The Rewatchables - ‘Forrest Gump’ With Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: June 21, 2018

Life is like a box of chocolates … especially when The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey revisit 1994's seminal classic 'Forrest Gump’, which won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), and Best Director (Robert Zemeckis). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rewatchables is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. That is their presenting sponsor of the BS podcast. To check them out, go to ziprecruiter.com slash BS. Meanwhile, Seekek is the best app for buying and selling tickets to sporting events, concerts, and more for $20 off your first Seekek purchase on any game or a sporting event or plenty of baseball available, I promise. All you have to do is use promo code rewatch. Download the Seek app or go right to Seatgeek.

coming up i'm not a smart man but i know what love is and i think i love this movie it's forrest gump controversial opinion this is a good movie i love it here we go now my mama's always telling me how miracles happen every day some people don't think so jennie but they do you can come home with me my house and greenbow i'll take care of you why are you so good to me you're my girl world will never seem the same once you've seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump. My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. All right. Sean Fantasies here.

We could get nobody else to do this podcast with us because Forrest Gump, it's not cool to like Forrest Gump anymore. Yeah, what happened? I don't know. What did this happen? It won every Oscar and it made a gazillion million dollars. And it's, I think with adjusted inflation is like one of the 30 biggest. movies of all time.

Definitely. More than that. There's been a backlash. I have some theories on the backlash. Okay. You want to go right in? I even feel like I was part of the backlash. Okay.

Because I remember writing about this, being upset about it. It beat Pulp Fiction in Shawshank in the 1994 Oscars, which was March 1995. Not great. It was the worst thing that ever happened in this movie. And then it became, it was during this era, the 1990s, when all these actors were taking these roles that started with Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man, take some sort of sort of handicap helped your Oscar chances. And it became almost like a self-parody by the mid-90s.

But it got caught up in that a little bit. I think it might have been My Left Foot was the first one where this really got big. Was that even before, Rainier's? Yeah, late 80s is Daniel DeLewis, My Left Foot, Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman, Forrest Gump. And it led to this year had Forrest Gump and Jody Foster as Nell. That's right. Which is one of 38 worst movies of all time. I don't know if you've seen it recently.

She created this new language. They found her in the first. Forest, it's really horrible. I don't think she has like a disability. I think she just was raised in the woods. And she's like, boom, blabla, no, blah, no. She had this whole forest language. Yep.

We should start a podcast called the unwatchables, because I feel like that might be on there. But anyway, Forrest Gump was a phenomenon when it came out. It made $330 million in almost $700 million worldwide. This was an amazing fact to me. It stayed in the theater for 42 weeks. Insane. Nothing like that happens now.

So what happened? I don't know. It tapped into something very emotional. And, you know, we were on this show a couple weeks ago talking about Training Day and Denzel Washington versus Tom Hanks. This is Tom Hanks at the apex of his hanksness where he was the center of the movie star universe. But these are all good things. Why did people turn on this movie? Oh, you wonder why the backlash? Yeah. Why the backlash? Well, there's some really corny stuff about this movie. It's manipulative. It's very manipulative. It's very saccharine and sweet. It's very obvious. You know, there's nothing. cool about Forest Gump. And we're living in a culture of cool. And for some reason, like the earnestness of this movie, and I'll be perfectly honest, I got pretty choked up watching it last night. Last 30 minutes are great. It's real heart-ending.

But there's something like corny. And I think that that's a big factor. Coming out of when it was nominated to begin with, I remember that's when the backlash started. This was pre-internet. So 1994, I think this movie's treated. a little differently during the internet. I think people turn on it a lot faster

and you have those poison pill pieces of, you're even seeing this with Hereditary right now. No, actually, it's this and people go the other way and they, this is a pretty easy movie to pick apart and I'm fine with it. We'll probably pick apart some of it right now.

I think you kind of have to. It's a really good movie. And Tom Hanks is unbelievable. I think Tom Hanks is in every single scene. Is that possible? There's a couple of moments where Jenny is seen from a far. doing coke and stuff.

There's a couple of Jenny. Aside from that, he's in every scene. Yeah. And coming off, so Tom Hanks, coming off Philadelphia, he's in the middle of one of the great gauntlets and any actors, IMDB, that's really ever happened. League of their own.

Philadelphia. Sleep us in Seattle. Forrest Gump, Apollo 13. I think it's those five in a row. I'm pretty sure. Cast away, not far off. Castaway, yeah. A couple of things.

Saving Private Orion's not far up. But those, it was those five in her own. He went from being an A-lister, who's in competition with Michael Keaton, basically, and they're kind of having a little back-and-forth thing. Funny, nice guy. Yeah. Great Letterman guest, unbelievable S&O host. Everybody loves Tom Hanks.

And then just goes up a level. And he's great in this movie. I'm not sure who else should be in this movie. It's a tough one. It's a pretty gimmicky performance. I think it has to be, though. Yeah, it's funny. It's iconic, but it's also almost like active,

I remember seeing so many mad TV sketches making fun of this movie at the time that it almost instantaneously became a joke into itself. So you do lose sight of how good, Hank's is in a part that is pretty tough to pull off to make it credible. I mean, the whole construction of the Forrest Gump character is like, it's a fable. It's not, it's based on a book. It's not actually like, this couldn't have been a real person. There's something credible in the real life storytelling. Impossible to pull off. I'm going to go that far. Okay. This movie should not have worked. So let's just do the Michael Keaton game. If it was Michael Keaton, would this movie have worked at all for you?

It would have been rough. This movie shouldn't have worked. Okay. What about Denzel? Try explaining this movie. I was actually, I was disappointed. Evans producing this for us today. Evans Young.

We have a lot of young people who haven't seen a lot of movies. Like, our beloved Liz Kelly has not seen basically any movie that's come out before 2003. And I was hoping Evan hadn't seen the movie because I was just going to explain it to him in a sentence. It's basically like village idiot. has a lot of crazy interactions with famous people and brushes with greatness and somehow becomes a bazillionaire and still holds on to the one girl that he truly loves and at the end finds out he has his son. But during the middle of it, he runs across the world for three years. I think it's three movies combined. Okay. You ready? It's one part Zellig,

the Woody Allen historical fake mockumentary. It's, It's one part being there. The Peter Sellers kind of satire. Yeah, I like that movie. And it's one part love story about two people that are faded to be together, but one of them can't survive. Yeah. And you take all three of the best elements of those movies, or maybe the corneous elements, like I said, and you put them all together. And you get history, you get drama, you get love, you get comedy, and you get kind of like the meaning of America.

There's like a subtext here that's just like, this is the story of a story of a movie. America across 50 years. It definitely hits something big because if you Google it, there's stories about, is this a conservative movie? Did this foreshadow the conservative Republican coalition? Is that a take that's going on? Yeah, there's things in there. The politics of this movie was what does the feather mean?

Is the feather some pair? Like, there is, I don't know if they put a lot of thought into any of that stuff. I think they just, they adapted a book. We're going to go into this a little bit, but they took the first 11, chapters of a book basically and we're like, wouldn't it be cool if we made a movie that span the course of 40 years or whatever it does? My interpretation of the feather is really straightforward, which is just the randomness of life. Forrest Gump keeps randomly finding himself at the center of the most interesting things in the world the same way of the feather

blows through the wind and lands wherever it lands. There's a lot of crazier interpretations of the feather. The feathers are a parallel of that, that, that. Is this like alt-right stuff? This is like English lit. Like those people are involved and then the politicians got involved all that stuff. This movie hits a couple of my weaknesses. I'm a sucker for anything with Tom Hanks. I love Tom Hanks. He's great.

I am a sucker for watching a person age over the course of a movie over multiple decades. The same reason I love World According to Garp. I just like those movies. Okay. I don't know where you're staying on that. Yeah, it's fine.

I mean, they don't go out of their way to age Tom Hanks. They go out of their way to age Sally Field. Yes. But they don't go out of their way to make it look like Tom. One of the flaws of the movie actually is 30 something, 38 year old Tom Hanks playing a 16 year old.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That part is tough. And I'm a sucker for Robin Wright. Yeah. Who is the most beautiful actress America has ever produced. I knew you're going there. I love Robin Wright. Yeah. She's incredible. Why wouldn't I go there? Who doesn't love Robin Wright? It's a known to, for fans of Bill Simmons, it's a

known take. Who doesn't love Robin Wright? Princess Bride Robin Wright, I think, is probably The most attractive person who's ever been in a movie. That was William Goldman's take, right? Yeah. He's like, she's the most beautiful woman who's ever existed. I think it's an interesting middle ground, right?

She has three phases of her career, too. Beautiful Anjanoo and the Princess Bride, sophisticated award-winning actress in Forrest Gump, and now Ice Queen in House of Carbs. Now short hair Robin Red. Ice Queen Robin Wright. I don't know if I like the Ice Queen Robin Red as much. I like the Princess slash Jenny Gump.

She's looked great through every decade. one of the reasons I think people backlash on this movie is not just that it won best picture over those other two movies but it kind of did the sweep you know it won best director one best screenplay we're about to go into that Roger Ebert called it a magical movie loved it most of the critics really like this movie

which is funny I thought the backlash came a little bit after massive massive soundtrack this was a year where you had the pulp fiction soundtrack and you had the Forrest Gump soundtrack which somehow sold twice 12 million copies. I think we need to talk at length about the soundtrack.

Yeah, we're getting there. I have that lockdown. So here's what's going on with the 1994 Oscars, which was March 95. What do we decide with that? Is it, so is it the 94 Oscars or is it the 95 Oscars? I always say the year that it took place in. That's what I think. It's the same thing with the Super Bowl.

2001 Pats, but they played hosted by David Letterman. I think this was the Oprah Uma. It was. This is the only time you ever hosted. I would dare say this would be the greatest. Oscars to rewatch. Gosh, okay. That's quite a call.

Letterman hosting, which is, by the way, way better than people remember it being. Way better. Yeah. He was lambasted. He was the one. He wasn't lambasted, though. No, but critically, people were like,

that wasn't good afterwards. They weren't like, that wasn't terrible. They were like, eh. They just thought it was weird. I mean, he was bringing his weird lettermanness to a place that is usually a little bit friendlier. Letterman, I thought Jason Zinman in his letterman book did a nice job of breaking down.

how Letterman is the reason people think this is now a disaster because he made so many negative references about over the next couple years. We were like, oh, yeah, the Oscars were a disaster. This is one of Jimmy Kimmel's biggest passion bar arguments. If he was good, the Letterman was good, and it's crazy that people think he was bad. And he just can't believe anyone thinks that. So anyway, hosted by Letterman, here were the five nominees for Best Picture.

Gump, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, four weddings and a funeral. I mean, that's a staggering group. Great lineup. It's really like up there with like the 93 NBA MVP kind of a... Very old school Oscars kind of line up. You got Redford in there. You got a docudrama. You got a story about like a great man.

You got a Stephen King adaptation. You got this indie powerhouse that comes out of nowhere. It's a good, good collection of movies. Zemeckis, Robert Zemeckis, who I think might be one of my favorite directors. I didn't realize that until I realized how many movies he's made that I liked. but I'm not, nobody's ever like, I'm a Zemekis guy. Yeah. Maybe like Chris Ryan.

You can see that being a Chris Ryan thing. He's had a fascinating career. He's like that generation right after Spielberg. You know, he's only like eight years younger than Spielberg or seven years younger. But he's made a lot of movies that a lot of people have seen. Yeah. He makes entertaining movies. He wins Best Director over Quentin Tarantino and Frank Darabon.

Yeah, Frank Darabon, I don't think was nominated. I don't think he was. No, it's, I believe it was Woody Allen for Bullets Over Broadway. Tarantino, Redford for Quiz Show, and Christoph Kislauski for three colors red. Have you seen three colors red, Bill? I have no opinion on three colors red. The great Polish showmaker, Kislauski.

I don't know if they showed that one in Boston. No. So Tarantino should have won. Yeah. I mean, if we're applying the years later, who should have won, which we love to do on the ringer over and over again, Tarantino. You're the guy who was shitting on Pulp Fiction like two weeks ago in that seat.

You know what's funny? So first of all, I've gotten a lot of emails that agree, agree with my take on Bruce Lewis's girlfriend. That's a lie. You've gotten zero emails. They're in shock that you think Bruce Wilson's girlfriend wasn't the worst 10 minutes. Not just the first 10 minutes of that movie, the worst 10 minutes of my life. How often have you been lying about what you get in your email inbox? No, I definitely got at least two emails about that one.

And some tweets. But Tarantino, I don't know. But Zemecas, this is a really well. crafted movie and there's some smart scenes. I think the we're going to talk about some of the scenes in a little bit but the Vietnam rally like that scene's just cool. Beautiful. It's just masterful.

The running sequence, which we're also going to talk about, it's appalling. But it's really well shot and the music's great and it's like it's the best version of one of the worst sequences of any Oscar movie. Okay. I'm interested

in why you think it's appalling. Well, we'll talk about it. Okay. Hank's wins best actor over Morgan Freeman and John Chavota. Yep. No Tim Robbins nominated that year. No Tim Robbins. I'm okay with Hank's winning, actually. Freeman's pretty good.

I really love that Paul Newman movie. Nobody's Fool. It is a good movie. That's a great movie. And that would have been a good time to give Newman a like, you're 80 years old. You get one now. It might have been his last movie. I think Twilight came after that, Shurray.

early that you're in there after one of his last. Best supporting actor has nothing to do with Forrest Gump, but Martin Lando, Martin Landoff for Edward won over Sam Jackson and Pulp Fiction, which is like, actually really racist. That's offensive.

Could we say that's a racist award? Martin Landole seems like a lovely guy. Good actor. Good actor. Yeah. Jules Winfield is an iconic character. It's kind of unbelievable. That Spike Lee didn't get nominated.

for do the right thing. Yep. And Sam Jackson didn't beat Martin Landau. It's bullshit. And there's 20 other terrible things. Also, I would have taken Lieutenant Dan over Martin Landau in the day of the week. Yeah, Lieutenant Dan's good.

Senise is great in this movie. And then the other one, Diane Weist won for Bullets Over Broadway. She beat Uma Thurman and Robin Wright. Yeah. Robin Wright not nominated. Oh, she wasn't even nominated? No. Oh, no.

That's a mistake. Yeah. Uma Thurman's unbelievably good in Pulp Fiction. Yeah. And I wish she had one. So then it's funny. We talked about how great the best actor was, but the best actress,

Jessica Lang won for Blue Sky, a movie that you wouldn't know what it was if it was showing right now. Jody Foster was nominated for Nell? Yes. I think I'd block that out of my mind. Miranda Richardson for Tom and Viv. Winona Ryder for Little Women

and Susan Sarandon for the client. I think that's the worst best actress. That has to be the number one worst batch they've ever had. I gotta say, I love the client. I watched the client like a hundred times as a kid. Which is that, Brad Renfra? Yeah, Brad Renfra. Yeah, in the bayou.

RIP. Yeah, he's great. That's a good movie. That was when those Grisham adaptations were nifty. Yeah. It's cool that she was nominated for that, actually. I mean, she won a couple years later for Dead Man Walker. That's a rough category.

I think if we applied what we have now with the internet culture and the writing and just the general savviness for the stuff, the Oscars is completely different. Oh, I totally agree. And I'd really be interested to see how Gump is received. So here, I wrote down all the people Gump interacts with or is somewhere around during this movie. Real human beings, you mean?

Well, just American things. Okay. The KKK, Elvis Presley, child abuse, Bear Bryant, Alabama integration, George Wallace, JFK, Vietnam, Playboy magazine, LBJ, Abbey Hoffman, Black Panthers, The Moon Landing, Dick Kavana and John Lennon, Chairman Mao, Watergate, Gerald Ford, Apple, Nike, the shit happens bumper sticker, the Havanaise Day T-shirt, Ronald Reagan getting shot, Bert and Ernie, and AIDS. We can't confirm AIDS.

Well, we're going to talk about that. It's an unanswerable question. Okay. Yeah, it's amazing. Sets Forrest Gump. Congratulations to him. Let's talk about some categories. Most rewatchable scene, I had trouble coming up with more than three.

I had to kind of stretch it. Here's... Forrest playing football, I just kind of enjoy. And I think if this is the right time for us to talk about him as a kick-returner versus Devin Hester and some of the other grades. He made the All-American as a kick-returner. How great? How many touchdowns do you have?

I think we got to give a little bit more credit to Alabama's blocking schemes because Tom Hanks has no escapeability. He literally just runs in a straight line and then he turns left and then he runs in a straight line. You know? Like, if you're Desmond Howard back in the day, you're zigging and zagging, you're weaving. If you're Devin Hester, you're a bolt of lightning, but then you have the perfect cut.

Like, what was... Can we call him the best white kick return ever? Unbelievable. Yes, yes. He was very gifted. He only had two football scenes. I could have watched 100. I love the scene when he breaks one and Bear Bryant's like,

look at that dumb ass go! I will say when I saw this movie, I didn't really know anything about college football history. And so I didn't know that that was supposed to be Bear Bryant. Yeah. The hat to it. That's the giveaway now. But it's cool to go back and look at that stuff.

Also, Alabama football, when the movie came out, wasn't really doing that great. And now it is back. Roll Tide. It was a smart move, though, because you had Bear Brian and you had the integration stuff. So it was the right it's cool to put it in. Second favorite scene, Forrest Blows his first load. I knew this would make you uncomfortable. Jenny Gup, an iconic.

I can't even look at you. Over the rest of the 90s, imitating that with my friends at bars. just great. Just hilarious. If that scene's on, I'm always watching because I love Tom Hanks. This is 0% chance

I'm going with that one. Yeah, okay. The Vietnam rally is fantastic. I love it. Tell us a little bit about the war, man. War in Vietnam. War in Vietnam. It's also CGIed.

They had like 1,500 extras, and they CGA'd the rest, and they had all the extras on one side, and then they moved everybody to the other side, and they split. the two, so it made it seem like there was 35,000 people or whatever, and there wasn't. Interesting. I love that

scene. I was really struck by it, watching it last night. I love the way that the fake Abby Hoffman says, Farras come! Very sharply. And then, you know, them running through the pool to meet each other, it's just, it feels like an iconic movie moment. Yeah, I think that's the best thing

in the movie. Forrest gets rich and Jenny comes back. Is a great montage? Mm-hmm. He gets rich. He's mowing the lawn. We have a little, Oh, I bought a church. I gave money here and then Jenny walks back. Solid four minutes. Let me just say, well, I'll save it for picking nets.

The running scene, which is appalling, the music choices in it are just so incredible. Is it Seeger and Jackson Brown? It's running on empty Jackson Brown right to against the wind with Bob Seeger. It's just so late 70s. Zemachus loves the obvious musical cue. Yeah. In flight, when he does. feeling all right by Joe Cocker when Denzel falls off the wagon.

It's like, this is just unbearable. Only Scorsese is worse out of his musical cues. And then the last one, Forrest meeting his son. His name's Forrest. Like me. I named him after his daddy. He got a daddy named Forrest, too? You're his daddy, Forrest.

Great scene. So touching. Haley Joel Osmond is incredible in this movie. He's like two years old. Really great. And then Forrest meets his son. And then basically the next scene he gets married, and Lieutenant Dan shows up so you could lump those together.

I think the best scene is the Vietnam rally. What do you think? I'll agree with you. One potential candidate that I thought was a fun scene watching it again was the hurricane and Lieutenant Dan kind of going to war on top of the mast. I thought that part was really fun too. And I had forgotten about that. So I dug that.

I don't know. I mean, I think those are good candidates. I'm going to go with the rally. It's not like Shawshank. where you're going, oh, here's the scene when he plays the opera. It doesn't have these like, just knock your socks off scenes.

But I think the Vietnam rally is pretty good. I think one of the things about the football scene that you're talking about is that that scene basically is connected directly to the previous scene where he learns how to run. And it's all kind of part of a flow. It's not as individuated as some other movies are. Right.

Run Forest Run is a candidate, too. That one's short, though. but just him breaking out of the braces and little Jenny going, run, Forrest, run. You know what's seen as funny too is the principal of the school sleeping with Sally Field so that he can stay in school? I hesitated to put that one on, even though I'm the same guy who put Forrest blows his first load. No, that's not getting any votes. Yeah, that principal, your mama really cares about your schooling. What's age the best?

Here are the nominees. Feel free to add any. Okay. Robin Wright. Sure. She looks great now. I'm on her corner and I'm on Michelle Pfeiffer's Corner for Life. Incredible music soundtrack.

And there's some really smart choices. Like when he's rolling around Lieutenant Dan in New York City in 1970, and they go with the Midnight Cowboy theme song. Everybody's talking at me. That struck me as a little bit too on the nose. I liked it, though. I was like, this is so over the top. Sinise literally hits a cab and says, I'm walking here.

Right. Which is funny because he's in a wheelchair. But I think it was an homage to that movie. It was clearly an homage. It was like two on the nose. You didn't like it. Like 12-year-old. To avert.

Yeah, 15-year-old me was like, oh, cool. I don't really know this song. I've never seen Midnight Cowboy. As an adult watching it, I'm like, this is hokey. Guess how many door songs are in this movie? Oh, I noticed that last night. It must be at least four. Six.

Bill, do you know about the doors rep among like rock critics? Do you know the rock critics think the doors are absolute shit? Oh, yeah. They're like the worst band of all time. Roberts and Mecca's is not a rock critic. He thinks these guys kick ass. Doors have a couple good songs. Rock critics can fuck up.

The gimmick of Forrest intersecting with 50 years of American history. It just shouldn't have worked, but I do enjoy it. I like, oh, now we're in Vietnam. Oh, now we're in the disco era. Oh, now we're in the post-disco era. And Jenny's a cocktail waitress and has shorter hair. But do you think the actual scenes of him encountering historical figures works well? No, we save that for what's age the worst.

I just like the 50 years. Like Elvis. Let me just go back to the soundtrack once again. It did identify a lot of really cool songs for a lot of young people, but it's the most obvious soundtrack of all time. And I don't know if it's aged the best. I don't think you can say that. Because it's like it kind of set up a bad run of soundtracks of like people using

Creedence Clearwater Revival on every soundtrack. and like Fortunate Sun, how many movies was Fortunate Sun and after this movie? So you're actually, you're making the case, it pushed other people to use these same songs

and now that means it has an age the best. Yeah, it like officially calcified classic rock as the soundtrack for all boomers in their 40s and 50s making movies through the 90s. And it's a good point. All right, well, we can also put it in what stage the worst. Okay.

I just really like hearing running on empty in the doors. Okay. Here's the thing. I never listen to that music anymore. Ever. I never listen to classic rock. I can't remember the last time I would have ever interacted with the Dora song. So hitting some of these old ones, I was like, oh, that song.

It was like listening to a jukebox from this era that's dead. I think it just ruined a bunch of songs for me. Like it just ruined like Sloop John B. I can't listen to that anymore. What's the one they put in all the Disney sports movies when, like they could remember the Titans they're dancing in the locker room? Like Sugar Pie Honey Bunch. Yeah,

four tops. Ain't O Mountain High Enough is another one. They just demolished. The movies have ruined those songs forever. The redemption of Lieutenant Dan has aged really nicely. Incredible. This is my wife, Susan.

Hello, how are you? These are my titanium legs. Oh, I'm a billionaire. We've invested at Apple. Yeah, normal stuff. Yeah. All predictable. I think Sinise's performance is awesome.

Yeah, he's really good. Anything else for what's age the best? Hmm. No, I have some age of the worst. All right. Well, that's a longer category. So we already talked about the soundtrack. You made your case.

The CGI was groundbreaking in 1994, and it's like we could do better stuff in the ring or office now. We just did Jurassic Park on the rewatchables, which came out a year before this movie and had much better CGI. Yeah. Much better. It was always a little dicey in the moment where John Lennon's talking and his mouse moving, but different words are coming out. That looks like the social videos we would cut for like Bill Belichie. check as Scarfaceickelin. You know what I mean? Like it's just, it doesn't look good at all.

If Zemeckis, how much money do you think he's made? He's got to have a comfortable life, right? Oh, definitely. I think him and Hanks made like a shitload of money from Forest Gump. No question. From a ton of money. I mean, he made back to the future. There's a chance he's listening to this. It can't be ruled out. If he's listening to it, Bob Smekis is a genius. But if he's listening to this, you've made more than enough money.

Do the 25th anniversary Blu-ray and just drop like $1.5 million on the CGI and just make it cool. You know, George Lucas did this in the original Star Wars trilogy, and people flipped out. They were not happy. Really? So be careful how you mess with history. How hard would it be to mess with some of these scenes? He has all those stuff already. I don't know.

You know what's weird too is... But also Star Wars people, get the fuck out with them. Okay, I'm not going there. They're lunatics. They're lunatics. They're lunatics. You know what stuff does look good, though? Oh, R2D2 looks differently.

Oh! Evan, please cut this so we don't get an email. They're lunatics. They admit they're lunatics. The ping pong stuff looks great, though. Pinkpong stuff looks good. That CGI-I, how can that CGI ball look so good? And John Lennon's mouth looks like it was like etch-a-sketched onto his face.

Forest moms sleeping with the school principal, which is a delightful scene, has probably aged badly in certain corners. Not super woke. Yeah. Okay. The running scene, Forrest ran three years, two months, 14 days, 16 hours. It started on July 5th, 1976, it was a day after July 4th, all the way through September 19th, 19th, 1979. You're not going to wait this, but I have some issues with that. Fire away.

Somebody, just somebody running for three and a half years. It's just absurd. Well, where was he staying? Where was he staying? You know, when he was like, when I was tired, I slept. When I was hungry, I ate. Who was getting his checks from from bubble gum, shrimp company? Who was in charge of the bank? Who mowed his lawn?

Who mowed his lawn? Who mowed his lawn? He was mowed his lawn? He was in charge of stuff. They had no cell phones then? I don't know. He's just off. He's running. His caretie. Checks are just piling up at the mailbox? I mean, he was a simple man who didn't need a lot of things. He didn't need a lot of possessions.

That scene is absolutely idiotic. They should have had him running for nine months, I can see. Nine months he's on there. Oh, he ran back to California and he ran back. Okay. He ran for three and a half years. It's the dumbest fucking thing. I can't believe they did that.

You're a little older than me. Tell me about the late 70s. What was happening at that time? Wasn't that a bad time? There was no decade where anybody would have done that. what decade exists? I don't know. I don't know.

It's just a weird part of the movie. In the same pair of Nike Cortez? The movie's ridiculous. It's meant to be a parable. That part is more than ridiculous. So it's like when you translate the story, it's one of the few parts of the story that shouldn't make sense on screen because it's illogical.

It's silly. But, you know, it's also, it's like a metaphor. One thing I do like about it is he breaks out the castaway beard. It's a little foreshadowing. I don't think the makeup is very good. No, it's a castaway here. I think there's real in castaway. It's real and castaway.

This was like they did the fake way and they learned for castaway. Which we should mention we voted, we had the listeners vote for this. On Twitter, we did four Tom Hanks movies and they were big, saving for everyone,

Castaway and Forrest Gump won. Which is why we're doing this. We like to listen to our fans. I'm mad at Avi that you didn't vote for castaway. You also declined to put Apollo 13 on that list. Because I wouldn't have been on it. I was being selfish. Okay.

I don't like that movie that much. I think it would have been a little bit easier to draw a crowd for this conversation. Forrest Gump was a massive movie. I know. This will draw a crowd. Okay. Bubba? I'm not sure he's age well.

What do you think is wrong with it? Just too broad the performance, too broad the character? I don't know if we needed to have the second superhero with the same power. Uh-huh. I know what you mean. Would have maybe had some wrinkles with Bubba. Well, but that's what underscores their friendship. He was a dumb-ass soulmate.

Yeah, they were both undereducated guys with sweethearts. Jenny Gump's journey. It's a little rough. Now, I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad thing. It's just tough. It's a tough 10-year stretch for her. Bad choice in men. Actually, a tough 30-year stretch for her.

Rough time at home? Well. Tough choice in men. Coke, heroin, it maybe seemed like there a little bit. Not to get too weighty, but I do think that this is a movie that probably showed a lot of young people like the effects of child abuse. Yeah. I mean, it really was one of the first movies that I saw that made an honest attempt, even though it's not a very raw or gritty portrayal. You got the point.

You understood what was happening there with her father. And, you know, maybe it's a little bit facile that every single thing that happens to her seems to be the after effect of what happened to her in her childhood. But that's true for a lot of people. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't think that that aged poorly necessarily. I think it's unfortunate that everything that happens to Forrest is great and everything that happens to Jenny is bad.

Yeah. Forest has to be the like the shoulder that she can lean on at all times. But I don't know. Robin Wright is so good in the movie, she's so empathetic. I think that that character works. Do you have any other what age to worse candidates? Sally Field's only 10 years older than Tom Hanks. Yeah.

That's tough. It's just, it's so obvious when you're watching the movie. Yeah. Especially when Tom Hanks comes home. home from Vietnam and she's like aged up, but they're clearly just contemporaries. And they had just starred together 10 years earlier in punchline. So I always thought that that was weird and it still seems weird. It's like Alan Bernstein canceled at the last second.

Yes, exactly. Somebody who was like 20 years older. Yeah. And they had to audible. All right. We're new casting what ifs. Casting what ifs are brought to you by ZipRecruiter, the presenting sponsor of the BS podcast. having a high casting IQ is important. Just look at this movie.

We could have had Chevy Chase in the role of Forrest Gump. That almost happened. That's the thing, though. You never know. You need a high IQ for whatever you're doing. But when it comes to hiring, you actually don't need a hiring IQ. Just use ZipRecruiter. They're powerful technology scans.

Thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience for your job. My listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com. B.S. All right, Sean. Casting, what ifs? Shoot. I didn't research this. What do you got? This is, you're going to be staggered by a couple of these. Robert Semeckis' first choice for the title role was Harry Anderson. What? And he was unavailable because he had a commitment to Dave's World on CBS.

Oh, my God. The late Harry Anderson. The late Harry Anderson was almost Forrest Gump, which is just dumbfounding. My brain can't process it. I think that might have been good. It might have been good. It's a different movie. it doesn't feel as big. That's definitely true.

Harry Anderson was not that famous even then. Yeah, bizarre. Huh, okay. Three other people turned down the role of Forrest Gump. Bill Murray, John Travolta, and Chevy Chase. John Travolta is a fiasco. John Chavolta said it's one of the biggest regrets of his entire career

that he wasn't Forrest Gump. That would have been terrible. He kind of played Forrest Gump and Phenomenon, which I still ride for a little bit with Kier Cedric. Yeah, it's funny. And I feel like Michael, too. is him like trying to get back to that moment. Yeah.

Oh, I need the Forest Cup. I have a magical powers. Exactly. Turn down the role of Bubba. David Allen Greer. Big mistake. Dave Chappelle. What?

Yeah. Dave Chappelle. An Ice Cube. Okay. Ice Cube refused to play an idiot. Ice Cube was actually literally too smart for this part. You wouldn't buy it. Dave Chappelle thought the movie would bomb.

and regretted it and ended up working with Hanks four years later on you got bail. How old was Dave Chappelle this time? It must been his early 20s. Is this half baked era?

Tupac auditioned for Bubba didn't get it. That wouldn't have worked. That's interesting. Tupac has Bubba Blue. Bubba Blue is his last, his last name was blue.

Buford Blue is I recall. Yeah. So let's imagine a world in which Harry Anderson and Tupac. That's rough. Jenny Gump. Jody Foster turned it down.

Okay. So did Nicole Kidman. They both could have been good. This is a tough one. So did Demi Moore. That would not have been good. I think she would have been a little too old at that point for the Robin Wright. Robin Wright was able to pull off the, I'm in high school, I'm in college with Forest Gump.

To me more, that was like strip teased to me more at that point. It was a little before that, but yeah. 94. Yeah. Is that strip tease? Strip Teas was 94-95. You got that

locked in your brain huh? That's been Demi more. Yeah. Turned it down as directors. Terry Gilliam

and Barry Sondonfield. Those both would have been interesting versions of the movie. Terry Gilliam would have been amazing. Yeah.

That would have been interesting. A lot different. So yeah. Those are the casting what-ifs brought to you by Ziprocutter.

How is Hank's not the first choice for this movie? He might have been unavailable. Okay. Would be my guess. Would you have enjoyed

Bill Murray? He kind of played dumb as Carl and Cadyshack. That's the only time But like for parody purposes. Yeah, for comedy. I don't think it works with Bill Murray. Okay.

What about Bob is probably the craziest he's gone? Just don't think it works. Okay. The Deanne Waiter's a word. It's basically Michael T. Williamson, Sally Field, and Haley Joel Osmond, unless you can come up with anyone else. Hmm.

It's got to be a heat check. Unless you want to go with the guy who sleeps with Sally Field to let forest and the public schools. How about Dick Cabot aging himself back 20 years? Oh, that was the real dick cabin? That's the real dick cabin. Oh, he gets it. We're a wig. Yeah, that's fantastic.

You win that if you're aging yourself backwards. The Joey Pants Award, there wasn't a Joey Pants in this one. Yeah. There wasn't a that guy. I didn't really recognize the that guy. Hmm. I looked. I wanted that.

We just launched this Joey Pants Award for the that guy who eventually stopped being a that guy. You could argue Gary Sinise was a that guy. I'm not sure he was Gary Sinise yet. I think there's a chance this movie made him Gary Sanis. I think you're right. I mean, if you were a big theater guy in Chicago, in the 80s during the Steppenwolf time,

you'd know Gary Seney's. What's his IMDB before this? What did he made before that? I'll tell you what he did. Immediately before this, it was great, is he was the star of the adaptation of the stand on ABC.

Which, you know, a lot of people have problems with, but I thought was great. And that was a pretty big deal with that. I mean, he was in a midnight clear and of mice and men and of mice and men adaptation, but he hadn't done very much in movies.

So he might have been of that guy. All right, I'll give it to Gary Seney's. Okay. Half-ass internet research. A lot of stuff for this one. one. Tom Hanks not paid for the film. Yeah, but he got points. Took percentage points, made over 40 million bucks.

Unbelievable. Good job, Tom Hanks. Based on the 1986 novel, we mentioned. Tom Hanks' younger brother, Jim Hanks, doubled for him in the numerous running scenes. Who the fuck is Jim Hanks? Jim Hanks. Who knew there was a Jim Hanks?

How do you name one son, Tom, and the other Jim? You Tim, John, everybody, three letters? Bob, Dan. Parents aren't very creative. The screenplay for the sequel, was written by the same screenwriter Eric Roth in 2001 based on the original novel sequel, Gump & Company.

By Winston Groom. Right. Began with Forrest sitting on a bench waiting for his son to return from school. And it had a little momentum. And then after the September 11 attacks, Roth, Zemeckis, and Hanks all decided the story was no longer relevant.

After 9-11? I don't know what 9-11 did. Maybe they felt like they had to reimagine it post-9-11 and then everybody just punted. Hanks was good. I'm glad they didn't make this an extended universe. You know it would have been a big mistake? Forest Gump, too.

Agree. When the mic goes out at the Vietnam rally, here's what Forrest says, in case you're wondering. How do you know this? I found it on the half-ass internet research. He said, sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mamas without any legs. Sometimes they don't go home at all.

That's a bad thing. And that's all I have to say about that. Boris Gump. Abby Hoffman comes a great job. Meaningful stuff, man. Jenny's birthday on her tombstone, which you see at the end, was July 16, 1945, which was the same day as the Trinity Test, the first atomic bomb detonation. What? I'm just telling you.

Okay. Someone's working really hard to make those connections. You think it was purposeful? I don't know. So Jenny was the atomic bomb of Forrest Gump's life. Is that what's supposed to think? Half-ass internet research. The running scene was inspired by an actual event.

In 1982, Louis Michael Figuero, age 16, ran from New Jersey to San Francisco for the American Cancer Society. Okay. Somehow they strung that along into three and a half years of Forrest Gump, jogging around and his Cortez's. All the ping pong was CGI. We mentioned that. The park bench that Tom Hanks sat on for most of the movie was located in historic Savannah, Georgia, at Chippewa Square. It took it out, sent it to the Smithsonian. Interesting.

Yeah. Bubba Gump now in 33 locations, including Santa Monica, on the pier. Can't say I've ever had a bite of food from Bubba Go. You're not missing much. Kurt Russell did The Voice of Elvis. Also very famously portrayed Elvis in a John Carpenter movie about Elvis. He's a great Elvis. That's a good Elvis.

And I think of Al-Kilmer was the Elvis and true romance. Yes. Warner Brothers in 1988 gave up the rights to this film in exchange for the rights to executive decision, which came out in 1996, because the studio felt the project had lost its commercial promise in the wake of Rain Man. Woof. Yeah.

They're like, nah, Rain, it can't work after Rain Man. What, we give us the right? This is like the hard and trade for movies. Isn't executive decision also a Kurt Russell movie? Yeah. Okay. If you ever want to, if somebody ever asked you,

what's the Hardin Trade for movies? Forrest go up for executive decision. That's awful. I think they threw in Stephen Adams. Robert Zemeckis, they left out a couple planned effect shots, but one in particular was four. Ross running into Martin Luther King and his supporters.

Forrest distract several dogs trying to attack King and his supporters by playing fetch with them and rendering them harmless to King and himself as well as his supporters. Again, this is half-ass internet research. Strong edit on their part. Great edit. If that's true, if that scene exists, I would destroy the scene. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my God.

People would go nuts. That actually probably would have ruined the movie if that was in the movie. You know what's an underrated part of this movie? Editing that scene out. that definitely. But the fact that Forrest Gump is literally a descendant of the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah. And people were just like, okay, cool.

Yeah. My parents ran around. My grandpies. He like pulls the white sheet over. That part's not great. I don't think that would have made it into the 2018 version of this movie. Oh, Woke Forrest Gump is a movie none of us want to see. Woke Gump.

Woke Gump is, let's never make that. The pair of shoes that Jenny gives to Forrest as a gift were Nike's 1974 Cortez running shoes. I'm wearing the replica right now. You got them, Bill. Here are the six door songs in the movie. Soul Kitchen, hello, I love you, people are strange, break on through, peace frog, and love her madly. I like Soul Kitchen.

Yeah. I mean, the use of it is so obvious, though, like, especially in the Vietnam scenes. I love that you're just destroying Zemeckis for his obvious musical taste. It's just, I don't know. But yet you give Scorke-Sasey a free pass for using Gimmie shelter and seven movies. I won't. I won't anymore. It's like those are not literal choices, though.

When Scorsese does it, he's like, he's using the same nine stone songs and that's annoying. But when Zemeckis does it, it's literally a song about the feeling that he's conveying in the movie. Yeah. I don't know. It's not great. Apex Mountain. Tom Hanks. Back to Back to Back Oscars.

I think you make a case, yeah. Back to back Oscars is insane. Apex Mountain? You really wanted this to be castaway. Is it not castaway? This is the most commercial movie he ever made. Okay. This won him a second Oscar and cemented him as the best actor.

That best A-list actor, most bankable, marketable, whatever you want. I'm not saying he was the best actor, but I think the, how people felt after this came out was like Tom Hanks is now the Alpha Dog in Hollywood. Whatever movie he wants to make, he can make. This makes me wonder what Apex Mountain means. Career Apex. in terms of his ability to like open a movie and what has movie starness.

Just the best point of his career. You go with something else. Well, I don't know. I mean, I guess this is probably his most iconic performance. Absolutely. I'd rather have him in a league of their own. I think he's a lot funnier. But that's not an apex.

He didn't even want an Oscar yet. You're right. You're right. Okay. All right. Gary Sinise. I don't know. He did 10 seasons of CSI, New York.

You sure we can top that? I don't know. I don't know what Gary Sniece is. I've never been a giant Gary Seneese fan, unfortunately. I think he's really good in this movie. He creeped me out in Ransom. He's really good in Ransom. I know.

In a way that it may be just not like him, I really feel like he might be like that. It's one of those performances. It's in like the Green Mile. Yeah. There's in a lot of, not a ton of great Garrisonese performances. This is definitely Apex Mountain.

Zemechus, yes. No, back to the future. Back to the future, 100 out of a hundred times. Back to the future, yes. Back to the future. God, he did Back to the Future. I forgot that. Yeah.

He also did Who Frame Roger Rabbit, which I love. He did What Lies Beneath, which is very underrated. Not in the Simmons House. He's good. He did all those weird... I totally forgot. I'm a dumbass. It's got to...

I think for Zemeckis in particular, it's got to be back to the future. We almost have to edit out that I forgot that he did back to the future. Kevin, don't edit this. Robin Wright? I think it's her most complete performance. You know, she has the most to do. Like the Princess Bride, she's beautiful, but she's not really on screen that much.

I say, I think this is her career I picks. Okay. But didn't win the Oscar. Michael T. Williamson, absolutely. He didn't have a good hoop show on Showtime that I enjoyed. Chris Ryan only wanted to be here for the Michael T. Williamson part so he could talk about his performance in heat. Oh, he was good at heat.

Could Danny T. Treo have been in this movie. Another category we have, obviously yes. I think we're looking at a younger Danny Treo from, it's like heat range, still probably late 30s. I think Danny Trao could have been Lieutenant Dan. I'm fine

with it. That's not true. I'm fine with him as Lieutenant Danny brings anger. It could have been like the drill sergeant in boot camp. Could have made a good drill, sorry? I love Danny Trao if he was Lieutenant Dan. What about force mom? Danny Trejo is Sally Field's character. Would that have worked?

No, I would like that one. Could have been the principal. No, I think Danny Chay has in the military scenes, I think. Yeah, yeah. Mark Ruffalo Award for the best overacting. I think Seneas dials it up a couple times in this movie. There's a couple of Ruffalo scenes of this. Ruffalo's great in spotlight.

I mean, the joke is that Mark Ruffalo's bad actors, just that one scene that they do, they do. Yeah. Senise, you could argue he dials it up a couple times. him on the boat really going for it in the hurricane I enjoy that stuff I enjoyed it too but it's a little rough aloe he's literally screaming it might actually be like

the precursor to the they knew like he may have invented the they knew by doing the like y'all never sink this boat could have started it the other nominee is Wesley Jenny's abusive boyfriend who gets the shit kicked out of my forest at the Black Panther Party that guy sucks he just went super evil he went Billy Zane Titanic

like he's just like I'm you're going to I mean, he literally looks like a combination of John Lennon and Vladimir Lenin. You know, like he looks like a communist. Yeah. Well, let's give it to him. Seneas is good in this movie. Picking Nitz time. Boy, I'm excited for this category.

How long was Forrest at that bus stop? I don't know. He's really stupid. What kind of bus stop situation was going out there? It's completely plausible. He was there for not. hours and that he missed his bus that arrived every time. Or he was waiting for a bus that didn't exist.

Well, we know that he can't read a map because it's only six blocks away from where he was waiting, where he needed to go. All fair points. Forrest had that bus stop for a loud, but he did have a 70 IQ. It's right. It's not offensive to say like this guy was a dummy. Yeah, he was really stupid. He was 70 IQ.

What did Forrest do from 1970 to 1974? This movie kind of skips ahead. It has a Vietnam rally. He sees Jenny. Jenny goes off. And then there's like some ping pong for the service. He's traveling the country. But when he comes back, he somehow interacts with Watergate.

Nixon resigns, which is we're talking late 74, early 75 now for Nixon. And then he goes back home. He gets discharged. I think the idea. Five years doing, what was he doing? From 70 to 74? I think it's all ping pong. Yeah.

I think that's the, we're meant to believe that he's playing. ping pong for years on behalf of the U.S. I would have thrown in one more thing, like he was working for the Democratic Committee or something. Sure. This movie's two hours and 25 minutes. I'm not sure it needs to be longer. Well, the 70s, he throws away, spends five years playing ping pong and three and a half years running around the country.

Those are forced comes 70s. Yeah. I mean, he didn't have a 70 IQ. The running scene. So you're in or are you out? I can't tell. Defend the running scene. I don't know if I can do that.

I think that it's meant to be a moment in time in your life when you don't really know what to do. You don't really know where to put yourself. You don't really know what your job should be. You've broken up a relationship. You're confused. And you need to just like physically vent.

And I kind of get it. I kind of get it. Now, I think that the like joky stuff is bad. I think that the t-shirt, that have a nice day t-shirt is stupid. I think the shit happens thing is like, that stuff feels like an SNL sketch. It's not very smart or interesting.

But the idea of the person just running across the country back and forth is like a micro metaphor inside the bigger metaphor of the movie about what you encounter along the way. So I'm not that mad at it. It's still terrible. The music choices are ridiculously on the nose. Why didn't Jenny ever find the right guy?

She's smoking hot. She's traveling. She didn't run into one nice guy in the early 60s, early 70s? She did. No. I think she's doing all these

Vietnam protest just doesn't meet some guy who's like a law student at Georgetown who just becomes enamored with her. I think we know

that we're meant to believe armchair psychologist that because of what happened in her past she doesn't know how to make good choices. You know, what she views as

a valuable man is probably not good for her. And it's why she and my biggest knit to pick in the whole movie is like don't fully understand why

after she finally sleeps with four. she leaves the next morning. Why did that happen? They never talk about it. I had that in unanswerable questions, but we can do it now. I just didn't like it. It was weirdly in a movie that is like really silly and absurd at times.

It was the one part of the movie where I was like, I forgot it happened this way. This doesn't really make sense. She ditches him the next morning. So here are the possibilities. Okay. One, he lasted like two seconds. And she's like, I can't, this guy's, he can't satisfy me. They already knew that was going to be the case. They already had that encounter in college.

She's like, ah, he's been older. Maybe he's with some, maybe he's been with some women. Forrest's sex life is weird in this movie because they also, he has the encounter with the prostitute on New Year's Eve with Lieutenant Dan. He throws her off. Yeah. Not a lot of sex for 70. Maybe they were going to get into that in Forrest Gump, too. I think there's a chance. Maybe Forrest was great.

Mm-hmm. And it was a great night. and her tendency when she's happy is to try to sabotage it because she's so messed up mentally. So you think Forrest was a tender lover? I think maybe it was a great name. Maybe Forrest was hung like a tripod. She's like, oh my God. And she's like, I get out of here.

This guy's a sexual tornado. Okay, neither of the first two things you said are the case. What's the third? The other one is it's just poorly written. Okay. That's probably the real reason. Okay, you got it. That sounds right.

It just stuck out to me. Because if she really truly loved Forrest, that's the meanest thing you could do to that guy. You sleep with him, then you leave in the middle of night, you leave the medal of honor on the table, and it's basically like, fuck you, dude.

Right after the, I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is, you know, that whole moment, which is very emotional, very powerful, and she steps on his heart.

It's like sometimes, Olivia, one of our dogs, really hates the pool. The meanest thing I could do to her is put her on a raft and just float her out into the middle of the pool and her feet would be just stuck and she would just be completely terrified. I just wouldn't do that as much as I have some conflicted thoughts. She's just my least favorite of our three dogs.

Okay. So if you put Olivia on a raft in the middle of your pool, you're the genie in this situation? No, I'm saying, yeah, that would be the Jenny move. Okay. It's like, all right, what's the meanest thing I can do to a person? do this. Cool. That's kind of what Jenny does.

This is the craziest metaphor I've ever heard for this movie. Well, I'm just saying it's, it's super mean. Yeah, it is mean. What she did is really mean. It's thought out. She had to call cab. Yeah. It's not like she hopped in her car to get coffee and then just never came back.

She packed stuff. She put the Medal of Honor on the nightstand. Called the cab, which had to take, what, 40 minutes to get there and forest is in the middle of nowhere in Alabama. I've all very calculated. Okay. So two other potential theories here. Yeah.

You want to know him? Sure. The first one is that she knows that Forrest is a dumb loser and she doesn't want to spend any more time with him. Now, that's really mean. And Robin Wright is such a sympathetic character that you would never think that that would be the case. But she's known this guy all her life and she knows that he's a dummy. Yeah. She's like, I can't be around this anymore.

I mean, he'd be a tough hang. Tough hang. It's the old Kevin Clark, tough hang, great hang. What are they talking about? I don't know. We never see that. It's like, we walked around. I told Jenny about being that.

I'm like, that sounds horrible. Seriously. I did most of the talking and she just listened. It's like, he's a moron. She's probably like, can I need drugs again? Is there any heroin around here? So the other option, I think, is she knows she's pregnant. And she's like, I can't have a family with him.

And so she either leaves. But then you leave a month later. Maybe, maybe. But maybe she just freaked her out. She knew that there was no protection. She wasn't on birth control, nothing. I'm going to go out on them and say that that wasn't the first time Jenny Gump.

had sex with no protection. Probably. Probably. Although we know that Tom Hanks' character, we know that Forrest doesn't really know how to control himself in that situation. So maybe he didn't apply the pullout method. I don't even,

he barely pulled in probably. It would have made more sense to have an extra small scene where two months later she's throwing up in the toilet. Uh-huh. And then she leaves. And then she leaves.

Okay. And then I'd be like, oh, she just want to have raise a child with the village idiot who's somehow a billionaire. Unanswerable question. Yeah. Best quotes, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. Bet that never happened in Homeack.

Don't sleep on that quote. Good stuff. Forrest, you don't know what love is. Really a mean thing to say to somebody. Sorry I had a fight of your Black Panther rally. Stupid is as stupid does. I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is. I'm really proud of both of us for not doing a four.

Forrest Gump accent yet during this podcast. I will not be that hour mark. I'm not doing one either. Life feels like a box of chocolates is the signature quote of this movie. Yeah, I feel like pop culture kind of messed with it, though. It kind of made it too much of a cliche instantaneously. Yeah. All right.

Unanswerable questions. Why didn't Forrest Gump go pro? So he gets out of college. I'm going to say 1964 range, something like that. He's an all-American. You have the NFL and you have the AFL at that point. You have two leagues. Sure.

You have this village idiot at Alabama kick returner who's just lights out, super excited to watch. No AFL offer? The New York Jets weren't snooping around. Doesn't he sound like the perfect jet? I mean, they were at the, yeah, because he's a dumb ass for sure. Yeah, they signed Joe Namath the year before. It's like, oh, here's our 70 IQ kick returner. I mean, aren't they teammates?

Yeah, they could have been. They're scouting Joe Namath. It's like, who's the kick returner? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think Forrest was a good teammate. Maybe that.

I think he was selfish. You couldn't know any better. If there had been a couple extra scenes in this movie, I think I would have liked the scene of the football people, the football teammates just torturing him in some way. Oh, yeah. Like just taping him to the goal post. Also, we know because of the leg braces,

he has kind of a checkered injury history. You know, he's kind of the Michael Porter Jr. Yeah, maybe he should have blown out an ACL in like the Cotton Bowl. Also, he does seem, I mean, he just signs up for the. military because he thinks it sounds like a good idea because he's dumb. So maybe he didn't even occur to him to play professional football. Maybe he didn't. We talked about why did Jenny ditch for us?

Why didn't Forrest catch whatever Jenny had from Jenny? Maybe they didn't have a sex life when they got back together. We don't really know that. When they get married, we don't know if they're actually having sex. Okay. That leads us. Because we assume that she contracted. HIV.

That's our next question. She either had AIDS or hepatitis B or hepatitis C, one of those hepatitis. So I actually, I went back because I knew I had written about this at some point in my life and somebody asked me, did Jenny Gump die of AIDS? It was a mailback question. It's an amazing career you've had. Someone sent you an email asking you that question. For years and years, I was to go-to person for that questions like that.

I was right there. It's great stuff. The point of the mailbag is I'll answer it. anything. So she died in March of 1982, nine months after the first recorded case of AIDS in the United States. Okay. That means she would have had to get it in the 80 to 81 range while taking care of Haley Joel Osmond as a cocktail waitress, presumably not doing drugs anymore. Who knows? We don't know. We don't know if it was because she slept with someone. We don't know if it was from a syringe. We don't know how it could have happened. They don't even approach

that idea. Here's my controversial take. I don't think she had AIDS. You think she died of... I think she was just sick. I think they intimated that it's AIDS, but I don't think it was. I'm in that corner now. I think she probably had, you know, she had a rough life. She probably had like hepatitis C or hepatitis B or something.

Something that was debilitating that led to liver cancer or whatever. Okay. I mean, I buy it. They never say what it is. She just says, I'm sick. Forrest. She's, I think, does she use the word virus? She used the word virus. Yeah.

So I think that that could be hepatitis. Made me think it was HIV. Other possibility is they just fucked up the timeline on it and they thought AIDS was like a big thing by them, but it wasn't. It's plausible. I mean, they basically let Forrest play ping pong for four years. So it's definitely possible. Forest run around the country.

So really, they probably fucked it up and thought, oh, this would be AIDS, but they got the, they should have had her die in 1984. I don't, but that's like not a good message. to send is if you live a life of like, uh, experimental drug use and sexual promiscuity, you're going to die of AIDS. Like that's a weirdly moralizing note in a movie that isn't that moralizing about stuff

like that. I don't really love that as a way to go out. I wonder if we'll ever get an answer. Probably not. We should we call Winston Groom? I assume it was a AIDS thing. Yeah. I think that's what we're meant to believe.

I also have a mailbag question that somebody asked me about how many, it was a settle about how much. many sexual partners do you think Jenny Gump had? I'm not going to put a number on that. How many sexual partners did Forrest Gump have? One. For sure? Yeah.

Just one. Just one. This guy was an all-American kick returner for Alabama. No. I don't think he waited. Jenny was his girl. His whole point was like, Jenny's my girl and that's it. Here's another one.

Where did everyone go after Forrest stopped running? So they're in like Montana or Utah. And he just stops. and he's got 150 people behind them. So now what happens from that point on? And they go to the Greyhound bus station. They're going to walk somewhere. They're in the middle nowhere.

I don't know. These people would have been like, what the fuck, man? I mean, what's wrong with you? Can you stop at a major city? Here's something I respect about Forrest when he's interviewed while he's doing the running. He's not trying to create some bullshit reason. He's like, I just felt like running. And people still follow him.

LeBron would have played it up much more. Totally. It would be all about the narrative. Here's my uninterrupted crew. Here's some thoughts on the feather. People thought it symbolized the unbearable lightness of being. Okay. That's overreeding it.

Forrest Gump's impaired intellect, the randomness of experience. I got all this stuff in the internet. That's the one I subscribe to. Hank's interpreted it as, Our destiny is only defined by how we deal with the chance elements of our life, and that's kind of the embodiment of the feather as it comes in. Here's this thing that can land anywhere, and it lands at your feet. It's the theological implications that are really huge.

And so I feel compared the feather to fate, was it planned or was it just perchance? Yeah, I think that's what we're supposed to believe. That's my interpretation too. I have a new category before we get to who won the movie. It's exciting. Yeah, new one. Because I think we've said this in every podcast,

so now I think it should just be a category. Would this have been better as a Netflix series? As a 10-episode Netflix series? because that seems like that topic comes up every time. Here's the Netflix series I would want from this movie. And maybe actually it feels a little more Amazon. Jenny Gump. Oh.

We're just going with Jenny Gump. We're going in. Well, that removes the... We know she's going to die at the end, but she's... Forrest is barely in this. This is a Jenny Gump story. Is this a world in which the movie Forrest Gump already exists?

No. So they haven't made this movie. And we're trying to figure out what's the best way to adapt? this story? I'm saying I'm in for Jenny Gump 10 episode Netflix series.

At least try the first episode. It'd probably be pretty raunchy. 68 through 80. She's just trying to make it work. Isn't that basically what vinyl is? Yeah, that's true. It would work. This movie's better as a movie.

I don't think this would have worked as a Netflix series. Okay. Who won the movie? Tom Hanks. There's no other answer. Here's what I wrote when I wrote about Tom Hanks seven years ago.

He's in every scene, not every scene, but almost every scene. He has to play a dim-wit in a blatantly manipulative movie without crossing over into that Robin Williams zone. I think that's an important point. Yeah, good call. Robin Williams has Gump. I think Robin Williams, I don't know if it works. R&P Robin Williams.

Interesting that he wasn't considered for this. I love Robin Williams too. If this is, but imagine it if it's a Terry Gilliam movie starring Robin Williams. You know, I mean, that is, it's probably too funny. He has to pull off a crazy accent that should not have worked and is so annoying that neither of us even tried to do it during this podcast. I have a take.

He doesn't pull it off. Oh. And it doesn't matter. Why didn't you do that in the picking nits? Well, because it doesn't bother me. He actually in the internet research thing, he didn't want to get too Southern with it. Why? And they pushed him to make it more.

Oh, I almost did it. There's a couple of times when normal Tom Hanks' voice comes out. Did you notice this for watching it? No. Particularly when he finishes building the gun in boot camp. And he says, Dundrill Sergeant! Dundra Sergeant! And he uses regular Tom Hanks' voice.

Oh, Jesus. C.G. I don't know what that was supposed to, if that was purposeful, or if that was the only time he was competent so he didn't sound like dumb Forrest Gump? He has to pull off that terrible cross-country sequence without making you turn on the movie. Okay. He has to make you think Jenny Gump would want to have sex with him. He has to believably pull off being a football player, soldier, Vietnam vet, shrimp boat owner and jogger, as well as someone with a heart and soul who's slightly smarter than he lets on.

And the whole time, you have to buy that he has a 70 IQ. Tom Hanks, everybody. Hanks is great. I love Hanks. It's great. I don't think anyone else could. All right. So let's say Forrest Gump happens 10 years later.

I think Matt Damon goes for it. Too smart. That's what I think. That's why I think he tries to do it, and I don't think it works. It wouldn't work. Brad Pitt? Brad Pitt basically has done this part in seven movies, so yeah. Brad Pitt is Forrest Gump.

I think I kind of like that. Might be a little too handsome. They'd have to give him a bad haircut. The dirty secret with Brad Pitt is like crew cut Brad Pitt is not as handsome. That's true. He needs like the blonde hair going. Okay. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, who is it? Who's our ordinary guy movie star from the 2000s? Because that's what Tom Hanks says. He's the embodiment of the every man, and that's why people find it easier to relate to him. Ryan Reynolds? No, he's too handsome. Tom Hanks is like, is a handsome guy.

Say Tom Hanks, Hanks is ugly? What if he's not ugly? He's just, he's just, he's a regular guy. I think he knows that he's got that regular guy appeal. Yeah. And we don't have a lot of actors like that anymore. You know, like Chris Pratt, this kind of has regular guy appeal, but he also is jacked.

Chris Pratt, non-jack, Chris Pratt would work. Okay. Yeah. Hank's got skinny for a couple of these movies. It was a good career move. Definitely. Well, Philadelphia. He's very skinny.

See, you didn't think we could do Forrest Gump. Any last words? No, this was fun. And I think that this movie now officially has a bad rap and doesn't deserve it. That's why I'm glad we did this pod. Even like asking ringer staffers and people, that's sappy. I've only seen it once.

It's actually really worth saying. And genuinely rewatchable. I was not bored. Yeah. So I would say it's one of the few monster giant movies that have come out that you could watch with any member of your family. Absolutely. Although then you have to explain premature ejaculation, the AIDS crisis, Watergate. No, see that... The Ku Klux Klan.

AIDS goes right over the heads of the kids. Right. Okay. My son would have no idea I was going under. Actually, my son would probably have a better chance of knowing than my daughter, my 13-year-old, innocent daughter. My son probably, oh! Well, maybe you can show to him tonight. Yeah, maybe. Sean Fantasy. We can hear you on the big picture on Channel 33. you can listen to my podcast, the BS podcast. Don't forget to check out the ringer. We have some good stuff coming up the rest of the way.

Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to Seekek as well. Don't forget to download their app or go to Seek. com. The rewatchables, we're rolling through this, man. We are two weeks away from Jaws, which is the podcast we were born to do.

Can't wait. Jaws is going to be July 4th. And then we have another good one next week as well. We're going to be doing this all the way through to September. every week. Thanks for less time.