“Few know more about how movies are made than Tom Hanks - not just the technical details but the history drawn upon and the lives and relationships that must intertwine to create a motion picture. Hank’s ambitious novel is about the making of a multimillion-dollar superhero epic.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and that’s a description of Tom Hanks’ novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. I picked up this book because, well, who doesn’t love Tom Hanks?
Hanks starts with the source material. In 1947 in Lone Butte, California, five year old Robbie Andersen meets his uncle Bob Falls for the first time. Bob is back from being a flame-thrower in the war and drowning his PTSD with wild living. He spends a few days with his sister’s family and buys a war comic for Robbie. Robbie loves to draw and grows up to draw his own war comic based on his uncle’s time as a flame thrower.
Fast forward to 2020 when film writer/producer Bill Johnson finds the comic and writes a superhero movie based on it. Three fourths of the novel revolves around the making of that movie: the cast, all the staff behind the scenes, the process. Hanks gives as much attention to the associate producers who see to all the details as he does to the producer and the actors.
The book includes copies of the three comic books that were fundamental to the story and lots of footnotes explaining technical film terms. By the time you finish the four hundred page novel you have a very clear basic picture of all that goes in to making a motion picture.
If you’re looking for an engrossing novel about how films are made then you must read The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks.
