To talk about art, which films are, is hard when your job is to go out and make them and promote them and to take the high road and say, “Oh, I’m [an] artist, I’m a craftsman.” But we are. People who make movies are craftsmen. There’s no way to fake it. There’s no way to bluff your way through a moment that is going to live forever. You have to be in the moment. When I’m asked, “Mr. Hanks, how do you create these moments in your films,” I say, “You go there.” That’s all you can do. There are no shortcuts. Dear God, I wish there was, but there’s not. You just have to make it so.

I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to do this as long as I have. I’m glad that we’ve all been able to experience some degree of bitter compromise that can somehow be examined when we go to work. That fantastic, glorious effort that goes into capturing moments in time that are real and accurate and make audience members think, “That’s like me! I wonder what I would do in the those same circumstances?” As a little kid in the movie theater and as a 60-year-old man now, when I sit down in front of the screen and see it happening before me, I always ponder that question: “What would I do if I was in the circumstances of that man, that woman, that child, that android?”

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