HANKS There's no trick. There's no electric thing in your ear to prompt you. You don't eat a lot of grapefruit to get it done. It's just pretty much bone-cracking work.
EW With airport delays so widespread now, do people want to spend two hours watching someone ELSE wait?
HANKS It's funny, the whole movie in a lot of ways was at the mercy of the headlines. Originally, it didn't have anything to do with a post-9/11 world. [And] we finished it before airport[s]became part of the Homeland Security Agency, or whatever it is.
EW When's the last time you flew commercial?
HANKS I did fly to London to do [producing-directing on the HBO miniseries] 'Band of Brothers,' and was going through JFK. But in all honesty, not since then. Maybe on occasion here and there.
EW You were friends with Steven Spielberg long before he cast you in 'Saving Private Ryan,' 'Catch Me if You Can,' and now 'The Terminal.' Was it awkward melding that with a working relationship?
HANKS Oh, I never thought about that. We took care of that in one very easy conversation. Which was: Steven, you're the boss. You can't hurt my feelings. Tell me anything you think. And on the other hand, I will come to you with a gajillion ideas. If you don't like them, just say, That's nice, Tom, but I don't like that, and we'll move on. [But all] that wasn't nearly as difficult as getting over 'I'm in a movie Steven Spielberg is directing.' I just didn't want to screw up so much he'd [have to]come up and say, Listen, a terrible mistake has been made. You need to go home.
EW What's unique about the way he directs?
HANKS He reads the scripts over and over. He reads pages he's shooting this week, he reads stuff he shot last week. He's revving up the mental imagery so it's all instinct when he gets to the set.
EW His film sense seems innate.
HANKS Have you been to his office? There's an article from where he lived in Scottsdale or wherever that said, ''High Schooler Wins Film Prize.'' He was, like, 16. And it's all right there. Why he loves films, what he'd like to do in the future. Thomas Edison was building stuff in his backyard when he was a kid, and Steven was making movies.
EW After 'The Polar Express' in November, the trade papers say your next two starring roles will likely be 'A Cold Case' [a retiring investigator tackles the unsolved murder of a friend 27 years earlier] and 'The Risk Pool' [a screwup of a father has to raise his son after his estranged wife's mental collapse]. How green are those lights?
HANKS Well, the way it works is this: The ideas are definitely great. We've made the alliances with the people who are going to do [them]. But then the actual pages have to come in. And it's a matter of how good they come in. Bob Zemeckis is always talking about the binary aspect of movies. They're either ones or zeros. They work or they don't.
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