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Sometimes life passes in the wink of an eye, and it's like, wow, are we here already?But there's other times in that same wink of an eye, you comprehend it all.
One of the greatest and most iconic actors of all time.
He has starred in dozens of movies over his 40-year career.You know him, you love him.Tom Hanks!
If you're just looking at the past and saying, man, that was when it was great.I wish we could go back.No!You never want to go back.You always have to understand that our best days are still ahead of us.
Well, as you keep saying, more will be revealed as well.
This too shall pass and more shall be revealed.
The number one health and wellness podcast.Jay Shetty.Jay Shetty.The one, the only, Jay Shetty.
Tom Hanks, welcome to On Purpose.It's truly an honor and a gift to be in your presence, to have you here, and even the first few moments that we've just exchanged a few thoughts, ideas, and stories.
I'm already enjoying your company so much, and I'm so grateful that you took the time to do this.Oh, well, how come?Likewise.And I watched here, which is out on November 1st.I have so much that I want to talk about it through and through your lens.
And when I was watching it, to me, the theme of home obviously is so strong and apparent.And I wanted to ask you, where do you feel most at home, apart from home?
Okay.All right, man.All right.Let's throw deep right off the bat.Because I was, so many things lined up with me at my age.I was the third of four.
My parents were very preoccupied with all certain, you know, like the positives and miseries of their lives.I like to joke that they pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California, you know, back.
They got divorces when only like Zsa Zsa Gabor, you know, or, you know, Nikki Hilton got divorces.
My home environment was fluid in that we moved a lot and we were suddenly living with a whole different set of people because people, you know, my parents got remarried and whatnot.
So that by the time I was seven, I had lived in eight different homes.By the time I was 10, I had lived in 10 different homes.And it's always been like that.So I am not intimidated by it, and I don't think I'm damaged by it at all.
As a matter of fact, my brother, who I did not live with, he lived in the same town and in one of three houses all his life.
And I consider myself the lucky one, you know, just by the nature of so much stuff that I've seen and so much stuff that I've been able to experience and be comfortable with. Look, I, you know, I, I'm 68.
So I went through, I witnessed everything, you know, whatever drug thing that you want to go.I wasn't a participant in an awful lot of that because I was so, I was kind of like entertained by the new rules of whatever we were.
And here's a new school and here's a new apartment complex.And now we're living in a bonafide neighborhood.And I was not intimidated by all of that stuff.And I was also comfortable
perhaps in a way that's not healthy in some ways, of being a new guy in a new circumstance, sizing up a room, sizing up a school, figuring out, all right, what's the easiest way to get comfortable here?
Part of it is being open, kind of like taking over, cracking a few jokes, not getting in trouble. And that's different from, I would say, like my older brother, who was very shy.And we were connected at the hip through all of this stuff.
And it was not great. for the other members of my family.But there was just something about the roll of the dice, number three of four, right there when the parents are too busy with all this other kind of stuff.
And my siblings were not much older than I was, but older than I was.They were social beings long before I was.I didn't become a social being until I was like seven years old or whatnot. And by that time, I had lived in very many places.
So you have a long-winded conversation.I love it.Where do I feel at home most?I'm going to say now, at the age of 68, with some collection of my immediate family, wherever we are, provided we are, and I don't mean to be good at laughing,
you know, provided we are laughing at perhaps the absurdity of it, or dealing with the cruelty of it, or sometimes just the surrealistic aspect of, can somebody tell me how we ended up here exactly?Can someone do that right now?
Now, that's not necessarily a strength, because along with that came, dude, I travel light. and I can travel light emotionally, I'm done.There's stuff that I cannot control.
I have left many a wonderful atmosphere or a loving atmosphere or a friendly atmosphere. And like Ernie Banks, you know, the ballplayer for the Chicago Cubs, without ever looking back, without thinking, oh, things were really wonderful back then.
I wish I was back there.Jay, I don't think I've ever thought that.
Now, is that great?Is it facile?Or is it so mercurial that maybe you shouldn't trust me?
Does it feel like, it feels like and sounds like a healthy detachment.
There is a type, okay, let's talk about that.Because there is a version of detachment that means that you can navigate, say like, can I say assholes?Of course, you can say whatever you like.So you can navigate assholes.
And I think my experience is about 90% of the people that you come across are pretty decent folks.5% are assholes.And I'll say 5% are sociopaths.And you cannot avoid that other 10%, those two 5%.
And the ability to detach from those circumstances, without a doubt, a good thing. The habit then, I think, of choosing isolation from the other 90%, because what can I rely on?
At the end of the day, I can only rely on what I can fit in either my emotional suitcase, an actual suitcase, or the back of my car. Uh, and that, and that lingers for a very long time.
So I, I think the healthy aspect of it has been a great aid to me as well as the, the, the tendency to want to be isolated, to not need anybody, put it that way, to not want anybody, because that's just what I learned.Life is easier if you don't
need anybody.And it can be a lot easier if you want nothing more than what's in the back of the car.But that can be a solitary life.And a lot of times, being solitary can be confused with being lonely.
And being lonely can lead to anger and resentments and stuff that you got to work through.And OK. at the 68, you know, a lot of those years have been dealt with dealing with the latter and enjoying the former at the same time.
Well, I think what you rightly said is that there's this binary feeling of if you're detached, you're lonely or disconnected, or you might be at the other end, codependent and attached and not have the ability to operate in a solitary state.
So how have you danced almost so beautifully between the two of being able to confidently say you've been detached in the right ways.
And then at the same time, you have this beautiful relationship with your wife, you have long-term friendships with people in the industry, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, you have- People I worked with.
Yeah, people you worked with.
So how does that dance work?Because I do think that the magic is in the dance, not in the choice.
I'm going to say that I got very, very, very lucky being in the right place at the right time and recognizing something that was just for me.All right, let's just go back to school.People say show business is like high school with money.
High school is like show business without money. You know, it truly was.
And when I was – look, I just went to school and my joke was we moved around so much that whenever – you know, at the end of the school year, my dad would stand me out on the driveway and say, son, your school is somewhere in that direction.
Just walk that way.And when you see kids your own age, just follow them.And they will lead you to whatever school you are supposed to go to.The school was a social kind of like place for me.
And every now and again, there might be a moment that landed in my intellectual pursuit, if that makes sense. I can't say I really loved going to school, but I certainly loved the hang of going to school.That's a different thing.Subject matters.
History was great sometimes.Some reading was great.But I was no artist.I was no mathematician.I kind of liked geography because you could visualize a map and know where Sri Lanka was or the difference between Cambodia and Thailand.
But when I was in high school and had no idea what I was supposed to do with my time other than, you know, maybe go to Young Life, you know, hang out, you know, hang out with, you know, some sort of like theological, you know, brothers.
But other than that, sign up for class, maybe do your homework on the bus on the way to school and what, run track?I don't know.What are you supposed to do? But there was a theater teacher.There was a theater department at this high school.
And actually, this guy I had known since sixth grade was playing Dracula in the high school play. And I said, what, really?And so, you know, we went, we went up to school at night to see him and I'd never been in my high school at night.
It looks different at night, right?And then I sat there and there was, you know, a bunch of people in the auditorium and then they came out and did this play.And I thought, this is school. You can do this at school.
School isn't this thing just to survive.This isn't this thing just to fill up your time, to leave as soon as you can and get there at the late.Oh, no, I never cut class.I didn't do that because, in some ways, the hang of school was too much fun.
But when I saw that there was this kind of discipline that I had already been thinking of in my head, That just changed everything.
That just, when you suddenly have a reason to go and do something, and the reason is in a pursuit of something that you cannot find anywhere else, right?
That my, I gotta say, my junior and senior years of high school, I have been living that same exact life and excitement ever since.
The idea of auditioning for the first, like, Our great instructor, our teacher, he wanted to do real plays because he loved to do the scenic design for it.So we did Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams.How about that?
16-year-old, 17-year-old kids playing Night of the Iguana.Then we did Shakespeare.They did musicals as well.Those were always popular.But suddenly, having this tantalizing thing that's like, if you have an imagination,
And if you're not afraid of getting up in front of people, which I was not, some people can't get up.It was a bunt for me.I did it without even thinking.
That gave a purpose and a pursuit that was much, much bigger than anything else that had been in my life.Now, I have a friend of mine from the same era.James is his name. I met him in fifth grade, and he said to me he was going to be a draftsman.
He was going to be an engineer.He was going to design buildings.And he did.That's what he's been doing all this life.I knew people at the same age that said, well, I really love to cook.
And they have written cookbooks, and they've run their own catering companies.That's the same sort of thing that I landed upon without really knowing it.Because my parents were divorced,
I spent a lot of time traveling to and from where my mom lived in this small town or where my dad lived in Oakland, in the Bay Area.
And those hours on a Greyhound bus, starting when I was seven, seven or eight years old, five hours of just daydreaming, five hours of looking out the window, five hours of looking at people passing cars, trains going by, farms and whatnot, buildings.
The natural preponderance, I had to sit there quietly and imagine what was going on.That fueled me into realizing that there's this thing that there's actually a discipline and a trade and an art and a, what's the word I'm looking for?
And I'll just say it again, a pursuit that is, let's put on a show, let's tell a story.That came along and bang, that was it.And I'm telling you, it's the same exact now as it was then. Did you write on those journeys or was it mainly?
I wanted to write specifically, but I did not have the scholastic example.I did not learn the tools because I just wanted to fake it at the last moment.Now, I started writing about 20 years ago.
by just incorporating the work that an actor does that is not told to anybody, that is not spoken, that actually was a form of writing that came about.And I was sort of like instructed on how that comes along.
But without putting it down on paper, I had malleable, cohesive narratives in my head for all of this stuff. And I just thought, well, isn't that what everybody does?That's the way you do this, right?
Because it's not just showing up on time and learning your words and doing what you're told.There is something beyond that.And the beyond that was always 15 times greater than the actual physical showing up.
I can't discount enough the power of the hang. You want to hear a story?Here's the show business story.Please, please, please.Darlene Love.You know who Darlene Love is?
Legendary singer, singer, a fantastic, fantastic Motown artist, among other things.
I was on the Christmas show of the old David Letterman show, and every year he brought her along to sing It's Christmas, this fabulous rendition with a big orchestra and male choruses.
I saw her there and I said, oh, I'd seen her on the David Letterman show for like six or seven years.And I said, I met her and I said, Miss Love, I cannot believe that I am on the show with you.
You have been belting out so many moments of the soundtrack of my life that I'm just thrilled that you're here and I'm glad that you're still doing it.And she looked at me and said, Tom, I'm just here for the hang.
And I got, I completely, I completely got that because the hang, the interaction with everybody, dealing with the attractiveness of those 90%, avoiding or learning how to negotiate around those other 5%, you know, the jerks and the, and the evil people, ain't that just living, you know, ain't that, ain't that better than being alone in a room when you don't have a thought in your head.
Mm, well said.Yeah, absolutely.I was wondering, you talked about luck a lot there.Can we all become a bit more lucky?
The fellow who ran the Great Lake Shakespeare Festival, Vincent Dowling, I worked for him for three years.And he's, he's the number of people that loved that man and worked with that man.He touched a great many people's lives.
He said, it's the most unfair business in the world.That's one aspect of it. Because so much of it requires being in the right place at the right time by choice and by sacrifice.And that's not easy to do.
I feel that I was fortunate that from, as we spoke about, from that upbringing, I had no qualms about, hey, let's go.I got enough money for gas.
I drove across the country with four other people one time, and then the next year I drove across the country by myself.Did not bat an eye.And there are people that, listen, they just can't do that, you know?
There is a degree of security and fear and intimidation that can go along with what?Putting yourself in the right place at the right time.And along with that will come all, it's a, look, it's a 50-50.Okay.It's a 50-50.Have you heard this great thing?
I'm no mathematician, but when I heard this, I thought that's actually a principle for living.
Jay, if I had a quarter and I flipped it and it came up heads five times in the row, what are the odds that it's going to come up heads a seven time, a six time, six time in a row?
It's absolute 50-50. Just because something has happened doesn't mean it's going to.Just because you're in a place doesn't mean that's where you should be.
So along with luck, shouldn't the other requirement be faith or some degree of disconnected to it, to whatever the end result is going to be?You're going to have to be.
I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, he read somebody, I don't know who it was, but someone wrote down, You have to be all right with what's going to happen.And I just went, well, OK.Thanks for that.Yeah, all right.Let's try to do that.
So you have to be all right with what's going to happen right or wrong, disaster, disease, whatever.
You have to be all right with what is going to happen with some degree of faith and luck that what happens after that is the best thing that could possibly be.
What's helped you get closer to that?That sounds hard.It is.It sounds impossible almost.
Yeah, yeah.I'm going to say that age, in all honesty, experience, that thing of what has not destroyed me only makes me stronger.And look, let's not discount the power of getting your ass kicked.
You know, and I'm not just, you know, suddenly not professionally as well.All sorts of, you know, all sorts of personal things go along that give you a bloody nose and bust your teeth.
And you have to go through those metaphysically, perhaps physically.I made this movie where I rode a scooter, a Vespa.
And so because of that, I rode a Vespa for about two years until I realized that I had been so close to killing myself on this thing, making a stupid mistake, that I'm going to give up this Vespa.
This was a smart thing to do that only came about because I learned that sometimes a hair's breadth between cracking up or falling down or needing that crash helmet or not.So it is a degree of that experience
that experience, and also being, I think, open to some of the most basic, I don't want to say philosophical truths, but I have been to the Holy Land, I have seen the sites that are precious, divine.
I was actually working, this was a long time ago, this was before the great, many of the great problems that were going there, and I was driving back.
Being driven to Jerusalem, I was with a guide, and I said, hey, so Moshe, tell me about where we are.
And he says, OK, I will tell you.We are bound by a kibbutz.This is a very old kibbutz.You know kibbutz?Yes, this is a very old one.It's been there a very long time. Very popular.And now we are coming up with the Moshav.You know what Moshav is?
Moshav is not like a kibbutz.It's different, more socialist, less comfortable.But this is also much like that.And people live there, and they work, and they farm.And this is where David killed Goliath.
And coming up here, it's whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back the car up, just a little, back this up.
Did you just say this is where David killed Goliath?Yes, he says.There's a little sign there, it said in English and Hebrew and Arabic.
This is, well, tell me about that.Okay, well, okay, there you see the valley, yes, okay.And on one side was the Philistines, they were there, okay.And David and the Israelites were here.
And they sent down to the middle the giant, yes, yes, the goliath, yes.And David goes and says, I will fight this man.And he puts the stones and he kills him.And I said, this is the place.He said, yeah.
I'm not going to argue with that.Absolutely not going to argue with that. So move along.And I've, you know, you visit great cathedrals and whatnot.I've been all over the place around the world, some of the great faiths.
And we were in Japan, the family and I, and we had this fabulous guy that was driving us around, and he took us to some Buddhist places, some Shinto shrines.
And there was a big tree at one of the temples, the shrines, and people would write down prayers on wooden signs, and they would hang them up like ornaments.So this tree's just covered with a million prayers. beautiful kind of like sensibility.
And he wrote down something, and he hung it up.And I said, you know, Oshi, what did you write?He says, oh, I wrote here, I'll show you.And it was in Japanese, you know, the language.And he says, this means, I will never know all I need to know.
That's all we talked about at dinner later on.So the ongoing education of we're never going to know what we need to know.More is always going to be revealed.And this too shall pass. that governs absolutely everything.
If you are having the greatest time in your world, this too shall pass.If you are successful, this too shall pass.If you are sick, if you are experiencing great tragedy and great drama, great difficulty, this too shall pass.
Now, I don't know if I'm still answering the question you asked. Yeah, you are.This was educated to me over the course of my 20s and 30s and 40s or 50s.At a time when you think that, no, what you have to do is have a master plan.
You got to stick to the plan.You got to lay your head down.You got to fight for it.You got to compete.Yeah, OK.There's times when, you know, you got to do that other kind of stuff.
And other times, you just kind of like got to roll over and say, I surrender.You know, just I will never know all I need to know.And I'll never be able to do all that I should do. Yeah.Does that make sense?
It does make sense.It does make sense.
And I appreciate you saying that it comes with wisdom and age and experience, because I used to have a mentor who sadly passed away during the pandemic, but he would always repeat to me, there's no substitute for maturity.
And it was- No shortcut to it.Yeah.Yeah.The maturity was just something that- And yet, didn't you know somebody when you were young? who was the same age as you that had it.Absolutely.Oh, I came across all sorts of people like that.
Yeah, and I just said, first of all, what makes you so special?And what makes you so smart?What makes you so calm?What was it?
Did you ever figure it out?
I have the vaguest idea.Some combination, I would probably say, of connection.A connection to a family, a connection to perhaps a heritage that goes along with that. that some friend of mine, we went to their son's bar mitzvah.
And I'm not Jewish, but I said, you got bar mitzvah?Oh yeah, of course I got bar mitzvah.And he said, let me tell you something about the bar mitzvah.
This is what's great about it, because my 13-year-old son, when he's getting bar mitzvah, and I told him, I said, after this, my son, your sins are your own. He's 13.
But this is, you know, and there's studies of, you know, there's examples of that all through all sorts of cultures and all sorts of histories.Yeah.
That said, there is a time when you and you alone are responsible for everything that goes on in your life. I have a friend who is studying with a Buddhist monk, you know, a guy whose name, he's literally got his name venerable in his first name.
How about that?Wow.When I was talking to the venerable, you know, whatever, and I said, look, I know squat about Buddhism outside of, you know, what I, you know, see on TV shows.So, well, What's the deal?
And he said, well, one of the smartest things I heard from a guy who practices Buddhism is, My life used to be nothing but chopping wood and carrying water.
And now that I have received some enlightenment, I find that all that is necessary for me to live is to chop wood and carry water."And I said, okay, all right, man, that's some high country.
And I don't know if you hear that, well, I don't know if I had heard that at the age of 22, I would have had the slightest an idea of what it meant.But at the age of 68, I think I can get a little bit closer to that.
Definitely.I think there's two things you brought to mind for me.I think one of them's been
when I've noticed some of the wiser people that I've met along the way or at a younger age, as you were mentioning, it's always been people who were exposed to more generations.
And so people who were in their 20s, but knew people who were 70 and spent quality time with them, or people who were in their 50s and spent time with someone who was 18 or 21.
And that kind of juxtaposition of being surrounded by people that weren't just all your age in the same space, There was a sense of you being able to learn and grow and take and receive.
I was spending time with a couple that my wife and I had become very close friends with, and they're both 70, and my wife and I are in our mid-30s, and we spent a weekend with them, and it was brilliant because I got destroyed at pickleball.
A humbling experience is always a good one.He's playing pickleball and tennis for four hours a day and I can barely play for a couple and so big inspiration.But just the life experience and the engagement you get from that and I think so much of our
Going back to what we were saying about community and even your mention of church there or the Holy Land, I was researching something recently.
I'm writing my third book, and something that I came across and I've been playing around with is this idea called the third space theory.What the third space theory lays out is that back in the day, we would have home,
we would have work and we would have church.And church was a place you could look back on work and home and reconcile and reflect and think about how- You can ponder why bad things happen to good people and vice versa, yeah.
Correct.It was a place spent, literally, meant for that.
This is why you come here.Exactly.And now what's happened is, let alone three spaces, we just have one.So we work from home, we live at home, and then our third space, or the closest thing to it, is a television, probably.
There isn't a separate space.And so it's arguing the fact that there isn't that space almost to have those thoughts, conversations, ideas, insights that may arise. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Sometimes it's just the old person that's sitting in the corner, you know.
But other times it's like, you know, a big, there is some aspect of the big family that is not for everybody, you know, because God knows not everybody wants to come to Thanksgiving sometimes because they don't want to have that same fight again.
I had a, I had a friend who, he had his, his grandmother was like in, already had a nine, like she was 93 or something like that.And she was always just there, you know, just there.
And at one point, he was arguing with his parents about not wanting to do something.I can't remember what it was.It didn't matter.But everybody was saying, why are you doing that?What's that about?How can you do that, blah, blah, blah?
And my friend said, well, hey, man, because life's too short.And this 90-year-old grandmother is just sitting there.And she said, no, life's not short.Life is long. which I interpret it as being life is long.
So if you're doing something stupid, you're spending a lot of time relishing, living inside that stupidity.
And my kids, my youngest kids, essentially were raised along by us, as well as a couple of people that have been employee-like families, members of family, but also their grandparents, their yiayenpapu as they say in Greek.
People who were never not engaged with them when they were Babysitting.We never had to have babysitters.We never had to have a nanny.We didn't have anything like that.
What we had instead was two generations removed of people speaking Greek to them, asking them questions, what are you doing, from the moment they are toddlers until they're 14 years old.What they got from that is so different from
from what I got from mine.There was a joke in my family about how bad I am with tools.
I mean, as soon as I pick up a screwdriver or a hammer, I start getting cold sweats because my dad had no patience with me about, he never said, let me show you how to use a, let me show you how to scrape that off.
It was always, oh, come on, you knothead, don't you know how to sand a board?Don't you know the difference between a standard ratchet, a socket wrench and a metric? And I never did, because nobody said, let me show you how you do this.
You've got to learn it.So you're talking about something there that is almost like water on a stone.It just has an effect. over time.
And in many cultures, you have to look at that and say, the more generations around that table with regularity, not just for three holidays a year, the richer the lesson is going to be.
Because you're going to pick up some stuff just like an old story from the old country. My father-in-law, dad, he was Greek but grew up in Bulgaria and had to escape the communists and whatnot, which is a fascinating story unto itself.
But when he told the story about being told by his dad to take the donkey up to the mountains and get something and bring it back, knowing that there was the meanest dog on the planet Earth up there that was going to try to bite him.He came back.
Oh, I think what it was is he said, take the donkey up there.And he didn't want to wrestle with the donkey.He just wanted to go up there and get it back really fast and on the way there.
this dog, you know, nearly mauled him, scared the living daylights out of him.So when he came back down, his dad said, I told you to take the donkey.Because the donkey would scare off the dog, you know, like that.
So, you know, that's the kind of stuff you got to pick up over time.Yeah.But did you have multiple generations in the home as you were growing up?
I felt that for me, my monk teachers became that for me. because they were older.And so I had a monk teacher who was in his probably 60s when I met him.I had another who was in his 30s when I first met him.And so they became that.
I wasn't so close to my grandparents.And so I didn't really have that same interaction as you were mentioning your children did.I didn't really have that with them.So I had my parents, I had my uncles and aunts.
But then I think it was really later on when I met those two generations in the monastery that really expanded my breadth of you know, human experience.
It'd be nice if it worked across the board.But sometimes, you know, grandpa's a drunk and, you know, and grandma does nothing but smoke cigarettes and, you know, and watch Wheel of Fortune.So maybe it's not always great.
No, maybe it's not always great.
But it can be sometimes.It can be.It can be.You were talking about your experience with your father and, you know, with the tools.And it's so funny because my dad was the opposite.He was useless at DIY.And so I'm useless at DIY.
OK, there you go.And so I have that experience.My dad was great.My dad could fix everything. There was a story, I was talking to my older brother, he and my dad, my dad was like, why in the world are we spending a lot of money for crying out loud?
We could get an electronics kit and make our own amplifier.We don't have to go off and pay all this much money.We could hook it up to a turntable and a speaker and there we have stereo systems.
So they got a kit and I saw them working on it together and I was kind of jealous.
I'm honestly 40 years later I said to say you know that when you made the amplifier with dad I was really jealous because oh man I wish I would have done anything to trade places with you my dad was so miserable as we're doing it always are you not head don't you know don't you know how to solder it's like oh
So, you know, there's a perspective of everything.Yeah, definitely.
Did you try to, did you try to parent differently?Like, did you try to avoid something?
You know, you try to, but I made every mistake, you know, you, you scar the kids somehow in, in, in the same exact way.And as they get older, you know, you come back around.
I said, Hey, can I talk about what a knothead I was with you for all those years?And said, Yeah.Sure, dad.Yeah.Been kind of waiting for this.Why don't, uh, why did you, why did you unload?
So I know that, but I would say at the same time, I think there was, you know, does it come up to be 50, 50, maybe the, uh, the attitude and the, uh, you know, the, the life that we led the, uh, the laughs, you know, um, that stuff's worth its weight and, you know, Jim encrusted gold.
What's something that they've taught you?What's something that they've inspired you?
How different they all are.They are not the same type of human being ever.My youngest at one point said something that was definitely true for him, and I thought is in fact true for all of my kids, which makes me feel good.
And that was, he was younger, he was like seven or eight.
I said, oh, you know, at one point, let's go down, we were in New York, I said, let's go down to the park and we'll take our gloves, we'll throw it around, we'll bat the balls, we'll just find a place of grass.He said, okay, do that.
And it got away from me, didn't happen. This called that something happened and I realized that, oh, the sun's going down now.And I said, oh, my God.Oh, my God.Hey, I'm sorry.I said we were going to go down and throw the ball around.
It got away from me.Forgive me.And he said, no, that's OK.And he sounded disappointed.That's OK.I said, well, you know, I feel bad.I don't want you to be bored.And he looked at me with a look on his face and said, Dad, I'm never bored.
And that's curiosity.That speaks to curiosity and drive, and also the comfort of where one is in order to feel free, in order to explore whatever world that is.
And I think I could say that maybe, in varied degrees for all the kids, their ability to pursue their own interests without being prodded, without being forced to.
I've learned from that, because look, there was that isolation that I was talking about.There was a time when I was so comfortable doing absolutely nothing. or pursuing some brand of disconnection that wasn't good for me.
And everybody has it in some degrees.But you could be of a, with all that you have, with all you kids, with all your advantages, I do not want to hear that you're bored. And they have never said that they're bored.
They have always had some action thing that was going on, whether I understood their passion for it or not.
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What attracted that isolation and disconnection at that moment in time?What was it that was so appealing?
I think I just had to get used to it because I was number three.People ran out of time.They didn't have the wherewithal, the interest.Because I was so young when my parents split up and there were so many other factors that had to go into
Man, there's logistics and legal thing and time and distance and stuff like that.That I took care of myself and, you know, was satisfied.I think it was reprieve for them.So I just got used to occupying myself by being alone.
And that's really great and it can be really detrimental.
Yeah, I can relate to so much of that as well.I felt I was the eldest, just one of two.And my parents, you've used this word previously in other interviews of having your parents had a fractured relationship and so did mine.And so
there was definitely a sense of i had to build independence, accountability and responsibility very early on because i had to take care of things and i also look back at that as such a strength and i'm so grateful for it in a kind of weird way because i feel like it made me grow up earlier
not in a way that I felt I lost a childhood or I didn't have amazing experiences, but I'm really happy now when I look back that it gave me strength and courage much earlier.
But as the older one, did it have some expectations of responsibility put on you?Like where are you going and you have to be back by now?Were there rules placed upon you?
No rules, no rules for me.More expectations educationally And what was strange, which is so much linked to what I do today, and I've drawn that line fairly often for myself, is I was emotionally depended on by both of them.Oh, okay.
So I became the therapist that mediated that.
Oh, wow.That's a burden.I'm sorry.Yeah, very early on.No wonder you went off for three years to sleep on the floor.Exactly.Sleep on the ground.
Yeah, yeah.So I'm grateful for it now, though, because I think it gave me the ability to listen closely, be empathetic, understand both sides, care for both.He gave me that ability to recognize how it takes two to tango.
I think this is a viable study about where you are in that pecking order.Amber and I agreed about it because because I was last and last by five years, I had no rules.I had no expedite.
They had spent so much time trying to establish that with my older siblings.They didn't want to bother with it anymore.
So if I was gone for two weeks, I just didn't come home for two weeks in high school, they knew I was sleeping at somebody's house and doing my homework and getting to school on my own.They were thrilled that they didn't have to.
They didn't have to discipline me or punish me.They didn't have to think about me.I just came and went by myself.But I was not the oldest.I did not have somebody that was establishing the rules and the structure of the family.
Yeah, that was, yeah, and that was different for me too.I had expectations academically, which is normal in an Indian family, but there weren't any rules for me as well.So if I was out and about and doing whatever it was, it didn't matter.And so.
So I'm going to, is the stereotype of the Indian family, are they, are you all brilliant students?Do you all work really hard and finish all your homework?
You're forced to prioritize homework.Education is all that matters.Your social skills, life, relationships don't matter.It's all about how well you perform.
I'm glad I'm not an Indian, and there's no way I could have been.Oh, Lord.
Yeah, it's all about how well you perform academically.Your whole life revolves around that.
Were your parents like high academic achievers?
Well, I think they did... I would say they did very well for what they had.So my dad became a chartered accountant.He qualified in England, but he grew up... He was raised in India.And my mom never did any more than what you'd study up until age 16.
And then after that, also became an entrepreneur and became a financial advisor.So they'd both struggled and worked hard.
I love it.It was going, it was going right where I thought it was until you said, and then became an entrepreneur.Yeah.Okay.Yeah.
Which I didn't realize growing up that she was an entrepreneur.
Well, that comes from somewhere of that structure of, uh, education and homework done even no matter the gender.
Exactly.Exactly.Exactly.Definitely. I was thinking about, as we're talking about your life, I can't help but think about the movie here that I'm so grateful I got to watch a couple of days ago, a couple of weeks, no, a week ago now.
And I really just felt that it was a work of art.That's kind of what I took away from it.It was a work of art because rarely, as a film more recently, had me so fixated on
First of all, the way it's produced and created is beautiful, and the way- It's a pretty deep throw there, yeah.It's so deep, and it's perfect for this conversation that we're having.
And even as you're reflecting on all of these scenes in your life, to me, I can't help but project- Oh dear, oh dear.
Because it was the four of us, you know, Bob, Bob Zemeckis, and Eric Roth, and Robin, and I, and everybody else in it, you know, Paul, and every other actor did. We, the scenes are very, very specific of a moment in a family's life.Yes.
And everybody was armed for bear.
Everybody had a thing that had happened to them that was like that, not necessarily example, but the sensory experience, the emotional connection to every single moment in this thing was really quite resonant for us all.
And I had to, when I, people say, what are you working on?Oh, I'm making a movie called Here.I say, not H-E-A-R.It's H-E-R-E.They said, well, what's it about?
I said, it is about how important things are when they happen here, you know, because you cannot control them.
And they are, if you, the film, I mean, all of the permutations where it goes, you know, we say, oh, the camera stands still in space, but it moves in time, you know.
Everybody, every character in it is going through that profound thing that happens in a specific moment in their life.And where does it happen?It happens right here.So we were always talking about presence, you know, some big aspect of it.
And also that we do not know that we're living in a moment of history. We don't know.They don't know.The first tribes, the Native Americans, they don't know that they're Native Americans.They're just living in the moment.
They don't know they're living 600 years ago, nor do the people that build the house that takes place.They don't know that they're living in 1911.They're just living in the right now of it.And that's a type of thing that really is so examinable.
in a very specific type of cinema.That is the point of what the whole movie is, that Bob and Eric fleshed out long before Robin and I came along.Yeah.And along with that comes together, the four of us have a history that we can go back to.I mean,
Robin's worked with Bob a couple of times.I've worked with Bob a number of times.Eric is one friend of mine.We've worked on stuff all the time.
And every time we've done it, we have a pinpoint of the difference between here, at the moment that it happened, and now, at this moment where we're talking about establishing a whole new other place in time.
Yeah, when I was watching it, I couldn't help but think of every place that has been monumental in my life, and then think about how many other events must have taken place in that room, in that space that I'm not even aware of, and I might even take for granted.
and not recognize the value of both in my life and previously, and of course, the future as well.
Well, I had to wrap my head around this thing that I had never experienced.We lived here. I've never lived any place, you know, now I've lived in the same literally home as in three-dimensional structure in time and space.
I've had that now for a couple of decades here.But this idea of someone putting so much I don't want to say importance, but having so much emotional centeredness in literally this place in a room, by these stairs, through this door.
The TV used to be there, and there it was there.Here's where mom and dad did this.Here's where I did that.I don't have that.Oh, I got it once we got married, finally.But I didn't get it until I was 35 years old. And my kids have it.
And sometimes I have to ask them about their perspectives.I moved around so much as a kid, I looked forward to it.
When we moved out of the house that my kids had been born in and lived in for the better part, you know, lived in for like 14 years a piece, they were sort of undone by it. And I didn't understand it.
I literally, in the back of my head, if not verbally, said, what's the big deal?How's that for a perspective?It is a huge deal if you're actually there.And Richard, Robin, and I are characters.I'm born in the house.I grow up in the house.
My kids are born in the house.Our entire marriage and family is spent in that house.And is it a solace? Or is it a boundary that you're never able to get through?Experiencing that and examining that was, oh my Lord.
I can't tell you how much conversation.This whole movie was just one big ass conversation about what it means.Not so much about what the words are, how we move around.That's the technical stuff that goes along.
But every moment that we were off by ourselves, it seemed to me we were,
trying to weigh this very specific thing of what we have always, what we have all been through in our odd, you know, celebrated, goofy, stupid, uh, individual lives and what it meant to this, the H-E-R-E aspect of, of, of this story that we were trying to tell.
And Bob particularly, I mean, we all, I think, incorporated our own approach to our art form and commercial life to it.Bob, as a filmmaker, is not about to do a shot that anybody could do.
And he's not about to tell a story cinematically in ways that have been done before.He's just built that way.He went, well, hell, anybody could do that.He says stuff like that.
And Eric, as a screenwriter, he's constantly landing on this place where only his words on paper can translate this thought process.And Robin and I, you know, Paul, everybody in the thing is like, I know the lines.Turn me loose.Let's go.Let's go.
What are you going to do?Are you going to try that?Let's try that.Where are you going to go?Just take it.This ongoing game of improvisational, emotional football in which you just, and I mean football is the international sense.Yes.
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Yeah.I know the film uses digital anti-aging technology and you get to see yourself many years younger.Was there any special feeling of that?
No.It was great because it's a great tool.People are aged and younged up in movies since Edison stole George Melies' film process back in the early 1900s.
It was fascinating to watch because it ended up being, the tools were so much better that it was a different completeness to it.
You know, we all had, you know, you always have hair and makeup.We went through extensive everything, you know.They did, at one point, I'm sitting there and Jennifer, our fabulous makeup artist, she's just looking at me.
She just grabbed both of my ears. and then lifted them up and shoved them into the top of my head.And I said, what are you doing?He said, oh, Tom, we're working on you being 17.And as you age, your ears grow and lower on your head.
And so I'm trying to see if I'll be able to glue them up. Oh, that's right.I said, have at it, girl.So all of the tool aspect of it is standard.What was new is that we could see it in real time.
We didn't have to send it off and wait for a long post-production thing, because that was the deep fake technology that uses some form of AI just to make it much, much faster and immediate.
And listen, one of the things that it shows is just how old I am.Because you got to have posture and energy. And if everything else about you looks like you're 22 years old, you're going to have to embody a 22-year-old.
I'm going to tell you right now, it's very hard to leap off a couch in enthusiasm as a 67-year-old guy at the time that we did it.
I didn't even think of that.
Hey, you know what?Had a lot of tea, had a lot of protein bars, got a lot of rest, got a lot of stretching in order to make that happen.
Yeah, you mentioned presence there, and that was a theme that definitely struck me.What do you find helps you be the most present today as you're living?
There are times that I think you have to be oblivious.You have to sort of like enforce it.You have to not think of things.
It's crazy, but one of the most basic things I think that I learned, probably in junior college when I actually, Shibu Community College,
when he truly did begin to study this kind of stuff is that the words, what you are saying has to be so familiar to you that you don't think about it.And that is a degree of being oblivious to the specifics of what you're doing.
Because if you're trying to get through it, that means self-consciousness.That means you are not getting out of yourself, and self-consciousness is the death of performance.Ask any actor this thing.If you have a scene,
Well, you have to go to a deep emotional place, and the only way to do it is to go there.Chances are, you have had the most wonderful day of your life prior to that, or it is so much fun to come to work that day, all right?
So that's one thing that you have to do.And the other side of it is, if you have to be charming and convivial and funny on paper, on stage a day, chances are you're going through some personal hell, you know, off camera.
that you just have to be oblivious to somehow.And along with that, there's, I can't discount enough, the joy of the hang.I think what I do for a living, joy does, it promotes it.
And joy not necessarily being we're all having a great time, we're all singing campfire songs, but the joy of allying yourself with great collaborators and trusting that they are going to get better stuff out of you that you could possibly bring yourself.
And being open to just knowing it so well.Everybody says, well, what do you mean by learning the lines?I mean, learning the lines like you know the lyrics to the best song you ever heard in your life yesterday. all my troubles seem so far away.
Now I need a place that's here to say, oh, I believe in you.You gotta be able to rattle it off that fast, that easily.It's gotta be so much a part of you that you don't have to think about it at all.If I actually sang the right words to you.
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.And I feel there's this, it's amazing to see your enthusiasm, excitement, joy, you know, continuing your career when you're, even what you just said now of working with people who can get even more out of me.
And that belief that there's more in you always, you've talked about imposter syndrome in the past. which obviously I'm sure everyone, when they look at you, find it hard to believe.
But I recognize when you've shared or I've heard you talk about it before, it's very real.
It's very genuine, this feeling of like, oh, well, you know, walk us through that, how you've been able to constantly believe there's more in you to give, more to do, more to find.
Somebody wanted me to do a movie, all right?And it was great. And I should have done it.It was going to be for a lot of money.You would pay and you go somewhere cool.You get a good per diem, you know, all that kind of stuff.
There was no reason not to do the movie, except there was something, uh, that I just said, this is not the match for me because number one, I don't have any curiosity about the subject.Now, That's not the only reason to do it.
But in order to translate the theme of the movie through a performance, there has to be some sort of challenge and curiosity to it.And I had none, that was one thing.
But the other part of it too, I was searching, I was having a one-on-one talk with the director.And I was just, I said, look, I said, I don't have the, I don't have the, I don't have the countenance.
And the director said, countenance? The hell does that mean?
I said, there is a thing that we all carry with us.We have a countenance that comes from everything we've said, all the work that we've done, all the times that we've either succeeded or failed, because they both go together.
Failure teaches you a lot more than success does.I'm talking about commercial success.
But that idea that you walk away from a job and you think that we went to a new place in order to examine this theme that only we could have done unless we all got together and challenged each other and made it happen.
And without that type of stretching of one's countenance that you come into, that to me is the big McGilla.I still find myself completely at the mercy of that instinctive moment of, oh, my God! That's what I think.
And the next thing you know, you want to do it and you're talking about it continuously.And there is nothing that anybody says that detracts from that initial experience.
Because, you know, there's plenty of other things that you can do because they're fun.
I mean, my beginnings, the first time I was a professional actor, we were in repertory theater with my Vincent Dowling at a place called the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, Ohio.And because we were in rep, we did everything.
We did Hamlet and King John and Othello at the same time we were doing fabulous rip-roaring comedies that everybody dug.The countenance then is exchanged between the two.
And that's something that it's not a burden at all, but it is a prism through which a decision has to be made.Going back again to this idea of this, I believe
that my countenance, look it up, staff look up countenance for me, my countenance is not going to aid the examination of this theme and movies work when the theme is worthy of being examined by that movie.
And so in that case, you just have to say, uh, no, uh, there's, uh, you need somebody that's going to come in there like a, you know, like, like a, like a mad dog and, and devour that bone.And I, I just, by countenance doesn't match up to that.
Yeah.It sounds like you've never compromised that.
Oh, I've compromised plenty of time.Oh, okay.Making mistakes.There was a period of time, look at my IMDB, it might be up in triple digits by now.And it was a time where I just said, they are asking me to be in a movie.You don't say no to that.
That's young, that's the stuff that you do in your 20s and in your 30s.And then sometime in there, you start thinking about, no, no, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
The greatest decision, by the way, I don't think I've ever said no yet. except by schedule.But now it turns out to be that's where you start shaping, what, your art and the body of work.You have to start, the power is saying no.
And that was really hard to do when, you know, everybody thinks you're great, you show up and everybody wants you to do it, and everybody says fabulous things.But I didn't know I was compromising, because I didn't know any better.
But there was a moment, I guess, when you said like, ah, you know, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to, I think I'd be compromising somewhere here.
And so the, the first time I said no to something, um, it was a very, it was, it was on one hand liberating.And of course I might've thought I made the biggest mistake of my life.
Uh, you know, if you take any great, take any great magnificent take, let's just pull from the take Faye Dunaway and Laurence Olivier. they have very specific countenances.
There is a thing that you will say, oh my God, the countenance of Lawrence Olivier, really, really, Ozzie Davis, well, you know, any great that, wow, that countenance matches.Yes.And that's, I guess that's what I'm talking about.Yes, yes, yes.
There is a, there is like a, you know, some sort of cosmic weight that they carry along with them that makes sense for what they're doing.
Yeah, for sure.There's a, Listening to you speak about, I mean, it's so relieving to hear that you've compromised sometimes because it's a relief.
Come by my house, we'll have a night of compromise.How about that?You want to do that?I love it.We'll bring the DVDs and say, this is the DVD of compromise.
I mean, that'd be amazing.No, I think because we forget that you're used to celebrating and counting someone's wins and hits when they've had so many and you look over the compromises or whatever it may have been.
It's a relief hearing that because your values of how you pick a project, of how you work on a project seems so strong and defined now, and that's obviously come with time.As you were making here,
Was there a particular scene that reminded you of a time in your life that you want to revisit, relive, rethink?
Eugene O'Neill wrote Our Wilderness.He wrote that play as the life he wanted to have, he wished he had had, the family that he had wished he had. And I always read that.
Eugene only is a big reason why I became an actor, because I saw great productions of his stuff back in 1975, 76.And when I finally saw All Wilderness, I was knocked out, because it was as delightful a play as it was.
And I'd always heard that he wrote that as the family that he wished he had.I thought about that when I was doing here, because there are moments, for example, when we're just sitting watching TV.
And Robin is there, the kids are little, and we're just there.And we ended up talking about what would be on the TV.
And I went right back to, I don't know, it was a Dean Martin show or an episode of something, even down to some of the commercials that we wanted to.And those moments were transporting for me, but not in a home the way we were picturing it.
I remember seeing those in an apartment that we lived in for two and a half years when I was walking to school by myself.
Or the first years, you know, somebody was married to a step spouse that was not the most benevolent human being in the planet Earth, right?
Sometimes I remembered sometimes just that gathering around, like-mindedly getting the same thing out of a TV show. like an electric fireplace, but it was solace.It was a togetherness that belied what was really going on in the house.
And there's a couple of those, particularly when the kids are little and Robin and I are in the early, early years of our marriages that were sublime right then and there, because we're laughing.It's there.The kids are being goofy.
There's a moment that there's a moment that comes along And I don't think there's a better example of a true sense of family and home and connection in moments that are not Thanksgiving or Christmas morning or a wedding or a kid.
They are when you're just sitting around on a Thursday night, you know, content and happy.And nothing is happening except the sense of presence that's there.There's a couple of them.Yeah, it's funny that you should ask that because I realize now that
the amount of suggestions we all had for how we would sit there, what would be on the TV, what we had done just before, was coming right out of our individual lives, from Bob, from Eric, certainly from Robin and myself.
Yeah, it felt so real. It feels so real.Every scene, every conversation, every event feels so real.
One of the things that we learned, because it's shot in this very specific aspect ratio camera position, is that everything works.Everything. if you're in the scene, even if you're not talking, you are registering in a way that warrants attention.
The stuff that is on the walls, I can't say enough about the TV.Here's something goofy.I walked onto the set one day, and it was from a period from early 1960s or something like that.
And the TV was an old General Electric TV that was the same model we had.No. When Apollo 8 flew around the moon, we had – this was the TV.We had this old black and white thing with General Electric.It had this big channel-changing knob on the side.
It was like that.And it was the same maple cabinet.It wasn't big.It was just not much – you know, it was on legs and it had the cloth speakers that said General Electric and the thing like that.
and I immediately took a picture of it and I sent it to my siblings and I said, you recognize this?And they all said, oh, that's a TV from the Johnson house.It was like that.So it had these kind of like talismans that came along with it.
Oddly enough, they were both great to see and bittersweet to remember.
Does that make sense?Yeah, for sure.I know you're fascinated by space.Do you have any desire to go to the moon?
Oh, you know, if they were going to do a thing where, you know, regular blokes could just go up and go around it, I mean, I'd take that.You would?Oh, yeah.Just to do it.But, oh, yeah.I'm sure Elon Musk would love to take that.
Oh, I'm not going with him.But he's not going there anyway.You know, they're just going up now.But I've met, I've talked to the, I've talked to the crews that are in line to make the next orbit around the moon that could happen as early as 25, 26.
And man, oh man, I just say, hey, if you need someone just to clean up and crack jokes, you got room in there, give me a call.I'll get down to whatever weight requirements are necessary because I wouldn't pass it up.But I said, but only if
All of the windows are clear, because a lot of times they have gone up and the windows get kind of like messed up because of zero gravity and the vacuum outside and the building material.
Was that fascination only from movies?Is that where it came from?
No, no, that came from, I was right smack dab in, I was that educatable generation for which it was, space travel was, the embodiment of every discipline that we were studying, current events, politics, physics, art, engineering, math.
It was all wrapped up all into one.It was on TV regularly. Of course, now you're going to think about this, but the idea of being alone in space in a space suit, it was kind of mirroring my life when I was like 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 years old.
Wow.Yeah.I mean, I don't know if you saw that movie, Fly Me to the Moon, recently.
No, I did not, but it's streaming in the new movie economy, so I know it'll be there for a thousand years.Yeah, I just watched it recently.It was fascinating. It's a little bit of the conspiracy theory, really didn't happen yet.
Normally I hate that kind of stuff but it's good quality people so I'll try to check it out.
I'd love to get your thoughts on it when you see it.And your other fascination is world wars.
Well this is another thing that goes back to The study of it, let me put it to you this way.I was born in 1956.That's 11 years after the war is done.
So essentially, everybody who is an adult in my life had memories of those years, whether they went to war or not.They had memories of what I like to call the emotional stasis of the early 1940s.
in which, go back again, they did not know the war was going to end.In 1943, they had no idea how long the war was, who's going to live, who's going to die, who's going to win, who's going to not, who's not, who's going to come back.
1943, if you're alive, they're not saying, hey, don't worry about it.The war is going to be over in just another 18 months.They don't know that.
And that was a palpable thing that was passed on to me because when it came around time to get to know the life stories of a teacher, a friend of my dad's, parents of my pals,
They would talk about those years, their youth, in three distinctive parts, three acts of their lives, which might have been picking up on because some sort of story sense.When they were kids, it was before the war.
When my dad was in high school, it was before the war.When he was working on a farm, listening to the radio, and worried about not being able to afford the dentist, it was before the war. Then there was, well, that was during the war.
It's a whole different storytelling process, the whole different guidelines of the narrative.Well, you have to understand. That was during the war.That was 42, was during the war.And their daily life was completely different than what it had been.
There was less of things.There was this fear of this unseen enemy possible attack.There were blackouts.They couldn't get cling peaches.They didn't have birthday cakes as much.It was during the war.And also, I said, well, where were you?
Oh, well, that was during the war.Well, where were you? Well, I was in a battalion, you know, I was, I was, you know, I was, my dad was in the South Pacific.
He was a machinist and he would never have been in the South Pacific as a machinist were it not for the war.Then the rest of their lives, when we show up, you know, when this next generation shows up, when their kids show up, all this stuff happened.
And again, the narrative has completely changed.We have to understand. was after the war.
So on one hand there was something to celebrate but on the other hand there was guess what life became one damn thing after another in a different way than it had been before the war.
And you know it the people that you the people who did it well you know the
the storytellers, the teachers, or even the friends of my dad's when we're sitting around and everybody's relaxed on a Thursday night and they're drinking beers, you know, and they're talking about when they're getting to know each other.
The stories from any one of those acts I thought were fascinating, were ponderable because As a seven-year-old, I'm hearing my dad and my mom and other people talk about when they were seven years old.
With the magnifying glass and the division of, well, that was before the war.We did not know what was coming down the pike.Then everything else that goes along with it.
I still can't quite get past the fact that in 1964, the Beatles are on the Ed Sullivan show. And my dad is of the generation of just 20 years prior.The war was not yet over and they had no idea when they were ever going to come home.
And now these four kids are up on there saying, yeah, yeah, yeah.And playing guitars and stuff like that.And everybody's making a big deal about it.Part of it is never saw this coming.Never would have never.And
in a lot of ways now us younger generation did not have the same attention span for what they had what they had been through.
I mean until the you know you could talk about Elvis Presley all you want and rightly so he was a he was a massive generational force changed the world a lot of ways but still vis-a-vis a World War II generation.
The Beatles come along in 1964, and it's almost as though the last vestige of that generation carries import, you know, has weight that we can pay attention to.
Even though I've, you know, I've never stopped studying of it, because at the end of the day, it's just great storytelling.You want to talk about great protagonists, antagonists, you want to talk about the irony, you want to talk about the,
schizophrenia of what can happen in good and bad.World War II is about as good as you're going to get.And also, here's this other thing that's ridiculously satisfying about it.It ended.There was a time when it was all done.
And wars now go on for generations.And they go on for decades.And there are no moments when the swords are pounded into plowshares.Not that that happened in you know 100% in 1945.
Yeah it seems it seems as though like not that it's any comparison with the events that took place but our language of this generation has become pre-pandemic. during the pandemic, post-pandemic.
Yeah, you could probably look at it.There was a moment, certainly the AIDS crisis came along and the pandemic of AIDS, that certainly altered all of society in the same way.
You could talk to an awful lot of guys who will say, well, you know what I'm saying, that was before AIDS, that means a lot.And yeah, you would say the same thing about certainly the COVID pandemic.We went through something
That, I mean, my look, I got grandkids who are now talking about their lives.Well, that was during COVID.And so they didn't go to school and they didn't see their friends.They were trying to do things online.It was really different.
And now COVID has let go and guess what?Now they're just getting on with the rest of the tasks of growing up with their life.So they too, um, you know, it might be a little young to remember, you know, before COVID, but they do.So, yeah.
So what's going to be next, do you think?What's going to be that next three act structure to our, uh, to our collective history?
Well, as you keep saying, more will be revealed as well.
Yes, this too shall pass and more shall be revealed and we will never all know of everything that we need to know.
Yeah, you've been seen as the, or even in a poll, voted the most trusted man in America.
There's an anomaly in the vote taking process there.After all the times I've lied to everybody, oh no, this is a great movie.By all means, come see this movie.That was a lie sometimes.How do you deal with that kind of a movie?
Oh, you know, I don't know. Yeah.Okay.You know, I get it.That's good.I guess that comes around to perhaps the thing that I was talking about countenance wise, you know, if you were going to take somebody who is
who is an artist and say, who is the scariest person alive?You'll come off with, I don't know, Vincent Pryor, whatever.I'm an artist.I'm a storyteller.And I think I'll take that as a testament to
I guess the veracity that I brought to my craft, my choice.I'd like to think that, you know, you go all in on a story on and say, hey, sit down.
I want, you might be interested in hearing this, is that you're, there's an honest exchange between myself and the audience.And if it's an honest exchange, then you could come to trust them.You know, that's not a bad thing.That's not a bad thing.
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Absolutely.And it's quite magical actually, I mean, trust in that way.Of course, you know, Hollywood success, you've spoken about it so many times, which is why we haven't dived into it.And then, you know, a happy, healthy marriage.
And how did you know Rita was the one?Like that's, you know, how did you know?
of divine providence, you know, maybe it's kind of like the same thing that happened when I was in school, in high school, and I said, this could be school.
There was a thing with Rita where I just thought, wait, it could be like this.It could be like just sitting around,
It could be like a carefree union.I didn't know that.How about that?Honestly, I had not truly experienced that somehow.And when it's there,
you just kind of go, Oh, I, you know, I, I, I, you know, I'd like to say, and then, you know, and then we met and I said, and you know, and then that was that.Okay.Yeah.That's pretty much it.Then you get on with it.
And, uh, you know, years later, um, no small amount of, uh, no small amount of me saying things like, Oh, let me get this straight.You know, there's a lot of plenty of, plenty of examples of that going on, you know,
With so much so that, oh, here goes dad.Oh, here goes dad with a let me get this straight.Why would it work for me argument?I pull it out.I pull it out all the time.And you know, we do.She does too.And that's the exchange.Yes.
And it remains glorious.And you can't create it anywhere else.You can't fake that.
Yeah.There's that beautiful, uh, acceptance speech that you have in 2020, when you talk about how a man is blessed with this beautiful family.
Oh, you're in tears and that, you know, you can't, number one, I am a sap.Number two, you, I, you don't expect, you think you're going to be able to get up and, you know, get away with it.So I'm eating on, I'm going to get it.
That'll be some straight shooting.I'll see some great stuff.But then I just, you look down and you know, there's my wife and there's, you know, There's, you know, a combination of all my kids, sometimes four or five, you know, they're all just there.
And what do you see?I see little babies, you know.And I, you know, I, you know, I see, I see this, this woman that is put up with so much stuff.And you just, you know, life flashes before your eyes a little bit.
And there's that, there's that moment of surrealism where it's like, can somebody explain to me how this happened?I'm not, I'm not quite sure.
and here does the same thing, the movie, here, H-E-R-E.There's a sense of you're watching your life flash back.
What I really loved, okay, I guess we have to be careful about spoiler alerts.I know, I'm trying to.I'm trying, I'm trying.We don't wanna go there, but I think that it ends up examining this truth that sometimes life passes in the wink of an eye,
And it's like, wow, are we here already?But there's other times in that same wake of an eye, you comprehend it all.And I think that's what the movie works towards, if I can be so bold.
And in many ways, that was the theme that we were all working towards. And even in the the perfectness of just the word it happened here This is where that happened.Have you been have you ever like been in like a really super historic?Place.
Yes a few times where something went down now Maybe it's something from thousands of years ago, or maybe it's something that you witnessed on tv yourself You go to like you go to like washington dc and uh
stood on the, you know, look, I made a movie in front of the Lincoln Memorial, I couldn't believe that was happening.
And then years later, I'm going back and there is there is a plaque at the top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which is where Martin Luther King stood.
And I have since gone back and read about that extraordinary day that did not happen by accident. In fact, it was originally going to be a protest.
It was going to be a sit-in and the powers that be all got together and said, rather than make it a protest of a sit-in, make it a march.And suddenly also things happened, like there were plenty of bathrooms lined up.
There were sandwiches that was made for people.There were social services.There were cops.There were army men standing by ready in case it was going to be a riot.And in 1964, 63, a riot was definitely a possibility.
It would have been a massive amount of civil unrest.And instead, it was all of these speakers. Marlon Brando was there, Charlton Heston was there, along with everybody else.
And Martin Luther King was, everybody could only speak for seven minutes, because they did not want it to run over and become unruly.So everybody who spoke, spoke for seven minutes, and that includes the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.
And there's a reason that plaque is there in order to place it.And to be there and see it and then just envision everything.It's a powerful place.Powerful, powerful, spiritual.
Are there other places you've been to like that or revisited multiple times to decode and discover?
Oh, yeah.I'll tell you one.Who cares what I said on other podcasts?When we were doing, believe it or not, when we were in Philadelphia, because I was making Philadelphia.
Kids were, you know, I only had three kids there and some of them were with us and we were, it was a freezing cold day.We had a day off, so we went and saw the sights. including Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, you know, a whole bit.
What are you going to do in Philadelphia?You're going to go do that.You're going to see the Liberty Bell.You're going to go like that.
And Independence Hall being a famous place, and it's still in the same joint, and it still holds the same, you know, dimensional structure to it, you know.Maybe a lot of everything might have been, you know, recreated, but nonetheless, there it is.
And we were up in the Senate building and the Senate room, you know, because it had Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Senate right there.
And we were there, and it's a national park, and the ranger said, if you look at all of this stuff is reproductions except that chair, which is the original chair.I said, wow, it looked the same.It looked like a chair to me.
So I said, that chair, that's an original chair.And it looked exactly like the same.He said, all this other stuff has been recreated to the best of its authenticity.And that's a riser there.And he said, that spot.
In front of that dais, John Adams was sworn in as the second president of the United States, taking the place of George Washington.
Was the first time in recorded history when the rule of a sovereign nation was passed to another without bloodshed and him not being a relation.Said something like that.In the head, I said, We are in holy ground.Nobody died.The king is dead.
Long live the king.No one was murdered, butchered.The hordes didn't come in and take away.No one was passing it on to his son in order to go on. There was no relation between John Adams and George Washington.
The only thing that happened was this modicum of a thing they called democracy, which wasn't really democracy.I mean, women couldn't vote.If you were a slave, you were only three-fifths of a human being.
The only people that actually voted were a bunch of white men, property owners, who originally didn't want to pay their taxes to the crown. But look what happened there.
I mean, I've been to plenty of cool joints, but this idea, not unlike the place where Martin Luther King stood, the idea that was communicated right there was tantamount to being in some version of the Holy of Holies, a precious shrine, a place of great faith and hope.
I mean, speaking to that impact, you received a honorary Greek citizenship.Oh, yeah.I got a passport.For your amazing work there.
Look, we just love Greece.It is the home country to my wife's family. Um, it, well, you can do, uh, this is something that, that, that we do in, that do in Greece.
You know, you go off to some other Island, you're swimming somewhere, you're on a boat and you can kind of like pivot and all you see is land, sea and sky. There's no sign of humanity.
And you go like, this is exactly what it's looked like for 110,000 years.This is exactly what this island was here in this exact same point.And by the way, there's a port right there, which was a place of antiquity or that.
But to be able to look at something that is unscarred exactly as it was, it's like looking at primordial forests.It's like going back in time.And you see this aspect of the sky and the wind and the aridness of it.
the power of, you know, a ship in order to get there.I've done that, you know, any number of places, you know, great historical places like that. And it makes you feel really, really teeny tiny sometimes.It's like, who are we?
But specs in the course of all of this is like standing under a big, massive sky and finally seeing on a really super dark night our galaxy or the Milky Way, our solar system.And it's like, wow, I haven't been out of town for a while.
I forgot how big that sky is and that that's a part of this.It's important to go through that sometimes.So important.So important.Have you ever seen a solar eclipse?
I'm sure I've kind of, but not, yeah.
Not the last one, but the one prior to it, we made sure that we were in the path of totality and we saw it.And oh my God, it
You, I cannot talk, no special effect in any movie has ever had the same impact or effect on anybody who takes a look at what that is.You feel as though you are witnessing God, you know, the clockworks of God.
And it's, they can predict it, they know what it's gonna be, and every step of it is, you cannot fathom what you are seeing.
And it made me feel on one hand, it made us all feel on one hand really super tiny, but at the other hand, magnificent, because we're a race that knew when it was coming and could predict it, could make sure where they were watching us.
Really marvelous.Where was that?When you read it, there is like these paths, you know, you can look at it on a map, but we just made sure that we were up in the panhandle of Idaho in order to take a look at it.
People were just parking their cars willy-nilly everywhere in order to be, they were driving from, you know, hundreds of miles on either side of it in order to get to this very specific path of totality. And it is, man.
It is a totally immersive experience.Don't miss it if you can.
Okay.Next one.Tom, it has been such a joy spending time with you today.I feel so grateful to have been able to hear stories, be taken on adventures, and learn life's lessons through your insights.
It's just been a delightful conversation.I've loved hearing about your history, how you got there. for the oldest boy of a, what is it, a fractured marriage between an Indian mom and dad?I think you've done well in your pursuit.
Thank you.I'm very grateful.We end every On Purpose episode with a final five.These have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
One word to one sentence maximum.
Yeah, which I will probably break the rules, so don't worry if you do.Okay.But Tom Hanks, these are your final five.The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
And why?If you're going to do it, do it.If you have the chance, do it.Don't pause.
They're instinct, man.If you got an instinct, go at it, throw deep.
I love that.Second question, what is the worst life advice you ever heard or received?
Do Fantasy Island.I didn't take it, but there was no reason to do Fantasy Island.
That's great.Question number three, how would you define your current purpose?
To be present. wherever one is, whoever is one around, be present, be right there, show up, be present.
Because that will teach you then, I think, how the difference between telling the truth to the best of your understanding and being all right with what happens next,
If you can't do that, your life is going to be a wasted opportunity, if that makes sense.
Are you making these up as you go along?No, no, no, no.No, no, no.
All right, okay.Every single question I've asked you today.What's something you believe you're learning and evolving into right now, or something that you're tinkering with right now personally?
There is, an addictive quality to examining the past that can be counterproductive if you're only doing it in order to wallow in a nostalgia of how easy things were back then.I fancy myself a lay historian.Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.
There's nothing new under the sun.Okay, so this stuff has been going on forever.
If you are not looking, if I am not looking for examples of the frailties of the human condition, if I'm only looking at the past in a version of there was an antagonist and there was a protagonist and the protagonist won, missing the point of how miraculous the human condition is.
If you're going to, I went to Egypt. And I saw all the stuff that tourists see when they see Egypt, right?
And if you're going to Egypt in order to come up with some, oh, this is the home of great spirituality, and there was a cosmic power here, and this is where, okay, fine, go ahead.I'm not gonna tell you that's not what's going on.
But if you're not also seeing this ongoing friggin' mystery of what humankind has figured out on its own, you're missing out, you know? There is, yes, they call them the great pyramids.They weren't necessarily built for great reasons.
Sometimes they were just built in order to maintain the status quo of the haves and the have nots.And when I heard a guy say, the Sphinx, you know, the great Sphinx, you could have been alive 2000 years after the great Sphinx was built.
And you're still in pharaoic Egypt.It's still before the common era began.And guess what?You and nobody else has any idea who built the Sphinx.That's how old it is and that it's bailed as well as it.
And if you don't take that and understand like, man, there's mystery there. Who did it, how they did it, that stuff's always interesting.The why they did it, that's interesting too.
But also that incredible impact of that, the sphinx will never be explained.If you're just there for the nostalgia and you don't want to ride the camel and get your picture, you can do all that stuff and that's a blast.
But there's something to the past that if you allow yourself just to be soothed by it, you're missing out on a great life lesson, something that is important as physics or poetry.
Mm, so powerful.Why do you think we do that?
I think because we're looking for a, we want to feel good about going to sleep at night, you know?We want to feel as though that there is this purpose, that outside, I think, outside the cosmic understanding that, hey, you know what?
The universe is indifferent, but the human condition is not. That's what separates us from, you know. you know, the chaos theory.We don't have to live in chaos if we choose not to.
And if we're only looking at the past in order for some degree of, oh, it was so much easier back then, no, it's never been easier.As I said before, you know, no one knows that they're living in the 1400s.They were just alive back then.
And it might be highfalutin, but what it says is, oh, I'll tell you this, what it says is our best days are yet to come. we are going to progress from here.And if you're just looking at the past and saying, man, that was when it was great.
I wish we could go back.No, you never want to go back.You always have to understand that our best days are still ahead of us.Otherwise, what's that say of us if we don't move forward?It says we gave up or got lazy.
or ended up putting too much power in maintaining a status quo that ends up being a division between the haves and the have nots.
Absolutely, well said.Fifth and final question, we ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show.If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
Man, you spring this on me?Really?I'm looking at a wall of shame of people, your Polaroids of people that have been, they all came up with something for that?They did.
One law that everybody had to follow, a law, meaning you could be punished if you don't obey this law?Sure.
Well, it can't be like a philosophical thing, like be kind, you know?Being kind is in the eye of both the kinder and the kindy.
I would pass a law that says no one is allowed to infringe upon the right in regards to what somebody else reads. That is, no matter how disagreement, whatever that disagreement is, to be free is to think.
And the most physical manifestation of thought is in the choosing of what you read.So I would say that no one is allowed to infringe upon the right to determine
figure out what the legal, but no one is allowed to infringe upon the right of an individual to read what they choose to read.That would be my, that would be the law.
Now take a look at all the societies, you know, I'm fascinated by, I'm fascinated by communism, man, because those guys were idiots, you know, they truly were.And the idea that in East Berlin,
You cannot read to kill a mockingbird or Dr. Zhivago for crying out loud.The idea that you can maintain order in society by preventing somebody from reading what they want to read, this is madness.
This is tyrancy and it's about, this is draconian, what's the word I'm looking at?That's despotism at its absolute height. that you can do that.
And I think on the opposite of that, absolute freedom to read what you want to read, and along with that, create what you want to create as well.That should be the default position of the human condition.And isn't it amazing that it's not?
So that would be the law I would pass.
Powerful, unique, and completely original answer, sir.Worth waiting for.
Well, as an author, you know, as a guy who writes, I'll bow to that.
Tom, thank you so much again.
Oh, this was magnificent.Thank you so much.
Oh, it was great.Such a pleasure.And I can't wait for everyone to go and watch here on November 1st.
All right.Yeah, we'll pay that.Oh, yes.Go on.And now, by the way, you can only see it in a theater.Okay.Here's the thing.This is why Crackstaff is so petrified.There was no streaming deal for this movie.You're not going to be able to, you know,
Log on, enter your passcode, you know, share it with your friends.The only way you're going to, you're going to have to drive to a place and buy a ticket at a certain time and sit in a room with a bunch of strangers.
And watch this movie.It's almost unheard of.And of course, everybody is petrified that that's going to be the requirements of seeing a movie, but that's the way it's going to be.
I love it. Theaters are still one of my favorite experiences.
Oh yeah, it's the, you know, not to continue along with that, but there's this thing that we talk about all the time right now, and I actually believe that podcasts can be an example of it.It is the experiential economy, meaning that
It is one thing, look, everything is a one-on-one.
You listen to a record, you see a band, but the experience of being with others as opposed to being in your house or being on your headphones or being like that, being with others has a value to it that in some cases is worth money, okay, that's commerce, but on other cases is to be sought after.
My wife and I went to see a play in New York.It was a revival of Into the Woods. And it was more or less right after the pandemic.Theaters were back opening again.People were essentially living their lives again.
There'd been enough, you know, everybody gotten enough vaccines and what have you.And COVID wasn't killing as many people as it had.And so we went to the theater because we knew some people in it.And it was, this thing happened.
You know, it's a theater, a mumble, everybody, blah, blah, blah, blah, sold out, big hit. and mumble, mumble, mumble.And when the house lights went to half for the first act, there was a standing ovation.
People stood up before a word, before a note had been sung.Nothing had happened on the, what was happening was the show is about to start.And it was a standing ovation.And I literally said, that's the experience.
People are reacting to the experience of being with strangers or a handful of friends with strangers in a room and nothing, What is going to happen in this room will never be repeated.
The only people that will participate in this is the folks that are here right now.And movies, oftentimes, can have that same experience.Because I can remember going to see 2001, or Jaws, or Close Encounters, or Aliens, or Full Metal Jacket.
I can remember the specifics of all those things.And it's the same experiential experience.Maybe it's part of the economy, or maybe it's just part of the, the great human purchase that we all want to participate in.
Thank you, Tom.Thank you.Thank you.
I really enjoyed it.If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with Will Smith on owning your truth and unlocking the power of manifestation.
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