Tom Hanks — He's Just Like Us!

America's Dad has always played angry characters onscreen, and in 'A Man Called Otto,' he fully unleashes his inner grump.

Hello readers, new and newish!

First of all, I’m very happy to present the cover of my new book, No Crying in Baseball, now available for pre-order wherever books are sold. Here’s how my editor, Hachette Books’ Brant Rumble, describes it on the Internets:

No Crying in Baseball is a rollicking, revelatory deep dive into a one‑of‑a‑kind film. Before A League of Their Own, few American girls could imagine themselves playing professional ball (and doing it better than the boys). But Penny Marshall's genre outlier became an instant classic and significant aha moment for countless young women who saw that throwing like a girl was far from an insult. Part fly‑on‑the‑wall narrative, part immersive pop nostalgia, No Crying in Baseball is for readers who love stories about subverting gender roles as well as fans of the film who remain passionate thirty years after its release. With key anecdotes from the cast, crew, and diehard fanatics, Carlson presents the definitive, first‑ever history of the making of the treasured film that inspired generations of Dottie Hinsons to dream bigger and aim for the sky.

It will arrive in time for Madonna’s newly announced Celebration Tour and Major League Baseball season — that’s what I call synergy, baby.

In the spring of 2021, I began to envision writing about A League of Their Own, which, for me, had the right ingredients for a nonfiction page-turner: A brilliant, idiosyncratic woman director. A cast of big, boisterous personalities. The story of an obscure, real-life professional women’s baseball league from the 1940s. A title too irresistible to pass up, inspired by the famous scene in which cantankerous coach Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) bellows, “There’s no crying in baseball!!!”

Three decades later, Jimmy’s tantrum remains one of the most quoted lines in sports cinema, and for solid reason: it is really funny and surreal to watch Hanks, a famously nice guy, shed his easygoing persona and go totally nuts, screaming at Bitty Schram (right fielder Evelyn Gardner) as he might a male ballplayer on the receiving end. The first time I saw this oh-so-1992 gem, I remember feeling surprised — I’d never, ever seen Hanks lash out in that way, with such venom and belligerence. I’d only ever known the actor as Josh Baskin, the delightful, naive man-child from Big. The difference between the characters was jarring. Both were hilarious, but which represented the real Tom Hanks?

It’s called acting, he’d tell you, hiding behind alter egos, each a projection of little-seen parts of himself — the innocence (Josh) and the anger (Jimmy). In his latest film, A Man Called Otto, Hanks fully embodies his most Scrooge-y role yet, a lonely widower raging at the world and any poor soul whom he deems incompetent. Without spoiling the plot, it’s heavy stuff, and darkly funny too. The ending, emotional but not maudlin, will get you as Otto gradually regains his will to live, thanks to a kind, nosy new neighbor (Mariana Treviño) who charges into his closely guarded personal space like a bull in a china shop. The dramedy, which opened wide last Friday, is a hit for Sony Pictures, exceeding expectations at the box office. It’s playing better in the middle of the country, outside of New York and L.A. It reminds me of a warmer, more feel-good Clint Eastwood vehicle — the kind, like Million Dollar Baby or Gran Torino, where an aging curmudgeon encounters friendly pests who become chosen family and undergoes a softening while never losing his bite.

Otto is Hanks’ GET OFF MY LAWN Eastwood homage, but the character’s righteous indignation is hardly new terrain for America’s Dad. The truth is that he’s always flashed anger onscreen, from his creepy performance in Elvis all the way back to his dark character study in Punchline, even in films you wouldn’t expect him to, like You’ve Got Mail (“I said we were a goddamn piazza!”). Another truth? That anger comes from within. Hanks, competitive but humble, was raised by his working-class father, a thrice-married cook who hopped from town to town, and job to job, bringing his children in tow. From a young age, Hanks learned to adapt quickly to his ever-shifting surroundings, which prepared him for the itinerant actor’s life. Yet, as a star on the rise, he did not have the cushions of nepotism or family money to provide firm foundation, and so he worked himself to death, concerned that if he stopped job-hopping, Hollywood would stop calling. Imposter syndrome set in. He worried that someday, he might be exposed, the rug pulled underneath him. That anxiety made Hanks salty, not sweet. It gave him edge, and drive. It made him deeply understand how someone like Jimmy Dugan, a once-great ballplayer, could become such a jerk.

Hanks, in conversation, is exactly who you think he is — affable, amusing and perceptive, always two steps ahead, the answers on the tip of his silver tongue. He is also casually profane, dropping F-bombs here and there, like he didn’t recently star in a Mister Rogers biopic! Like your father losing at golf. Missing the exit on the freeway. Trying to fix the bleeping TV.

As Hanks joked to the Today show on Otto’s press tour, “My brat kids will probably tell you, ‘When is Dad not in charge with his inner crank? Well, I like to use the word ‘fascinating,’ as opposed to nice. But listen, we have all been stuck in traffic, right? So, when that stuff happens I do, in fact, go absolutely berserk.”

His son Truman, who plays young Otto in flashbacks, told People, “Whenever I do my imitation of him, people are like, ‘That’s not what he sounds like.’ But I have to convey to you the way I hear him. Everyone hears, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ I hear this grumpy old man who’s mad at the DVD player.”

I hear an actor who’s far more interesting than he lets on.