WVIZ/PBS ideastream®: BackStage with: Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Short URL
Share
Leave a Comment
Premieres Thursday, Feb. 11 at 9:00 PM on WVIZ/PBS!
Encores Sunday, Feb. 14 at 10:30 PM and Monday, Feb. 22 at 9:00 PM
Tom Hanks is one of the most celebrated and popular actors of our time. He saved Private Ryan, befriended a lone volleyball, led a band of broken toys back into a boy’s heart, cracked the Mary Magdalene mystery, and opened the box of chocolates of life for millions of people around the world.
Now, he is the focus of “BackStage With Tom Hanks,” a production of WVIZ/PBS ideastream and PlayhouseSquare in partnership with Great Lakes Theater Festival. Mr. Hanks joins NPR’s Scott Simon before a live studio audience of high school students and invited guests for an intimate and often rollicking conversation about his career and his life, beginning with his professional debut performances in Cleveland at Great Lakes Theater Festival. The program was taped in October 2009 when Mr. Hanks was in Cleveland for a fundraiser for Great Lakes Theater Festival.
As spontaneous and natural as the roles he has made his own, the interview begins with Hanks describing what he was like in high school. Not surprisingly, “I got to school and tried to figure out how to make people laugh.” And while he doesn’t remember his first applause, he does recall getting his first laugh – it was in second grade, by telling a joke stolen from his older brother.
It was being passed over for a part in a college play that brought Hanks to Cleveland and Great Lakes Theater Festival in the late-1970s. He regales the audience with stories from his early days (“When you don’t have any money in your pocket and you’re on the west side of Cleveland, you might as well go down to the theater and change over the sets at two o’clock in the morning”) and reveals the many lessons he has learned working in the theater, in film and on television.
From funny, behind-the-scenes stories of some of his most famous films – with lots of laughs coming from the audience for his re-telling of his experiences making “Toy Story” – to personal stories and life lessons learned, Hanks’ answers to both Scott Simon’s and the students’ questions are nothing short of entertaining.
Presented by WVIZ/PBS ideastream and PlayhouseSquare.
Funding for BackStage with... is provided by The George W. Codrington Charitable Foundation, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and The Ohio Arts Council.
