going to be the person who's going to be elected President of the United States. That's as far as my powers of ESP go.

Presenter39:28

Let's have some more music, Tom. Tell me about this. It is your seventh.

Tom Hanks39:29

Sure.

Tom Hanks39:31

Oh, okay.

Tom Hanks39:32

There is something about

Tom Hanks39:35

The anger and joy that is inside this song. I have since met LL Cooljay. He is one of the most delightful, happy, smiling people you will ever come across. But in this video, he had that boxing microphone down and he was screaming into it. But what he was screaming into it is, I'm going to blow you away. I'm not just going to knock you out. I'm going to impress you in ways that you can't even begin to fathom right now. But Mama said knock you out means I'm going to figure out how to do the right thing regardless of the confines that you place on me.

Speaker 140:14

Come on, man.

Speaker 140:15

Uh

Tom Hanks40:15

And with the local DBC News, Ellen Cooje with a 200 comeback, Mora Solomon.

Tom Hanks40:22

But to mine don't call it a comeback

Tom Hanks40:25

Bands are rocking my f ⁇.

Tom Hanks40:33

Mixed all day.

Tom Hanks40:35

Tower competition, I'm dying wreckage shot. When I drop these lyrics, that'll make you

Tom Hanks40:43

Yeah, stamp, do it.

Presenter40:47

Mama said knock you out. That was L L Cool G.

Tom Hanks40:49

I love your BBC tones. Mama said that was Mama Said Knock You Out.

Presenter40:51

Marla said

Presenter40:54

And that was me trying to be cool, Tom Hanks. That's about as good as I get at it. Anyway, you said that he's in pretty good shape. I cannot believe meeting you today that are you sixty this year?

Tom Hanks40:55

Tom Hacks.

Tom Hanks41:02

I am. I'll be sixty in July.

Presenter41:04

You are in very good shape.

Tom Hanks41:05

I had type 2 diabetes, and I was finding that out was like, oh, my doctor even said, well, congratulations, Tom. You've done it. I said, what? What have I done? You have achieved the status of a type 2 diabetic. And what I have been told, I'm and very blessed, is if I can hit a certain weight, I will not have type 2 diabetes. So that's what I'm working towards. And now 60, both of us, we're empty nesters. Hey, man, the kids are gone. And when that happens, you're 24 again, man. Nothing is expected of us is to keep ourselves entertained. So 60 means nothing to me.

Presenter41:39

And how do you keep yourself entertained?

Tom Hanks41:42

Uh well, I I I

Presenter41:44

You work, right? That you work.

Tom Hanks41:46

No. Like I'm I'm in the middle of a year off right now. I'm

Presenter41:49

You've got four movies out in the world. Well, that's one of the reasons I've taken a year off. And one of them you're the producer of. So you're not. Yeah, you're not.

Tom Hanks41:50

Well what's one of the reasons I've taken a year off?

Tom Hanks41:54

Do you not?

Tom Hanks41:56

I remain completely engaged in the things that fascinated me. This is funny. So, because I went to a neurologist and said, Anything wrong with my brain? And he looked at it. You never said, I said, No. Well, I have good news and a bad news. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your brain. So, any problems you're having are your own making. So, I said, Hey, doctor, you with the diplomas on the wall, is there anything I can do that can give me a slight edge of not becoming senile? And he said something so profound that I've since told everybody. He said, Never retire.

Tom Hanks42:30

Do less, don't work at the same pace, but never give up that pursuit of the spark that has always fascinated you. So I'm always reading and trying to get involved and being open to other people's inspiration coming from corners that I have no reason to expect that they'd come from.

Presenter42:48

You know that I'm going to cast you away to this island where you will be all alone. And I, yes.

Tom Hanks42:53

But

Presenter42:54

Um will you try and escape?

Tom Hanks42:57

Uh

Tom Hanks42:58

after a certain period of time. I'm going to langer.

Tom Hanks43:03

And I'm going to enjoy it and I'm going to listen to nothing but these songs, the sea and the sea gulls and the wind blowing through the trees. I'm going to do that until one day I wake up in the morning and say, all right, back to work. Come on.

Presenter43:16

Because it's the loneliness thing. I'm thinking about the loneliness thing.

Tom Hanks43:17

Yeah.

Tom Hanks43:18

Yeah. It breaks you. You've got to have contact with other people. I've learned that in spades, but I've also figured out, you know what's really good for the soul? Getting out there and forcing yourself to be all alone. Almost like, I don't know, some sort of meditative procedure. Stuff bubble up without you being prepared for it. There's a huge difference between loneliness and solitude.

Tom Hanks43:44

Loneliness is to be avoided. Solitude is to be sought. And I seek out solitude for the right amount of time, right when I think I'm making the biggest fool of myself and I'm much too big for my britches.

Presenter43:56

Let's have your final piece of music, Tom Hanks. Tell me about this. What are we gonna hear?

Tom Hanks43:58

Tell me about

Tom Hanks44:00

Okay.

Tom Hanks44:01

Layla by Derek and the Dominoes

Tom Hanks44:04

If I was to have a BBC knife held at my throat and said, you must name one piece of music as being the most beautiful recording ever made, what is it?

Tom Hanks44:17

This would be the choice that I would come to.

Tom Hanks44:21

What you doing, you get hard bitch?

Tom Hanks44:25

But it's waiting by your side.

Tom Hanks44:30

One much too long.

Tom Hanks44:33

It's just your foolish drive.

Speaker 344:48

Oh, Jim.

Tom Hanks44:48

Yeah.

Speaker 344:49

Uh

Tom Hanks44:49

Uh

Speaker 344:49

Uh

Presenter44:52

That was Derek and the Dominoes and Leila. At Tom Hanks, I give everybody some books to take with them to this island. You get the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible. Oh, good. I'll take those. You get to take another book with you. What what book will you take?

Tom Hanks45:05

I will take a book called A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester that is about the Dark Ages, back at a time when no one in humankind traveled more than a few miles from the hut that they were born in, and the incredible transition of not only just the technological level of life in the Dark Ages, but the intellectual boundaries that were completely surpassed during that time.

Presenter45:30

We shall give you that. And everybody is allowed to a luxury, something that makes life alone on this castaway island just a little bit more bearable. What's your working?

Tom Hanks45:39

A working manual typewriter.

Tom Hanks45:42

And paper. You know, a sheaf of paper in there as well. Because with that, you can go anywhere and you'll always have something to do with a typewriter.

Presenter45:46

Certainly.

Presenter45:51

I know you know typewriters. Is there any particular model you want?

Tom Hanks45:54

Let's take a Hermes 3000, made in Switzerland, indestructible. If manual typewriters ever evolved to the absolute top, could never be improved, the state of the art, it was the Hermes 3000.

Presenter46:08

It's yours. Thank you. And which one of these eight discs that you've chosen today, which one would you save from the waves if they threatened to be washed away?

Tom Hanks46:08

Thank you.

Tom Hanks46:16

I would have to say Disc 4 2001 of Space Odyssey. At the beginning of the day, you'd hear it and you'd think, I think things are going to be all right. And at the end of the day, you'd play it as the moon is coming up over the horizon. And I think you would think, I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Presenter46:32

Tom Hanks, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Tom Hanks46:37

I wish I could stay here for ever, but I must get back to work.

Presenter47:21

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website, bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.