Headline Dec 29, 2017/ ''' TOM HANKS - THE WRITER '''

''' TOM HANKS - THE WRITER '''

SOMETIME IN 2006, when Tom Hanks wanted to get a story published, he sent it to his friend and sometimes director Nora Ephron.

Hanks sent Ephron the piece.

''Ánd she said, 'Send it to The New York Times. I'll make some calls for you.''' Hanks recalls. And after many re-writes and lots of no-mercy Nora editing,  It was finally published in Thursday Styles.

It is interesting, given that  Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, are celebrated as the king and queen of Hollywood, that there is a strain of melancholy that runs through many of the stories about small-town characters.

The title of the book is drawn from his love of vintage typewriters.

There are 300 or so perched upstairs and downstairs in bookcases in the Santa Monica office of Playtone, his production company, which also boasts a turntable with enviable collection of LPS and 45s.

WE talk next to rows and rows of rare black and red and green typewriters that do not work, but count as 'objects of arts' for Hanks.

There is a glamour shot of Ben Bradlee, whom Hanks is portraying in The Post, the Steven Spielberg  directed  movie about The Washington Post 's role in publishing the  Pentagon Papers.

''Ben knew he was the coolest  guy in the room,'' Hank says.

In the adjacent room, bookcases are covered with  brimming typewriters. Vintage posters of  typewriters hang on the walls.

''Typing was the one requirement my dad had for me, going to school,'' he recalls.

''He said, 'goddamn it,  you'll take a typewriting course!' I think that was the sum total of my dad's advice to a young man.''

He tried to write his fiction on a typewriter but concedes : ''I only made it about five pages in. ''  That delete key on a laptop is too alluring.

All different brands of  typewriters -Royals and Remingtons and Continentals -make cameos in the stories, with pictures.

When I ask Hank how he fell in love with typewriters, he tells the basic story in These Are the Meditations of My Heart, noting : ''I changed the gender so they wouldn't all be about confused young men.''

It's a yarn about a young women who finds a cheap typewriter at a Church-parking-lot sale, goes to  Polish repairman to get it fixed, and ends up upgrading to a Swiss sea-foam-green Hermes 2000, the Mercedes of Typewriters, with ab Epoca typeface.

Did his stint in the early 80s sitcom Bosom Buddies, in which he dressed in drag, Some Like It Hot-Style, to live an apartment building restricted to women, help him write in a woman's voice. 

''I'm not sure that Lenny Ripps and Chris Thompson wrote in women's voices per se,'' he says with a smile, referring to the show's writers.

''I think between all the women that I worked for and with and married, they all had a great amount of input.''  

The character wants a  typewriter because her handwriting is so bad, Hanks says that's his problem, too, that his handwriting is ''horrible, horrible.''

He looks at mine and says it's just as bad, noting : ''If you were up for murder, a handwriting expert would read it and say, 'Oh, she's guilty, look at the Y's versus the block Js.'''

He looks trim. ''It's amazing what happens,'' he says.'' when you finally understand you have Type-2 diabetes and start eating like it.''

I had read that he got diabetes from gaining and losing a lot of weight for roles, but he tells me : ''No, I got from a life of worst diet on the planet Earth. I just ate sugar and stuff all my life.''

When one of his stories, a whimsical tale set in the future about four friends who built a spaceship  and fly to the moon -besides typewriters, Hanks has long been obsessed with flying to the moon -appeared in The New Yorker in 2014, a couple of critics pounced.

Slate complained that it was a ''mediocre story that breezed past the bodyguards because of its  Hollywood pedigree'', and another writer in  The Chicago Tribune, admitting envy, called Hanks ''a dabbler at best''.  

'Just don't read the comments because.... nothing good can come out of it,'' he says.

''Look, I'm 61. I don't have time to read about how bad or how good I was at something. Just let it sit out there, and they have to deal with the fact that I'm the famous guy who got my name in the paper.''

With respectful dedication to master writer Maureen Dowd, all the great actors, producers and directors of Hollywood. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

'''Students & Heritage'''

Good Night and God Bless

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