Five years after the success of 2017's best-selling "uncommon type" short story collection (234,000 copies sold in the UK alone) and in its second "conquest" into the world of literary fiction, American actor Tom Hanks surprised audiences with his assertion Adding the job of a "novelist" to his biography, in an interview with the "People" website to promote his novel scheduled to be published on May 9, 2023.
The novel bears the title "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece" and tells the story of a child influenced by his uncle, a soldier returning from World War II, who expressed this influence through many drawings that eventually found a director to turn it into a huge and exciting movie.
It was described by Sarah Shafi, in the British newspaper TheGuardian, as a "very ambitious story" and publishing director Ayla Ahmed said, "It is an epic about ordinary people, in an extraordinary world."
Hanks, 66, was inspired by the idea of "important lessons" that he learned from his personal experiences during his career in Hollywood, and told People that "each character in the novel plays a role I played in one of my films, discovers a philosophy or learns a lesson from what I learned and even repeats my foolishness as well, Whether it was a trick I did, or a mistake I got away with."
Only 4 movies Hanks considers good
Convinced that "human passion is not affected by the passage of time," Hanks' novel spans nearly 80 years, in a "thoughtful, touching, and very interesting" context - as Shafey says - and highlights the changes in American culture since World War II.
Part of it revolves around the year 1947, about a troubled soldier returning from the war, who left poignant impressions on his 5-year-old nephew, and was the cause of exploding his talent, so he composed a comic story about his uncle in 1970, when a director came and decided to turn the story into a movie Massive on a big budget, it features a "very tough" rising movie star and a "brilliant" lead actress, as well as an "eccentric" inspirational director and more outlandish crew members.
The novel is also interspersed with satirical writings of Hanks drawn by the famous cartoonist and comic artist Robert Sikorak.
"I'm still amazed at how most of the films are put together in this work, from just the blink of an idea, the whole experience is a miracle," Hanks says.
Although he believes that "making films is very hard work, the greatest job in the world, and the most confusing business," the star - winner of two Academy Awards for Best Actor for his roles in the films "Philadelphia" 1993, and "Forrest Gump") 1994 - who starred in Elvis last June - sarcastically admits, "I've made a lot of films, but I think only 4 of them are very good."
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Candid, bold and shocking opinions
Critic Stewart Heritage expresses his astonishment at Hanks saying, "A great actor who has made so many good films, and achieved success over decades, that any other actor on earth would be jealous of him." He sees only 4 of his films as the best of the rest, considering that This prompts him to take a deep dive "trying to get to that favorite group that Hanks is talking about".
He adds that Hanks told the Guardian newspaper that the 1998 movie "Saving Private Ryan" won 5 Oscars, in addition to 79 wins, and 75 other nominations.
And ranked 24 in the list of the 250 best films on the site "IMDb" (IMDb) "was, for Hanks, terrible, terrible, and wished he was doing something else."
Hanks also stunned everyone - in an interview with the "Bill Simmons Podcast" last year - when he was asked to rate his favorite films, and he excluded the movie "Forrest Gump", which gave him the Oscar, as "ineligible".
Also, he had previously announced his dissatisfaction with other works, such as the movie "The Man with One Red Shoe" 1985, one of the films that Hanks did not hide his contempt for in his statement to the press, where he said, "It is not a good movie, and it was not achieved." No revenue at all (made less than $9 million against a budget of $16 million)."
And so did the movie "The Bonfire of the Vanities" 1990 that failed badly, and two decades after its release, Hanks said of it "everyone was wrong, me in particular" (it made less than $ 16 million against a budget of 47 million).
My four favorite movies
What good movies Hanks means, who says his ratings are based on personal experience, and the lessons he learned while shooting, are unforgettable, might surprise you.
In his meeting with Bill Simmons, he chose a list that included the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, saying "because all I did all summer was play baseball."
And the movie "Cast Away" 2000, saying "because we had daring adventures when we were making this movie" and the movie "Cloud Atlas" 2012, saying "because it gave us hope and a dream, and nothing but a circle of love" and he said about him In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Cloud Atlas "completely changed my consciousness, and it's the only movie I've been in and I've seen more than twice, it's very cool."
Only one movie remains a mystery, and Hanks ranks it above all others, "a movie he didn't just write and direct, but also acted in, and it became one of the movies he regularly attends," according to Heritage, it's a movie "That's Something You Do"!
(That Thing You Do) 1996 which he discussed at length during his podcast last year and called it "the greatest work experience of his life."