The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece

by Tom Hanks

Genres: Literary Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

From the legendary actor and best-selling author: a novel about the making of a star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film...and the humble comic books that inspired it. Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, while also capturing the changes in America and American culture since World War II.

"Wild, ambitious and exceptionally enjoyable." —Matt Haig, best-selling author The Midnight Library, The Humans and Reasons to Stay Alive

Part One of this story takes place in 1947. A troubled soldier, returning from the war, meets his talented five-year-old nephew, leaves an indelible impression, and then disappears for twenty-three years.

Cut to 1970: The nephew, now drawing underground comic books in Oakland, California, reconnects with his uncle and, remembering the comic book he saw when he was five, draws a new version with his uncle as a World War II fighting hero. 

Cut to the present day: A commercially successful director discovers the 1970 comic book and decides to turn it into a contemporary superhero movie.

Cue the cast: We meet the film’s extremely difficult male star, his wonderful leading lady, the eccentric writer/director, the producer, the gofer production assistant, and everyone else on both sides of the camera.

Bonus material: Interspersed throughout are three comic books that are featured in the story—all created by Tom Hanks himself—including the comic book that becomes the official tie-in to this novel’s "major motion picture masterpiece."

*Includes a downloadable PDF of the comics from the book and a QR code for access to the original screenplay of Knightshade: The Lathe of Firefall

Release date: May 9, 2023

Publisher: Knopf

Print pages: 448

Sample

One night on location, after another long, hard, yet average day of shooting, over YouGo FroYo, Bill told me, "Journalists—the lazy ones anyway—always try to explain how movies are made, as though there's a secret formula that we've patented, or procedures that are listed like a flight plan for a voyage to the moon and back. How did you come up with the girl in the brown polka-dot dress who could whistle so loud? When did you first imagine that last, indelible image of those blackbirds on the TV aerial, and where did you find trained blackbirds? Why, they ask, did this film succeed when this other film went flat? Why did you make Bonkers A-Go-Go instead of Moochie Spills the Beans? That's when I look at my watch and say, 'Hot damn! I'm late for that marketing meeting' and bolt the interview. Those people look at the Northern Lights as having been designed. If they saw how we movie-orphans do our job, they'd be bored silly and very disappointed."

 

I never got bored. Disappointment? While hanging around for the making of a motion picture? A fig! 

There is always a good conversation to be had on a movie set, around the Production Office, and during the Postproduction process because most of moviemaking is spent waiting. The question How'd you get started in this racket? prompts hours of very personal, improbable stories, each saga worth a book of its own.

When I said this to Al, the subject came up about writing a book to explain the making of movies through my time on the movie. I was going to bear witness to so much of the creativity, friction, surface tension, and balls-out fun on the project, what if I were to write about it all and, well, publish a book? Would her boss be enraged by that idea? Chuck me off the set?

"Oh, Cowboy," she said. "Why do you think you are here?"