Based on a true story, “Bridge of Spies” topbills Amy Ryan and Hanks.
LOS ANGELES—Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, longtime buddies and next-door neighbors, faced a dilemma before shooting their fourth film collaboration, “Bridge of Spies.” Steven recalled their apprehension: “Can we still work together and go from close friends to close colleagues and then go back to being close friends again? That was the fear that both of us had because, what if we don’t agree or knock heads over the interpretation of a moment or the whole script?”
“That never happened,” reported the man who is perhaps the world’s most famous living director. “We share a brain.” The collaborators who previously gave us “Saving Private Ryan,” “Catch Me If You Can” and “The Terminal” do seem wired to each other.
While we interviewed them separately at the Ritz Carlton-Central Park Hotel, Tom and Steven tended to share the same observations and anecdotes. Both wore glasses, dark clothes and sported gray hair and mustache (and a beard in Steven’s case) although Tom’s was dyed for his role as heroic airline pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in a film currently being shot by Clint Eastwood.
Tom, who wore a New York Yankees cap to cover his peroxide silver hair, calls Steven “boss.” In “Bridge of Spies,” cowritten by the Coen brothers with Matt Charman, the Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning artists revisit their favorite theme: an Everyman thrust in extraordinary circumstances.
Cold War
It’s the true story of James Donovan (Tom), a lawyer tapped by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War to negotiate the exchange of a convicted Russian spy (Mark Rylance) for two Americans—a downed spy plane pilot in the Soviet Union and a jailed student in Berlin.
Tom, whom we interviewed first, offered his perspective of his lauded collaboration with his iconic “boss”: “Part of the boss-employee relationship is that when you start shooting, my job is to give him what he wants. I might have an idea that’s something different. But he is a collaborator of the first degree. He requires any actor who works for him to come in with ideas. He really likes those ideas and works with them.
“If we have any disagreements, it’s before we get around to showing up on the set that day. In regards to ‘Bridge of Spies,’ upon reading the screenplay, I called him up and I said, ‘There are some things that are inaccurate.’ I am a student of history and a fan of Berlin so I had some recommendations of maybe what we could do. He was up to almost all of them except a couple because of the fact that this is a piece of cinema and it’s not a historical textbook.”
Steven Spielberg used special effects to convince his kids that his job is not boring. RUBEN V. NEPALES
“There’s one quite extraordinary thing that happens with Steven and that is inexplicable,” added Tom about his director with whom he shares a passion for reading history. “We make movies for the same reason and that is to glean some authenticity and accuracy on the subject matter. This has happened more than once on every movie we’ve made. I’m looking at a scene that we’re shooting the next day and I put a big circle around a piece of dialogue or a piece of business that I think is blatantly horses*** (laughs).
Lovable boss
“I worry a little bit in the morning because I got to go to work and I’ve got to walk up to Steven Spielberg and say, ‘Hey, listen, this thing right here is such friggin’ horses*** that I can’t bring myself to say it or do it. Fire me.’ He will say, ‘It’s funny you mentioned that.’ He’ll turn to the scene (on the script) and he’ll have a circle around the same moment and he’ll just say, ‘Why don’t we just not say that then?’ I say, ‘Boss, I love you.’
“That has happened. I can show you those moments in every movie [we made]. That speaks of his faith in me as far as what I bring to the course of the day. And of his understanding of the cinematic process. This is not a big headline and I’m not dropping a bombshell but, believe it or not, I’d like to continue working with Steven Spielberg. I will take that position. I believe we can work out any differences that we may have.”
Tom paid his “boss” the highest compliment when he talked about a crucial scene toward the end of “Bridge of Spies”: “Steven has the ability to make drama out of a ringing telephone and waiting. It’s pretty profound, isn’t it? So I don’t know how the boss does what he does but I’m glad he calls me every now and again to go off and help him.”
When the conversation somehow veered from the film and switched to the last time he flew coach, the star who broke through in the sitcom “Bosom Buddies”—his comic skills ignited—stood up and hilariously demonstrated navigating a plane’s cramped economy section. Aptly enough, he said that the last time he sat on economy class was when he was flown by a TV network for tests to star in… “Bosom Buddies.”
Tom Hanks admits that he is a history buff and a fan of Berlin. RUBEN V. NEPALES
Neighbor
Steven, for his part, told us why he enjoys working with his neighbor in Pacific Palisades, California: “He is one of, not even arguably, the greatest actors in the world. To be able to have two of the greatest actors in the world, Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks—that was the blessing for me in this whole endeavor. This is our fourth film together.”
Steven revealed that he could have also directed Tom in “Big,” which was helmed by Penny Marshall. “But because my sister (Anne Spielberg) wrote the script, I backed out,” the filmmaker explained. “I didn’t want to take the thunder away from my sister because it was her first script. My sister Anne and Gary Ross conceived and wrote ‘Big.’ Jim Brooks, who was the producer, offered it to me [to direct]. So it could have been five films with Tom Hanks. I am hoping it will be seven, eight or 10 with him.”
Steven echoed what Tom dished out about showing up on the set with suggestions to delete some lines and remarkably, the director had also circled those lines to be taken out. “That has happened to us every time we have worked,” said the highly regarded filmmaker.
Steven pointed out, “It’s a very strange experience I have had because we were so close as friends before we did our first movie together, ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ We have produced a couple of miniseries together, ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific.’
“There is a real familiarity because we were friends before we were colleagues. He is godfather to one of my kids. This is all before we started working together.
“Because of that, there is no period of adjustment between Tom and me. With a lot of actors, it takes me a couple of weeks to get to know them. After I do get to know them, I wish that I had gotten to know them earlier because I wish I could have reshot that last couple of weeks. With Tom, we hit the ground running every time we have made a movie together, which is a luxury for me.”
In his footsteps
Asked if his kids want to follow in his footsteps, Steven rattled off their different interests. “I have two kids, Sasha and Theo, who have a music group called Wardell,” he began. “They compose, perform and go on the road. They are singers and songwriters.
“My daughter Destry was at the Masters of Los Angeles (an equestrian event) at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I watched her ride live today on my iPhone about two hours ago. She has been competing for four days. She goes all over the country competing and she is 18 years old. She is my youngest, my baby.
“My son Sawyer is an actor and he is also getting into a new kind of business for the first time. My son Max designs video games for a company that is a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. So my kids are dabbling in everything but nobody wants to be a director.”
There are two other children in the family of Steven and his wife, Kate Capshaw: Jessica, Kate’s daughter from her previous marriage, and Mikaela George, an adopted daughter.
Tom Hanks amusingly demonstrates being in a plane’s cramped economy section. RUBEN V. NEPALES
“You know why they don’t want to be a director?” he asked aloud with a smile. “Because it’s a tough job and they have been on my sets. They have watched me work and they have two responses. One is, ‘Dad, what you do is really tough.’
“But they also say, ‘Dad, what you do is really boring.’ They think it’s really boring. They came on my sets when they were much younger. They were lighting and they were laying cable. It took time.
“When you are the director and they are on the set, they ask, ‘When is something going to happen, dad? When are you going to say, action? There’s nothing happening.’
“So I tried to get my kids to come to ‘Jurassic Park.’ They go, ‘No, we were on the last movie and that was really boring. We don’t want to go on the ‘Jurassic Park’ sets. So when I finally got them to come to ‘Jurassic Park,’ we had the full-sized T-Rex and it was in the center of the set.”
With his face lighting up, the famous father, being the master storyteller that he is, continued: “I brought the kids up to the set and I winked at Stan Winston (special effects creator; he died in 2008). My kids looked up at the T-Rex and it was just like a sculpture. It wasn’t moving at all.
“Suddenly, Stan hit a button and the T-Rex went ‘Rarrr!’ They ran out of the soundstage. They took off running. I got them in a little group and I said, ‘What daddy does is not boring!’ That’s the moral of the story.”
(E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.)