There was a period of time in Los Angeles when I wondered if I was just going to lose everything.
If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.
I’m not interested in doing something edgy with a capital E just so everyone knows, ‘Oh, OK, now he’s showing us he can do edgy.’
Growing up in northern California has had a big influence on my love and respect for the outdoors. When I lived in Oakland, we would think nothing of driving to Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz one day and then driving to the foothills of the Sierras the next day.
Believing is seeing and seeing is believing.
There isn’t any great mystery about me. What I do is glamorous and has an awful lot of white-hot attention placed on it. But the actual work requires the same discipline and passion as any job you love doing, be it as a very good pipe fitter or a highly creative artist.
I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.
What we’re doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They’re not just mythic heroes.
When I was 21 years old, I had a job playing Santa Claus in a shopping centre in Sacramento. I was rail thin, so it’s not like I was a traditional Santa Claus even then. I had a square stomach; that was the shape of the sofa cushion that I had stuffed into my pants.
I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.
I’ve made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good.
I don’t ask for much. I don’t ask to be rich, and I don’t ask to be famous, and I don’t ask to play center field for the New York Yankees. I just want to get married and have a wife, and a house, and I want to have a kid, and I want to go see him be a tooth in the school play!
When you’re on the open sea and you drop 10, 12 feet and your stomach goes up around your neck – that’s when you have problems.
Directing is a constant test of your communicative powers. You’re constantly trying to explain people your vision of what you want and steer these tiny little details into a cohesive thing.
Every job requires a certain riding of a horse.
All the kids are gone. It’s the greatest thing that has ever happened to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hanks. I’ll tell you that right now. Second greatest after having the kids in the first place. When they go, holy smoke, it’s like you’re dating again. It’s fantastic. Also, we were doing an awful lot of work.
Making a film is to make sure that everybody looks forward to coming to work.
When you try to bring a story to life, it starts in your head and you see possibilities for it, but it’s just one damn thing after another.
In the creative process you come to loggerheads and you just have to keep the process moving forward, even if that requires jumping on a plane and flying to London. It’s a good thing it’s fun, otherwise it would be too much work.
An animatic is a process where every voice and every sound effect is added to rough animated drawings and it lasts exactly as long as the final movie. So you actually get to go into a screening room with the rest of the cast and you get to see it all at the same time.
I love my family and I love my kids, but when the moments come, it’s not as though you can just substitute your own life with what you’re doing on film. You have to go to some other place where it’s bigger than your own life.