Blank Check with Griffin & David - Forrest Gump with Jamelle Bouie

Episode Date: November 1, 2020

Jamelle Bouie (NY Times) returns to Blank Check to discuss Forrest Gump! Subscribe to our patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod onTwitter and Instagram Merch is available at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Hello, my name's Forrest Gump. You want a podcast? I could listen to about a million and a half of these. My mama always said, life was like a feed full of podcasts. You never know what you're going to get. There you go. Very nice. I mean... Very nice.

I mean... What a nice, gentle opening. I even... I feel uncomfortable having done that. Having done the voice for five seconds. Poorly. But even I was like, if I, if I,

if I try to make it more accurate, I'm only going to feel more uncomfortable. Don't you think every movie should start with the main character sitting down on a bench and starting to tell the story of the movie to whoever's listening? Hello, my name's Spider-Man. Right? That's how it should sound. Exactly. Hello, my name's Buzz. Buzz Lightyear.

It just always started that way. My name's John Wick. I sure as hell didn't kill my dog. My mom always said dogs aren't for killing. Hello, my name is michael corleone here's here's an immediate uh point of contrast okay um sure uh i i did uh an uncharacteristic amount of research for this episode and that i read both uh original forrest gump books you read forrest gump by winston grew, the recently deceased Winston Groom.

Very recently deceased. Passed away about a week or two ago from when we were recording. Right. And you read Gump and Co., his sequel. I will do a little comparison segment on it because I don't want to spend the entire episode relating everything back. But the relationship between both of these books to this movie movie is fascinating here's just an immediate point of comparison okay this is the opening line to winston grooms forrest gump novel let me say this being an idiot is no box of chocolates that is the line in the book mama never says anything about it that other comparison

is never made it's almost the exact opposite of the moral that the movie starts with and yet a box of chocolates is involved they kept the box that's everything you need to know you can extrapolate everything else about how this book was adapted into this movie from that like everything that exists in the book exists in that type of form that. Like everything that exists in the book exists in that type of form in relation to what we got in the final movie. In the movie, Mama, who's like the soothsayer, who has all these like sterling little pearls of wisdom

that he carries with him in his back pocket. It's this general philosophy for life. You don't know what you're going to get. You got to just go with the flow. In the book, it's him announcing, I'm a fucking idiot and my life is difficult. That's what he's saying. Hey man, being an idiot is no box of chocolate. And then he goes on to say like, what's the exact phrasing here? Now they say folks supposed to be kind to the afflicted, but let me tell you, it ain't always that way. Even so I got no complaints because I recognize don't live a

pretty interesting life. So to speak, that's the entire attitude of the book this guy who self-identifies as a moron is like it's been rough but now that i look back on it sure lived through a lot of weird things right and and and he speaks with introduce our broadcast but he speaks with an accent right like the book transliterates his accent like grammatically into the text essentially if the book is as if he wrote it it's not as if he's saying it to you if that makes sense so it's just like riddled with weird phrases and typos and improperly structured sentences it's like a clockwork orange like the book the novel of clockwork orange is written in this kind of like train spotting. Yeah.

Yes. It is like Clockwork Orange, which is, that's the other bizarre thing. Look, let's just unpack it. We got to unpack it. This fucking movie.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmography. Directors still have massive success early on in their career. And sometimes they're given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy

passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. And sometimes they fucking win best picture and become the third highest grossing movie of all time and continue to confound us to this day. They hyper clear. They hyper clear.

Yeah. This is about the biggest clear possible how much did this movie cost was that how blanket check it 55 million it was a fairly blank check for considering the the elevator pitch for this movie and there's a good story i don't know if you caught it that happened recently that hank shared about the making of this movie but we'll get into that this is a mini series onies on the films of Robert Zemeckis, the famous Bobby Z. It's called Podcast Away. And this is the key fulcrum point, right?

This is the point of no return. For better or worse, this is the big transitional moment in his career where he becomes the Oscar-winning, top-tier, A-list, sterling, Hollywood-beloved, prestige-y filmmaker. I guess so. It's weird, though, because, I mean, it's right in the middle of his career. You know, at least his career to date.

I guess he will just continue to make movies. He's already an absolute A-list director when he's making this movie. Yes. And it's not like he ever made, as we've mentioned before, a Best Picture nominee or got a Best Director nominee ever again. No. But yes, he gets to make movies for life because of Forrest Gump, even more so than Back to the Future. He directs two more very serious best actor nominees and outside of that none of his

movies really connected the oscars ever again despite him forever being seen as the most oscary kind of filmmaker to the degree that like charlie kaufman will dunk on him as being the like what's the funniest name that can pop up in the end credits of a fake movie? Right. Although supposedly he ran that by Zemeckis or whatever. But yes, yes. Sure, sure. But it connotes something. There's a reason that joke is funny. It's funny that his name shows up.

Yes. And Zemeckis wasn't insulted by it. He approved of it. But it's still Zemeckis understands what his public perception is. Even though at this point, he's actually one of hollywood's most avant-garde storytellers but that's a story for a different day right now but that's but this is also kind of the beginning of him look i mean my big argument that i was thinking is like that this movie and welcome to marwin are like cousins and they're like they're like first cousins who have

hooked up like they're very close they're they're closer than people might consider they're like, they're like first cousins who have hooked up. Like they're very close. They're closer than people might consider. They're kissing cousins. I think they're very much two sides of the same coin, especially in the filters they put on their source material. One book, one real life story. Telling stories about, you know, people who are quote unquote different. Yes. The oddballs on the outskirts of society who become inspirational figure thoughts. And in both cases, it's he's, he's taken a power sander to those original pieces when he adapts

them. Um, but our guest today, uh, I got so amped. I feel like perhaps did you volunteer as soon as it looked like Zemeckis was winning or had won? I think so, right? I believe so. Yeah, I volunteered to do something and then David suggested Forrest Gump. And I quickly agreed because I have a funny story involving this movie that we can get to later. I think you asked for it. Did I ask for Forrest Gump?

Yeah, I didn't suggest it. I mean, I really was just sort of like, you know, take your pick of Zemeckis. That was all. Because I remember just being so amped when David said to me, like, Jamel wants to do Forrest Gump. And it just felt like, not that you necessarily describe yourself this way, but I feel like, Jamel, you are one of the best chroniclers of America in, in so many ways, the way you write about current day America and what, uh, like,

you know, sort of, uh, uh, ails us and, how we're doomed to repeat these cycles, your perspective on history, the echoes of these things going on forever.

It just felt like that, that is the person we need to try to untangle this movie because I don't know how to fucking do it Jamel Bowie from the New York Times is here well thank you for the kind of words also let me say I don't know how to fucking do it either this is a strange movie this is a weird freaking movie agreed it is a weird

one but I'll say this Jamel someone of your qualifications and intelligence admitting that you don't know how to untangle this movie makes me feel less dumb i can untangle it i'll untangle it for you guys i feel pretty confident i feel good i'm feeling good uh what's your funny story about this movie because i have a a similar kind of weird story the film is forrest gump. Forrest Gump. It's funny. This movie, its sort of reputation, I think, at this point is it's like a boomer nostalgia play. Yeah. And that, you know, people born, people old enough to remember the 60s, but not old enough to have experienced the 60s, love this movie. Experienced the 60s.

Loved this movie. But strangely, because of when it came out in 95, I also feel like older millennials are very familiar with this movie. I somehow remember maybe not seeing this in theaters, but I remember seeing it a ton as a kid. On cable all the time. Yeah. 100%. It was just very much part of the movies I saw as a kid. Forrest Gump was one of them. A movie for the whole family, even though it's not.

You know what I mean? But like almost everyone I know my age saw this movie with their family a bunch. Same. You know, like they would rent it from Blockbuster all the time or it'd be on TV or whatever. And like you consider watching this whole movie with your family, this movie that begins with sally field fucking a principal loudly you know to get her son into school and you're like jesus but anyway jamelle back to you i'm sorry this actually is a great lead-in to my story here so when i was in college uh for two summers uh when i was in college i was a summer camp counselor paid pretty well i stayed on campus

at uva and um was a camp counselor a lot of backlash for this jamel if my experience tells me anything talking about summer camp on this show is go on walk at your own peril i was like i was i was a counselor at a camp not unlike the one you would have gone to griffin i can't for like gifted kids for smart kids or whatever. And so I think it was my first summer as a counselor. The first, it was a two-week cycle for each group of campers. And the first Friday was like a movie night. And me and my buddy, who was also a counselor, I think we had decided it'd be fun to screen for Scump.

Thinking exactly, oh, we saw this movie when we were kids. This is like a family movie. You know, a bunch of bunch of 13 and 14 year olds should be able to enjoy this we put this on in the auditorium on like a you know a big projection screen and we're watching we get to the sally field scene and i'm just sort of like you know we didn't clear any of this with these kids as parents, but this should be fine. This is not too bad. We get to the scene where Jenny and Forrest are in her college dorm room, and he, like, comes in her roommate's bath towel. And I was just like, we're going to get fucking fired. This is—we're going to get fucking fired. We've made a terrible mistake. We should not have shown this movie to these kids what were we thinking i had totally forgotten at the time

all of this stuff throughout the movie that is not family friendly whatsoever um and uh you know we finished the movie, the kids watched it, and I did, I didn't, we didn't get fired, but one parent did comment to me when they were picking up their kid that it was interesting that we showed their children Forrest Gump. Interesting, was how they put it. That is the last time I saw this movie, and that would have been when I was 20 or so.

The last time I saw this movie was when I was nine years old. I have not seen it since. I saw it one time before tonight. It was very much burned into my memory. And I had the experience watching it last night for this episode of, I cannot believe that I enjoyed this movie at the time. There is no way I understood 50% of what was happening. there is no way I understood 50% of what was happening.

Like there's no way I understood what was happening in that premature ejaculation scene, let alone all of the ways it comments on American history. Like all of that was fucking flying over my head. And the idea that I watched that movie and was like 10 out of 10 masterpiece. It's one of the greats put it on Mount Rushmore. Was that your reaction when you started the time you're like, rules yeah look here's the here's my quick version my mother is french a humblebred uh when my i was nine my brother was six and my sister had just been born

she wanted us to spend more time in france so we went to the south of France for like three weeks with her high school friend and his many children and his extended family, his in-laws and their kids and all the cousins and whatever. And there was like a house in the south of France where we all were. And I was there with very limited interaction with other people who spoke English, essentially just my parents, my brother, and myself. My sister was an infant. And these French kids who were rambunctious and wanted to play in the field all day and jump at the pool, activities I hated. And all I wanted to do was stay indoors and watch TV, which was in French, and I didn't speak it. The closest town had had a video store and the video store had one tiny shell that was American movies with French subtitles.

And so those just became, I guess we have to rent these for granted. My parents were very overprotective about what I watched, but it was like, what else? He won't do anything else. We got to rent these movies for him. There might've been four. The three I remember distinctly were Independence

Day, Forrest Gump, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Hey, that sounds like a decent collection. That was like my whole fucking summer. I mean, the Monty Python one we rented multiple times. I watched it 8,000 times.

In a pen's day, I probably watched twice. Forrest Gump, I watched once. After that, I started renting American movies in French. And there were a lot of big movies I saw for the first time dubbed in French, which is a weird cultural tip I have of like seeing Wayne's World in French three times before I ever saw it in English. like tip I have of like seeing Wayne's World in French three times before I ever saw it in English uh so it was like a big deal that my parents were letting me watch Forrest Gump which I usually I think they would have not let me watch Jamal for all the reasons you mentioned but it was like I assumed there had to have been R-rated English language subtitled VHS's there that they would not let me see no matter what. And Forrest Gump

felt like the one that was right on the edge. I think because they knew it is so sort of childlike in its approach to everything that everything I didn't get, I wouldn't understand what I wasn't getting. I wouldn't ask questions about it. just kind of go like this is some weird fantastical folly this man is going on and watched it was devastated by it uh found it very upsetting uh was perplexed when people told me they thought it was funny in the years ensuing i was just like uh that's the saddest movie i've ever seen. It's a movie about misery. But it always stuck with me. And especially because I was watching it.

It's a couple of years after the Oscars. My dad keeps on coming in and going like, oh, that's the famous line. That's the famous scene. This is the thing that everyone talks about. Like he kept on walking in and out of the room and underlining things for me, explaining to me cultural importance. And I was such a Mad Magazine kid. I was so much a kid

who was reading old issues of Mad Magazine and reading riffs on pop culture that I had never absorbed and then wanting to learn about the things that were being made fun of. The way the movie goes through American history in that way, I think I was just like really into like, Oh,

this gives me jokes. I can make about shit about different points in time. Uh, but just had not seen it since then, you know, 10 years later, whatever in high school, I start realizing,

Oh, people hate this movie. Like cool. People hate this movie. They think it's for cops and then have just spent the time since then. Assuming I probably don't like this movie. Uh huh. I see. You never like rewatch it and we're like, Oh, this doesn't hold up for me. have just spent the time since then assuming i probably don't like this movie uh-huh i see you

never like re-watched it and we're like oh this doesn't hold up for me you still had the cherished childhood memory but you just sort of assumed yeah when i play back in my head i'm like that scene is i'm gonna hate that right sure but just almost never had the compulsion to re-watch it um my experience of forrest gump is i probably saw it once when i was young uh i don't i didn't like it i was sort of confused by it i like i don't know it creeped me out i watched it again like five years ago i watched it again tonight i always cry at the end it always gets me it's hard it's hard not to the the sequence beginning with him getting to jenny's apartment yes to the end is sort of it's hard not to um choke up i think i mean i

will we can talk about it later but i just think him asking the question if if his son is like him without even quite being able to say it but but touching his chest is just unbearably devastating and is so well acted. So I always sort of walk out of Forrest Gump, quote unquote, kind of being like, I get what is so undeniable about this movie. I sort of can understand how it became this sort of endlessly rewatchable phenomenon

that beat Pulp Fiction and the Shawshank Redemption, you know, to best picture and all the, you know, like was Paramount's highest grossing movie ever. Right. Griffin until like recently,

like right until one of the transformers, unless one of the transformers overtook it, it might still be their number one. Like I, yeah. I, you know, that like the shit like that i when i re-watched it certainly was like oh i think this is like you know this is like being there this is uh a quietly acidic movie i and that's just the only way i can make sense of it and re-watching it today uh yesterday like that that's the only way i can make sense of it and re-watching it today uh yesterday like that that's the only

way i can understand this movie is that you know it is a deeply satirical movie but it is fascinating that it was taken at face value like at the time i i started started watching this last night my wife goes to bed early and we have a little toddler so i usually a movie longer than an hour and a half gets split up between two nights. And so we watched the first. This is a long boy. We watched the first half last night. And I tweeted that this was a little more satirical than I had remembered.

And I don't think I, honestly, even as a college student, I'm not sure I was sort of old enough and self-aware enough to, like, pick up on that stuff at the time. But it's totally there griffin at the beginning you mentioned that the movie very much sands down to the edges of the novel and this like these really not saying sound is even uh not even the right way to put it sort of flattened so much of the the biting satire of the novel but it really feels as if the satire the concept is so satirical that you cannot completely take like extricate the the acidness from it and so just from the just from the jump when you have like your good-natured uh hero named after the founder of the kook clucks fucking clan.

And they don't shy away from that. They're like, that's not hinted at. Right. It's just, it's just, they put it up front. And that to me, as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh, this is right. This movie, although it's going to be saccharine and modeling and like all those things later on, it is doing something here that isn't just nostalgia. I don't disagree. Reading the book is bizarre and I'll unpack it in a moment,

but, but you tweeted that last night, Jamel, and your mentions went like nuclear and it made me realize just how much of like a live wire this movie still is for people because it was just the arguments that were unfolding and you would sort of respond to some people and go like i'm not disagreeing with you and then they would get angry at that you know and then people would come thinking they were defending what you

were saying but they were actually interpreting it the wrong way it's like this very bizarre sort of like it almost feels like the movie is like a reflection pond or something in terms of like what people want to see in it because there is that thing of like it has gotten flattened out to some degree i mean we're right there's there's the inherent dna of what the book is trying to do right there's what zemeckis is trying to turn it into which there are strains that he cannot remove but man is this movie about as sort of transformative an adaptation as you can possibly get like to some degree reading the book i always thought oh the book is a more intense more acidic version of the movie when in fact the book is very much like it's it's like the kind of adaptation they parody in something like The Player, you know?

Where it's just like, oh, you've just taken out every single thing. It's just the characters basically retain the same names and the same basic relationships. And even I feel like the satirical points the book is trying to make are totally different than the things that zemeckis is trying to do but he has kept in it the satirical strain it's just he's located a different pipeline well i i haven't read the book so i don't know but i don't know i think this is i don't i think this is a deeply the movie is a satire the movie is a satire but then there's also shit like on a fundamental level i was trying to watch it through that prism. You tweet that, Jamal. I'm looking at all the replies. You have people going like, absolutely not. The movie is reprehensible. It's the it's the Marvin Barry scene for two and a half hours. scenes are satirically edgy like your tweet was specifically saying some of these scenes have a lot of edge and people were saying how dare you excuse the entire movie which you weren't even

beginning to say and then there were people on the other hand who were saying excuse me the entire thing has satirical edge how dare you not give the movie that much credit and then there were people saying no one should be taking the movie this seriously it's just a fun lark and then people saying like it's a technical achievement above all else we shouldn't be engaging with the meat of it whatsoever it was just wild and i start watching it and i'm like okay i'm really gonna try to see this movie through all possible prisms especially now watching these zemeckis movies in order seeing how much there is a satirical strain through all of this films up until this point, even if it doesn't always land.

And then I start watching it and it's like, from the moment the fucking score starts, you're like, well, this automatically is why people take this movie at face value as the inspirational story of, you know, you'll never see the world the same way again,

after you've seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump. Like everything about the score is like soaring magical. Like what you know, you'll never see the world the same way again after you've seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump. Like everything about the score is like soaring, magical, like what you're about to be touched with the greatness, the beauty of Forrest Gump's way of life and the impact. He is the golden thread that has unified the last four decades of American culture. Right. I agree with you that there's wild that it's presented very sincerely at times and yet also it begins with sally field fucking the principal and when forrest gump is introducing himself it flashes back to tom hanks putting a clown clan hood on like that's the first 10 minutes of the movie like yes it begins with a beautiful feather

floating to this like lovely score by Alan Silvestri, but also Tom Hanks puts a Klan hood on in this movie. Yeah. Like that's what's like, either people just forget or just kind of like, or, you know, not some, some, some people just kind of, I guess, skip on by like this movie was presented as like, you know, ah ah the republican revolution crystallized in a film just as it arrived right you know what i mean like 1994 yes that's right america's starting to like think about its values and like what's so great about it like just at the right time

and then i watched the movie and i'm like isn't this movie about how the only way you can think america's great is if you're an idiot like yeah it's such a why it's such a wild text i really enjoyed watching it this time in ways that i hadn't before i think because griffin like you're saying i'm sort of thinking about it i'm thinking about the robert zemeckis who made back to the future and welcome to marwin like but anyway it is a wild text it i feel like it's it's i'm not sure it confuses the right word for it but there are so many different tones going throughout this movie it is at different points trying to do very different things that i think it's genuinely hard to say forrest gump is a reactionary movie, although I think there is a very clear and obvious reactionary reading of the movie. I think you can make that argument very easily.

It's hard to say that this is a purely satirical movie because, as we were just discussing, there are moments that are genuinely heartfelt and pull up are very emotional, very much not the kinds of things you would find in a satire. And oftentimes the two things are sort of, they're like right next to each other within the film. And so the Vietnam sequence, I don't know how this is going to be structured. So I'm just going to like. We have to sit on a bench and talk to a random person.

That's how we're going to structure it. Is it okay if I run into the podcast? Do you guys mind? Yeah, of course. Can you run, swim into the podcast? I mean, however you want to go about it. Sorry, I let my boat drift into a dock. Jamel, treat Ben as our bench partner for the sake of this episode.

You're regaling Ben with the tale of your thoughts. Yes. The Vietnam sequence, when the all-along-the-watch-tower music cue hits, and while Forrest is narrating why he enjoys being in Vietnam so much, that just

feels so satirical to me. This complete moron loves war because he's an idiot and can follow directions and with sort of like the most stereotypical vietnam war q you could imagine just right feels like zemeckis screaming you know this is look how how look what idiots we are right but then this is but then 10 minutes later not even 10 minutes later you have the genuinely touching scene where gump rescues his comrades who have fallen um in this ambush and that's like a that's a that's a that's a harrowing piece of filmmaking and because the two are so close together and because the harrowing, emotional, traditional stuff hits so well, that's the stuff that sticks in your head.

And the stuff that doesn't necessarily stick in your head is the Tom Hanks in a clansman uniform is a sally field it's just so wild is this sally field uh sleeping with his uh with his teacher um is the is is one of my actually favorite little scenes where uh bubba gump's mother has like the white housekeeper cooking your dinner right sort of this sort of the tables of terror and honky moment right right but but that's the weirdness of this movie is that everything that is subversive in it is the stuff that we all forget is in it and everything that you could sort of like pull anyone off the street and go describe to me the six major scenes in Forrest Gump are the scenes that are very very easy to track as a a cry

for conservatism in America you know um this is the other incredibly weird thing about the book I mean let me just take my little corner here for the book and I'm not going to get into like the scene by scene comparison of everything in this movie, but I think the biggest fundamental difference with the book, Jamel, you were saying like the idea that this guy is such a force for good or something like that. The book,

he is fundamentally not a great guy. He's, you know, very much like this weird, he's six foot six, he's 250 pounds, and he's pretty abrasive. There's nothing cute about him. He's viewed as threatening by a lot of people. There isn't the sort of miracle, I was born with, you know, bad legs. I learned how to run. I then become this all-American hero. He's very much like this giant kid who a coach pulls up to on the side of the road and is like, you look like you could tackle people. You should be a football player. And they bring him into the

football team just as like a bruiser. He doesn't save Jenny from a household of abuse. There isn't that same sort of like deeply knitted relationship from the very beginning. Jenny is very much the little red headed girl from Peanuts. She's just the prettiest girl he's ever seen. And he keeps on running into her again. She remains the unattainable object for him, but they aren't as intrinsically tied. And that's the biggest, fucking difference and eric roth i think is the one who said this uh i'm trying to find the quote here but zemeckis was like i want him to be just a force for good i want for us to just be a complete innocent that it is as you were saying this very naive childlike perspective of all these big events in american history

um only thing he believes in is god his mama and jenny is is what zemeckis said to him and so they took everything kind of uh here the writer at broth departed substantially from the book we flipped the two elements of the book making the love story primary and the fantastic adventure secondary also the book was cynical and colder than the movie. In the movie, Gump is a completely decent character, always true to his word. He has no agenda and no opinion about anything except Jenny, his mother, and God. Now, the thing that Eric Rolfe said is the way he pulled that off was to put all the unsavory elements and the unsympathetic things that Forrest Gump did into Jenny. Jenny becomes the receptacle for everything kind of rough that Forrest goes through. So you end up with one character who's just like a simpleton going through history,

somehow winning, succeeding, and making everything around him better, and one character who just feels like fucking cursed by the gods to suffer over and over and over again and and forrest's accomplishments are much smaller in the book he has adventures that are a lot weirder like him becoming a professional wrestler or a stuntman and like a raquel welsh movie um but he doesn't meet like seven presidents. He isn't a war hero in the same kind of way. Lieutenant Dan is a guy he just meets in the hospital in recovery, not someone he served under, not someone he saved. Bubba is his friend going back to college on the football team. But, you know, the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company is the end of the book. That is the absolute peak of what Forrest Gump accomplishes. And everything else is much, much smaller than that.

You don't have the same kind of thing of like at five different points in this guy's life, he became a national talking point until people forgot. And then three years later, he does another thing and people treat him like a new guy. The book ends with uh he starts the company it becomes huge he goes back and hires pretty much everyone he's met along the way in the book like every side character comes back and becomes an employee of the bubblegum shrimp company he makes a ton of money and then he decides i don't like it i don't like this fancy life his mom's still alive he sets his mom up with money for the rest of her life since baba's family up for the rest of his life uh he can't find dan he doesn't know where lieutenant dan is he wants

to hire him um doesn't know where he is but every other side character has come back is working for it and he just sort of leaves it behind and is like i don't like this fancy life people are trying to talk him into running for senator the biggest running thread in the entire book is him saying, I need to pee at big moments. He does it like eight times. Anytime he's in front of the media, he says, I need to pee. And that's the only thing he can think of. So he goes and makes his announcement speech as senator. He says, I need to pee. And people love it. And they try to turn it into like a Chauncey Gardner-esque slogan as if it has this deeper meaning. And he goes, I don't like this. This is ugly. I know I'm too stupid to be senator. He walks away from it all, gives away all of his earthly positions.

His only friend is an orangutan who he went to space with because also in the book, he's a fucking astronaut. So his best friend is an orangutan named sue who is a male and he goes with the orangutan and just starts living a hobo life because his only real love was the harmonica the harmonica is kind of treated with the same sort of savant attitude as his ping pong this book sounds lame so he's wants to just be a harmonica player. The book's kind of good, but it's insane. Come on, a hobo segment? That would have been great. Well, I mean, the running is, I guess,

the movies version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a harmonica player with Sue, going around, living on the rails and whatever. Then he runs into a band. They start a three-person band. Then when he's sitting on a bench he's like i should see what jenny's up to these days so he reaches out he finds jenny and she's married happily with

his kid who's four years junior and he's like is the kid dumb and she's like no he's really smart but i was just worried because you know your brain so i thought it was better that i get a normal husband. So he's like, Oh, I'm glad to see the kids happy. I always thought I ended up with you, but you're right. I could never be with you where I belong is homeless with my harmonica and orangutan and Lieutenant Dan. And the book ends with them just fucking busking in new Orleans. He never sees the kid again. He never sees Jennyenny again yeah the book is just like i was a man who was stupid i know i'm a moron i went through some weird experiences i made a ton of money i never got super famous but i have these weird little moments where i like crossed over with culture

at large but i didn't invent the fucking smiley face i didn't become a folk hero didn't stop watergate right like there isn't that same sort of i mean you did this i'm gonna make you talk about your tweets from earlier today jamal but he they don't do that thing the marvin barry thing of like he's always the person who somehow either made history happen or almost stopped history from happening he's not the guy who fucking inspired elvis presley like all that shit is zemeckis eric roth. It's just sort of a story about a man who's got some rough edges. One of the earliest incidents, like big incidents in the book is he finally builds up the courage to ask Jenny on a date. He takes her to go see a movie when they're in high school. And she, it's a horror film,

I think. And she faints and he goes to pick her up off the ground because she fainted. And he's so strong that he accidentally rips her dress off and she starts screaming and he goes to pick her up off the ground because she fainted and he's so strong that he accidentally rips her dress off and she starts screaming and then the cops come in because they think he's sexually assaulting jenny and he goes to jail yeah well the book sounds bizarre yeah it's just a different thing fundamentally different because it's Because it's clear that they just saw the germ of an idea in this, basically. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Because the idea of it and making it into far more of like, it's just the folksy tale about this guy who doesn't even realize the impact he had on everyone around. Right. And also in the book, isn't he kind of like an idiot savant? Like he can kind of like do math, right? Like, or whatever. Right like or whatever right he has he has like a brain for that he's really good at math but like nothing else um i mean he ends up like fucking up the big game in football he ends up getting kicked out of school like he fails at

most things he tries to do he just gets to try a lot of things right math is the one thing he's like got a natural kind of predilection for um but but the movie translates that into all the weird things of like oh he's able to assemble the gun faster than anyone else like he's constantly breaking all these records well because he's a machine he's a single-minded simple-minded man who who right they can just if you give him directions he can do them he has no like on we like he is not burdened by any sort of like inner conflict so right so he's a perfect machine of sports right a perfect machine of war right you know like and like all of that he is the dream of generals since time began right exactly i mean the i mean honestly possibly the funniest scene in the movie is the drill sergeant being like you're a genius

like like the opposite of the opposite of full metal jacket essentially but the marvin barry hit is is a fair one in a way right like yeah it gets a little goofy where it's like okay elvis okay but then there is that weird sort of salty, sweet thing where like he meets these presidents. But then also Zemeckis is like constantly prodding the audience being like, remember that American history post-war was just our fucking presidents getting shot at like for 40 years and often murdered. Like, isn't that weird? You know what I mean? Like, like in this way where I feel like people think about and often murdered. Like, isn't that weird? You know what I mean? Like, like in this way where I feel like people think about the Kennedy assassination,

they think about, you know, Reagan being shot, like, but they, you know, like when you see it as this chain, we're like,

huh, it's funny that that that's just all woven in. Like, and that's like so much of what he's trying to do. Right. Like, it's sort of like when you see this as this big woven thing like it's it seems ludicrous like like why why can't forrest gump just wander through it right and it

seems it's it's um it's ludicrous and someone the movie seems to be saying that only someone like forrest gump could experience all that uh and come out of, you know, not irreparably scarred, right? Sure. Not completely neurotic. And Jenny seems to be the counterpoint, right? Sort of Jenny and Lieutenant Dan, too. These are normal human beings who experience the things force does and react as normal human beings do. To be depressed or to be sad or to make bad decisions.

Right, right, right. But also they push back against these things and are sort of punished for them in a way that he is not. You guys know what Eric Roth's big follow-up to this movie was. Eric Roth, the screenwriter of this movie, who wins an Oscar and is still a big Hollywood screenwriter. But do you know what his next movie was? I do not know. No.

The Postman, which is another movie that is that weird mix where you're like, is this thing patriotic or is it unbelievably myopic about about like you know is it really depressed about america it's such a like that that movie obviously is the super flop to this movie's super hit right like both are big swings one totally connects one completely baffles people but like kind of the same sort of tone right like you know waving you know, waving American flag, but also apocalypse. I mean, I think there's this other element of it too, not to relate everything back to the future, but watching these two movies close together. Oh, you gotta relate this movie to that.

Yeah. You gotta relate this to Back to the Future. You gotta relate it to Marwen, right? If there's sort of a Ghost of Christmas past, present, and future. Yeah, yeah. Not to relate it to Christmas Carol. I feel like these three movies are on's sort of a ghost of Christmas past, present, and future, not to relate it to Christmas Carol, I feel like these three movies are on some sort of spectrum. And I think both

this and Back to the Future are very interested in the way that history is sort of rewritten with distance, that we sort of commodify it into the pop culture version of what we live through and everything has to be seen as a triumph that that there's nostalgia for even our worst moments you know that everything is kind of cleaned up and the way that back to the future is like you throw the guy into the middle of it and he's realizing that everything his parents told him was not really true that living in this time day- day is very different than how it's been related and this movie is like forrest gump in real time is editing uh you know what he's living through into the hallmark card version of itself which is where the movie gets into this weird or a spurious thing of oh it became such a big hit with like boomers as this nostalgia trip of like them reliving all the things that they were a little too young to live

through themselves but watch with a child's comprehension right soundtrack by the biggest hits of several different decades and perceiving things the way they remember them as a child right and the movie is sort of like having us take an eating a tube by doing the joke of oh what forest is saying is different than what you're seeing you an adult holding all the cards know what actually happened and it's funny how he misinterpreted it but it's also very easy to just coast on the level of what forest is telling you if you don't really want to engage with it and just go like man ccr yeah remember vietnam he won he got the he got the trophy and this is where i mean this is where I think the totally valid argument that the movie is reactionary comes in. Because watching it on that level, you know, it's not just presenting, oh, isn't it, wasn't JFK so handsome?

You know, wasn't Vietnam so hard? Weren't the Black Panthers so militant? Weren't the, you know, weren't the anti-war demonstrators so ridiculous? Right? Sort of. Yes. Weren't the, you know, weren't the anti-war demonstrators so ridiculous, right? Sort of, it begins to, when it hits that register for those moments, it does put forth this, oh, all that was very silly. really crystallize what is doesn't work about this movie, which is that he,

you know, he, you don't hear him say anything about Vietnam. Like, you know, that's the joke of that scene. And in 2020, or even in 1995, you know,

if you were, you could look at Vietnam, you could look at the civil rights movement. No, they were right. The protesters were right there. They're not to be skewered because they actually, they got it all correct. And so it's weird to skewer them. The only way you can skewer them is from this kind of Rush Limbaugh listening, you know, Newt Gingrich voting

perspective. And that's what makes it, I think, like when people say this is a, you know, a reactionary, not even conservative, but a reactionary movie, I can kind of see where they're going on that. It's certainly easy to take that away from it. I mean, Griffin, what do you want to say? I have another Eric Roth thought. I keep thinking about Eric Roth's kind of an interesting career. Well, I want to, I guess, back up a little bit, do a little bit of our standard sort of career context. Just place this movie in its time and talk about the versions that almost got

made. And then let's maybe sit down on the, on the bench and go through these things in order. Jamel, your run of tweets that you did earlier today about all the different events that Forrest Gump was responsible for. I would, I would love to request a reading of those tweets.

Sure. So again, like i said earlier we um we were watching the second half of this movie and we had started pretty much just like 10 minutes after we started the second half is when uh forrest gump meets president nixon which is actually the scene uh before that's pretty funny where he's like, no, I met the president again and I went to the White House again. It's funny. I enjoyed that. I think that's actually the proper way we should think of presidents. It's just sort of like guys who have this job and like whatever. But it's the scene where he meets Nixon and Nixon asks him where he's staying and he's staying at some hotel.

Nixon and Nixon asked him where he's staying and he's staying at some hotel. Nixon's like, oh, I'll put you up in a nicer place. And then it cuts to him seeing the Watergate break in happen and then calling the police and say, hey, you may want to check that out. The implication being that Nixon, Forrest Gump is the reason Nixon got impeached. And so what I said on Twitter. Yes. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, Jamel, it's really subtle.

It's hard to understand what's happening. He's like, I'm here in the water. Talking. Right. It's Nixon saying, what hotel are you staying at? No, I know a much better hotel for you to stay at. Then it cuts to him in the hotel looking out the window seeing men with flashlights looking for something rummaging through files calling up the cops and then in case you don't get it the camera pans over to the desk where you see the stationary that says the water gate i just love that he has no faith in the audience whoa what's that scene about though i don't understand i thought it was just about nixon knowing from hotels no nixon noted hotelier yeah yeah totally he was he just really smart about hotels okay okay

good he was like the original yelper yeah exactly i just wrote on twitter you know forgot that the film makes gump responsible for stopping the watergate break-in and then that was followed by a tweet uh looking forward to the remake of gump in 20 years where it turns out gump did 9-11 uh gump makes his way on the apprentice and tells donald trump you should try being president sometime you'd be a great president gump is working as a janitor at harvard in 2003 bumps in the market zuckerberg says it'd be nice if i had a way to remember all these people i meet and faces i see that was good god drinks too much soda and he burps and it sounds like google and you know starts off that whole idea god he would just that's the that's the depressing thing at a certain point he would just invent various websites it would just get really right he would be like oh you know uh you know i wish

i could sure buy you know books on the internet i don't know like it would just be that over and over again we'd be like oh fuck every single advancement in the last 20 years has just been a website he unplugged something and it causes y2k like we could just of course right yeah that's great oh god uh okay so the the book comes out in 1986 it is well liked but it's not a massive sales hit nor like a completely beloved thing but i think it it has its fans it has its fans. It has its champions, including right here on the cover, Larry King himself saying, do yourself a favor and read Forrest Gump. It may be the funniest novel I have ever read. That feels like Larry King. No offense to Larry King, who is still with us, I believe.

Right? Look at how weird this cover is, though. Yeah, that's a weird weird cover I've seen that one with the sideways face because the other one is that kind of like kind of painted one where he looks like he looks like a big dude have you seen this one it's on the Wikipedia

page yeah I mean he's supposed to be an absolute fucking unit right he's like he's a football player Winston Groom said he wanted it to be John Goodman right right right and it's because that's why he's like uh he's a he's a football player winston groom said he wanted it to be john goodman right right right and it's because that's why he's a kick returner in the movie like tom hanks is more thin frame but um like you just have to like give larry king like a bag of onions right to get a quote on your book or whatever right like how hard is it the single greatest book i've ever read

a masterpiece oh the western canon trembles as Forrest Gump enters. You know, he's just like reading that over the phone. Anyway, the book comes out in 86, as you say. Winston Groom, who is sort of like, he's written other books, but isn't he? He's also like, he does a lot of nonfiction, right? Did a lot of American historical. I think a fair amount but but gump did sort of a lot yes gump did like i i think yeah i was looking through reviews and people

recognized at the time like oh this is like a pretty original creation you read reviews and they're like gump might form its own little cult you could see a lot of these sayings ending up on t-shirts like gump as a character kind of speaks in constant like yogi era isms you know right right right um and so he i think even before the movie came out published another book that's like called gump isms or something like that gump isms the wit and wisdom of forrest gump like he did sort of just like a forrest gump advice book. Uh, right.

Okay. So, right. So it's like, and it's optioned right by Paramount or whatever. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and I believe the original choice is someone who is like always an original choice to direct a movie and never does it. This guy is, I feel like constantly mentioned in the eighties and nineties, Terry Gilliam. Like, I feel like after Brazil, he was just attached to everything.

That's the thing I want to talk about for a little bit here is just Terry Gilliam has this movie coming off of like Monty Python and everything. Right. He has Brazil, which is notorious for like the studio doesn't want to release it. The critics champion it. They finally will it into being released. It's still a commercial failure. It doesn't get major Oscar noms, but it has this very fervent cult following right yeah it was

seen as sort of a underdog triumph and it's weird just because it got released right but but he does have a run of successful mainstream movies which i feel like from from Quixote on the first time he tries to make a hotel, he's cursed. He never recovers. He becomes like just this complete, like, I mean, it's the onion headline of Terry Gilliam barbecue,

six months, $400 million over budget about him trying to like build the barbecue out of like titanium or whatever. I mean, right. Yes, yes, yes.

I mean, time bandits, which is pre brazil that was a hit and munchhausen which is his blank check post brazil is a flop but then fisher king and 12 monkeys yeah are both well-liked box office hits that get oscar nominations he's working with huge movie stars he's adapting big works like you know he's adapting other people's scripts and he's keeping them his own but still you know like i like those movies i like that run and i guess fear and loathing

was not a hit exactly but it was one of those movies that instantly had a long life on vhs and all that but he's definitely one of those guys for how much he's seen as just like poison right now and like a pox upon studio filmmaking. They never let him near anything again. That whole run of like him being the first choice for Roger Rabbit, being the first choice for this, J.K. Rowling, her infinite wisdom famously really wanted him to do Harry Potter. her infinite wisdom famously really wanted him to do harry potter and like said to warner brothers he's my choice and gilliam's the one who turned it down and was like i don't know what i would do with that but anytime there was something that seemed technically complicated the material was tricky or both he was viewed as a somewhat not safe pick but it was like the doug lyman thing of like look sometimes it's gonna blow up in your face and he's gonna make a fucking train wreck but every once in a while this madman gets it right um

right so he turns it down he's just like i don't know uh watchman was another one that everyone thought he was the one guy to adapt for so long he really and he that one was one where he actually really took a crack at it but and then it didn't work out but uh yeah so there's him and then i believe the second person attached was barry sonnenfeld right sonnenfeld was a hundred percent attached and then dropped out to do adam's family values when that sort of got fast track um so then zemeckis comes on it's wild that zemeckis is like third choice especially considering what a run of hits he had because he's essentially i mean he's done three back to the futures who frame roger rabbit romancing the stone and death becomes her all in a row obviously not in that

order he hasn't whiffed since uh used cars um but i do think as much as he was a sort of a-list hollywood director he was in a little bit of that Spielberg thing where Spielberg was so desperate to make like an adult movie and be respected by the Oscars and not just seen as this populist popcorn guy. And Spielberg, it took him a lot longer to get from Jaws to Schindler's List. Zemeckis did sort of the fast track version of it. but i think the version that gilliam or sonnenfeld would have made would have not been a major poster play yeah and most of the actors do here that were wanted for this movie were comedy actors like it was like bill murray and chevy chase sean penn was one of the serious actors who they wanted which that movie sounds like a fucking disaster. You just imagine him combining his I Am Sam performance with his All the King's Men performance. Right. Yes. I mean, because Gilliam directed Forrest Gump

feels like it'd be much closer to the spirit of the novel. Right. More, more directly. Yeah. Cynic and satirical. And so Murray playing Gump feels like it would be closer to like Carl Speckler from Hattie shack. Like that's how Gump reads as like that somewhat menacing idiot. But I, I would argue,

I mean, when you watch this movie, I, you, I, at least I was doing the thought experiment of like, what if this movie, this exact movie, had made $30 million at the box office and was considered like a weird entry from Zemeckis, right? Very easy to imagine. Right? It's the exact same movie, but it just like, it was like, yeah, this didn't connect. It was a little too dark and strange at times and a little too goofy, you know, like, so, and then I feel like you would just sort of be like, huh, well, this movie is very ambitious and interesting, much like a lot of Zemeckis' later flops, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Not only does that situation sound plausible, if this movie had come out in 1990, I think that's what would have happened. I mean, it's worth considering. And if it came out in 2020 and I made this joke, everyone would go to jail. Right. Just straight to jail. Considering that in 1995, I mean, this is, you know, it's not just boomer nostalgia. 1995 is the entire U.S. federal government is run by people who grew up in the 60s and 70s.

The whole thing about Bill Clinton, the whole thing that made him so interesting and exciting, he was the first boomer president. The 90s were kind of the ascent of the boomers into positions of power. And so this movie, I mean, I think the reason the movie got read the way it did, the reason it was received the way it did, is that it hits at exactly the right point in American history to have the kind of cultural impact it did and to be read the way that it was. Because if you just put it – make it a movie that comes out in 2000 even, 2005. I mean, certainly post-9-11, the movie hits – you know, people would – might read it as totally a satire straight up. But – Right. satire straight up but right um five years earlier you can't force him i think ends up as a weird curiosity you're right i mean it's literally this is the one moment it comes out july 1994

it wins the oscar early 2005 it runs at the box office for months and months and months early 95 95 i'm sorry but it like it has like nine months there where it is the key movie in america yeah you know on people's mind absolutely from from sort of july to march or april the following year and then from then on it's just pop culture history you know what i mean like i say it's on cable all the time everyone knows the lines bubble grump's gym company is a real restaurant like you know it's just sort of like everyone's like, yeah, Forrest Gump, the movie, the famous movie that we've all seen. I mean, Jamel, you're talking

about how weird it is that you would think to play it for kids at a summer camp, it's only weird when you're re-watching the movie, because I feel like the movie, now I feel like the backlash against the movie has started to overtake the goodwill in some kind of way.

I feel like in 95, it was very much the minority opinion of like, oh, you're so cynical, you hate Gump. And now people question it a lot more. But I feel like not only was the movie that quickly canonized, but it was canonized in a way that's closer to something like wizard of oz yeah then something like casablanca it was like every kid understands what this is it is constantly parody every single element of it is iconic you can dress like forrest gump you can have someone sit on a bench you can have there be a feather you can use the music the supporting cast the lines the shrimp like just fucking everything about this movie was just like in the cloth of the culture for years and still is. That's the other weird thing

about it is I feel like so often when we cover movies that are this iconic, when I actually put them on, there's that thing of like, oh, this is a a movie like i have to unpack the years of simpsons parodies and like bad improv references right right and just engage with silence of the lambs as silence of the lambs and not the later sequels and all the other shit surrounding it and then you watch forrest gump and for as weird as it is you're like this is forrest gump the parodies aren't really subverting what it is right the reputation isn't really subverting what it is it's a weird thing to wrap your head around but it is very much like it in so many it is both weirder than what people remember it being and also exactly what people minimize it

to, if that makes sense. It does. I'm just, and I'm thinking more just about the politics of it, not in terms of the reading of the movie, but just in terms of its reception and how it's evaluated. And I think you could make a pretty good case that it's declining reputation amongst movie watchers, or at least, you know, amongst people like us, directly reflects the extent to which we are living at the tail end of the political leadership of the 60s generation. And it's a total mess, right? It's hard to watch that movie now, given everything we've lived through, and not conclude that people, like someone like Forrest Gump, cast a ballot for Donald Trump. Absolutely.

Not that Forrest Gump has ever voted. Right, no, no, of course not. Absolutely. Like, that seems like just a little too aggressive for him. But I agree with everything everyone just said but i also hearkening back to the talk of the you know gilliam and stuff i do think the only reason this movie works is because zemeckis read this script read this book whatever and was like no it's got to be totally sincere like you know we can be ironic or whatever but like the tone and the performance needs to be

absolutely sincere or else this this just will baffle people also strip everything else away forrest gump as a character is nothing less than the physical embodiment of sincerity right he needs and he needs to be and the i i you know i feel it in the first moments in the movie not the bench so much but like when you see him getting on the bus and saying like i'm not supposed to talk to straight you know i'm forrest i'm forrest forrest gump that that whole exchange you love him like you feel great affection for him instantly you want to protect him right like you know he's it's that sort of and like that that then you're on board you're on board with all the bullshit that's about to happen you know like

because you're like well this is a come on like you know leave the kid alone you know like you just immediately have that kind of defensive reaction and it works is tom hanks to me the biggest and most baffling question is is he good in this movie or not? Because I think you have to argue that yes he is like that it's a crucial performance like the movie only works

because of it. But at the same time you watch it and you're like Jesus Christ man what is he doing? But looking vacant isn't acting I would argue. I don't know. I have very complicated thoughts on this issue. Have you guys seen that video of him doing the accent over and over again while they're getting ready?

Have you seen that? There's the, I feel like it was going viral recently. It was circulating like a week or two ago. It's him doing takes just his closeup on the bench for some part. And then he keeps on going like, let me reset, let me reset let me reset

and it's it's fascinating because of how technical it is that there's no sort of like methody self-seriousness he's just sort of going like bob where do i look eye line here eye line there okay laugh is like no that was off let me try it again let me try it again and he's just like laugh is like right like that yes yes, Hanks did this interview recently about the fact that they filmed the first three days. Zemeckis came up to him and said, Tom, I just want you to know,

I'm not going to use any footage we've shot so far. I don't think you have it yet. You don't have the character. It's fine. I believe you're going to get it. You're going to get your handle on it, but I just want you to know, don't feel any pressure. Essentially you're at a blank slate because none of that's being used. Right. And then like a week or two later, he went to Hanks and was

like, uh, they're making us cut these scenes. They don't want the running thing at the end at all, because it's too many locations outdoors and extras and whatever. And there was like one or two other things they didn't want to put in the movie because of budget and complication and he said here's what i'm asking of you i will make you an equal creative collaborator on this movie i'll bring you into edits i'll take your notes i'll shape the entire film to your specifications we'll be 50 50 on this i'll give you a lot of say but you need to sacrifice like 25 of your salary to put back into the budget of this movie i'm doing the same and in exchange we'll get points and they did it and zemeckis and hanks each made like 60 million it's it's 80 it's some insane amount of money yeah it's just because they got

net points not gross but right yeah um but wait okay but back to the question shemel what do you think this performance is this good is this good i don't know there are there are point there are moments where Hanks is genuinely great. We already mentioned one, when he asked about his son. That is amazingly well-performed. Incredible. That is a testament to what Hanks is bringing to this role. I think a Sean Penn would have fucked a scene like that up completely.

Absolutely. I mean, the last 20 minutes are all terrific, and Hank's doing a great job. But is it good? I don't know! I'll say this. I don't find it off-putting, right? Like, unlike an I Am Sam, unlike a Sling Blade,

unlike a radio, a movie that i detest it's not an off-putting performance and i think it's i think i think it's because gump isn't uh disabled gump is just slow right they don't really delve into anything specific he's got a low iq right that's about as much as they say right he's magical in that kind of way where it's like what he is and isn't good at what he does and does not understand is very selective based on what benefits the movie right he he's childlike but also america is childlike often so he fits this is my whole thing it's like do i like this performance no i also don't really like this movie uh right that i agree with you i just also kind of admit that it works i guess and this is the this is the fucked up thing everything that's effective about this

movie is completely tied to how effective Hanks is in the role, even though I don't necessarily think it's a good performance. But in whatever ways the movie works, it does work because of what he's doing and it gets into that sort of canniness that Hanks is able to apply

sometimes in terms of understanding audiences, understanding how he plays, how audiences react to him, what he's able to convey well, and what is outside of his range of what people will accept from him in ways where I'm like, this accent sounds like how no person has ever, ever spoken. But if he were doing a more realistic accent, I think it would work against what Zemeckis is trying to do. Right, the weird magic, like you're saying. If he were more realistically playing some sort of neurological developmental disability,

it would play against the movie. He's in this weird, like, Clarabelle the angel space as just this odd, like, sort of, like, one-off creature who doesn't sound like anyone else, who doesn't think like anyone else, who doesn't behave like anyone else. The reason why he's a smart casting choice is because of Big. It's what you're saying, David, from, like, the moment he arrives on the park bench, you're like, I mean, I'm gonna feel like an asshole if i make fun of this guy there's something so childlike about him without him being you know a a sort of specifically developmentally disabled regressed childlike man if that makes sense but i think it's crucial to think of the movies Jamal mentioned.

Radio is a great example. I Am Sam is obviously a great example. And how spectacularly bad they are, especially the performances. Yeah. And to maybe, like, as broad a performance as Hanks is giving, like, to, I guess, acknowledge, like, no, there is a high wire that he's on that

other talented actors have you know tried to get i mean those movies are worse movies also but like still like they tried to navigate that and completely you know fucked it up like i mean rate radio radio is one of those movies that I don't remember exists because it doesn't exist. But then the second you mentioned it, it like floods. Oh boy. I mean,

look, Griffin. Yeah. As you know, Tom Hanks won best actor at the Academy awards for this second year in a row. Like that's the thing you have to wrap your head around is that that's why I want to talk about it. This movie was so undeniable they were like look our hands are

tied we're loathe to give it to the same guy we gave it to last year but how do we not give him the oscar it must happen because if we're gonna you know give this movie best picture over pulp fiction quiz show uh you know for weddings and funerals shawshank redemption hanks must win like because it and here's who he beats all four performances i would say are arguably better winners okay so i don't even so travolta and pulp fiction where you have the combo of an excellent performance a a star reviving performance, what the Oscars love, an against type performance,

you know, like you've got everything there. Yes. It's a, it's an anti heroic character, right? Like, you know,

that's turning some voters off maybe, but right. But like, it just seems like such an obvious win. I don't love that performance. And also I don't think he's the lead of the movie, but I have a controversial opinions on Paulul fiction yeah jesus i mean david is making a face right now that i haven't seen since we went to see the lion king remake in theaters i i will griffin i will give you i

will give you a slight bump which is just to say that when i i saw paiction, you know, in high school, then later learned that that performance for Travolta was so transformative for his career. And then went back to watch Pulp Fiction and couldn't figure it out. Thank you. I don't think it's a bad performance, but I think, thank you, Jamal. And guess what? You just got booked on our eventual Pulp Fiction episode. But like, all right, a bunch of things. I think Travolta, Willis, and Jackson are all the leads of those movies.

Like, they're co-leads. They have equal screen time. Travolta's absolutely a lead of the movie. But I think Bruce Willis is the best performance. Who is? Bruce Willis. He's great in it. I mean, whatever.

I mean, Pulp Fiction is good. John Travolta is good in it neither of those are controversial opinions but those are my opinions but beyond that i'm just talking about oscar i'm not talking about david's picks or griffin's oscar great narrative yeah okay here paul newman for nobody's fool like that's the one you were like okay he's not gonna win like even though screen legend it's actually a really good performance but whatever yeah fine nigel hawthorne for the madness of king george which is an astonishing performance but sort of ladled with the kind of like oh well he's the old brit in the costume drama like the nom is his reward actually an incredible performance but and then

morgan freeman in the shawshank which is, in my opinion, the whiff. I don't even love the Shawshank Redemption, but that's such an obvious win. For the career, for the moment, kind of his definitive role, you know what I mean? But they couldn't do it. I always forget that Robbins didn't get nominated, that they didn't nominate both of them. No. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't. And I'm sure didn't nominate both of them. No. Yeah. Yeah.

No, they didn't. And I'm sure they had to run both his lead. Right. No. And to the degree that also, I feel like when Freeman finally wins the Oscar for million dollar baby, everyone says like,

well, this is the Shawshank award. He's very good in that movie, but he's kind of given you Morgan Freeman in that movie. Like, right. But I, you know,

as opposed to driving Miss Daisy, no one was saying, Oh, finally they're giving him his makeup award for driving miss daisy by the point million dollar baby comes out and shawshank redemption is the highest rated film on imdb everyone's like this is his belated shawshank award um yes the hanks win is bizarre in that kind of way especially because he's he's he's doing things as an actor to benefit the movie that don't stand that well on their own if you're only paying attention to the performance.

But it makes sense, that story about Zemeckis being like, we have to be in this together. We're making these decisions together. We're sink or swim. Because he's so unified with what Zemeckis is doing. All the elements are so unified. I mean, it's that Zemeckis thing of just like, he's so slick. It's so unified with what Zemeckis is doing. All the elements are so unified. I mean, it's that Zemeckis thing of just like, he's so slick.

It's so tight. It's so sort of well-crafted that you find yourself getting like lulled into it. And then you were like, is this insipid? Is this just total bullshit? Do I find this despicable? Is this performance offensive? And you kind of can't even answer any of those questions because then you get lulled into the next thing or caught up on a genuine moment or perplexed by something so strange happening but as you say it is also so slick like in that way that it is annoying

right i genuinely yeah i i like i watch it and i'm like that's very skilled like it is very impressive what Tom Hanks is able to pull off here and what he's pulling off is big it's the same magic trick of just making a character feel that much like a supernatural child that you can go off into insane territory and accept it right that he's like your key to the suspension of disbelief that this movie asks of you. But he can do better accents than this. He can play more realistic people than this. And it's not his funniest performance, and it's not his most emotionally resonant performance, and it's not his most physically demanding or transformative performance. Like, he's done better work in every area. I think part of it's the combination of all those things and that he had just become like

the president of hollywood as you've joked the year before he makes his philadelphia speech i mean he wins for philadelphia while they're filming this is that correct uh that would make sense certainly it's the year before right right? So yeah, certainly. I mean, yeah. Filming. No, no,

no. Filming is done right before the Oscars. So, but whatever he does, he finishes filming, wins an Oscar for Philadelphia probably is then, you know, finishes filming gum, wins an Oscar for Philadelphia,

moves on to fucking Apollo 13 or whatever, you know, next family friendly crowd-pleasing blockbuster he's gonna make Toy Story probably he's getting in the booth for Toy Story and then he's like oh oh there's another Oscars I guess I'll show up and win again and then maybe I'll

play Sully the fucking hero who landed flight 1549 on the Hudson 155 souls 155 souls there were so many souls the moment jamel of of the is he like me where he can't get the word out and then the relief when jenny says like no he's brilliant it makes me sob it's it's insane as you said it's like an incredible incredible piece of acting but it also there's a straight line from that to the moment I find most impressive in Sully,

which is the moment where they tell him that there were 155 survivors. There's that thing that I think he's truly better at than any other actor in history, which is asking a question he is afraid to hear the answer to, and then receiving that news and trying to maintain composure and he's done it at many points over his career because there is that like hank steady hand america's dad trying to remain stoic and noble but that moment where you just see for a second he almost loses it he's almost overcome with emotion and then he pulls himself back together it's the thing he's fucking best at.

I mean, at the end of Captain Phillips, when he lets himself go, that's what makes it so powerful. Because he's kind of doing the exact opposite of what you expect him to do. I cannot watch the end of Captain Phillips without bursting into tears. The end of Captain Phillips, it's like you say, you're just thunderstruck by it because it's the last thing you thought the movie would end with like right yeah yes yeah yeah yeah yeah oh and in inferno when he's like did the inferno get everybody i don't know what happens in inferno one thing i'm still thinking about because because it's precisely because Forrest Gump is this movie with these two kind of discordant tones that can be read multiple different ways. version that kind of gets traction is the kind of American Innocence, you know, American Triumph reading. And it's interesting to bring Hanks' career into that as well, because the end of

the 90s has him, or is it the 90s? Yeah, 98 has him in Saving Private Ryan, which is very much a movie about America's sort of like inherent goodness. And there is this, to the extent that Tom Hanks does, is not just America's dad, but America's like friendly dad. Yeah. Not just kind of a throwback to award, was it Cleaver? I don't know. Yeah, uh, was it cleaver? See, I don't, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Not just a throwback to that, but a throwback to that shorn of the distance and shorn of the, of the, um, the sternness even sort of like much more warm. Um,

to the extent that Hanks does represent that it is also, it is also intersecting with a moment in American culture where there is this rekindling of this belief in our national innocence. That you see throughout the culture in the 90s. Right, right. For which Saving Privateyan is like the capstone like that's the thing that kind of sums it all up and so it kind of makes sense just thinking of the cultural currents in america in the 90s they gump again they come with land the way it did the people would respond the way they did and then they would also want to reward hanks for it too all of it

really lines up when you think of that movie as despite its tourist material despite maybe its intentions maybe not as being a visual you know plugging into the psyche of the you know 30 to 50 year olds who run the country and want to believe that um they and the country are you know they won the cold war right the cold war cold war just ended just ended it's 95 18 months ago right like they won the cold war uh you know uh capitalism is is victorious around the globe. We're going to bring peace and freedom everywhere. I mean, it's really triumphant. There's so many 90s movies. I mean, Griffin, we just watched Armageddon, which is, you know,

sort of absolutely coked out, like vision of American exceptionalism over everything else, in which literally they try and refuel at a russian space station and it explodes within minutes okay now we gotta watch like a fucking punchline um but like the 90s are just right it's like uh i i guess we're on top and so it's either like we're the best or like your american beauty style movies it's like oh god i don't believe in anything like what happened?

Like, you know, this sort of like, and this, rather than where the best, this is sort of looking back at the tumult and saying, we made it through after all, didn't we?

Yes. Which is probably how a lot of audience members at the time. And even now, but certainly at the time, you know, they just, that resonated with them so much of like, wow.

Like when you look at it that way, like what a crazy thing. And it's very much a, we're in the clear now movie. Yeah, it is in that it, yeah, it finishes with a note of such tranquility and like, you know, I think things are going to be okay. It's which that's true. I mean, but at the same time I watched this movie and I'm like, this movie fucking hates America. Like I can't get,

I cannot decide. It's so slippery. And I, I cannot decide whether that is to the movie's credit or the ultimate indictment of this movie's evil, but it is like, I just, I can't,

it's like a fucking waterworm and I'm in a pool and I got my legs around it. And I think I get it. I don't even care if I like it or hate it. I just want to know. And then just keep slipping out. I mean, there's so many things to unpack here, but I feel like I saw both of you write about this or at least tweet about this over the summer but watching the reaction to uh hamilton going up on disney plus was so fascinating because hamilton is such a peak end of obama era work of art and to watch it is the definitive work of obama era right right like what this is to you know 1995 uh you know uh that's what uh hamilton is to like 2016 2015 uh 14 when did it open 13 2015 it's 2015 because i distinctly remember um the culture editor at slate asking me if i wanted to to go up to New York and check out this rap musical about Hamilton and me saying, come on, man, I got better shit to do.

You were like, ew, Jesus. But it is such a 2015 thing where you're like, that's the moment that show exists. Well, there's not, it's not only that, but it's that it like the first time Lin-Manuel Miranda like debuted in public, anything from Hamilton was when he did, you know, the, the title song at a slam poetry event that Obama held at the white house. And you're like, what? They, they held slam poetry events. It was in 2009. Right. About American history at the white. Like, what? They held slam poetry events that were sincere about American history at the White House? What do you mean? I thought the White House was just like where people got COVID at each other and like ate chicken nuggets all day. Like, ah, like it's such a it's such a ridiculous sounding thing like that. Obama was like, oh, let's have some historical slam poetry, you know. But like people who who had not seen Hamilton on stage and had seemingly not listened to the soundtrack and were just watching it on Disney Plus as if it were a new movie engaging with it in 2020.

A lot of them were like fucking flummoxed by it because I think they couldn't place it within the context of time. How much things have shifted in the last four years is it is one of those pendulum swings between America making the kind of art of like things feel steady now. Let's look back and sort of whimsically chuckle at all the shit we've gone through versus the work that comes out of a time like now. That is the work of just like, we're fucking fighting this thing it's the trial of the chicago seven everything's at stake like every movie's about everything you know like everything is like some some means of like political revolt um and and this is yeah this is a movie made in that sort of period of time. The movie's such a fucking big hit, and Groom writes the sequel book, and it was one of those things where, like,

Groom was offered a percentage point of the movie, but then because the Hanks and Zemeckis had gotten first dollar gross, and they had to pay them out so much, they did Hollywood accounting and pretend that the movie lost money so that they never had to pay Winston Groom out, then he sued them and the way they settled the suit was by paying a ton of money for the sequel book and they by all accounts were going to make the sequel i think it was not

really going to be based off of what the book is um because the book's fucking bananas but right but eric roth wrote a sequel treatment at least and and hayley joel osmond was now the fucking new hope of hollywood they were like make the movie that's gump and son make it and apparently the thing that killed the sequel was 9-11 that it was literally like he hands the draft into paramount on like september 9th and on september 13th they get on the phone they're like we we shouldn't go through with this right like it was just an immediate this shit ain't cute anymore throw it in the garbage it was just one of those moments where it's like this is done that window's

done this is the one time it could happen now you talk about like hanks being america's 50s sitcom dad and everything the other thing that hanks is so known for really starting after this is being like the most hyper competent steady man you know this thing we always talk about like tom hanks movies about guys who are good at their job and that's his run that starts right after this where he he has, I think, 10 consecutive $100 million movies. If you discount that thing you do because he's not the lead, it's like every movie from Forrest Gump straight to Catch Me If You Can. Maybe there's one after that. Makes over $100 million.

I can't look it up. It ends with The Terminal. It starts with Forrest Gumpum including the two toy stories um but saving private ryan apollo 13 passed away catch me if you can road to perdition it starts well i guess philip right it really starts with the league of their own it's just the philadelphia makes a little hundred and that thing you do kind of break it up. But yes, you have, you know, Apollo 13 toy story,

same by Ryan. You've got mail toy story to being mild cast away, wrote to perdition, catch me if you can. I mean, Hey, man had hits. I think it's interesting that like Forrest Gump is kind of the outlier in

that all the other things are like, Hanks just knows what he's doing, you know, even straight to Bridges prize and captain Phillips and Sully, obviously things are like hanks just knows what he's doing you know even straight to bridge of surprise and captain phillips and sully obviously it's like hanks is in charge and then this is the movie where it's like hanks is oblivious hanks has no idea keeps on stumbling ass backwards into victories which is at such weird odds with everything you were saying, Jamel, about what Hanks represents. But I think that innate energy he has, which is not in line with the character, and in theory works against what the character is supposed to be, is why the movie works for people. Because you don't get

uncomfortable feeling like you're watching an idiot savant, because there's that sense of like, Hanks knows what he's doing right like this guy's just a pro should we talk about the uh the other cast i mean i i really like gary sinise in this movie gary sinise is the best performance in him he's so good in it he is and he's doing his thing like and that's not to dismiss his thing but he has such a well of like sadness and rage like that he can just pull upon instantly and it's like clenched teeth disdain towards everything which is his thing right like that's his thing yeah i would say is gary sinise is kind of a clenched teeth guy right you're gonna bring him in i know he on stage is like a steppenwolf

legend or whatever like in a movie you're gonna bring him in he's gonna clench his teeth and either turn out to be a fair guy or the bad guy right like in in like the third act twist right there's a lot of gary sinise paycheck secret bad guy he seems like the best friend for the first two acts he ends up being a bad guy in thrillers for like four or five years after guy he seems like the best friend for the first two acts he ends up being the bad guy in thrillers for like four or five years after and he's like look there's nothing i could do look they had my wife in a in the car look i what could i do i'm a god in country he's in the list cage i swear i tried to be a good guy he's in three movies with Hanks. I believe this Apollo 13 and the green mile, right?

He's, he's sort of a, a frequent collaborator in that run. He's good in Apollo 13. Yeah. He's so, yeah. Lieutenant Dan's great.

Lieutenant Dan is also, you know, Jenny gets every horror visited on her, but Lieutenant Dan is a pretty crucial character if you're going to embrace the more acidic reading of this movie right the um the scene after he after hanks leaves the talk show or whatever and lieutenant dan is um on the you know meets him in the wheelchair and he says to him um they gave you the congressional medal of honor you an idiot who goes on tv and plays a moron got the congressional medal of honor and that just

feels like gary sinise or the character channeling someone like us yeah right critiquing the movie being like what the hell is going on here you know right he just met john lennon in that scene like that's basically got john lennon to start thinking about no religion that fucking scene led to right oh my god that's so ridiculous saying i should imagine no possession but i mean that's a ben thank you so much for bringing that up, because it gets to sort Imagine, followed by a critical character in the movie kind of breaking the fourth wall and being like, this is fucking stupid. This is the big breakthrough I had watching the movie last night.

And then, you know, sort of I was trying to reread sections of the book today, having watched the movie freshly. sections of the book today having watched the movie freshly um there's there's some weird correlation between like the the book in which he is more of this like chauncey gardner character but also more of this sort of like unpleasant like is, is he the worst of America kind of guy versus the movie kind of turning him into Homer Simpson. I've been watching Simpsons way too much recently, trying to watch all of it. And that thing where like the,

the Frank Grimes episode, which I contend is brilliant, of course, but where the show sort of like zooms out and says like, wait a second, what are all the things we're saying this one character lived through who is a quote-unquote normal you know lower class middle class man space he's been to space he's won a grammy he's met like all these celebrities he's

like fist fought two presidents like what the fuck are you talking about and lieutenant dan is kind of frank grimes or he's just like this is fucking bullshit that the movie's about you why do you keep winning this sucks but but then forrest gump's reaction is just like oh yeah i don't know like you know like he's so without ego that it's hard to be angry at him it's's the same as the Homer thing. And there's that like watching the first season of Simpsons where Homer is like angry. And when they sort of like soften him down, so they find the balance of just like,

Oh, it's wild that no matter what Homer does, you kind of never lose support with him. You know, you have these episodes where he does something awful or he's misinterpreted as doing something awful and all his weird experiences. You're just kind of like, yeah, he's just an everyman. And that's sort of what they do to Gump in this. But Sinise works as the one person who's playing like a real human being,

not Gump's idealized version of someone. And also the one person who has like is embodying the anger of the actual experiences right right because robin wright's performance is also this sort of whatever you know magical angelic performance like she's not playing a real person really like michael t williamson is very transfixing as bubba like but obviously he's playing a bizarre caricature Sally Field is kind of playing a bizarre caricature like everyone else in this movie is a is cartoonish and Sinise Sinise much like and Sinise in that opening scene when he's the drill you know he's their lieutenant and he's barking orders of the you know he could easily be

cartoonish too and he's instantly not yeah yeah it's the other thing i mean i i get why they did it but the book it's like there are 40 plus characters that make some sort of impact on him sure it's like a big fish kind of thing right right right the movie sort of boils it down to just those sort of central four bubba dan mama and jenny representing everything yeah and mama is just like constant founts of wisdom dan is like all the cynicism and anger until he sort of like comes to peace with it and uh you know jenny is is the angel who's constantly being punished and buba is just like is mirror. Um,

but, but they put a lot more on each character in the movie. Um, Dan is the only one who feels like a human. I agree. The Jenny, all the Jenny stuff we've touched on this somewhat, but all the Jenny stuff is very,

very troubling. Yeah, it is. It's, it's, I would argue indefensible that's and that's the easiest way to just attack this movie it's just like yeah how how else am i supposed to read this right well i mean i think it's fair to read it if i'm you know again if i'm gonna play devil's advocate or whatever you know like she's she's punished but i don't think the movie is punishing

her because she quote unquote makes the wrong don't think the movie is punishing her because she, quote unquote, makes the wrong decisions. I think the movie is showing how America punished people who dare defy homogeny. Right. Like it's like any moment of independence she seeks for herself. She's just like cast aside. But this is the whole thread of the movie that we're trying to untangle. Right. I mean, because, yeah you yeah on that reading you can have you have gump as the get along to go along follows rules doesn't question accepts what he's told and is rewarded yeah rewarded beyond anyone's wildest imagination lieutenant dan believes in

everything genuinely right and wants to die for his country yeah once wants to be a sacrifice and then his reward for his belief is like a decade of torment right and being adjured by his country and even jenny who is sort of, you know, the individual born into hell, right. Born into hell, maintains this indomitable individual spirit is also punished for, you know, trying to live up to the individualism that we say we value. And so, yeah. Yeah. On that reading that the movie is like very sour. Yeah.

And as I said, all of that is created for the movie. Jenny in the book is just a pretty girl that he likes and sees occasionally. She wants to be a musician or maybe an actress. But this thing of like, as you point out, Jamel, Jenny is almost always on the side that we now in the present know was empirically correct fighting for the right thing and she's punched in the face you know she's given some unnamed illness you know she she comes close to the brink of suicide multiple times she gets addicted to multiple different substances she gets kicked out of everything she ever tries to be a part of you know it's it's this movie makes counterculture look so bad like it i hate the way it it portrays like but that's the

argument ben is it is it portraying it as bad or is it portraying them as being like treated badly by our country right like yeah that's the sort of thing we're grappling with it does both i mean it does both at different points i don't know i just think like the the way that they portray people who are involved in this political movement it makes everyone look like an idiot yeah they all look like it makes it look like everyone just like go back to college like kind of people and you know what i mean to get back to my i guess my hobby horse of this episode which is that like you can't take away you can't take this out of the context of the nineties. That was how the nineties thought about politics.

Right. Right. It was, it was all a dumb game and right. Like, and, and the nineties vision version of hippies is like the most cartoonish. That's interesting. Cause yeah. Protesting. Right.

Save the whales. Like that was like kind of the vibe in the nineties. Like that's what I remember of people who cared about stuff they're dummies they're suckers yeah and they're all they all talk like this man like you know that it's god Armageddon remember the open of Armageddon with him opening Armageddon

yes into green peace boats it's it's crazy Michael Bay is taking his dick out pissing on your face and people are cheering I mean that's that's such a good point Jamel which is like the the main counter-cultural movement of the 90s is the gen x the lamest thing in the world is caring too much about anything the thing which means that you're you're disarming and sort of critiquing both the people on the culture and the counterculture for being too invested you know so in that way it's easy to just slam jenny in and like well i don't know

why she get her hands dirty with all this shit what what what's the use of all these ideals she has like forest is constantly coming you know he sees the George Wallace, you know, standing in the doorway at the University of Alabama. He sees the, you know, the Black Panthers and the protesters and all that. And he's never judgmental or, you know, he never expresses a prejudiced thought or anything like that but he also never support you know he's just like cheerful and polite and nice to everybody and doesn't want to get in anyone's way and drinking dr peppers well yeah there's that refrain that keeps on coming up anytime they sort of like foreshadow him meeting someone who was then assassinated and then show the footage of their assassination yes right they'll say like over and over again variations on the same line pretty much i guess someone shot him i don't know why i don't

know why right this thing where it's like it feels like the comment they're trying to make is well if you saw the world like forrest gump you do understand it is silly that anyone ever murders anyone else it is silly that assassin assassinations happen like that's bad we shouldn't do that strangers shouldn't shoot other people but also sure right it's like sure but then it's also sort of applied willy-nilly to like both john lennon and wallace you know right right i mean it also on re-ing it now, it made me think of how normalized it was that in history class we were just like, well, you know, in politics, sometimes, you know, just politicians get shot like quite often. And that's just like kind of happens. Yeah. And now I'm like, what?

That's insane. Like that. That was just the consistent thing happening to like figures in our history. It's so fucked up. I mean, it is. It is. It is very striking to figures in our history. It's so fucked up. I mean, it is, it is, it is very striking to see in the movie. Cause you,

for the ones everyone remembers are of course, Kennedy, MLK, Malcolm X, and Bobby Kennedy. But then you remember that, no, it was,

it was, you know, Wallace was shot. They tried to shoot Ford. Reagan was shot. Multiple times. Yeah. Right. It was sort of, that was, you know, Wallace was shot. They tried to shoot Ford. Reagan was shot. Multiple times. Yeah. Right.

It was sort of, that was. John Lennon. It was John Lennon. It was right. It was common. Like Ford, it's like people just kept bringing guns to events that he was at, you know, and like whatever, pulling them out or pulling the trigger and it didn't work. And everyone was like, oh yeah, Costa doing business is being president, I guess. Like, I guess that ends.

It's like if you pick up on those things, if you focus your vision of this when you're watching this movie on those things, the movie does not feel like a nostalgia play. It feels like something darker. But I think, again, it's because it lands at this moment when americans are very much trying to look past those things and to think like things are better now like right like there's that 90s thing of like yeah no sure you know racism sure war sure but you know come on look around the cold war's over the bill clinton like what aren't things better now right like right it was okay to have that kind of i no offense but very naive like view of things i also think i mean i was watching the performance trying to make sense of it and going like what does this remind me of

and then i realized oh it reminds me of peewee hermit it's the same kind of thing just it's like you know when we did our peewee's big adventure episode we're like why does this character work why is it funny he is not riffing on any type of real human behavior like it's all these weird characteristics that are not in in sync with each other it's not like he's that type of guy we all know and forrest gump is the same thing where like you read the book and you're like for better for worse you get a very clear picture of who this guy is you can place him and then you watch this and it's like it's all these weird elements that somehow work because you can't really pin them down to anything real it is like he is this mythical sprite like sort of trickster

character but who also like doesn't know what he's doing you know it much like peewee herman where you're like is he the only pure one is he an agent of chaos i i know i feel bad if i mock him because i can't figure out if he's smarter than me or dumber than me. I don't know if he's 13 or 87. You know, like, everything about him is confusing. Like, ping pong is a sport? Like, what is this movie? Yeah, the Tom Bombadil of America. He's the Tom Bombadil of America.

Yes, you're right. Like, he got sponsored. He had, like, a cutout of him. Like, who's following ping pong? What is this? That was a big thing. He got sponsored. He had a cutout of him. Who's following ping pong? What is this? That was a big... Ping pong diplomacy was a big deal at one point, Ben. As ridiculous as that sentence sounds.

That's insane. That's so weird. Griffin, I'm just curious. Has Zemeckis said anything about what he was trying to do with this movie? Is there a commentary? i i didn't even think to listen i got it on itunes because there was like a hanks four pack deal with three other movies that i actually liked of course the movies with tom hanks in them right it was a catch me if you can road to perdition oh and terminal so it was two other movies i actually like but um there

were special features but there wasn't a commentary. I was curious. I really kind of wanted to hear one. I have the Blu-ray, yeah. I was digging into different things that Zemeckis has said. And in particular, like, let me see if I can find this. But there was some sort of, like, compilation of different quotes from people who worked on the movie as to the meaning of the feather, which the feather is something that solely exists in the movie has no

reference point in the book whatsoever. It's a visual flourish, right? But I, you know, almost everything else in the movie at least has some vestige that comes from the book. And the flower is so much a movie conceit and it's such the bookend and and becomes so much the visual motif of it um that let me see if i can find this well there's there's quotes on that about the feather are you are you talking about that

yeah like where they talk about the symbolism of the feather you know like the feather to me griff i just think of it as like very symbolic of what the movie's about right like this thing just sort of blowing through randomly but having so much meaning if you like think about it that way right like you know it feel it feels like an appropriate motif to me. Yes. Yes. Sorry. I'm trying to find this now. I was finding it. I was reading it somewhere else.

But I do feel like he's always been kind of elusive in talking about what the movie means and what his intent was. I feel like no one's ever like sat him down and been like, so what the fuck, man? Like usually it's sort of like, so how did you get Gary Sinise's legs to disappear? Because there's so much to discuss about Forrest Gump just as a piece of filmmaking anyway, right? Like, you know, oh, you know, it does all this technical stuff that's so unusual for the moment,

which makes sense because Zarekis, you know, is a technical filmmaker. He's interested in that kind of innovation. So like any interview you find is so much of that, like versus someone being like, what is your perspective on essentially like boomer culture? And I found, I went on some rabbit hole and found this thing where they were asking him

point blank about the feather because they were, whoever was interviewing him was citing so many other people who had worked on the movie or other critics and their readings of what the feather is. And like my reading is the same as yours, David, which it's just like, it's about the randomness of this whole thing. You just blow into it. Anyone could end up affecting this much in the grand scheme of the world. If the winds blow that way. And he just like i don't know it's just a feather like he very much had this like i don't know it's like a thing that felt like a good way to start the movie that feels like director shit too you know what i mean where you sometimes oh yeah you

know i don't know i just thought of a feather and i felt like that would be good right but like they're they're full of it like you. But in watching all these interviews with him, and listening to commentaries, and all the stuff I've been doing for all the other movies we've covered so far, he's usually more open in that way, and he's open in the sense of saying, he wants to now, with distance, call out what his intention was that people might not have read at the time. On the Back to the Future supplemental material, he's like, yeah, I really intended the end of it with George being so successful and them living in this clean house to be

a pretty scathing indictment of that being seen as the ultimate form of happiness and like an 80s capitalist sort of yucky culture. But people took it at face value and then got upset that they thought it was an endorsement of that so the fact that he's so open talking about something like that and with horace gump he's like i don't know it's about a nice man it's it's odd america was kind of or hollywood was kind of addicted to you know you think of being there you think of rain man like these movies about like well you know even like a movie like awakenings like well what if someone had like this unusual perspective

on life wouldn't that be refreshing even though you'll never see the the world the same way again yes yes it's like you know oh they're special like and they're they're gonna they're going to help us, the ordinary ticket buyer, discover new lease on things with their unique perspective. And Forrest Gump is kind of the apex of that. It's the apex of that. And then it morphs into what I would say is a new subgenre that everyone tries and no one really pulls off. To the same level of successes, Forrest Gump, although very few movies have ever level of success as Forrest Gump, although very few movies have ever been as successful as Forrest Gump. But the quote-unquote ordinary man

who lives an extraordinary life and this sort of whimsical mashup of tons, the Benjamin Button, the Big Fish, there was another one I was thinking of today. Big Fish is a good one, yeah. The Ben Stiller Secret Life of Walter Mitty is absolutely trying to do this as well, although it's a much weirder version of it. And there was one other big one I was thinking of. But this idea of like you put a major movie star, whimsical director, you know, it's sort of like look at their journeys, look at everyone they meet along the way.

Look at how it sort of mounts up. Look at how they go through history. We relive all these eras and these different genres and these different periods and these different moods this sort of like episodic sort of like homer kind of odyssey i i like pretty much the movies that i just listed more than this all three of them by by some good measure i've recently come around to thinking i maybe really like Benjamin Button. I'm sort of reappraising it. Eric Roth's most personal movie, so he claims. Yeah, and that

feels to me like the inverse of this. The thing I like about Benjamin Button is that it kind of ultimately makes the argument, despite the fact that circumstantially this man is so unusual, argument, despite the fact that circumstantially this man is so unusual, his life is pretty ordinary. He is not a great man, and all of his adventures don't really impact the world around him that much. He meets a lot of people, he sees a lot of things, but he's not someone who's like creating a butterfly effect throughout the world in the way that Gump does. And I think that's one of the reasons people were kind of confused by that movie because it's this big expensive ornate epic in which it's like he's just kind of a boring guy who doesn't seem to have much of an interior right and the thing that makes him happiest is to be with his son like you know like that's that

everything pales in comparison to at the end he's with his son who he loves and he seems at peace right you know or whatever he seems very satisfied can i talk about eric roth for a second please talk about benjamin button it's the perfect segue yeah exactly like so in the night so that you know before this movie he's a hollywood journeyman screenwriter uh and after this movie he basically you know and i think he remains like just one of hollywood's powerhousey guys right like like steven zalian like like aaron sorkin like these just sort of like they you know they'll come in and they'll deliver for a price like you know very premium screenwriter types but his 90s i feel like he mostly like his follow-up projects to this as scripts are the postman and

the horse whisperer which are both sincere oscary movies that flop big blank check flops from beloved movie star slash big directors costner right costner and redford exactly but then he starts making starts writing much darker much more meloly, bittersweet type stuff about America. So his two collaborations with Michael Mann, The Insider and Ali, which are both great scripts. And then Munich, which he co-writes with Tony Kushner for Spielberg. The Good Shepherd, which he writes for De Niro, which is like a very, you know, it's not a nice movie. But it's written in this kind of memorial you know elegaic kind of way but like you know it's about the cia uh and then benjamin button

like he has he he's gotten much more this this move this script sort of sticks out weirdly when you think about his later darker output yeah yeah and button feels like a weird kind of counterpoint to this movie in a lot of ways yes um but but it's a movie that i think like pales under the shadow of people who like gump say it's no forrest gump and people who don't like gump are like it's trying too hard to be forrest gump yeah it is kind of a weird sister movie to Forrest Gump. I've actually never seen it. It's not bad. And it's also a sister movie to Forrest Gump in that it's this kind of quiet

tale of one person's experience of life. But it's also this like kind of technical Marvel that's like doing things. No one had ever really pulled off visual effects. Why? You know what I mean? it has that angle as well yes and fincher is like gen x zemeckis in a weird way like in that like he's the sort of nasty i love david fincher to be clear but like he's the very cynical you know but also very technically minded that's the thing it doesn't it doesn't have the emotional catharsis, uh, that I think everyone expected a movie like that would have from something

like Forrest Gump. Uh, I, did I give you my read on that movie? You may have privately. I can't remember if you did on air. But I think it's about, uh,

uh, trying to know your parents, who they were before you were born. And Roth talked about it, like his parents died when he was making that, when he was writing that script. And like, that's, yes, that's why he calls it his most personal work.

We got to do Fenterman. Are there scenes in Forrest Gump we want to discuss that we have not discussed? We have discussed the film, you know, broadly, but is there anything we're missing? I like the shrimp bit. I think that's funny. that's good no lieutenant then screaming at god is pretty good just all those little lieutenant like that moment you tweeted at me yesterday griff like him at the bar the bar yeah while the confetti is dropping on him him swimming in the ocean you know and finally kind of being at peace.

Yeah. Surprisingly jumps off the side of the boat. Right. The scene with the two of them in the apartment on Christmas, but particularly the moment when the women start calling Gump an idiot and he gets so angry and comes to the defense of gump who he's been so irate at for feeling like gump cursed him with this life for so long that weird sort of like misfit toys unifying moment between the two of them are like we're both in this world that doesn't really know what to make of us even if you've somehow only experienced luck and i frank rhymes and constantly getting shit on living underneath a bowling alley and above another bowling alley um i i like that whole run of the movie a lot um the scene i i'd like to

unpack very briefly because for me it's the whole movie in a nutshell all this stuff we've been talking about especially you've been talking about jamel of just like these things sitting right next to each other that you can't reconcile uh the Abby Hoffman scene is like everything for me where you go so this guy is like as the movie presents it is like an all-American football star right meets the president then graduates from college and just gets a brochure and goes, oh, sure not. But why not? Let me enlist and begin, right? The movie doesn't have this sort of looming specter of the draft, which the book does, and certainly was the main fear of that era. He just looks at the enlistment brochure and shrugs, goes off, becomes a hero, meets his best friend,

saves Lieutenant Dan, gets the medal and becomes a ping pong hero, right? So he spends, he's able to like after doing his one heroic act, spend years just going around essentially as a diplomat and a celebrity ping ponging his way to freedom and away from danger. Then know gets off the bus where there happens to be the rally happening sort of stumbles into it backwards is pulled up on stage by people think that he wants to speak out against the war despite the fact that he's in full uniform they push him on stage and i remembering so much of this movie vividly despite not having seen it in over 20 years when okay so there's no way i understood what this was at the time there was no way i understood this was abby hoff and there's no way i understood the political complexity of the vietnam war and what he represented to this these people and what they would be expecting him to say at this

moment how does the movie thread this needle what does it possibly do and then he gets up on stage an interior monologue. He says, there was only one thing I had to say about the Vietnam War. He says, I only have one thing to say about the Vietnam War. And then the plugs get pulled. You don't hear anything he says. The audience is in stunned silence. And I assume the joke is what Gump would say would either be nonsensical or would be the kind of like marching orders that he had been following, which this crowd of hippies would hate. But this technical gaffe, his superior pulling the plug, spared him the crowd revolting against him. And then instead, Abby Hoffman is emotional. Abby Hoffman, heart, you know, on sleeve like greg gasp like oh my god man you you couldn't have said it better there's there's nothing to be said outside of what you

just said everyone cheer for us gump and then the whole crowd blindly accepts the idea that gump is the radical figure they want him to be on faith alone because they couldn't hear what he said and the movie can't answer what he possibly would have said now i i think it's obvious what he would say which is he says well i went over there with a bunch of my friends and a lot of them died and i sure didn't enjoy that and like now i'm here in washington like you know he just said what happened to him and to him he's just reciting it and to abby hoffman he's like what a critical crucial indictment of what we've done to these people and whatever but like to richard nixon it would be like and you did your duty sir and like you'd shake it by the hand and that's

the weird fucking magic of forrest gump like that everyone can see everything in it and god knows what it's really about but don't you think i i agree with you that what he says is some variation on that but don't you think that's like the ultimate trick this movie is pulling because yes that's what i'm saying public speech all he says is i gotta pee and so the movie says like we've set the character up well enough at this point that we're gonna pull the plug and let you write in your head the version of the speech that you would like because if we wrote it someone would find something objectionable in it and we want to make the version that is completely cynicism proof and we're underlying that by abby hoffman the most radical man of them all loving it so who are you are you going to say

you know better than abby hoffman right but also tom hanks wears a clan hood in this movie yeah i didn't know david i think you're right that scene that that scene is the movie it's the movie i'm not sure yeah absolutely i i had actually i had actually not thought about that but that's yeah that's exactly

the whole fucking thing and he lets you can read whatever you want exactly exactly newt gingrich can watch it and enjoy it as can i'll let you do the work dennis kucinich who is who is to the who is the opposite of newt gingrich in 1994 i don't know which i can't tell if that makes the movie is sort of the most breathtakingly cynical thing i've ever seen or right is it in some way that's what's so frustrating about it it's so cynical i i look i ultimately don't like it i think it's pretty insipid but there's a lot i also am pretty captivated by with it and you also just kind of have to like be stunned by it as an object becoming so successful and resonant with people in spite of its overarching weirdness no i mean i think that's the reason that's the reason the movie matters

it's not it's not its quality or anything it's simply the fact that it it it is a part of american culture in this sort of like bone deep way now that it's it's it's it's reception it's success the extent to which it's whenever i uh whenever i'm sitting on the couch and my wife comes by to sit next to her i always say seats taken like it's just it's part of yeah it's just part of you dick it's part of like the movie is part of our language and part of our vernacular. And that's why it matters. It's not nearly the same level, but it's the reason why we study Uncle Tom's Cabin, a pedestrian book. It's not a good novel.

A pedestrian book. It's not a good novel. But it's a novel that arguably changed the course of the 19th century in the United States. And it had this massive impact. It's worth trying to figure out why. What this podcast is all about, baby. Exactly. I mean, I feel like every 18 months we go like, wait, is this what the podcast is about? But you in some recent episodes said like, that is ultimately what we're doing, right?

We're like examining these things as pop culture objects. And this is like the perfect movie to view through that prism where it is just like everything that's bad about it and everything that's good about it is sort of one in the same and inextricably tied to whatever weird magic it has over the culture for good and ill the fact that we're never gonna fucking drop this thing that people are going to continue studying this thing even if it's with complete ire or if it has a second win of like adoration um it's just such a fucking weird object. And it is so bizarre that it then became the third highest grossing movie of all time.

And number one for Paramount, except for, I believe Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and Titanic, if you count Titanic, which you shouldn't because it's a Fox movie, but Paramount had anyway, you know, but yes.

And swept the Oscars in a transformational year, like, you know, Pulp Fiction, one of the, you know but um uh yes and swept the oscars in a transformational year like you know pulp fiction one of the you know 10 most whatever you know pivotal movies of the 90s and you know 94 is a great year ed wood hoop dreams the lion king like you know you got really good movies like the hud circle proxy and crooklyn and. But you also have like True Lies and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Shawshank, obviously. You have Reality Bites. You have Quisher. You have Clerks.

You have Interview with the Vampire. You have all three Jim Carrey movies. You know, Jim Carrey emerges this year. Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber. Ben, you've got Clifford. Those are all in the same year. All in the same year, Jamal. Wow. They're like same year, Jamel. All in the same year. Wow.

They're like January, July, December. It's insane. Yes. No one will ever have a year like that ever again. It's a crazy year. In one year, and it's like the first movie he gets paid like $200,000 for, the second movie he gets paid like $2 million for,

and the third movie he gets paid like $10 million for. The third movie they just sign over Hollywood to to him it's like it's yours now exactly correct exactly about if you can make this work yeah they started negotiating with him for dumb and dumber when ace ventura was the first one to come out right ace ventura then the mask then dumb and dumber and and then by the end of the year he has signed the 20 million dollar deal for the cable guy which will come out the next all three of those movies spawn sequels spawn saturday morning and Dumber. And then by the end of the year, he has signed the $20 million deal for The Cable Guy, which will come out the next year. All three of those movies spawn sequels, spawn Saturday morning animated series. That is wild. In my head, that's like a four or five year period. It's 12 months. And it's like Ace Ventura surprise hit. New Line is like,

oh, we should get Jim Carrey to do Dumb and Dumber. They start negotiating with him. And in the process of developing the movie before signing the contract, then the mask comes out. And they're like, we're fucked. We're fucked. He gets to name whatever number he wants now. And then Dumb and Dumber is the biggest of the three. And then, of course, the biggest movie of them all in 1994, a little film called Blank Check. Yeah.

Am I correct, as we do the box office game am i correct in remembering that forrest gump comes out becomes the number three highest grossing movie of all time behind et and star wars and then lion king surpasses gum a month later uh i think lion king are you correct they come out within a month of each other and they were either they were three and four at the all-time box office north american i forget which one was three and which one was four well lion king made more money than forrest gump but the thing is i don't know in terms of you know the the record holders because that's not charted anywhere like it's so hard to sort of pick that together. So like,

I know like, you know, who was top 10 at what times, you know, all time. But yes, obviously a forest cup, a huge sensation.

It opens to on July 6th, 1994, it opens to $24 million. It makes 330 domestic, uh, which inflated would be about $ million dollars today um but you know like not only did it make so much money but it had like colossal legs it played all year one of the highest selling soundtracks ever yes uh spawns a fucking still massive

fast food chain past casual sit down restaurant chain this yes absolutely yes bubble gum but the other thing griff is uh lion king has already come out it is number two at the box office and it makes exactly the same amount of money in its fourth weekend as far as gump does in its first 24 million came out within a month of each other and there was some crisscrossing where one made more and then the other one surpassed it. But yes, Wild. Wild, these two movies were out at the same time.

The other thing, Griff, is that next week True Lies comes out. So we've done next week's box office. Okay. So number three at the box office is the best action movie of the year, one of the greatest of the 90s. So wait, just to clarify, Forrest Gump 24, Lion King 24? That's right. Okay. Number three is action movie of the year one of the greatest of the 90s so wait just to clarify forrest gump 24 lion king 24 that's right okay number three is one of the best movies of the 90s best action

movies of the 90s oh uh can i can i play yeah it's speed it's speed the bus that couldn't slow down what a great movie watch it again guess what still good seen it like five billion times we should do it on patreon the speed franchise yeah you should do them that's that's when they should do the legacy for they should bring back fucking keanu why not speed 300 on the train yeah it's easy easy concept you're on a train on a bullet train yeah yeah i'm i'm there like sounds great like let's do it tomorrow get bullock involved involved. Do the Elon Musk. What's the Magna Rail? Do Speed 3 on a Magna Rail.

Yeah, sure. He's on a fucking Tesla. I don't care. Right. Speed 3 Tesla. All right. Number four at the box office. I would say something of a forgotten movie.

Certainly, you know, not a hit at the time, but a pretty big movie. It's, how to describe it? God, you know what? This movie's so forgotten that its SEO is fucked by a completely different movie. It's. That's a hint. The movie shares a title with an unrelated film no with the tv show it's a it's a thriller it's got two actors i like the house is being rocked in this

movie it's a tlj tlj is in there 94 it involves bombs post-oster it's got one of it's got a title where you're like oh that's like the title for a fake movie. Hmm. The director directed one movie that we've covered on this podcast. Directed one movie that we've covered on this podcast. Interesting. But, but we wouldn't cover their other films. Is, is that movie part of a franchise or was it a Ben's choice? It was a neither. It was a sibling's choice. And he's worked in two franchises that we could eventually do on the Patreon, I suppose. Both Predator and Nightmare on Elm Street. It's a Stephen Hopkins. That's right. What is this fucking movie called?

I was looking at Hopkins' filmography the other day. It's got a father and son uh famous father and son both in it there are real life father and son both in it real life father and son what's what's like the the setting of the film what's the world of the film well the main actor is playing like an irish uh terrorist he is not irish to be clear what is this movie i say you can't really talk about it without giving it away i'm sure that no one has seen it look the movie is blown away oh right with jeff bridges and tommy lee jones and lloyd bridges i was gonna guess douglas yeah okay sure right i, that's another obvious. Has anyone seen Blown Away? No, I didn't think so. Okay. But at the time people went, right? I

don't know. That was like a programmer in the nineties. Maybe I'll watch it. I've never, I've never heard of it, but it seems like right up my alley in terms of a weeknight movie. Yeah. It's like a thriller, you know, Jeff Bridges is an Irish terrorist. Tommy Lee Jones is chasing him. Yeah. You got a problem with that. Come on, Jeff Bridges is an Irish terrorist. Tommy Lee Jones is chasing him. You got a problem with that? Come on, check it out. What a thing I missed that like you could be an ornery character actor in his 50s when supporting actor. And they're like, yeah, you get to headline or at least like co-star in a bunch of $60 million summer release thrillers. You get to fight a volcano.

Yeah, you'll do volcano. You'll do basic or the hunted whichever one he was in he's in the hunted right he was just like you know obviously like you have like your man blacks and whatever but there was just so much tommy lee jones either being the guy or the two-hander like rules of engagement the fucking hunted double jeopardy yeah it's strange in retrospect to think that like i as like uh you know as like a eight-year-old or nine-year-old had tommy lee jones was like my favorite actor because of men in black absolutely i also have loved him my entire life it's also weird that like the equivalent tommy lee jones winning best supporting actor in the year 2020, they'd be like, great news. Uh,

you get to be 19th build in Avengers overtime. You're playing a nihilist. Right. Hey, you know, like you wouldn't get that. You get your own vehicles now. Right,

right, right, right. Yes. Yes, for sure. For sure. I mean,

he would know that his vehicle would be like a epics original series or whatever. He'd be checking into Berlin Station. Exactly. Number five at the box office is a comic. Well, it's not a comic book adaptation. It's a radio. The Shadow.

It's The Shadow. I mean, how do you set up The Shadow? A legendary bomb where they were just like, Dick Tracy, how can we do more dick dick tracy type movies and uh sam ramey wanted to make it so badly and when they rejected him he made dark man as his like bitter breakup album a great a great film great film dark man rules another another guy we gotta do yeah uh and then and then like i feel like 10 years ago rainy announced he had gotten the rights for the shadow and he was gonna reboot it and at the time it felt like too soon you just did spider

man but now i'd love to see rainy show up and be like hey remember me i make fucking superhero movies that feel like mgm musicals here's my busby berkeley movie. I'd watch it. Some other movies. I love Trouble. Wolf, which we've talked about many times. Baby's Day Out, we've also talked about many times. The Flintstones. The first movie Griffin thought was bad.

And chugging along at number 14, last year's Best Picture winner, Schindler's List. Sharing a box office with last year's Best Picture winner, Schindler's List, sharing a box office with this year's winner. Zemeckis and Spielberg won Best Picture back-to-back. When you think about it that way, that's crazy, too. Spielberg finally wins, then his great protege wins the next

year. And it's like, yes, we have finally fully conquered. Yes, this is it. It's ours. Spielberg presents the award as Zemeckis and there's the moment where he's on stage he looks at the envelope and he says like Bob and it's like with the pride of a father saying you won MVP but it's bizarre when you consider like that Spielberg just gave Zemeckis like the fast track version like he just did everything so much quicker than Spielberg did it in so many ways

even though he had a couple of flops at the beginning right wow that's it forrest gump we did it guys all righty forrest gump we cracked the movie or did we probably not yeah we did it everyone knows how they feel about this movie now definitely everyone feels very clear about it um can i just say uh because i couldn't even begin to dig into it. It's just too fucking dense and so much its own thing. I didn't want to spend too much time talking about Gump and Co, the sequel, but I just think it's important that people know that Gump and Co is a book

about quote unquote, the real Forrest Gump, whose life has sort of been ruined by the fact that they made a movie about his life starring Tom Hanks. That was a big hit and won a bunch of Oscars. And now everyone thinks that that's what really happened. It's like a Don Quixote-esque, the book is a sequel to both his original book and the way that culture has taken hold of Forrest Gump and turned it into something different. So it's Forrest Gump trying to outrun the shadow of Forrest Gump,

the movie being like, now everyone thinks I'm fucking Tom Hanks. I'm not, I'm Forrest Gump. I'm not that pleasant. It's a very, very, very weird book,

but it's all about, as they say, Forrest is still running this time straight into the age of greed and instant gratification known as the 1980s. The fucking insane. What a weird thing. running this time straight into the age of greed and instant gratification known as the 1980s. It's fucking insane. What a weird thing. It's got a lot of Wall Street jokes, right? A lot of Wall Street. Yeah.

Fucking Wall Street. Goes and works at the Coca-Cola Corporation. Well, maybe right, right, right. Maybe Zemeckis will do it one day. I just want Zemeckis to come back and make a sequel to every movie he ever made. Contact two. What lies further relief?

I'm just doing them all again. Hey, you know, but stupid is as stupid does, guys. That's a good point. And that's the best description for this podcast anyway. Jamel, you're one of the smartest people I know, or also one of the smartest people uh alive on the planet and i can't believe you come and do this stupid show and talk to us very very good every time you come on the show i am perplexed every time you message us or tweet publicly about something you liked in an episode it makes even less sense to me i don't understand why you put your reputation on the line, but it means the world.

Well, again, thank you for the kind words. You guys know that I love this show. Love to listen. Always grateful to be on. You're coming back. You're in the schedule for 2021. You're a Blank Tech guest. You're in that

territory of, we give you four miniseries ahead and just say, pick anything you want. You're in that territory of, we give you like four mini series ahead and just say, pick anything you want. But I'll also just say, I signed up for your newsletter some months ago. I'm someone who gets very stressed out anytime I receive any email, but your newsletters are always

like a nice little antidote to the world. I feel like you have an incredible skill, both because of your knowledge and your understanding of history, to put things in perspective, but also crystallize very complicated abstract thoughts. The things that like keep me up at night where I'm just like, what is this? And you find a way to just sort of like pluck it off the tree and put it very, very cleanly and unpretentiously in a way that whether what you're relaying is a sign of doom or a sign of hope for the future, at least makes me feel a little bit calmer

that the thing has been put into work. So I thank you for the work you do on it. Thank you. I really appreciate that. A true antidote to everything. And the world is bad. But Jamel is one of the you do on it. Thank you. I really appreciate that. A true antidote to everything. And the world is bad. But Jamel is one of the good things in it. And Forrest Gump. The jury's still out.

I don't know about this guy. It's perplexing. It's perplexing. People should, I don't know, people should watch it. People should watch it with just sort of like an open mind to it. Because it is, it is, my wife, she watched watched it with me and she was sort of just like, I had not seen this movie in years and it is, um, you know, she's like, I can't really get my head around what it is.

And I think that's, I think it's an experience worth having. I think that's accurate. Beautifully said. Uh, thank you for being here, Jamal. And thank you all for listening. And please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Thanks to Andrew Guto for our social media, for producing the show.

Thanks to Lane Montgomery for our themes, to Joe Bone and Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit. Go to patreon.com slash blank check, blank check special features where we're doing the Alien franchise and other nerdy stuff.

I don't remember the exact schedule. And go to our Shopify for merch, new merch coming soon at the end of the year. Tune in next week for Contact, a movie that was supposed to be directed by George Miller. How weird that we end up covering these two directors in the same year.

And as always, I want to leave you all off with a little merchandise spotlight. It's from the last page of Gump & Co. A little ad here. I'm just going to read it. It's the music, dot, dot, dot. Forrest Gump, colon, music, artists, and times. A three CD-ROM music anthology. Best multimedia music title. Stands head and shoulders above other music offerings suburb interview and performance footage pc entertainment this is a disc for everyone don men multimedia world and the highest praise possible in the era of peak cd-rom one of the most compelling titles, dot, dot, dot, since Myst, Chris Shipley, Computer Life Magazine.

Oh, I thought it was going to be Larry King again. Larry King, most compelling title since Myst and its sequel, Riven. I love this CD-ROM. I, Larry King, can't stop playing this disc on my gateway. I'm still stuck in mist. Let me out. I can't leave. Not since Mavis Beacon taught me typing

have I been so entranced by a floppy disc. All right, all right, that's it. We're done. Goodbye.