The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: Tom Hanks
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical World War II Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 22 MB
- Price: Free
BACKSTORY
A little over five years back, I had a message on my voice mail from
one Al Mac-Teer—which I heard as Almick Tear—from a number in the
310 area code. This no-nonsense woman asked me to call her back
regarding a thin little memoir I had written called A Stairway Down to
Heaven about my years of tending bar in a small subterranean club that
played live music way back in the ’80s. At the time, I was also, sort of, a
freelance journalist in and around Pittsburgh, PA. And I wrote movie
reviews. These days I teach Creative Writing, Common Literature, and Film
Studies at Mount Chisholm College of the Arts in the hills of Montana.
Bozeman is a gorgeous if stark drive away. I get very few voice mails from
Los Angeles, California.
“My boss read your memoir,” Ms. Mac-Teer told me. “He says you
write like he thinks.”
“Your boss is brilliant,” I told her, then asked, “Who is your boss?”
When she told me she worked for Bill Johnson, that I had reached her on
her cell as she was driving from her home in Santa Monica to her office in
the Capitol Records Building in Hollywood for a meeting with him, I
hollered, “You work for Bi-Bi-Bi-Bill JOHNSON? The movie director?
Prove it.”
Some days later, I was on the phone with Bi-Bi-Bi-Bill Johnson
himself, and we were talking about his line of work, one of the subjects I
teach. When I told him I’d seen his entire filmography, he accused me of
blowing smoke. When I rattled off many salient points from his movies, he
told me to shut up, enough already. At that time, he was “noodling” a
screenplay about music in the transformative years of the ’60s going into
the ’70s—when bands evolved from matching outfits and three-minute
songs for AM radio to LP side-long jams and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
The stories from my book were full of very personal details. Even though
my era was twenty years after what he was “noodling”—our club booked
unheralded jazz combos and Depeche Mode cover bands—the stuff that
happens in live-music venues is timeless, universal. The fights, the drugs,
the serious love, the fun sex, the fun love, the serious sex, the laughs and
the screaming, the Who-Gets-In and Who-Gets-Bounced—the whole
riotous scene of procedures both spoken and intuitive—were the human
behaviors that he wanted to nail. He offered me money for my book—the
nonexclusive rights to my story, meaning I could still sell the exclusive
rights, if there should ever be an offer. Fat chance. Still, I made more money
selling him the rights to my book than I did selling copies of the thing.
Bill went off to film Pocket Rockets but kept up with me through calls
and many typewritten letters—missives of wandering topics, his Themes of
the Moment. The Inevitability of War. Is jazz like math? Frozen yogurt
flavors with what toppings? I wrote him back in fountain pen—typewriters?
honestly!—because I can match anyone in idiosyncrasy.
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