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The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks

3 reviews

astrangewind's review

slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

0.25

Tom Hanks, along with Keanu Reeves and Sean Astin, is one of the precious few actors who can Do No Wrong. That is, until this book was published.

Tom Hanks is not a writer, and The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece is a clear indication of this. If someone else’s name were attached to this, it would have been unpublishable, but instead, there’s yet another rich and famous person who got tired of being rich and famous in the acting way and instead wanted to be rich and famous is a different way, and so it’s this book lining the shelves instead of myriad of ignored stories from truly talented authors. Not only is The Making Of littered with beginner mistakes, but it’s also just vapid in every conceivable way.

I’m going to assume that Hanks wrote this book; ghost writers are usually professionals, and there’s no way this book was written by a professional. When confronted with three consecutive pages about frozen yogurt, a professional writer asks, “Why am I writing so much about frozen yogurt?” A beginner writer asks, “How many different synonyms for ‘frozen yogurt’ can I jam into this?” (I had to read the phrase “cold dairy product with candy nuggets” - in a line of dialogue - and now so do you.)

To be fair, it appears as if only a small section of the book uses these bizarre synonyms, and it’s more of a nitpick if anything else. It might be forgivable, charming, even, if anything else about the book had been redeeming.

The Plot

The Making Of starts off by telling the story of Robby Anderson and his inspiration for his comic, “The Legend of Firefall,” in the chapter titled Source Material. Then, it cuts to roughly 20-30 years later, to the actual writing of the comic. After that is the majority of the plot, which is the making of the superhero movie Knightshade: The Lathe of Firefall, which is extremely loosely based on Robby’s comic.

Source Material is the only chapter that is even remotely engaging. There’s a story there - the bits and pieces from Robby’s childhood; that moment when his uncle leaves him reading comics alone in a drugstore to get drunk, seared into Robby’s memory and catalyzing the writing of “The Legend of Firefall”; his uncle’s PTSD from the Vietnam War. Everything else, though, just feels like a laundry list of tasks that the movie’s production team carries out perfectly every time, with no mistakes or revisions or scheduling issues, etc., whatsoever.

There are two attempts at conflict. The first happens when OK Bailey, the original actor for the character of Firefall, becomes your stereotypical “spoiled actor” type. I actually found this portion of the book to be the most realistic, and OKB ended up being my favorite character (more on that later). However, after causing all sorts of problems, none of which actually affecting any major aspect of the movie’s production, he gets fired. And... that’s it. We don’t hear from him again - he causes no further problems for the movie, they are able to replace him almost immediately, and he leaves the set without a fuss. It’s a damn shame that this plotline fizzled out like this.

The second attempt at conflict, like the first, is a scenario which I can imagine being a major problem on movie sets. The next actor for Firefall, Ike, is working alongside the actor for Knightshade, who is smokin’ hot (and Hanks does not let you forget it). Unfortunately, Ike is married. Again, this was almost a compelling conflict. But I ultimately found myself unable to root for Ike (who has the hots for his costar), Ike’s wife (who doesn’t like that her husband is working with a hot lady), or the actor (who has the hots for Ike). There isn’t enough setup for their relationships to feel real to me, and apparently it’s not enough for the characters, either, since literally nothing comes of it. Everything goes back to normal after the movie is finished, and none of these characters learned anything at all. It’s disjointed and unresolved, and honestly it’s just plain boring.

The Characters

Still, a bad plot is forgivable if any of the characters are likable. Out of the 94* named characters, I only found two and a half of them likable: Bob Falls (Robby’s uncle and the inspiration for the character of Firefall), OK Bailey (the most realistic character in the entire book), and Robby Anderson (who I liked until he showed up at the end and was just tickled that his antiwar comic was sold out to a huge corporation to be twisted into a superhero-movie-slash-romance). My theory is that OK Bailey is so compelling and realistic because he’s modeled on a real person - OJ Simpson.

Let’s talk about that number some more. 94 named characters. At least. Out of this number, I remembered only 25 by the end of the book, and many of those are because they are mentioned within the last twenty or so pages. The majority of this 94 have some kind of backstory that’s at least one paragraph long. The backstories sometimes include their childhood, their parents’ full names, their hobbies, how they got into the movie biz, things like that. I have no problem with explicitly stating backstories, but when the character’s backstory is longer than the rest of the scenes they’re in combined, maybe you should reconsider if they really need a backstory. Perhaps Hanks thinks that giving the characters a superficial life, with their minority group and hobbies read off slips of paper drawn from a hat, is an adequate substitute for real characterization. (It’s not.) And of those 25 characters, only 8 of them, in my opinion, are necessary for the book: Robby Anderson; Bob Falls; Bill Johnson, the writer and director of the movie; Al Mac-Teer, who I think is Bill’s assistant but her role is never clarified; Wren Lane, the actor for Knightshade; Ike Clipper and his wife, Thea; and OK Bailey. None of the other characters need full first and last names or a detailed description of their lives. (In fact, none of the main characters need that much description, either. Is it relevant to the book to know what classes Ike took at community college? Not even remotely, but now I know he took “Introduction to Tolstoy,” which is, I suppose, information of some kind.)

There’s no one to root for. Each character is so empty, just words on a page, assigned a job on the production team and some random backstory that has no impact on their lives. Any character who has enough screen time to be worth paying attention to becomes obviously inconsistent. For example, Al Mac-Teer is first painted as a “no nonsense” type person who gets shit done; her backstory makes her seem demure and deferential, anticipating everyone’s needs; and by the end of the book she... uh.... I don’t even know what her role is at the end of the book. When Ynez is introduced, her backstory reads almost identically to Al’s. (In fact, it seems as though all of the women in this book do everything that men tell them to with no question or complaint or errors. They anticipate everyone’s needs perfectly and never screw up. Except for Wren, who is the Hot One With Trauma. Tom, have you ever spoken to a woman before? I mean, really spoken to one?)

Truly, I don’t want to accuse Hanks of being a misogynist, or racist, or anything of the sort. I think he truly wanted to make his cast diverse, but it resulted in some serious tokenization. You’ve got the no-nonsense Black woman who somehow, despite being no-nonsense, does whatever she’s told; the Mexican woman working three jobs with a huge family who’s friends with a mariachi band, because didn’t you know all Mexican people know each other, and also she was able to quit all three of her jobs somehow with no reservations to drive Al around, and who also does whatever she’s told; the non-binary costume person; that one guy with two gay dads and two gay moms; a minor actor with Down syndrome; Wren’s “PTSD” with men that manifests itself in needing to live in a secret residence, but she has no problem being in a room alone with a man who has proven to be volatile.... I get the sense that Hanks thinks he’s being inclusive, but he doesn’t go deep enough for it to be worthwhile, and he instead relies on stereotypes without approaching any further, perhaps out of fear of saying the wrong thing.

Conclusion

I could write an essay on this book, but I just don’t want to waste the effort on something so mind-bogglingly bad. Even though this book is utterly unworth reading, I suspect many people will buy it and convince themselves they like it because Who Doesn’t Love Tom Hanks? Really, it will have no negative impact on his career whatsoever, but I kind of wish it would. Celebrities really need to stop coopting industries just because they feel like it. If you buy this book, please also consider buying a debut novel from an author you’ve never heard of as well. And Tom, if you somehow read this, please hire me as your editor :)

Content Warnings

wordsofclover's review

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funny informative lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

This is an interesting one for me as I think the first half is about a 3 stars for me, and the second half is a 4 stars. If you are at all interesting in film making or movie producing, this book, while fiction, may be the perfect book as once the movie gets going, the book really takes off!

This book follows the journey of several people involved in the making of a motion picture about a young superhero called Eve Knight, and anti-hero character Firefall. The journey starts with the inspiration and the creator of the original Firefall character, moving onto director Bill Johnson years later and his producers as they try and make the movie of Nightshade happen and all those that make an amazing motion picture come to life from the big name actors to the runners, production assistants and make-up artists,

This is a chunky book, and there were times it felt long. I thought the first half of the book slightly lagged on pacing as Tom Hanks really wants everyone to know everything about the characters, and I mean everything. At times, we were just short of knowing the timings about their bowel movements. So for a while, I feared I wasn't going to like this book and I didn't want to do that to Tom Hanks! But as the movie began to take shape from the location to the set design and casting, the story picked up and things got really exciting. I was actually sad that this movie doesn't exist in real life - albeit, it was basically another Marvel movie (or Agents of Change movie in this fictional world) but it sounded good!

Obviously Tom Hanks has worked in movies for a long time so he was able to really show off this knowledge in this book but also I think his general love and appreciation for the business and everyone in it. The book shows how it's not the big name star in the title role that makes the movie but it's the combined effort of everyone on set from the big names to the local runner who makes everyone's day a bit easier by knowing where to get the good coffee and food. And also how the person with the ego who shows up on set, disagrees with the boss and isn't a team player can wreck the entire thing (would love to know if Okay-B was inspired by anyone).

I listened to this book on audio and it was narrated by Tom Hanks (which was lovely) but also had a full cast for other characters including Rita Wilson, January LaVoy and Holland Taylor. So it was a very well done audiobook with some sound effects and some money put behind it to make it really good.

The ending of this actually had me a little emotional which I was surprised at!

Content Warnings

maggies's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

It's eminently unfair that Tom Hanks should not only be such an incredible actor but also give such great book. Admittedly, I didn't pay any attention to this book aside from the title and the author, at which point I assumed it was a memoir and yet when I realized it wasn't, I was not disappointed in the least. A wide-ranging plot with frequent in-depth characterizations and coincidences (much like ensemble cast movies like Love Actually), The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece is enchanting all the way through. The audio recording is much recommended.

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