‘Like a big box of chocolates’: Tom Hanks puts his typewriters on display | Tom Hanks

WITHSome celebrities collect works of art, rare movie prints, or good old fashioned action figures. (Welcome to the club, Leonardo DiCaprio..) Tom Hanks is known to collect something both more practical and bulkier: typewriters. And unlike Steve Martin’s paintings or Leo’s figures, you can currently take a look at some of Hanks’ typewriters at the Church, an exhibit site in Sag Harbor on Long Island.

Some of Tom’s typewriters include 35 from his collection of over 300, handpicked by Hanks himself. They include an electric typewriter from the Mad Men set (curators aren’t yet clear how Hanks got it, but he’s recording an electronic guide to accompany the show that they hope will explain), an original 1969 Olivetti. Valentina,” designed by Ettore Sottsas, and, most astonishingly, a relatively new model: a translucent typewriter, still produced by a company that transitioned from making calculators in the 1980s, to incarcerated writers. The exhibition also features less fashionable beaters, reserved for a more interactive experience; after all, physical presence is part of the mystique of the typewriter.

The origins of Hanks’ typewriters were told, albeit fictitiously, in his story “These Are the Thoughts of My Heart” from his collection. Unusual type. In the story, a woman brings her old typewriter in for repair only to have a fateful conversation with the man she hopes will repair it. Hanks said the conversation was taken almost verbatim from his own experience, which involved essentially being told that what he brought was closer to a toy, and instead being given a Hermes 3000 as an object of wonder durability and usefulness. . Hanks now carries a typewriter with him almost everywhere—not always the same one—and uses it almost every day. He won’t necessarily use them to write longer forms (a laptop will still be a more efficient tool for this), but will use a typewriter in the same way others might write something down on paper or use notes. application: let’s say to make a shopping list.

But while Hanks provided the typewriters and some of their stories, it fell to renowned creative director and writer Simon Doonan, who has worked on everything from a Warhol exhibit to Barney’s window displays to Christmas decorations in the Obama White House. , to actually design and assemble the exhibition. It’s easy to see why Doonan would pair well with Hanks’ bubbly, good-natured character; when I mention that I used my mother’s old typewriters as a child about 35 years ago, he asks her name and constantly includes her in his thoughts: “Typewriters had a huge influence on Linda and me,” he says. “The soundtrack of the 20th century was the clatter and clank of typewriters,” says Doonan, “because it was a huge revolution at the beginning of the century and in the 50s, 60s and 70s.” He cites his parents as an example: “They both left school very early and went to work in factories, but they learned to type and that changed the course of their lives.”

“For young people,” he notes, referring to people who are not used to these devices, “it’s like, gosh, look at these crazy machines that are at once very simple and incredibly confusing and complex. Looking into a typewriter is like looking into someone’s brain; it’s horrible”. As a friendlier analogy, Doonan compares the hobby to collecting (and playing) vintage guitars, where there is an element of interaction rather than just reverently displaying the goods. In that sense, creating this show was reminiscent of his work on “The Warhol Look,” a show at the Whitney that focused on fashion and clothing: “You’re dealing with a lot of objects that don’t have that heavy artistic approval.” He notes that it was also similar to his job at Barney’s, where he worked as a window dresser for decades and the materials he worked with were chosen by others: “I was used to handling products without all the preconceived notions of art.”

This, of course, does not mean that these cars lack aesthetic pleasure. “For me it’s a visual thing. It’s like a big box of chocolates,” Doonan says, recalling Hanks’ famous character. “Each of them is so loaded with design language that you become completely obsessed with the era.” Does he have a favorite style of typewriter? He says he’s torn between mid-20th century, space-age style typewriters and older models that evoke a kind of dark glamour: “I like the really heavy Victorian typewriters, they’re very sinister – [you can picture] poison pen letters and hate messages written on them. That’s the thing about typewriters: love letters, scripts, books, yes, but also insidious messages that make your blood run cold when you take them out of the envelope. Typewriters have appeared in many films and in many sinister contexts – a clue to identifying a killer or, in the case of Jack Nicholson, [in The Shining]typewriter, revealing the true extent of his psychosis.”

This extends to the physical feel of using them, especially on pre-electric models: adjusting the paper manually, pressing the keys to produce a satisfying hit for each letter, moving the carriage at the end of the field. Doonan has no writing rituals of his own, but he does note that the physical process has changed from “knocking to tickling the ivory”, while losing a certain power. (“Violence!” he enthuses.) For the few generations who have made the transition, and for the many generations who never had to, Some of Tom’s Typewriters can at least offer a condensed, larger version that lost experience.