I'm Alan Alda and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating. I have made movies in which literally a crew, almost like the circus. You know, there's trucks and

rvies and tents. We drop into a town.

Sometimes the town is Evansville, Indiana,

or sometimes a town is Darnstadt, Germany,

or sometimes the town is Seattle or Baton Rouge.

And we're there for three months and the town becomes something of our own and

everybody recognizes,

oh, you're with the picture.

Oh, yeah, we're with a movie.

Oh, good to have you here.

And that circus-like atmosphere governs the pace of the day and it is exciting but is also

incredibly challenging.

There are times where everything works and there are times where absolutely nothing works

whatsoever and you have you have a

ten week 12 week experience that is unlike any other and then it's all over in the

wink of an eye and you're gone and you can hardly remember the names of the people that you worked with.

That of course is Tom Hanks.

He's making a return visit to the show in which I ask him about a whole new side to his

talent for storytelling. He's written a novel and what a novel it is.

It's a story that ranges over decades and tracks the emotional lives of a crowd of people

who come together as near strangers to engage in the intimate

experience of making a movie. Tom's book is called The Making of Another Major

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