“Greyhound” has long been a pet project for
the 63-year-old actor. He wrote the script,
adapted from C. S. Forester’s 1955 novel
“The Good Shepherd,” a book first given to
him by his late friend and “Sleepless in Seattle”
director Nora Ephron.
“It just stuck with him,” says Gary Goetzman,
Hanks’ producing partner and co-founder of
their company, Playtone. “As happens with him,
he’ll ruminate about a certain idea, it goes in his
blender, and one day he just put a script on my
desk and very much wanted to make it.”
Hanks had approached others to write it and
met with other filmmakers. But they tended to
envision a grander version of the film.
“I said, ‘I love you so much but that’s not the
point of what we’re trying to do,’” Hanks says.
“We’re trying to condense this. We’re trying to
get as much coffee in the can.”
Instead, he found a director in Aaron Schneider,
a veteran cinematographer who last helmed
2010’s “Get Low,” with Robert Duvall.
“Tom always called it ‘the perfect little
90-minute movie,’” Schneider says. “From
the beginning, his point of entry was about
maintaining this almost hyper-subjective point
of view in terms of this captain’s experience.
You would throw the audience into his world,
sticking to over his shoulder.”
Hanks, of course, has been in similar worlds
before. He’s been a captain four times
previously: “Saving Private Ryan,” “Apollo 13,”
“Sully” and — his last time manning the bridge
— “Captain Phillips.” A voracious reader of
history, he’s returned frequently to WWII.