You know Tom Hanks the actor. Now meet the gifted novelist with sparkling wit.

As the adage goes, “Write what you know.” And if there’s one thing Tom Hanks knows, it’s movies. The two-time-Oscar-winning A-list actor whose career spans four decades and includes starring turns in blockbuster films as big and different from one another as “Saving Private Ryan” and “Toy Story” knows how the cinematic sausage is made.

And so the actor’s first novel, “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece” (Knopf, 448 pp., ★★★ out of four, out now), is accurately titled, as over the course of 400-plus pages Hanks charts the production of a film, from the inception of its source material to the development hell of planning the shoot and straight through the detail-oriented tedium of post-production.

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• "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece" at Amazon for $27

• "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece" at Bookshop for $30

“For all the actors in the cast and every member of the crew,” Hanks dedicates the novel, which generously dispels of movie-star mystique in his account of the making of a Marvel-like superhero blockbuster that takes its inspiration from a Vietnam War-era indie comic drawn by an artist who, as an impressionable child, was imprinted by an encounter with his estranged WWII veteran uncle. The stars of Hanks' story aren’t, well, the stars. Behind the sparkling white teeth, cut abs and designer apparel of mega-watt movie stars and billion-dollar blockbusters is a crew of persistent, patient professionals like Allicia “Al” Mac-Teer, whose no-nonsense competence promotes her from a hotel reception desk to a Hollywood producer’s chair. Or Ynez Gonzalez-Cruz, a gig driver for an Uber-like company whose punctuality and problem-solving skills elevate her from chauffeur to collaborator.

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Hanks is, little surprise, skilled at creating characters. No crewmember is too small to escape the notice of Hanks’ pen as it sketches out loving backstories for the writers, drivers, coffee-fetchers and problem solvers who keep the motion-picture machinery humming. “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece” is by a film lover, for film lovers – a book for anyone who’s ever watched a DVD with the director commentary turned on. The book is riddled with filmmaking lingo and factoids. Don’t know that SPFX is short for “special effects” or that an EPK is an electronic press kit? Hanks helpfully footnotes the text with definitions, explainers and diversions into film history (including a memorable anecdote on the making of “Casablanca”).

The writer on page is much like the actor on screen: an affable, easy hang. Hanks, who also wrote the 2017 short story collection “Uncommon Type,” is a gifted writer with a sparkling wit and innate curiosity about other human beings (he plays them onscreen, after all). His book would have been a fun yarn whenever it was released, but it’s got a particular resonance coming out now, just a week after a writer’s strike has ground Hollywood to a halt as the Writers Guild of America union members fight for better working conditions and more equitable pay in the streaming era. Hanks’ book is a needed reminder that movies don’t make themselves and no one person, especially not the star, deserves all the credit.

“Everybody works the hardest,” Hanks writes. “Everyone has the most important job on the movie.”

• "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece" at Amazon for $27

• "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece" at Bookshop for $30

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tom Hanks novel 'Motion Picture Masterpiece' is a sparkling debut