This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Tom Hanks has been a constant presence on the American movie screen for 40 years.

He's played a mermaid's boyfriend,

an astronaut, a soldier on D-Day, an FBI agent, a young man dying of AIDS, a castaway,

and a dim-witted innocent who runs clear across America. He hasn't just won an Oscar for Best

Actor. In the mid-90s, he won it two years running.

And in his 60s, he still sells a lot of tickets. Now, Hanks has just added another line to the

resume, novelist. His new book is called The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece,

and he's put everything he's learned in the business

into an overstuffed, often funny, work of fiction. The story, which seems real enough,

involves an old comic book that's being made into a big-budget superhero movie.

I joined Hanks on stage the other night at the symphony space in Manhattan. Now, one note, it's

kind of interesting, because of the persona that comes with Tom Hanks, and we'll get to that later

for sure, I was expecting a certain kind of laconic, modest presence, Jimmy Stewart in

modern dress. But the Tom Hanks I met was more excitable, more performative, edgier.

And though the movies have made him very rich and very famous,

he was a lot more conflicted about what it is to be a star.

Tom, I want to start with your novel,

the making of another major motion picture masterpiece, which comes out

today. I have a question, and of course it comes in the form of a complaint. It's what we call a

Jewish question. In 1952, the New Yorker sent a writer named lillian ross who got access from start to finish to the

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