(单词翻译:单击)
Even though Hanks had occasionally written movie and TV screenplays, and a bit of nonfiction, until about 10 years ago, he’d sidestepped fiction.
尽管汉克斯偶尔会写几部电影、电视剧本，也写过一些纪实作品，但直到大概10年前，他才不再回避小说。
But after immersing himself in some The New Yorker anthologies and reading uncollected early J. D. Salinger stories he found online, Hanks was struck with an idea for his own story about some people who launch themselves from a suburban driveway in a rocket that loops around the moon, then return to Earth.
但是当汉克斯沉浸在《纽约客》的文集里，阅读在网上找到的无需付费的初期塞林格的故事后，他突然想到了自己的故事：一些人乘坐绕月火箭，从郊区的车道上发射升空，然后返回地球。
He wrote a draft “in a fevered two and a half days.”
他“在发烧的两天半时间里”写了一份草稿。
What to do next?
下一步该怎么做?
Hanks had been in the habit of sending his nonfiction to Ephron – a characteristic response: “Voice, voice, voice” – but she was no longer around.
汉克斯习惯于把他的纪实作品寄给艾芙隆(美国著名编剧)——会收到一个独特的回复: “声音，声音，声音”——但她已经不在人世了。
In her stead, he sent what he had written to Steve Martin with a single question: “Is this a thing?”
他把自己写的东西寄给了史蒂夫·马丁(代替艾芙隆)，只问了一个问题:“这像那么回事儿吗?”
“There’s always a dread when a friend sends you something,” Martin tells me.
马丁告诉我: “当朋友给你寄东西时，总会感到惴惴不安。”
Once, he says, a friend of his asked for feedback on something that he didn’t think was particularly good.
他说，有一次，他的一位朋友要求他对他认为不是特别好的地方给出反馈。
“I said, ‘I think you should work with an editor’ – that was my comeback on something I didn’t think was up to snuff.”
“我说，‘我觉得你应该和编辑一起工作’——这是我对一些我认为不合格的东西的回应。”
To his evident relief, this story was different.
他明显松了口气，这个故事不同凡响。
“It was a surprising piece,” Martin says. “It was well written, it was charming, and it had flair.”
“这个作品出人意料，”马丁说。“写得很好，引人入胜，很有格调。”
The New Yorker ended up publishing the story, called Alan Bean Plus Four, and Hanks went on to publish a collection of short stories, Uncommon Type, in 2017.
《纽约客》最终发表了这个名为《艾伦·宾和四个伙伴》的故事，接着，汉克斯在2017年又出版了一本短篇故事集《天才打字机》。
After that, Hanks began to think about a novel.
在那之后，汉克斯开始考虑写一部小说。
As he remembers it, his editor, Peter Gethers, was the one who suggested that he write about what he did for a living, and his first instinct was to resist the idea: “I said there’s nothing worse than hearing an actor talk about being an actor.”
据他回忆，他的编辑彼得·格瑟斯建议他写写自己的谋生之道，而他的第一反应是抵制这个想法: “我说，没有什么比听一个演员谈论自己做一名演员更糟糕的了。”
Then it occurred to him that there might be a broader story he did want to tell, one set in the world of movie making.
他随后突然想到，也许他想讲一个更宽泛的故事，一个以电影制作为背景的故事。
Because, he says, “I have found that absolutely everybody assumes they know how movies are made, and nobody does.”
因为，他说，“我发现几乎每个人都认为他们知道电影是如何制作的，但实际上却无人知晓。”
Or, as he puts it to me more grandiosely: “Like all cumulative endeavours that require a collaboration among artists who are all operating at the absolute top of their game, making a movie is exactly like starting a business, waging a war, getting to the moon, figuring out how to treat a disease, or coming up with public policy to make a city work better...
正如他十分夸张地对我说的那样: “拍电影与所有这些日积月累的事业一样，需要各自领域内顶端艺术家之间的通力合作，拍电影也很像创业、发动战争、登上月球、弄清楚如何治疗一种疾病，或者制定使城市更好运转的公共政策......
Making a movie is as unknowable and as complex as any great saga or odyssey that is wrought with many turns of fate.”
拍电影就像任何充满无数命运转折的伟大传奇历险一样无法预知、错综复杂。”
Early on, he came up with a title. It would be called The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.
一开始，他就想出了一个标题，叫作《又一部电影杰作的幕后》。
