"RE-RELEASE: Tom Hanks"
The SmartList podcast hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett interview Tom Hanks in a wide-ranging conversation covering his career from early sitcom work through iconic dramatic films. They discuss his passion for WWII history, the craft of acting, directing, and the changing entertainment landscape. The episode is notable for its casual, humorous tone punctuated by genuinely insightful reflections from Hanks on storytelling and the industry.
Summary
The episode opens with the three hosts — Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett — doing their usual banter, this time noting that Sean has been nominated for a podcast hosting award, which the others mock affectionately. They introduce Tom Hanks with an elaborate fictional backstory involving dog racing, hi-li, and attempts to mend the San Andreas Fault, before listing his actual accolades: multiple Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, a Tony nomination, AFI Lifetime Achievement, BAFTA honors, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, Kennedy Center honors, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Hanks joins from a small room in his 'vast compound' and the conversation quickly turns to literature, specifically the Bernie Gunther detective series by Philip Kerr, which both Hanks and Will Arnett have been reading. Hanks praises the series for its historically accurate depiction of pre- and post-WWII Germany.
A central theme of the interview is Hanks' deep fascination with World War II. He explains that as a child, every adult caregiver in his life referenced 'the war' as a defining dividing line in their lives. He describes being profoundly moved at age 18 by a dry-cleaning deliveryman at his hotel job who turned out to be an 82nd Airborne paratrooper who jumped into Normandy on D-Day and still returned annually to visit the graves of fallen comrades. Will Arnett shares a similar story about his grandfather who planned RAF bombing sorties and witnessed a fellow soldier walk into a propeller blade — and simply moved on.
On making Saving Private Ryan, Hanks describes the intense physical and psychological experience of filming the Omaha Beach sequences in County Wexford, Ireland, with 500 real Irish Army members, air mortars, squibs, and amputee stunt performers. He recounts being wet, cold, seeing a man catch fire and another blown 40 feet into the air, describing it as 'odd fake and yet at the same time terror.'
Hanks discusses his early career trajectory — starting in Shakespeare at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Lakewood, Ohio, making less than $10,000 a year while married with a child, and then landing Bosom Buddies with Peter Scolari, which paid him in two weeks what he'd made in a year. He describes the formative experience of being yelled at by director Dan Sullivan during a hungover rehearsal, a lesson that stayed with him: 'Show up on time, know your lines, and have an idea in your pocket.'
On his transition from comedy to drama, Hanks says he simply got older, and eventually told his CAA agent Richard Lovett that he wanted to 'play grownups — people who've been through bitter compromise.' He credits Gary Marshall's Nothing in Common, David Seltzer's Punchline, and then Big as turning points.
Hanks also discusses playing Falstaff two years prior with the Shakespeare Center Los Angeles at the VA Center, where a medical emergency forced a 30-minute hold mid-show. He improvised in Shakespearean language to keep the audience from leaving — a moment the hosts found hilarious and impressive.
On directing, Hanks says he believes all actors should direct and all directors should act, to appreciate how hard each job is. He directed two feature films (That Thing You Do being his first, which he calls his most personally joyful filmmaking experience) and several miniseries episodes. He says true directors are 'born into it' in a way he doesn't feel he is.
On the streaming vs. theatrical debate, Hanks says the pressure to make a great story remains absolute regardless of platform, and that audiences don't care where they see something — only the business side cares. He reflects on the industry's evolution since VHS players cost $4,000 and notes that sitting home watching TV 'is not that bad.'
The conversation closes with the hosts expressing admiration for Hanks' continued prolificacy and authenticity, noting his new Apple TV+ film Finch (starring him, a dog, and a robot, set in a post-apocalyptic world) drops November 5th. Hanks jokes that if Marvel ever calls, he'd likely play 'the Secretary of Defense — a guy who says please help us, Iron Man.'
Key Insights
- Hanks traces his WWII fascination to childhood, where every adult caregiver spoke of 'the war' as a defining dividing line — before, during, and after — making it feel like the Black Plague walking among them.
- Hanks describes being emotionally impacted at age 18 by a hotel dry-cleaning deliveryman who was an 82nd Airborne D-Day paratrooper, who still returned to Normandy annually to visit the graves of fallen comrades.
- During the Saving Private Ryan beach shoot in Ireland, Hanks says he was given no warning about specific special effects placements after flags were removed, resulting in genuine disorientation and panic amid explosions, fires, and amputee stunt performers.
- Hanks credits director Dan Sullivan's furious dressing-down of hungover professional actors at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival as the most formative professional lesson of his life: 'Show up on time, know your lines, and have an idea in your pocket.'
- Hanks argues that the era of his early comedies was defined by the false belief that any setting — ski slope, school bus, bachelor party — automatically constituted a comedy, and he describes making 'imitations of other people's funny movies.'
- Hanks told his CAA agent at CAA in his mid-30s that he wanted to 'play grownups — people who've been through bitter compromise,' which he identifies as the conscious pivot away from broad comedy.
- Hanks says that directing requires 'fidelity, patience, and an ability to communicate' that he doesn't believe he instinctively possesses, and argues that true directors are born into it rather than trained into it.
- Hanks argues that from a storytelling perspective, present-day reality is hard to dramatize because 'there is no shame left anymore' and 'truth seems to be a malleable, viscous' substance — which is part of why WWII stories retain their moral clarity.
- Hanks contends that in the streaming vs. theatrical debate, audiences fundamentally do not care where they watch something — only the business, marketing, and studio infrastructure cares — and that the pressure to make a great story remains absolute regardless of platform.
- Hanks describes his most personally joyful filmmaking experience as making That Thing You Do, which he cast with friends, set in 1964, and which marked the founding of his production company Playtone with Gary Goetzman.
- Hanks notes that Marvel has never called him, and speculates that if they ever did, he'd likely be cast as 'the Secretary of Defense — the guy who comes in and says please help us, Iron Man' rather than a superhero.
- Sean Hayes reveals that after doing Promises, Promises on Broadway for a year, he told Hanks he wasn't sure he had 'the fire in the belly' to sustain eight performances a week — an observation Hanks connects to a similar quote he attributes to Laurence Olivier about performing at the National Theatre.
Topics
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