Tom Hanks is writing now. And he has written a novel, Another Great Masterpiece of Cinema (Roca Editorial, translation by Librada Piñero), which follows on from an earlier collection of short stories, Unique Types: Some Stories (2017). And what will the two-time Oscar winner talk about? Well, from Hollywood, from the shooting and the dark times that the film industry suffers from. From the America where Hanks seems to feel lonelier by the day and therefore becomes a dream far from reality: a multi-ethnic United States capable of combining hard work and talent with promotions and decent ones reward salaries. The best thing that can be said about Hanks’ novel is that it is steeped in Hanks on all four pages and is smoothly written. And that’s what weighs on the book: Hanks didn’t write satire, but believes in his work and, as if he were a renowned director, reserved the final editing for himself.
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Throughout his career, Hanks has been dubbed the new-age James Stewart. Something cheesy and soft, albeit with moments of firmness when the moment calls for it. Personally, he’s a charming guy who’s come back from many things (including a bad contagion he and his wife, also actress Rita Wilson, caught after filming Elvis in Australia), with a tremendous ability to think about to laugh at yourself. But his spirit and his novel read like Norman Rockwell’s sketches of a blessed America: faded, reviled, darker, but pure and eternal at heart. In Another Great Cinema Masterpiece, which makes it difficult to delve into the subject due to its structure of Russian puppets, the country becomes another character, a nation born of the Democrats’ best dreams: with its ethnic mix, its commitment to gender equality, the reward for effort, the forgiveness of society’s stray children returning home good spendthrifts, and the triumph of quality films and acting actors (not just those with chiseled muscles). What is a beautiful place to live for Hanks will seem like a pipe dream for others.
Another great cinematic masterpiece begins with a journalist declaring that he is the author of the work, which begins by projecting phrases from Hanks’ mind into his words: “I don’t hate movies. Movies are too hard to make to justify hate, even when they’re flops.” Or: “Journalists, the idlers, always try to explain how movies are made as if there were some proprietary formula or process listed as a flight plan can be.” for a round trip to the moon […]. If they saw us cinema orphans doing our job, they would be bored like idiots and very disappointed.
Tom Hanks on the set of A Friend Extraordinary.
And from there he jumps to 1947, a boy’s happy childhood in an exemplary family from Lone Butte, California—extremely similar to the author’s hometown of Concord, both places with great Hispanic influence—whom he surprisingly visits with his uncle on his mother’s side, emotionally devastated as he witnessed and caused too much misfortune in World War II. Fast forward to 1971. This boy, now in his twenties and in the middle of the Vietnam War, returns to his childhood comics “Exploits of War” to draw a political satirical comic full of the pain of his kin and hell, starring Firefall, a flamethrower soldier who jumps from conflict to war, supporting US troops with no mercy for the enemy. And that work, The Legend of Firefall, will be the basis for the superhero film from Bill Johnson – a transcript by Steven Spielberg – a filmmaker so perfect he’s a writer and box-office hit without contradiction. Hanks continues to project his thoughts. “Making films means solving more problems than you create,” he says. “I make films because no other job satisfies my desire to capture an unspoken truth,” the director proclaims in a motivational talk ahead of shooting Knightshade: The Firefall Lathe in 2020. Other times, the author spends line after line on typewriters to describe (the actor collects them), which weighs on the emotional progression of the plot.
Of course there are villains in the novel, hateful protagonists. However, Another Great Cinema Masterpiece is written in the style of Forrest Gump: the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad; kind-hearted, wayward boys will do better, and kind, hard-working people will prosper. Good triumphs. Even if it’s only 53 days of filming of a Hollywood blockbuster where an imaginary star is fired two days into it. While promoting the novel, Hanks confessed to the BBC, “Not everyone is at their best on a day of shooting. I had a really hard time being a pro when my life fell apart and the job required me to be funny and charming, which I just didn’t feel like doing.” And on a CBS show, he revealed that some of the nonsense being told , such as wearing sunglasses to bring truth to a character the star embodies, stemmed from his own experience and made filming explode during these trying times.
The actor has been writing all his life, he has signed several screenplays, and this is the novel he started in 2018: “I wrote it between films and wherever I was: on the plane, at home, on vacation, in hotel rooms, during the…” weekends when I was resting while filming. Like a love song to his Hollywood, to his United States, to what Norman Rockwell would draw in 2023. Reality, insistent with his industry strikes, QAnon manipulation and systemic racism, is at odds with him.
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