What’s it like when a major motion picture star surprises everyone by deciding to serve as guest host of a public radio comedy news quiz?
Two primary answers came Thursday night at Chicago’s Chase Bank Auditorium, where Tom Hanks — yes, that Tom Hanks — subbed for vacationing Peter Sagal at the helm of “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”, the hit NPR show produced out of Chicago’s WBEZ-FM 91.5.
Answer 1: The show does not become something other than itself. Yes, there was the fact of Hanks, star of no small number of beloved films, standing on the Chase auditorium stage.
“This is the Chase Bank theater in Chicago?” he asked. “I haven’t seen a room this bland since Kim Jong Un stood still for 45 minutes of spontaneous applause.”
Panelist Paula Poundstone kept saying things like, “I can’t believe I’m five feet away from you.” In general there were more references to Sully and Woody and, yes, to “Bosom Buddies,” Hanks’ old sitcom, than is typical.
And panelist Faith Salie, right as they got started in the 456-seat theater, asked Hanks, “How often do you get to perform live?”
“Oh, these days?” the 60-year-old actor deadpanned. “About twice a week.”
At another point, he said in mock ire to the others on the stage, “I’ve come a long way, and I’ve volunteered my time. This is the last (expletive) ‘Bosom Buddies’ reference.”
But even if he is, up at street level, a pretty big deal, in the subterranean theater in the Loop, Hanks was wholly up to the task of shepherding “Wait Wait” through its format of questions, limericks, tall tales and, especially, improvisational banter coming off the news.
Wearing a V-neck sweater and dark jeans, he charmed, he jested, he mock-blustered, he thought quickly on his feet, he poked fun at Sagal and at the panelists, also including “Live Wire” host Luke Burbank. He even read promos for sponsors like Carmax and St. Petersburg-Clearwater, who will probably be very happy to get Tom Hanks at NPR prices.
This guy apparently has some talent in the performing arts, and it’s not just an ability “to be told what to do and to do what you’re told,” as he at one point summed up “the secret to any actor’s career.”
Answer 2: The trains do not run on time. Taping of content for this week’s show went for 2 hours and 14 minutes, plus another 15 or so for the usual retakes of audio that hadn’t come out quite right the first time and then maybe 20 more for Hanks to field questions from the audience.
Whether the starting point is a more typical 90 minutes of material or this week’s 134, on Friday editors have to cull that to under an hour to send a finished show out to NPR stations for airing beginning Saturday.
The thing is, though, while trimming so much stuff may feel merciless, editors will have what felt in the room like a whole lot of great material to work with. This was the week of President Barack Obama’s farewell, after all, of Donald Trump’s first news conference as president-elect and of the publication of certain unsubstantiated documents alleging unsavory activities by citizen Trump while visiting Moscow. If you can’t make funny out of that batch of events, you probably can’t make funny.
It’ll be interesting Saturday, though, to hear how many of the in-theater references to bodily functions make it to the on-air version. We can probably safely repeat one of them here: Salie pointed out the irony of Trump’s nominee for CIA chief Mike Pompeo saying, “I take these leaks seriously.”
Hanks, meanwhile, did an impersonation of Trump yelling, “Don’t be rude” to a reporter at his news conference. And after telling of going to Obama’s speech at McCormick Place on Tuesday night, Hanks said the Obama years had not been without scandal.
“Those mom jeans,” he reminded us.
Not surprisingly for a first timer, his performance was more self-conscious than Sagal’s. “The script says ‘wait for applause to die,’ ” he shared at a moment when there wasn’t any applause. But despite the length, the show didn’t feel disorganized, just maybe a little looser than usual and a little more festive.
Leading the joviality was the host, who invited joking about this perhaps puzzling career move. “I’m going to have an ocean of people,” he said, “coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, I heard you on “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” Why did you do that?'”
“Be honest,” Poundstone had said to him earlier. “Was this a bet?”
The reason he agreed to host the show he called “the top of the NPR heap” has to do, Hanks would explain, with his daughter who knows someone who works at the Onion, and who got word to him that the guest-hosting stint was available. Executive producer Mike Danforth had a key role in it, too, Sagal explained last month, saying Hanks has long been a fan of the show.
The producers had announcer Bill Kurtis read promos for fake movies about the career suicide the actor was committing by guest-hosting (“Tom Hanks as you’ve never seen him before in ‘I Used to Be Big’ “).
But in truth it’s a pretty canny move: Hanks gets to display his talent for being amiable and funny in a new format and a surprising place. He does so before the show’s audience of 6 million people, more than he would get on any of the TV late-night shows. And the people who listen to NPR and “Wait Wait” are pretty much the audience for the kinds of movies Hanks makes these days.
When it was over, he said the point of any movie or TV project isn’t the money or prizes it takes in. It’s the quality of “the hang,” the time the people making the project spend together on the set.
Seeing the “Wait Wait” offices might have shocked him: “It’s a sad little folding table … in the sad little stepchild section of WBEZ,” he said.
But, he added, “the hang was fantastic.” It probably wasn’t bad for the people he was hanging with either.
sajohnson@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
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