Holy cow: Tom Hanks has the twenty-volume second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary on his bookshelves. As seen on Saturday Night Live tonight.
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See it here. I know — there are only eighteen volumes visible on the shelf. But it is the OED. A screenshot, with a member of the audience asking a question:
[Click for a larger view.]
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Hanks’s OED
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comments: 7
I wonder if, at an earlier stage of his career, he — like many of us — joined the Book of the Month Club for the sole purpose of getting the Compact Edition (mine now serves as a stand for the Gallo speakers on my desk).
I too signed up for that reason. I think it was a rite of passage for students in the humanities. My two volumes, long unused, are on a shelf next to bottles of ink and a coffee can full of coins. I’ve used the online version for years now — what a resource.
They could be faux books used on shoots. I think the art dept calls then panels. If they are real, Tom Hanks did not pay for them.
Ah, that magnifying glass...
If you watch the clip, you’ll agree that they’re real. You can see the light moving on their glossy jackets. And it doesn’t cost that much to own an OED — about the cost of a MacBook Pro. I suspect Hanks can afford it. :)
But Tom didn’t get that magnifying glass. It’s a wonderful one, and I still use mine, though not with the OED.
Someday your son will explain how the famous don't pay. Do you think Michael Jordan pays for a meal at a restaurant?
I don’t know about Mr. Jordan, but I suspect Tom Hanks pays for his typewriters and his dictionaries. I doubt that OUP is comping random celebrities with twenty-volume sets. (If they are, I’d like to know that came about.)
At least now you seem to have tacitly acknowledged that the OED in that scene is real.
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