Happy Sad Confused - Tom Hanks

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Tom Hanks. Have you heard of him?! Yes, the legend that is Mr. Hanks joins Josh on his first trip to the podcast and boy, does he deliver. Enjoy an hour-long deep dive into one of the great screen acting careers in history. Come see Josh tape LIVE Happy Sad Confused conversations in New York City! September 29th with Mila Kunis! Tickets are available here! October 25th with Ralph Macchio! Tickets are available here! For all of your media headlines remember to subscribe to The Wakeup newsletter here! Don't forget to check out the Happy Sad Confused patreon here! We've got exclusive episodes of GAME NIGHT, video versions of the podcast, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, Sad, Confused begins now. Today on Happy, Say, Confused, an hour with Tom Hanks. Hey, guys, I'm Josh Horowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Yeah, this is one of those shows that doesn't need much preamble. It kind of sells itself. You're either in or you're out.

And if you're out, I don't know what's wrong with you. I present to you today, guys, a feast for the ears, a true treasure trove of Hollywood stories, of creativity and passion. Tom Hanks is the guest on Happy, Say I Confused today. He has been, and I'm sure I'm echoing something that any number of you, all of you perhaps, could say. He's been a huge part of my life the last 35 years, as much as anyone can be, who's not, you know, a family member. He has contributed so, so much to my love of film. Truly dozens of remarkable performances,

films that are part of the fabric of movie history. And it's not hyperbole. Yeah, sometimes I can get a little carried away. This is Tom Hanks. There's no getting carried away with a two-time Oscar winner, Tom Hanks, winner for his roles in Philadelphia, Boris Gump. and frankly probably could have won two or three other times at least if you really look,

dig into the filmography. This was everything I had hoped it would be. It's an hour-long plus chat with Tom Hanks. He came to play with stories with a great attitude and in full-on Tom Hanks. Some people were asking me after the people I told that I was going to talk to him, they asked me after the fact, how was he? I said, Tom Hanks is really good at being Tom Hanks. I don't know if it's a performance.

I don't think it is. I think he's just 100,000% Tom Hanks at all times, which isn't to say he's bright and sunny at all times. I'm sure he's not. But he has that spirit that is so familiar to us that shines through in so many interviews and so many performances. This was just like I had a grin in my face. the entire time. And you can watch that grin if you so choose. If you want to watch this

conversation, and I highly recommend it, check out our new YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Josh Horowitz, J-O-S-H-H-O-O-W-I-T-Z, YouTube.com slash Josh Horowitz. And you can watch this entire chat right now. If you had been, and perhaps you are, a Patreon member, you could have seen this already. We give you early access to everything on the Patreon. So that's patreon.com slash happy, say I confused, for all the early goodies, for all the discount codes, for all the extra special treats, the bits and the bobs, go over to Patreon. All that info is in the show notes. But anyway, back to Mr. Hanks.

And I won't go on too long because, as I said, this is a hour-long conversation. This is a lengthy one, and you're going to want to hear every little bit in morsel. Tom came on to support his latest collaboration with Robert Zemeckis, who of course is been a huge part of his career. Dating back to Forrest Gump, he has collaborated with him on the new rendition of Pinocchio, debuting on Disney Plus this Friday. Check it out. Anytime Mr. Zemeckis contributes to new work, I am there. Anytime Tom Hanks contributes a new work, I'm there, let alone when they collaborate, it's gold. So check out Pinocchio this Friday. As well as Elvis, if you haven't caught up on Elvis, which I believe is now available on demand in your homes.

It's had an amazing run in theaters, I would expect a bit of an awards run, too. It's been a really pleasant surprise, maybe not surprise, but I think it was a hopeful gambit for Wounded Brothers and Bazelerman, and certainly a star-making performance for Austin and, of course, Tom as Colonel Tom Parker. So we get into a little bit of Elvis, a lot about Pinocchio, but really mostly. guys, this is just an exploration of Tom's career, of the movies he's been passionate about, about his love of Stanley Kubrick, about the roles that he's been rumored for that perhaps he was or wasn't up for. We geek out about Star Trek and Star Wars. As I said, this was a big, big one. I was so excited going in, and man, Tom Hanks did not disappoint. He's not going to

disappoint you either. I'm going to leave it at that. Please enjoy this conversation with Tom Hanks. Here we is. Here we go. Very appropriate to Pinocchio. I have like, this is like having like Abraham Lincoln and the Hall of Presidents come to life.

This is like having Mount Rushmore start talking to me. Wow. It's Tom Hanks on my little podcast. Don't you mean either Chip or Dale, you know, and the guys inside the costumes there. You're both of them combined. Yeah.

Yeah, you got me. There you have it. What do you need to know? Well, you know great moments with mr lincoln let me let me blow by some of my now as as you know i'm authority i mean well i can speak with authority i'm not an authority but i can speak with authority you played the man all things disney because i played Walt disney and i learned an awful lot and great moments with mr lincoln which was put together

for the 1964 flushing meadows world's fair uh lit a bonfire i mean everybody loved it along with Hey, hey, hey, the G.E. Carousel of Progress. And at the last minute, literally at the last minute, it's a small world in which the, I'm going to say Richard Brothers. I mean, quick, staff, do I have the right name? The Sherman Brothers. The Sherman Brothers, the Sherman Brothers, Richard Sherman and his brother. They were essentially told like in a minute's notice that they were going to be writing the theme to a new attraction, sponsored by the Bank of America, by the way, called It's a Small World. as they were walking from the announcement in which Disney's sort of like impromptu said, and there will be a third attraction at the World's Fair. And it's going to be called, it's a small world. And we brought to you by my friends at Bank of America. And the Sherman Brothers looked at each other. They said, we are, we're writing that song.

And as they were walking from the meeting, is how are we going to write this song? I mean, what do we say? It's a small world. They said, well, you know, it is a small world after all. And there you go. And let's sing. One, two, three, Whitney, Sarah, it's... We don't have the rights, Tom.

We can't. We're going to get sued. That is a problem. That's right. We can do two notes. This is the gift. If you look at, if you go on, I'm just, give me a couple more Disney minutes here. Yeah, please, place, please.

Because I've, this is, I got... They've done a lot for you. You've done a lot for them. You might as well. If you take, if you parse out your voyage on, is a small world, you might notice that it has a slightly, let me, how do, I mean, it's since become sacrosanct. It's gorgeous. It's classic, everybody.

loves it. But it has a cobbled together feel to it. I mean, you can see the cables on the ground and not the most lifelike of characters. And some of them really only do one thing. You know, their head spins around or their eyebrows go up and down or something like that. And here's one little tidbit is the flotation devices, the trough and the boats that sail, that slowly go through. It's a small world. Same technology as it's Pirates of the Caribbean. You're in a boat that goes, you know, flows with water, have had to take into account the growing weight gain of your average American. So they're not as, I guess they have more flotation on them because quite frankly, people eat a lot of food more. So there you go.

This sums up the state of the world. Check it out next time you're there. This is the gift and the curse of talking to Tom Hanks is I can name any subject and you can pontificate beautifully for 10, 15. I can just let you go. I am a miserable dinner party. to guess. I literally, I punctuate all these stories with, am I talking too much? Should somebody else interrupt me here? What else would you like to know? I'm going to be your gentle guide on the story next hour. I'll walk you through the whole process. So look, there are 10,000 different conversations to be had with Tom Hanks. I'm trying to figure out like what to do, where to go. And I figured, look, as a big old nerd, since you are talking a little bit about

Pinocchio, your collaboration with Zemachus. Oh, I can tell you stuff about Pinocchio. It's fascinating. What I want to talk about is about your filmmaker collaborations because you've worked with the best of them. And let's let's start with this Thursday, Zemeckis. Okay. It's been a minute since you guys have collaborated. It actually shocked me how long it's been. Talk to me about, because here's what I think of when I think of Robert Zemeckis. I certainly think of the technical know-how and he gets a lot of justifiable praise for that.

But then when I really dig into his films, I do honestly think about emotion. And I think about how he can wreck me in Castaway, at the end of Back to the Future, at Forest Gump, what is the secret sauce over the years that you've noticed that that Bob Zemeckis delivers? What's a quintessential? Well, he's a man. He's a man possessed with a desire to do to do something that nobody else has done. Sometimes that's technicals, but oftentimes it's thematic. You know, what are we really examining here?

And it is constantly challenging. Let me tell you a story about Bob. Bob was, he grew up in the south side of Chicago in the most average. of lower middle class row houses there is actually at a time where you could actually go hunting out the backyard in south chicago so that's a long time ago the south side um and um he was he was doing things like he had a he had a job evidently i think making instructional films for the evan rude outboard motor company uh the little outboard motors you know for boats and he went in there, and he took some of the equipment, you know, some of the cameras and movie olas and

whatnot. And he ended up making like videos to Beatles songs with films. And so he was always playing around with making movies. And he was sitting in his, he was sitting in his basement rec room one day, watching the Johnny Carson show in the 60s with, and the guest was Jerry Lewis, believe it or not. And Johnny asked, hey, Jerry, what are you up to now? And he says, Well, I'm teaching, what he said, he's teaching a seminar on filmmaking at the USC film school. And Bob said, I was in there alone, and I heard Jerry Lewis say he was teaching a seminar at the USC film school. And I stood up and I yelled at the top of my lungs. There's such a thing as a film school.

And from then he was possessed. And the story of how he got into USC is actually quite legendary. And how he stayed at USC was really quite legendary because a long story. I'll leave Bob to tell you that. And this translates to a moment, the first time we worked together, which was on Forrest Gump and we were shooting the scenes, we're actually very shooting a specific scene where Forrest was playing ping pong and a guy comes in to say, in the in the hospital, in the veteran in the wounded, wounded hospital in Saigon. And some guy comes in in a uniform. This is a

private gun, but I said, yes, sir. He said, you have just been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. And I said something like, oh, and Bob, it was the last shot of the night. And we were trying to, Bob was like, looking, how do we do this? How do we do this? And I said, well, Bob, how about if I'm here playing ping pong? And the guy comes in and asked me the question, and I stopped playing ping paul. And that's how we do the scene. And he looked at me like I was insane. He was angry at me. His fist balled up and the veins on it.

So the tendon in his neck, you know, clenched. And he said, well, hell, anybody can do that. And from that, if you look at, go back and look at the movie now, we added a special effect in which there's a little tape square. The ping pong table is up, is flipped up and force is just hitting rockets back and forth. Digida, diga, diga, diga, diga, diga, diga, diga, diga, dig. And we had to come up with a way in order for me to, to set the ping pong paddle down with the ball on it, under it, and stand it attention.

And the ball was optical. It was a CGI ball. But so I had to palm a ping pong ball in my unused fist when it came around to do it. And that's the way Bob approaches, not just a technical version of a shot, but literally every moment of the dialogue. Working with Bob, you sit with everybody in the movie for about two weeks, and you discuss the movie. And it doesn't matter if you're in the scene or not, if you have an opinion of what works and what doesn't, because Bob just says, well, what do you think about that?

What do you think about what we're doing there? And everybody gets to put, uh, input something. And you end up getting something from the other people that are in the, in the film. Is that me? Sorry, I got to turn off my, my, uh, my ongoing government notifications. Oh, look at that. Oh, man. Anything we seem seems to, wait, I got to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to have to take this because it seems a prince in nairobi needs some help here i turn that off um and that's the way bob works and we have done that over and over over again i guess what this is our uh let me think what let's see i've got to hear this is uh this is your fourth go round okay this is our fourth go round and every time we've done it and i'm actually i'll be starting a fifth we don't have to talk about now

in the in the in the in the after the first of the year and they are all they have all been these deep throws of not just, you know, how do we make this movie, but also what is the story we're telling? What is the theme we're examining? And why? Why are we bothering with all of this? Now, you would think then what's the point of doing as commercial enterprise, tent pole classic as Pinocchio? And I said, Bob, said, you really wanted to say, Bob, I want to be a part of what you are going to do with when you wish upon a star. This is, this is, this is, this is marry one I thing with another iconic thing. Yeah, let's go to it. And I have, I have spent, let's see, Bob and I first worked together. What the hell year was that? 1993. 94 when it came out. So we made it. We shot it in

93. And I, he and I have got together about every six weeks or so and says, what are you got? What are you doing? What are you coming up with? And that's a lot of six week intervals in the last like 15 years between. Well, I'm okay. Have I, have I usurped reality here with six weeks sometimes it's six months but um yeah we we we we roll back into each other and we sit and we have lunch and we talk about everything under the sun life kids you know everything but we always come around and the you know the the more hilarious aspect of the biz you know where it is because i i can tell you about me and bob sat down with the with a bunch of mucky mucks at at at at i think it was before sony uh whoever we made some movie for it. I can't remember. And we were saying, we were trying to convince them to release the

DVD of the movie day and date with it. Anyway, so we're always playing around with that. But we also come around to what is going on or what has gone on that deserves the attention and the work and the effort of having a movie made about it. And when this one came around, I just said, Bob, what are you doing? And he said, it looks like I'm going to do the penult. And I just said, you got a Geppetto? And he said, you'd want to do Geppetto? And I said, Bob, to, you know, however long it would take for me to do Geppetto with you would be, it would be like being able to, to being traded to the 1927 New York Yankees and, and helping them make a pennant run, you know, and, you know, bat me right after Lou Gehrig or, you know, something like that because the the full frontal effort that he puts into the tiniest moment

even on you know between a digital cat and a digital puppet and whatever I'm bringing to it ends up being just this this magnificent workout and in in the in the guys of revisiting one of the the other thing I know about it is Pinocchio was a wickedly important motion picture in the whole Disney Uvra because it was the first feature film that used the multi-plane cell camera. So suddenly,

deep pans, deep focus became possible on a Walt Disney feature film. Prior to that, the only movie that had done it had been a short called the Old Mill, which is a cartoon with no dialogue, just sound and music. And so I wanted to be a big-ass part of that.

And knowing that, Pinocchio, excuse me, Geppetto, it appears throughout. If, if, if this was the story of Jean Valjean and Pinocchio is Jean Valjean, I get to play Javert. I get to constantly be, you know, be, be after him throughout. So there was just going to be some combination of a revisit to something that, you know, was going to have to be updated to some degree, because there's just a bunch of stuff in Pinocchio. You can't do no more. You can't do, you can't do societally. As well, whatever Bob was going to do, you know, with Monstro and Jiminy Cricket, who is Joseph Gordon Levitt and everybody else that's in the cast. So, yeah, when, the great thing about working

with people more than once is you get right to it. There's no small talk. There's no getting to know you. Everybody knows how each other's works. And so it's a very low maintenance kind of thing. And all you really do is, you know, mix it up as opposed to, well, why are we doing it that way? Right. Which is a question. to it. Yep. And Bob asks that question of me, you know, so what you want to do here? And I said, well, I was thinking to do that. Well, wow, why do it that way? Why don't, why do it just do it? Oh, so great. You mean, and then we go back and forth on that. Well, why are you doing it that way? And with no ego involved and, you know, and by the way, I've pulled a number of boners a couple

of times. I can tell the time Bob, you know, knocked on my trailer door and, you know, first thing in the morning, you came out, I need a, hey, can I have a word with you? I said, Okay. What didn't work? Well, everything you did yesterday did not work. So everything you did yesterday, let's not do again today. Very good, sir. All right, sir. Let me see what else I can come up with and how about this and this. So it ends up being a, you know, I have a number of filmmakers. I mean, like, I'm sad. I really only got to do three things with Nora, two films and the play and the play. And the luxury of being able to go back and work with somebody else.

you reach the level of what you did. And then you have to surpass that, you know. It's like the next year of university. You know, you're no longer doing that subject 101. You're now in. And graduate studies. Yeah, every movie afterwards becomes graduate studies. You mentioned Nora Ephron.

That was exactly where I wanted to go next as a born and bred New Yorker and Upper West Side. Her films are so important to me. This is my first controversial question of the podcast. What's a better film? Sleep is in Seattle or you've got mail. And you choose which of your children you love more. Oh, man.

You know, I'm going to call them twins, and one is not the evil version of the other. One doesn't have a goatee and wear sunglasses. They're both. The thing about both, okay, okay, if you go back and look at sleepless in Seattle, do you know that there's a reference to Jerry Seinfeld soup Nazi in it? I don't remember that. There is. There is a conversation between Rosie O'Donnell and,

and, uh, and, uh, Meg. And which is said, you know, there was a guy in New York who sells nothing but soup. Right. Right. That was, that was the soup Nazi. Um, and Nora always pay, you know, Nora has her finger on the pulse of, uh, what she, she always has this. She always says, and I, I never turned down a front row seat for human folly, uh, which is why she was one of the early contributors to the Huffington Post. Um, so she pays attention to everything. And this, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the conceit behind both films have an awful lot to do with mass media, this personal contact that comes by way of mass media, that we now all feel because there is that ongoing difference

between having 50,000 followers on your Instagram account, which can make some people feel fantastic. And other people have 15 million versions of them, you know, followers as well. When we did sleepless in Seattle, we read it I read it instantly and I said oh well we yeah let's yeah let's do this I think it's great and Nora said yes I think it's great too we have to hurry up and get the movie done before there's something surpasses email oh for you've got yeah yeah yeah and you've got no sorry you've got mail

and she was actually right I mean the idea of having to log on to AOL now is this quaint you know kind of like that specificity doesn't bother me it's somehow it you would think that that would not lend itself to having a longevity, a long life. But somehow it works. Well, it comes down to it's all an examination of human behavior and that need to connect. And, you know, the, what do you call it? The realities that people project upon people they just heard once on the radio or, you know, got an email from. Right. And so the answer between your question is, go get out. Get out. I'm not going to answer that stupid question. Josh Horowitz. Go out and wander around Midtown Manhattan. and, you know, go, go get a cup of soup.

I have to give the edge to any film with a rooftop killer subplot that has never realized. I've always wondered, like, was Steve Zon, the rooftop killer? I have my own theories. Good question. My next question is about big swings in terms of performances, because as much as people talk about you as kind of the every man,

and certainly you've done that in many a film and kind of been our avatar at times, I often think about the big swings, and you only have to look most recently, at Elvis, for instance, which is a big swing. When have you ever, when have you felt most out on the whim when you felt like this could really, I'm on the knife's edge. Well, you're, okay, this is, this is an interesting question because everybody just assumes

that a bunch of movies just show up and learn lines and hit the marks, you know, and I'm going to tell you, every one of these movies drives me to distraction and fills me with self-loathing at three o'clock in the morning. You get up in the movies, say, how in the world can I be authentic in this moment? because you know all those movies that you're cheerful and charming and witty and your hair looks great you know what happens while you're doing that your life is falling apart you got a lawsuit going on you found out you know you found out you have type two diabetes you have to literally go in and be completely contrary to the way real life actually is your kids are miserable

they all hate you somebody got lost your dog you know there's so many things that that are going wrong and what you have to do is still go in and somehow do what Shakespeare said and hold the mirror up to human nature. The bigger swings are are delicious meals to tell you the truth. Because there's you end up you end up being you go down this path that is so complex. And every time you add something onto it, you actually are taking something outside of yourself and putting it on to yourself as opposed to the other films where you have to dig down deep inside and be true to yourself. Now, which one is the easier gig? Right. Scary. You know? It's a dig. You know, it's kind of like talking to a stand-up comedian who has 40 minutes of brilliant material.

And you say, my God, that was hilarious. You looked like you were having fun up there. Fun. Fun. I took nine years to come up with this thing. I am, I am tortured out there on stage. Three divorces. I lost whatever. Yeah. For your benefit. Exactly. And I'm glad that you enjoyed my 40-minute set. It ends up being a, making movies is holding reality at bay for as long as you can. And sometimes the most you can do is hold reality at bay for the two and a half minutes that a scene takes. And the rest of it is just like one, just damn thing after another. But you take like, okay, you're going to look at Elvis. There's only one way to do Colonel Tom Parker. And that is to start with Colonel Tom Parker. I had never seen. Colonel Tom Parker. I'd never heard his voice. When Bads Lerman came to me and he said, Elvis, I said, okay, first of all, why are you here? Elvis in my office, this doesn't make sense. And he says, well, you know, there would never, without an, without, without, there certainly would have never been Elvis without a Colonel Tom Parker. But there never would have been a Colonel Tom Parker without Elvis. And so, boom, there is something right there that is fascinating. But then I saw what he looked like.

heard what he sound like. And again, I said, Baz, are you, are you in the right place? And he says, nope, this is, this is, this is, this is the layering that I want you to take a stab at. And so you just begin. And I'm, none of this is easy. All of it is some degree of torturous fun. But all you can do is put the backpack on and step out onto the trail and you see the mountains in the distance. And hopefully you have enough water and protein bars and blanket so you can make it through the nights and get on with it. The thing that you must also understand, Josh, you and your listeners, is that all of these are part of a grand alliance with an awful lot of collaborators. Nobody takes a big swing all by themselves. There is, I can tell you about Sean and Jason

and Brittany, who I spent 45 hours a week with, you know, as they were in layering. on all of the, all of who the colonel was. And, and so literally I could close my eyes and open, open them every 45 minutes and get and see a little bit more of the, of the colonel that day. And then there's also the people that you interact with. There's not a lot of difference between having to hit the marks and tell the truth under as much of the, the visuals that go along with Colonel Tom Parker than there is with being, you know, any of the other guys I've played.

You're, somehow you are creatively naked, no matter how much stuff you have onto. And you have to get down into a thing that people, everybody will recognize as not. That's human behavior, as I understand it. I love talking also to my favorite artists about the films that form them. And I've heard a lot of interviews with you over the years.

And one film has often come back around, a film that you've seen many times on the big screen. and I've seen it at every opportunity, too. You never worked with Stanley Kubrick, but you loved 2001, I know, and you love it to this day. Did you ever meet Stanley Kubrick? No, that was beyond my comprehension at the time. And I probably would have passed out, you know, if I, if I had been, you know, we never left England. But if I was, if I was, you know, in some restaurant in England and Stanley Kubrick was walking in when I was walking out,

I would have fallen down and blocked the revolving door. I would just would have, they'd have to revive me, you know. Not, that movie, you know, if I was a 13-year-old kid and saw some, you know, a architectural masterpiece, name, name an architectural masterpiece in the world. Sistine Chapel. Okay, the Sistine Chapel or the Taj Mahal or, you know, the great pagoda in Cambodia or something like that.

And you end up being transnational. fixed and altered forever because of it. Or if you read, you know, the greatest book on the planet Earth, you know, you read the, you know, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance when you're 12 years old or something and it just alters your, your consciousness. That's what 2001 Space Odyssey did for me. Because it was not, it was not told in standard, not told with the narrative. Right. You had to glean what these people were talking about. You know, nothing was explained to you, it was just shown to you. And that's really screwed me up because I beat the living daylights out of everybody in the course of some movie one after another. I was at,

why are we, why are we talking about it? Why do we just show it? Why do we have to explain what we're doing? Let's just show it. And, you know, that doesn't fly with an awful lot of people. And it doesn't work for an awful lot of stories. I've since gone back and watched Barry Lyndon. I just saw it like six weeks ago. Yeah. And I had never seen it in its entirety. And to watch it and know, you know, know of Mr. Kubrick's work as I do now, I think it is, it would, at the time it came out, they just weren't going to give it to him. They were not going to give him credit.

And they hated the fact that he cast Ryan O'Neill in it and it was slow. And does candlelight really look like that, you know, all this kind of stuff. Oh, he's having so much fun with those new Zeiss lenses. He forgot to make a movie. They're insane. It is a masterpiece because he shows it and then he tells you what was going on in the course of it. So talk about a guy who, you know, swings, you know, big swings and throws deep. You cannot look at a Stanley Kubrick movie and see it as some brand of equal as Fellini or Pasolini or, you know, Goddard or any of it.

It is a singular approach to cinematic art in which he, can you imagine if 2001 of space audits he had gone through research screenings, Stanley Kubrick, they're saying, how are the cards? What are the numbers? What are the, what are the high recommends? Every one of those, every one of his movies would have been flown out of the theater. Cut the prolog, talk, narration. Can you add a narration? Can we understand what's going on?

Can Hal narrate this entire thing? it would have a change of heart yeah can he turn and i'm not you know and i think there's a there's still a number of artists of filmmakers that do the same thing um i would challenge anybody to look at a movie that came out of i think it came out of greenland or iceland last year called lamb oh i saw lamb newie yeah okay all right yeah what did that movie do to you you know that then that and that goes part and parcel with everything else that that that you know comes down the pike i happen to know a number of people, Stephen Spielberg, for example, and a few other folks that knew Stanley Kubrick who said, you know, he watched everything. He saw everything. He watched TV in order to see

it was going. He looked at stuff that would be going on on commercials. So his faith in an unspoken narrative, a purely cinematic narrative is off the scale. And to see that when I'm 13 years old, 12 or 13 years old, and then to go right back the next Saturday and see it again. And periodically, just put it on in a good like every now and again it shows up on a 4k projection right nearby and i saw the big one that they put up on um on essentially iMac screens i saw that in in pittsburgh a couple of years ago when i was doing the mr rogers movie they should they showed it in 70 millimeter here like five years ago at the village east and i left the theater and the usher said oh spielberg was just in the previous show that's what i love about it they

You have to like pay your respects. You have to revisit and kind of just. And 70 is the way to see it because of the grain. The digital projection of it is quite frankly too clear. You can see all the logos. You can see all the seams. You can see everything. The diffusion in the grain of the 70 millimeter really just makes it soft.

It makes it look, I think, 10 times more fantastically around. I will say the biggest thing that really screwed me up about that movie is it paid attention to physics. Right. You know, they were in zero gram. And so that stewardess that walks upside down and the odd kind of like way they're walking around with their grip shoes. And of course, the major, you know, the wheel, the centrifugal drum of the command module of the Voyager Discovery. I remember reading interviews of the movie in which the critics said, we're talking about magic, excuse me, magnetic boots on the actors. And it's like, really?

I remember there was, I remember a teacher in my junior high school said, well, They probably have zero gravity chambers at NASA. And I actually remember thinking, oh, right, they have a room with a big switch on it. This is gravity on, gravity off. And they just switch it down to off and everything floats around. So the idea that a filmmaker would make a movie about, you know, an alien, you know, contact with Earth and people flying to the moon and whatnot and insist on their reality of zero gravity and paying attention to the true soundless.

physics of the void and stuff like that. Screwed me up, man, because I had to then look at like Star Trek, which was great. There's nothing more than, you know, a TV series about being in the Navy, you know, because somehow they were able to walk around on Starship Enterprise and eat food and drink, you know, take elevators and miraculously, every single planet had the right gravity. Yeah, oddly enough, and they all spoke English too. I thought that was pretty great. I want to run through some famous and maybe not so famous.

What ifs about? Okay. All right. Okay. Confirm or deny these. And we can run through these pretty quickly if you want. Spielberg, who of course you eventually worked with, he first wanted you to play Peter Pan and Hook. Sure or false? Do you remember? No, that's false. No, that's false. Okay. We of course know that you were going to work for many years on Dino with Scorsese. Yeah, yeah. Which is one of those films that will always live in my brain, at least. It sounds like he also explored having you play Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. News to me. Okay. This is good. This is valuable.

I would have jumped on that. You mentioned Star Trek. Star Trek and Star Wars have come up. Star Trek First Contact, did they ever approach you about playing James Cromwell's role, Zephrum Cochran? Not to my knowledge. Didn't get through the Hank's team? The guy who invented Warp's Warp Drive?

Oh, come on. I would have jumped on that. You got the bona fides. I would have been, you know, talk about Nerdtown. I mean, I just would, I would, I would, I would, you know, I would, I would, I would, I would, I would, I would, you know, I would, I would, I would, I would have come I would have brought in gift tribbles to everybody on the first meeting. Guys, here's some tribbles for you. Remember the trouble with tribles?

I would have done that. You're speaking my language. I had an old pal in junior high. That was at the time when on Channel 2 in Oakland, every night at 6 o'clock, they ran a cut up version of Star Trek, the original Captain Kirk, you know, William Shatner, who is a genius, by the way. I've since done some stuff with William Shatner. The man, genius.

Yeah, pushing 90, going into space. Yeah, yeah, a man who has a devouring appetite for art and performing. Anyway, it was on every night at six, and we would have a competition sometimes to see who could call the other guy first with the title of the episode, you know. And you would base it not sometimes on the star date, but mostly was about you could, you'd need a nanosecond to know what episode it was. And if you didn't know the title, he still took a shot at it.

That's a fun game. Oh, yeah. Let that be your last battlefield, balance of terror. Oh, yeah, balance of terror. That's right. That's a good one. My mud. Oh, there you know.

Ron Howard has said that you were almost a stormtrooper in solo. I would have done that. Yeah, I couldn't make that work. Okay. I couldn't get there in time. You know, I think now if you like do a survey, all kinds of famous people have been in a stormtrooper. I think Danny Craig was in one, you know.

I think, I know movie executives have shown up to be a stormtrooper, you know. I'd do it. That was one thing about Star Wars, you know, within the first 45 seconds of it, as soon as you saw a stormtrooper, never mind, Darth Vader. But as soon as you saw those guys run around, those stormtrooper out, you were in the hands of something something had been really well thought out despite the fact of the lack of gravity on all those ships there's a great new doc on on disney plus actually about the birth of iLM and just that that whole directed by the great laurence casden i remember i remember we did some iLM shots for joe versus a

volcano and we had to go up to Marin county for it i said oh my god we're going to iLM this is going to be fantastic. It was just a storage space. A lot of guys. A computer. No, it wasn't even that. It was just, you know, a garage door, you know, in one of those industrial parks somewhere. It was like, this is ILM? Oh, man. I was expecting, you know, gates and guards, you know, like Old Paramount Studios or something. Nobody moving the Ark of the Covenant back and forth.

Nothing like that at all. Just a bunch of guys in black t-shirts. Speaking of sci-fi, Dr. Who, it said that Peter Capaldi tried to enlist you through the advances of the producers to actually play Doctor Who at one time. That would have been a blast. That's all scheduling, I guess. You know, can't do every job. And honestly, me as Doctor Who, can you imagine? Can you imagine the outrage?

I'm an American and I'm going to go over and I'm going to jump in that, you know, red telephone box and, you know, and either wear a scarf and whatever it is. I don't think Anthony Quinn could play Zorba the Greek in today's popular. the judgment you know but why and do you know why josh because he's not greek so imagine the imagine the cry if i had played world famous i would have played one of the daleks maybe i would have been inside those big salt and pepper shakers talking in that automated voice with an english accent by the course i could not get into um in san francisco in the bay area where i grew up oakland uh they threw on some old doctor who's the guy with a big uh red uh you know that guy yeah

And because it was on video out of the BBC, the video signal on American TVs looked odd because they have a hundred extra lines of scansion on their TVs over there. So the way it scanned for us, it just didn't look like video. It looked like this some other thing. And I just couldn't get past, you know, all these robots with robotic English accents, States right, Doctor Who. You know, it's like, I don't know what's going. on in here. So I've never been a Doctor Who aficionado. I've just been aware of Doctor Who's grand grand history. Do you remember your last audition? And did you know it at the time? That's a good question. Wow. I... It must have been late 80s, early 90s. I got it.

Well, I audition for Splash. And I think that the only reason they had auditions for splash is because everybody, everybody who was big at the time turned it down. You know, if you will go back and who were the top 10, you know, box office actors of the time, they all said, no, right. They all said, no way am I going to make a mermaid movie, you know, for the company that released Gus the field goal kicking mule for Walt Disney Pictures directed by Opie Cunningham. It just was not going to happen. So I remember, I think you can see the auditioned the actually video auditions

because Ron was playing you know he made they had those huge you know home video cameras and JVC had one with a miniature VHS cassette

that you put into an adapter and then you could play it on your home via that's what he was doing you know each one lasts about 20 minutes and I think that might have been that might be the last thing

I auditioned for because then this terrible thing happened as they kept asking me to be a movies and I said yes to every single one of them because they asked me they ask me to be in a movie you know you go you go from a period where all you're all you're just waiting for the phone to ring and so someone can say hey would you like to come in and maybe get a chant you go from that to the phone rings and said would you like to be in a movie you just would I well you bring up

the fascinating shift that a conversation I've had with many folks in your in your privileged position of the opportunity to say no, which for 99% of actors doesn't come. And it's, it must be such a strange shift where, as you say, you're just working. You're just going. It's the, I think it is the Rubicon, blessed Rubicon that I've, I've had the opportunity to have to cross. I don't know. I think, I think the first time I came to loggerheads with,

Some member of my crack representation team was the season in between the two of bosom buddies in which because I worked for ABC, the inevitable opportunity came down to do Fantasy Island. And I said, I could use the money because I didn't get paid much for bosom buddies. And, you know, 25% of it was gone in commissions and another 50 was gone in taxes. So I was in a rented house and, you know, I, Colin was, you know, it was in my childbearing years. And the idea of doing a week on Fantasy Island just demoralized me so much that I just said, you know, I think I'm going to say no to Fantasy Island. And I had a, I had a representative contention that says, well, you think you're making a big mistake. And I just said, you know, no, no good is going to come to it. What's the best possible?

And I literally said, I don't know what I'm going to get from doing fantasy. So, well, and he said, well, how about if you're just the best thing that's ever been on fantasy? Maybe the love boat. Maybe that. Well, I had done the love boat. I did the love boat, you know, in between the pilot in the first episode of Pussy Buddies, which was hilarious. And I just, look, if you want to have, if you just want to fall on the floor laughing uproariously, Just take a look at my love boat, you know, I shot it in, I think, June of 1980 or something like that.

And it's, it's just, I had no idea how movies were made. Right. My teeth were the color of moss. My skin was bad. They hadn't given you the full once over yet. They hadn't washed you down. Terrible. But a wondrous adventure, you know, even the movies that you talk about, even the movies that don't work, or even the movies that you just think, like, was it, did I even know what I was?

was doing. You learn something very prescient and important on every single one of them. Because here's the weird thing that happens. You have no idea if it's going to work or not. You can be certain that it's a disaster and it works fine. You can be certain that it's the greatest thing that's ever been put on film and it's horrible. You don't have any idea. And that comes down to this great serendipitous power of the collaborative process. And you learn how to get back around your question. You learn how to say no against every instinctive grain in your body when you can finally get to the place and look at it and see what the absolute source material is. If it's not on the page, it's not on the stage. And if you read something and you,

and you deep down inside yourself think, this, I don't know what this theme is, and I don't, but I do know, it's not worth exploring. not that, you know, and look, at some point I might have been said the most important thing any artist has to learn. This is when you can be really highfalutin. The great thing about podcasts is you can say highfalutin things. And it's just a podcast. No one's going to hold it up to as like a credo. Tom Hanks said on the Josh Horowitz podcast. But, you know, the reason to do a movie are multitudinal, you know, the money, the people that you get to work with, the you might get to go if you're single you know you might get laid you know there's all sorts of

reasons in order to go off and and and do movies and also because they're all a blast you know you never don't have a good time making each one's an adventure yeah each one is a huge huge huge adventure and the other the other collaborative artists that you meet become indelibly imprinted upon you for the rest of time. But if you can't go into it 8,000% of enthusiastic about getting to dig down into the granular aspect, if I'm using that word right, of the story that you're telling the theme that you're examining, you have to say no. And it's really hard to do. But when you do you, I think you've crossed some sort of rubicon. And I don't want to discount for a moment that being financially secure makes that more possible. I have.

have the greatest respect in the world for anybody who doesn't take the money, even though if they really, really need it. And I can't say that I've done that. I think I've always, particularly in that early run of movies when they're asking. I never, it was never about the money, which is the opportunity to make someone. Yeah. And I don't discount that. I'm curious. You know, particularly if you got, you know, car payments and a kid or two. It's real life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How aware were you, are you when you think of mannerisms that have popped up on screen? We're all a collection of sex mannerisms. And you know, you've got the like exasperated laugh that I think of when I think of Tom Hanks.

I think of you, you know, I'm not going to do an imitation certainly, but you kind of the hey kind of a thing. Like, do you, do you, are you conscious of that at a certain point? Like, I can't go to that well again or is it like? Yeah, yeah. I think you are. I mean, there's some stuff that comes out completely instinctive in it. And it kind of works. But no, as you get old, you just like, well, you can't keep drawing from that well.

And you do end up being, I find myself being attracted to the types of guys that don't do that. I mean, literally, that require a whole different sort of physical DNA. Because I do, you know, we all have the same countenance. I think that's what the question is. Right. Every actor has a countenance that they bring with them into the project. And it's not a mystery because everybody's, everybody's seen. the billing you know they know you're in the movie you know um and then what what the the great you know

and this is why they're all torturous challenges at some point because you just don't want to go off and do the same thing unless you're playing the same part of course right you know and unless you're you know how many how many how many how many woodies did i do i lost is it five i think with smaller four movies but there were a couple of shorts right as well and that's that's that's fun to go back into, but you don't, you, I realize that there is a type, I, I have never heard an imitation of me per se being done, but I'm sure there's someone out there that does that will, that would, that would both make me laugh very hard and, and fill me with dread at the same time. Am I that readable? Really? I'm that obvious. Do I have that geeky a voice? Yes,

turns out I do. We all do. You mentioned, uh, the toy story film. And like, you know, Disney. Somewhere a fairy got its wings just now. Yeah, Tinker, Tinkerbell. Hey, we just bought Tinkerbell back to life. There she was sliding from the Matterhorn to somewhere in Tomorrowland. But it is funny because, like, yes, obviously you've been a part of some franchises in the Robert Langdon series as well. But for outside of those, and those are notable exceptions, like there was never, and I count this as a good thing, the splash sequel, the Forest Scopes sequel, et cetera.

I'm sure they've gone to you, especially in this era of like reboots, re-treads, re-everything. Yeah. Is that just like not even, is there no character at this point that feels like worth going back to from the early? No, I can't. I mean, I think other people can go off and reinterpret it if they want to. You know, right now there's an Indian movie out that essentially. I can't wait to see it. I just saw like a photograph of it somewhere.

And I said, well, I'm going to have to check that out. there is a um i the one the i will say this a smart thing i did was i never signed a contract that had a contractual obligation to a to a sequel right because i always always said guys look you know if there's a reason to do it let's do it but you know i'm not going to i'm you guys can't force car before the horse yeah of course yeah and um there is that uh natural inclination i sense that is a purely you know one of pure commerce that says hey you just had a hit so do it again and you'll have a hit. And well, I will say that with long, with a long time in between, we did take a stab at talking about another, another forest gum. Right. That lasted all of 40 minutes.

And then we never says, uh, guys, come on. League of their own, we thought to that there was a possible thing to bring Jimmy Dugan back after the color, after Jackie Robinson. they had broken the color barrier. And we had a, there was actually a pretty, pretty nice screenplay. But all these other kind of like market forces come into it because one of the things that often happens is the original people who made it happen don't have anything to do with the sequels. And so they're really made by studio executives, you know, and some talented people, you know,

like that come in and take their shot. but the they have to be the great thing about well the Langdon movies were great because they were individual mysteries that came up and I viewed those as Sherlock Holmes movies

right you know Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes is great me as Robert Langdon running around you know Istanbul or something like that that's a blast man yeah and after after that it just comes down to well you know how delicate are we going to make this house of cards

you know that that's and that is fun particularly so much of it goes on on the day because you realize you got to get from here to there and how are you going to do that and what's the anyway and then also the the toy story movies I'll tell you this great this is a great thing and this is both commerce and art wrapped up and actually quite perfectly suited for the entire history of Walt Disney I mean as of the man a guy who understood commerce and art he had to contractually contractually contractually do two more three little pigs cartoons that he hated doing. The first one he loved and all the second ones were not caught.

And he even said at some point, in contractual, he wrote on some people piece of paper, no more pigs, meaning that he was, he was a type of artist who said, look, we did that. Let's not just repeat ourselves.

Let's take it to some brand of next level. So if you see the second and third three little pigs cartoon, Disney hated them. Right. Even though they're loaded with blah, blah, blah. Art, you know, all the filmmaking is still pretty great, but he didn't care about the story because the story had been told.

When we, the first the first toy story movie was such a mind-blowing revelation on, you know, on all levels.

I was first walked through the storyboards of Toy Story in an anonymous industrial park in Glendale in which John Lasseter walked me through the entire thing from beginning to end. And all it was was hand and then they showed me against an anonymous blue background, the CGI version of Woody over and over again, having taken a line from Turn Huch, in which I was yelling at Huch, don't eat the car, stop eating the car. And it was a lightning bolt. It was beyond kind of like comprehension. And that was in the days when Michael Eisner and Katzenberg took the Disney studios from its sleepy little, you know, Greyhound Bus kind of, Greyhound Bus Station kind of like, Archieft

architecture and turned it into an Air Force base in the Philippines. It may be a metaphor or it may be literal. Well, anyway, they turned it into a, they turned it into the massive thing that it is now and it's been to keep growing. But, you know, those are the guys who just like really came down and brought a very hard edge version of the industry to it. And God bless them, out of it came the first Toy Story movie. But we did an entire version of that movie that was then thrown out.

You might know that story because it was flip and it was, it wasn't really about anything. It was just about a bunch of guys insulting each other and trying to say wacky, funny things. And John Lasseter and the team at Pixar went back and we ended up doing the whole thing all over again. So then it comes out and it is what it is. And that was still old school business practices, which said if you had a hit, do another one and knock it out really. fast. And now there was this new way of doing it where you don't even have to strike prints. You can just do it for DVDs. You can just do it for home video. And so we started doing the second one for home video. And Tim and I both looked at each other. And Tim, Tim was a big guy at Disney

then because he had home improvement and all that kind of stuff and did all those Disney movies. And I'm saying, what's going on here, man? This is, this is a rocket. And they're just going to release this on home video. And they had all these numbers that said, it'll cost half as much, but it'll make just, so they had all these number reasons where we do it. And at one point, we were in, and we were in Studio C, and there was, there was Doc O'Connor. No, no, Doc, just Doc, can't remember.

Doc, the guy who's legendary sound mixer back behind the man in the glass booth back there. And we just said, Doc, roll the dat, the DAT, digital audio tip. Roll the dat, roll the dat. And we say, hey, there's Tom and Tim here, guys. we were in there just briefly you never actually record with anybody we said can we just say that you guys are nuts to put this out on home video right now you're nuts you this this is going to make a billion dollars guys if you put it in the movie theaters you're insane now I don't know if they

actually took that and did anything with it but that's what they did and they sort of rewrote that aspect of a thing and what was perfect about it was you cannot go back evidently you cannot go back and and examine the relationship that a kid has with their toys enough, you know. Clearly. Because it continued along. And what's extraordinary about this is that we did that for the first time in 1999. Five was when I think the first one came out. Okay. So that means we started working on it in 91. All right. If not 90, because they took, they take a long time to render those things. So it's now 2020. So over the course of about

30 years we examined, you know, all that stuff is. And every time I got to say it worked as a theme. And this is not the case with all sequels or in the long, long series. There, you know, I love to do this thing particularly. It happens a lot in, in Europe where you think you're going to sit down and you have a conversation about, you know, your career. And you're essentially talking to a member of the entertainment industrial complex, you know, somebody who, somebody who writes about entertainment or movies or something like that. And they, you know, they always say, you know, you just, you just always, you just always are playing the nice guys. You are just playing the same guy over and over again. And I said, well, if you think that, that's fine. And they said,

well, why do you do that? And I said, well, I don't think I do. I'm trying to reject the premise of your question. Yeah, I'm not going to reject the print of the question. But then I always say, but look, you and I both know that I could be sitting here right now promoting Forrest Gump 6 and telling you that if you like Forrest Gump 4 and Forrest Gump 5, you're really going to love Forrest Gump 6. I mean, you can do that. And, you know, I've just been very fortunate. And every now and again, I've had some forceful boundaries that I've been able to keep up in place. And I think I've been, it doesn't always work, alas.

You don't always, or you aren't always rewarded for examining the theme of the movie by making a movie about it. But ain't that baseball. Yeah, I was going to say. All you can do is your Honest Wagner. Your batting average is pretty good, man. Whoa. Have you read the baseball 100? No.

Hone it. Oh, you've got to read the baseball 100. Is he our last 400 hitter? Was he our last? No, well, I think it was somewhere down there, but he was just like one of the truly great baseball players back when only white people played, you know, major league baseball. But evidently, he was just a dick on top of that. I may have the wrong baseball legend.

So forgive me, baseball. I saw the Thai Cobb movie. I think there were a lot of expectations. Well, he was a notorious notorious. Okay, Mr. Disney himself, Tom Hanks, why are you not in a Marvel movie? They've asked you by now. No, I don't know.

Not to my knowledge, have they. I do not know. I do not know. Boy, talk about coin of the realm, you know. It's like, holy cow. I mean, you don't need them. They're fine. Everyone's fine.

But I'm just saying it would be a nice marriage. That's all I'm saying. Okay. All right. Let's unpack this a little. shall we let's let's unpack is there is there an era

of film in which a very particular type of movie dominated the marketplace I mean you could say Westerns in the 50s right all right

the biblical epic in the 60 I don't even know yeah what else in order to get into kind of like a universe or something let's take John Ford's Westerns right you can maybe say that that is the John Ford universe of Westerns is not that different, perhaps, than, you know, the Marvel universe of motion pictures. Yeah.

If it's a bodacious John Ford Western, would you do it? You know? Let me say, oh, let me get this straight. John, Jack, I think it went by Jack, Jack Ford. What, you're going to take me back and we're going to be in Monument Valley and we're going to be on a horse and we're going to do the things. we're going to do that, then the Monument Valley will be there, and that's what we're going to do. You might do that because you might end up in, you know, like, the searchers, or you could end up in, she wore a yellow ribbon.

There's all sorts of things you could, you could end up in. I think it, but then there's, you can look at the same era of Western in the, in the 1950s, and just a ton of them were, you know, not great, you know. You want to, you don't want to rag on any movie, because movies. movies are just too hard to make. I think the most thing you can say is, you know, it was quite good, didn't quite, although it didn't quite work. I mean, that's about the worst thing you could say. And there's an awful lot.

So, and I'm trying to think if there was any other type of movie that came out that truly dominated, um, a market, you could, maybe could say this, like the universal monster movies of the 1930s. Yep. You know, um, you could. And there was interaction between them similar to the Marvel stuff. So you could. Yeah.

I not too long ago saw the, I'm going to say a son of Frankenstein with Basil Rathbone and, and of Boris Karloff as a monster. And it was the fourth in the run, but there was some brand new stuff that was brought to that. You know, got to say, got to say there was. Then you get into the creature with the black, you know, you, and out of, you know, diminishing returns at a certain point, but, right. I think the bigger question here might just be is, you know, what, how many, screens or they're going to be remaining

because I think there's an awful lot of films that don't need to be shown on motion picture screens and I think what the ticket sales the idea of going to the movies is definitely coming back and there is nobody who doesn't want to have that experience there is something I just saw a matter of fact we just saw bullet train in a in a movie theater and I can't I couldn't say the last time we bought ticket

you know, let's drive to the movie theater. Let's park by the movie theater. Let's walk up and buy a ticket into the movie theater. Yep. Let's find a seat. And we were both, even before the movie began, we said, isn't this great? This is great. Oh, my God, we're back in a movie theater.

This is fabulous. And then you watch a movie and it's fantastic. And you have a shared experience with, you know, 40 or 50, you know, other strangers who were there at the same time. So, you know, what is about, what's up there? What are they examining on the screen and is it worthwhile? You know, we've all, we've all seen plenty of, of the, what is it called the, is it officially the Marvel universe of motion pictures?

It's the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whoa, the MCU. All right. And it's got Spider-Man and the X-Mans and the, all the men's and all the women's and the ladies and the women's, yeah, yeah, the boys sometimes, yep. And I, look, every, I haven't seen them all. I'll give you that right now, but the ones I've seen, I had never come around. away from it and start without thinking,

there's a couple great performance in there, man. Those people really gave their all. And I don't know how they do that. I do not know. Then after that, it's like, you know, did they examine the theme that I wanted him to be seen? And I think I can tell all that. I can tell you all of quite good, Josh.

They're all quite good. I'm going to, you've been very generous with your time. I'm going to let you go on this. I have one challenge for you, Tom, because I've noticed over the years, you are quite a mimic of your own film, of the filmmakers you've worked with.

Okay. It's because I spend way too much time with him. All right. So let's see. I'm going to name a collaborator, a filmmaker. You give me a quick impression. I'm going to go, we're going to keep it moving. Okay.

You're ready? Yeah. Tom Hanks, filmmaker imitation challenge, Ron Howard. Okay. Okay. All right. Remember, remember, you're, you're, you're hurtling home. You're hurtling home.

Remember, it's called. Penny Marshall. my mom how why where are you going how can you can't be in the scene where why did you walk out there you have to be in the scene i need your face to cut to i don't know what i'm going to need later on you've got to stay in the scene robertsomacus you know i thought i did one earlier oh yeah what about that i mean you know you know bob why do you why do you have a guy in a in a in a motorcycle with a side. Like, I think sidecars are funny.

Why not, I mean, why not have him in a side car? I think it's funny. A guy pulls up in a side car. Do you have a Spielberg? I don't know if I've heard Spielberg. Oh, let me, let me, let me, let me, uh, uh, this is, you know, how? Oh, uh, oh, okay, here's how I'm going to do this. You know what I'm going to do this?

I'm going to get, I'm going to have a pogo lens. I'm just going to have a pogo lens. I'm just going to have, Janush, Yonush, put that, put it, put a 75 on a polo lens. I'm going to have a polka. We're going to follow you around. I said, we're going to follow you one of that. Let me tell you about a story about worthy with Steve or when we were doing the post. There's a ton of guys in it, right?

And we would, I said, Stephen, let me, I've made movies with Stephen before. So I try to get together with everybody on the movie. Bring them in. You know, I have pizza and stuff like that. And I explained them all. Stephen, Stephen, Stephen makes movies. And I said, guys. Guys and gals, we're all in there.

We had everybody. everybody was in the post was what we were all there and I said okay listen here's how it works let's make sure we all know the dialogue you know we'll run some today and let's make sure before the day comes we all run the dialogue so we know it backwards and for us because here's what's going to happen either Stephen is going to come to us and say I need you guys up I don't know I don't know how I'm going to shoot this I don't know I don't know how to shoot this I don't how to shoot this. And that happens, that happened on the bridge of spies in Germany at three o'clock in the morning. I need some help. I know I'm going to shoot this. What do you guys think it would

do? Where would you say? Well, Stephen, how about like this? And we try it. Oh, that's great. That's great. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then he goes into the other mode. Then he runs off. Yonnas put us 75 on the polo cam. He says something like that. Then the other thing that will happen is we will be prepared, we'll know our stuff absolutely perfectly, and Stephen will have done all of our work for us. And we won't even know what's happening because the camera will be nowhere near us. And he won't care if we say the words the way they're written. He's just going to want us to be in a space and interacting because the camera is literally delivering all the dialogue and all the narrative that we know. And that, that's why, that's why Stephen is Stephen. The man cannot help but think in cinematic terms. Very excited, very excited. Oh, that's great.

That's great. Because it's great, he says, he does this all the time. Hey, Stephen, when if I have this down working in the foreground just with, oh, that's great. Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great. It's not in the movie. It'll never be in the movie. Do you think he thought it would be in the movie?

No, no, no, he just, no, he just understands. That's great. Do it, do it, do it, do it. that's what he does not tell you that right that's a brilliant film which is fine yeah anyone we left off where we go nora uh clint anything in your well norah was just always well why in the world wouldn't we just do it exactly like that the only thing i would remove is your beret when you make a movie about a french little popo dog in paris trying to find his way then you can wear a beret but not in this one that's pretty much nora nailed it um sir

I can't thank you enough both for the time today, but honestly, I mean, look, you were talking about that that film going experience you've recently experienced. I could rattle off 35 Tom Hanks. Oh, you're very kind. That have changed my life in different ways. Pinocchio is the latest collaboration with the great Bob Zemeckis. I'm trying to come up with, oh, okay, I'll tell you this moment, the making of Pinocchio. Yep. You're talking with Bob Zemeckis, and the scene involves Jepetto almost drowning by way of Monaco. in the boat. And we had, we had such a complicated rig in order to, in order to, in order to, in order to get this thing. The camera was on some massive thing and I'm from, we're shooting in a thing called not blue screen, but we're shooting in a volume, which you hold, this is the new technology and works fine. And we were, we were trying to, to come up. And Bob was explaining, well,

what I need you to do is to float up, rise up and come to the surface and choke, but then roll around and almost choke again and then come back around and then spit water out of your mouth. And I'm literally, I'm shackled to some sort of like, you know, gravity rig that spins me around at the same time. And of course, there is no water involved. So you're thinking, this is how I die on Pinocchio. Yeah. I would say, Hey,

thanks, Bob, for once again asking yourself, saying to yourself, well, hell, anybody can do that. Because I'm not sure anybody can do this.

But give me 20 minutes and I'll try to provide you with a beat that you need for the movie. So there it is. Jepetto and Pinocchio by way of Bob's effects. There we go.

And as you said, you're re-teaming soon. Eric Roth and Robin, the whole forest gum. Yeah, yeah. We're going to go off and swing wide,

throw deep, you know, give it another shot. Amazing. Thank you again, sir, for the time. All right. Sarah, you'll give me a memo about the things I have to retract or record and change. And Whitney, you've written down a list of all the people I've insulted somehow and have to make apology phone calls to. So I look forward to both of those over email. Start with me. All right. And

Josh, I'm going to tell you right now, how often do you use, say, Uber Eats or DoorDash there in your little midtown apartment? Pretty often. Pretty often. Too often. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, God bless you. Thanks. I enjoy talking to you. Another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pressured to do this by Josh.

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