Gavin Edwards - The World According to Tom Hanks: The Life, the Obsessions, the Good Deeds of America’s Most Decent Guy

The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses: A Creative Game of Limitless Possibilities (editor)

The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing

Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums Drums Drums

(by Travis Barker with Gavin Edwards)

Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind

VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTVs First Wave

(by Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn, with Gavin Edwards)

Is Tiny Dancer Really Eltons Little John?: Musics Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed

Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly: And Other Misheard Christmas Lyrics

When a Man Loves a Walnut: And Even More Misheard Lyrics

Hes Got the Whole World in His Pants: And More Misheard Lyrics

Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy: And Other Misheard Lyrics

T OM H ANKS IS A REALLY NICE GUY. Hey, wait! Where are you going?

Since Tom Hanks is a really nice guy is the sum total of the knowledge many people have about the actor, lets go deeperand lets start with nice. Its hardly ever a compliment, except in the hands of grandmothers who put a high value on politeness. Its almost a term of contemptnice is what you say about an edible but forgettable meal, or about a blind date whom you wont be seeing again. Modern society, however, values feuds, celebrities who subtweet sassy insults at their exes, and reality show contestants who declare I didnt come here to make friends.

I get itbad behavior can be incredibly entertaining. The mass media has thrived for decades on the hypocritical game of I am going to express my disapproval of something immoral and sexy, and I will do it in great detail so we can all get a vicarious thrill. But in recent years, all that invective migrated from the TV dating shows, gossip magazines, and the free throw line into the center of our culture, so now everything from the pop charts to the American presidency feels like a perpetual mashup of a rose ceremony, basketball trash talk, and Who Wore It Best?

Nice means dull. Nice means bland. Nice means vanilla. But if everyone wants to be the rebel who embodies the counterculture, then theres no central culture left for bad girls and boys to flip offlife just becomes a race to the bottom in a counterclockwise spiral of petty bickering.

Im not here to tell you that you should be nice because itll make the world a better place. But I am here to tell you that a more virtuous worldviewone where you consider other people and place basic human decency in higher regard than petty bickering and side-eye snipingis a richer and more rewarding mental landscape to pitch your tent in. Vanilla isnt the absence of flavorit has a delicious taste of its own. (When Thomas Jefferson first encountered vanilla ice cream in Paris, in the 1780s, he was so delighted by the new culinary sensation, he wrote down a copy of the recipe, now preserved in the Library of Congress.)

Nicenesslets define it broadly as deferring immediate self-gratification in favor of the common goodis a road to building happy families, to making great works of art, to sending human beings to the moon. Niceness can be tough and bloodythe good guys dont win World War II if not for the sacrifices of millions of people. It doesnt matter whether you get your ethical code from religious texts, your grandparents, or Parks and Recreation reruns; youre going to find a way forward into your own version of niceness. Maybe youll call it something else, like self-sacrifice or human decency.

Which is where Tom Hanks and this book come in. When you interview Tom Hanks friends, heres something that almost all of them say: How are you going to write about this guy? They understand the difficulty of selling nice as well as anybody. But when theyre assured that youll figure something out, theyre happy to tell you how much knowing the man has affected them. Consider a few testimonials:

I suppose its the sheer bloody Tom Hankness of Tom Hanks that takes the breath away. He is the national treasure of America that you expect him to be, but he is not bland or smooth-edged and round-cornered, hes witty, funny, feisty, and fully human not a mannequin of overniceness.

Stephen Fry (national treasure of England)

He is the most accomplished actor ever. He has this enormous box office, but he also has enormous critical accomplishments. He knows what the truth is, both in work and life, and has the confidence as an actor to believe that the truth will have dramatic power. More often than not, movies have moments that are jacked up or have a heightened sense of drama; he will not allow that, and thats what really distinguishes him. I always view him as a role model in terms of character, ethics and morality, and I will often try to project how he would handle a given situation. He is a moral compass.

Brian Grazer (producer of Splash, Apollo 13, and The Da Vinci Code)

The guy could be, should have been, a professional soldier. He has the mind, the motivation, the spirit and the body to make a good officer. Hes inquisitive and highly intelligent. Strip away the Hollywood crap and hes like Captain Miller: a common man in uncommon circumstances who rises to uncommon levels.