WHAT WENT WRONG - Forrest Gump

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

‘Forrest Gump’ became one of the biggest hits of the ’90s—but it was never a sure thing. What started as a seemingly unadaptable novel bounced through multiple directors, screenwriters, and studios before it finally found the team that could bring it to life.This week, Chris and Lizzie break down how Robert Zemeckis pulled off the film’s groundbreaking visual effects, why the first three days of Tom Hanks’ performance were thrown in the trash, and the unexpected source behind Forrest’s now-iconic accent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dear listeners and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies. And how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a picturesque, pickeresque picture pointing out the pinnacle of visual effects in the mid-1990s. As always, I am your host, Chris Winterbauer, and joining me, unlike a box of chocolates is the very reliable Lizzie Bassett, Lizzie, how are you doing this morning? and which best picture winner are we discussing today? Well, Chris, there was a lot of peas. Congratulations.

And we are today, of course, talking about one of the best examples, I think, of somewhat invisible effects in recent movie history, is Forest Gump. Gump! There's a P in that. But before we get into it, I need to mention that this Friday, we will release our final pre-Oskers bonus episode. And not only will we discuss the two remaining Best Picture nominees, but, we will go over each of our top 10 lists of our favorite movies for 2025 and briefly discuss them. Also, if you are a patron, we will be live streaming during the Oscars on Patreon, moderating a live chat during the program and hopping on video during commercial breaks.

So join for $5 to be a part of that. Chris, I am sure you've seen Forrest Gump before, but what was your initial impression of it? And what did you think upon rewatching it for the pod? I think, as have most folks of our generation, and probably Gen Xers, I would imagine. This movie has loomed large in the American film landscape. I don't remember how old I was when I first saw it, probably middle school. And I remember thinking I once have described folks who listen to this podcast know.

James Bond movies as a bit of a grab bag, an attempt to give you five genres for the price of one, only done at a very discounted price. Forrest Gump gave me five movies. that seemed like high-quality versions of those movies for the price of one. And I couldn't believe it. I thought, oh my God, this is a historical, you know, period piece. It's a football movie. It's a war movie. It's a business movie. It was all of these movies in one. I really thought this is the greatest movie I have ever seen, just in terms of the spectacle of what a movie could be. And then, of course, I aged into my dushy intellectual period in college. And then Forrest Gump was constantly railed and criticized. It's a conservative part of the movie.

Propaganda film. This is a movie that suggests that all you have to do is take orders. And that's how your, you know, life will work out. And God forbid, you question authority or you join the counterculture movement because you will get addicted to heroin and eventually get AIDS. And Jenny is the villain. And this movie is bullshit. And I survived that portion of my movie going existence. And then I rewatch Forrest Gump for the podcast. And I really liked it. It's a really fun movie. It is as just a pure vehicle for entertainment, it's tough to beat. This movie is well over two hours and it just goes. Do I think it cheats by using an insane amount of montage? Sure. Does it have so many needle drops that I was like, wait a second. Did we just do three needle drops in introducing the Vietnam scene in a row,

just going from fortunate sun to sloop John B in 90 seconds? Yes, it does. Did I mind? Not really. Great performances, very fun. As you mentioned, for the most part, very effective visual effects. wonderful cinematography, Alan Silvestri's score is very iconic. And I actually think that there's a less cynical way of interpreting the message of the movie. And Lizzie, I don't know if you're going to talk at all about like, like, picaresque stories or tall tales or anything like that. But this movie very much fits into the, I think, long history of the pickeresque hero, the kind of roguish hero who ascends through society, thinking of something like Barry Lyndon, for example. And Forrest Gump very much subverts that in a lot of ways. And it's like an American tall tale, right? You're explaining the

names behind so many things. The shit happens, the smiley face, Elvis Presley's dancing, John Lennon's Imagine. But I like this idea in Forrest Gump that it seems like it's a movie that's almost got this libertarian streak of individualism can triumph in America. Only in America could a man with a 75 IQ become this wealthy. I think that's actually a really surface level take. And my pitch to the audience, or my pitch to you, Lizzie, would be another way to interpret this movie is actually that it's about how little control we have in our lives and how much our existence comes down to pure luck. I would argue entirely luck, but if not, largely luck. On the one hand, you have Forrest, who I think nowadays maybe we'd say maybe on the autism spectrum, but who is not, in 1956,

they're never going to diagnose that. And so he simply pointed out as slow. He's never going to keep up, but he has a really strong advocate in his mother. And he is good friends. I know Jenny, eventually you could argue it's not a great friend, but she is a good friend when he's little. And because of the systems around him, football, his mom, I know the military is a mixed record, but he actually really thrives throughout these situations, as opposed to someone like Jenny, who comes from a home where she's, it's suggested, sexually abused, and then faces continued forms of abuse as she tries to find her place in the world and eventually, you know, dies of a really terrifying sickness at the end of this. I think a cynical way to view the movie is that the movie is

punishing her for her decisions. I actually don't think that is the intention or I would suggest an alternate reading, which is Jenny had bad luck and didn't have the right infrastructure to catch her and help her, right? And Forrest just had good luck. I like that idea that the movie's actually pointing out, we have no control. We are all just feathers on the wind and our goal collectively should be to raise the floor of everyone around us, which is kind of what Forrest tries to do. So anyway, that's my optimistic. I'm now an adult take on Forrest Gump. Perhaps I am just Pollyanna-ish and naive. but I really enjoyed re-watching this. No, I think you're touching on a lot of really important points there.

I had a very similar experience. Same thing. I think everyone our age saw this movie probably around 10 or 11 years old, which is arguably too young since it features sex, intravenous drug use, death. But hey, he's so happy about it. It's fine. And, you know, same thing. I loved it.

I thought it was funny. I thought it was fun. I was entertained. It felt like I was ingesting history without actually understanding any of it or any of the context. And then, of course, as it was revisited, you know, through the millennial lens, I think everybody started to think this is a massive oversimplification of United States history. This is almost like cheapening these moments in history by putting him in them. And while I'm not saying there's no merit to that argument, I think there is. I think we'll talk about this a little bit, but this is a movie from another time. This is a movie from the early 90s. And that was a very different. time with a very different outlook, and I think that is reflected here. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think, honestly, this time watching it, I was so impressed by Robin Wright, because there is like a, there's a coldness and a hardness to her that I think is actually really essential to Jenny in this.

And had they cast someone who was sweeter, I actually don't think it would have worked as well. I think she's really good in this. She does not shy away from that. She does not shy away from that. She does you know, try to play it softer. Like, she's mad. She's fucking mad. And I don't blame her at all. So I really was impressed by her, very impressed by some of the special effects, which we're going to talk about quite a bit in this.

There's some really good ones. There's really clever things that they did that you wouldn't even notice. You know, when I said, hidden effects at the top, it's like, obviously, there are some things, of course, we know that they're doing inserting, you know, forest into archival footage, but there's a lot more that's really cool and really innovative. let's get into it, Chris, and, you know, let's find out why everybody underestimated Forrest Gump, much the same way everyone underestimated Forrest Gump. So the basic information, as always, this is directed by Robert Zemeckis, who we have talked about before.

So if you would like more of a primer on Zemeckis, you can go back to the Back to the Future episode. It was written by Eric Roth based on the novel Forrest Gump by Winston Groom. It was released July 6, 1994, and it, of course, stars, Tom Hanks, Sally Field, Robin Wright, Gary Seneese, Michael Connor Humphreys, Michael T. Williamson, who I love so much, and Hannah Hall, and many more. And the IMDB logline, as always, is the history of the United States from the 1950s to the 70s unfolds from the perspective of an Alabama man with an AQ of 75 who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I would really call it, this is the most American tall tale, maybe ever put on film

certainly in the last 35 years. Forest Gump is Gumpin. Big Fish lives in the same world as this to me. It lives in the same world. I don't think Big Fish touches this movie, personally. Okay, I love Big Fish. But yes, I agree. Little Big Man, Big Fish,

and then on the piquoresk side, I put together some other examples, Barry Lyndon, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Zellig, and then Lizzie, Marty Supreme. Oh, interesting. That's a pickeresque story, I would argue. All right, great. Okay, Chris.

Our story begins not with Forrest Gump. but with his creator, Winston Groom. He was born in 1943 and raised in Mobile County, Alabama, and he attended University Military School, where he became an editor of his school newspaper. In 1965, he graduated from the University of Alabama with a BA in English, then he joined the Army, did a tour in Vietnam,

and got his first post-war writing job. He worked as a reporter at the now-defunct Washington Star covering the court system in Washington, D.C. But soon, tragedy struck. His beloved mother, Ruth Groom, who was a high school teacher with a master's thesis on Shakespeare, died while Winston was out on the job. And when she passed away, he decided that he was done, wasting time,

and he wanted to pursue what he loved, and that was writing novels. It turns out he was really good at it. His first two novels, better times than these, and as Summers die, were pretty favorably reviewed. They did quite well, and his third book, Conversations with the Enemy, earned him a Pulitzer nomination. Wow. Yeah, not the case for most people that decide to leave their job and become novelist.

In 1985, he was now a successful three-time author. He's living in New York City. But he went back home to visit his dad in Mobile, Alabama. And over lunch, Winston Sr. told his son a story. He said there's a local special needs kid in the neighborhood who was always teased growing up. He got chased. He got roughed up by all the other kids. And then one day, a truck showed up outside his house and delivery men wheeled out a huge piano. And within days, beautiful music started wafting out of the home. Turns out, the kid was a musical genius. And as soon as word got around, the other kids stopped picking on him. Everybody took him under their wings and everything was forgiven. Those kids are still assholes. It doesn't matter that they liked the piano that he was playing. Winston and his dad started chatting about a recent 60 Minutes segment on Savant Syndrome. Now, if you're not familiar, according to the National Institutes of Health, Savant Syndrome is a rare but extraordinary condition where people with serious mental disabilities, including autistic disorder, have an island of genius, which stands. in marked incongruous contrast to overall handicap. In other words, someone who might not be able to even

tie their own shoes by themselves can somehow also solve the world's most complex math problems. Now, it seems like it does occur more frequently in people with autistic disorder, but it can appear in other developmental disabilities. It can also appear in other types of central nervous system injury or disease, which is really interesting. And this sparked an idea in Winston. After lunch, he went home, and by late that evening, he had written the first chapter of his next novel. Now, much of the novel was pulled straight from his own life. Vietnam, Alabama, shrimping, boating, all that took place around Mobile. Lieutenant Dan and Bubbo were based on sort of a mishmash of his friends. And he would call it Forrest. He had a pretty hard time with the last name, Chris.

So let's rewind to 1967. He was fresh home from Vietnam on the West Coast, and he learned the hard way that walking into a San Francisco bar in his army uniform was not a good way to meet women. So he went out and bought a new suit at a department store called Gump's, the It Shop of the time. And then 20 years later, as he's sitting at his desk trying to figure out Forrest's last name, he looked down and there's a Gump's catalog. And he had it. Forest Gump. And six weeks later, Winston finished writing his novel and he sent it off to his agent. And then it landed on the desk of Wendy Feinerman, who had just joined Steve Tish Productions as the vice president of production and development.

Now, Steve Tish, that is a name that has many others has popped up in the Epstein files. He's not super relevant to this episode. So we're not going to get into it or talk about him. Now, Wendy, we are going to talk about. She had come from Business Affairs at Universal Television, and she was hunting for the movie that was going to launch her film career. She was also really young, like early 20s at this point, I believe. And when she came across the galley, which is basically a first look at a book before it's published for Forrest Gump,

she thought, this is it. This is my movie. She told the New York Times, quote, I was floored. When do you come across material that literally makes you laugh and cry almost at the same time? The characters were timeless. So she took it to Warner Brothers, thinking she's got a hit on her hands. And Chris, what do you think their reaction was? I'm going to guess, Lizzie, the reaction is, what is this? You nailed it. That's exactly right. You can't really boil it down to a marketable pitch. It's not really a comedy or drama as written, as you pointed out. It's basically a fairy tale, but also not really. And then the main character isn't really very likable. More on that in a moment.

Well, it's a pickeresque. Like, that's kind of, you know, it's like wandering. The story's wandering. It's very meandering, yes. Yeah, Hollywood stories have like clear arcs. Yeah, very much not the novel, and as we'll discover more so than the movie even. So they thought, ah, what the hell? They bought the rights anyway in 1985, which, you know, it's existing IP from a successful Pulitzer-nominated author at this point. It makes sense to go ahead and grab it. Finerman hired Winston Groom to write his own screenplay, and they were off to the races, right? No, because when Forrest Gump, the novel, came out in March of 1986, it pretty much bombed. Kirkus called it, quote, gawky and ham-handed and a, quote, stumbling droopy-droar'd attempt at a picaresque novel.

While Publishers Weekly wrote the, quote, absurdity gathers its own speed and begins to run dangerously amok, and that, quote, groom has written better books than this. The general consensus was this was a pretty big letdown from a usually very reliable Winston Groom. And in fact, the only person who seemed to still believe in it was Wendy Finerman. So she plowed ahead. And she did have one ally, Kevin Jones, who was an exec at Warner Brothers, who was genuinely excited about the idea, but not so much groom's script.

Because Forrest Gump, as written in both the novel and the original script, was a horned Swery, marijuana-smoking, lady chasing, money-loving, all-around complicated guy. He's what we'd call a Winston Groom. I don't know anything about him, but he just based it on his own life. So maybe, you know, I mean, that's kind of, that could describe any number of people. That could, a lot of outside of the marijuana smoky, you know, you could call it, we call it Chris Winterbauer there, maybe. Hey, there was a time.

There was a time. He was also a really big guy. He was six foot six and around 240 pounds. Groom had actually envisioned John Goodman playing the role. Interesting. So at this point, they kicked Winston Groom to the curb, and two more screenwriters were brought in to now adapt both the novel and Groom's first draft of the screenplay.

But nobody could really crack it, because, as you pointed out, Chris, the novel itself does not follow a typical story structure. It's very episodic, it's flowy, there's no real build towards any kind of climax. And then, the film was dealt the ultimate blow in the form of Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, ride in escalators and diss in Kmart because what came out in 1988, Chris? Rain Man.

Rain Man. And execs thought, well, there can't be two of these. No. The performance, Pauline Kale, I believe, said was the equivalent of playing one note on the piano at varying intensities for two hours. Rain Man? Dustin Hoffman's performance. Yeah, that's what Pauline Kale didn't like his performance in that movie.

I actually like his performance in that movie. I like Rain Man, but I don't think that Dustin Huffin's. Hoffman is the standout performance there. It's Tom Cruise. Oh, no, it's Tom Cruise. That's one of his best movies. He is incredible in Rain Man. Yeah. Anyway, by 1990, Warner Brothers put poor Forrest Gump in Turnaround. And Chris, what happens in Turnaround? So Turnaround is when a studio decides that they no longer want to pursue a project. So effectively, you're putting it back out to the market to see if another studio would like to pick it up and develop it further. But the problem is that when a project goes into Turnaround, it has a price tag associated with it. And that price tag is however much the studio has

spent on the project thus far. So in this instance, that would be the purchasing rights for the book or option or whatever it is, plus whatever they've paid screenwriters and, you know, studio math, maybe a couple other things get shoved on there just to make sure we make a little money and turn around. And so it becomes a sunk cost issue, right? There's all this dead money shoved against this project and it's not as appealing anymore because your investment is going to be higher than if you found it clean on the market, for example. Finerman said, people would ask me what I was working on and I'd say, Forest Gump, and they'd get that glazed look. I knew they were thinking, when is she going to give up?

So eventually, Finerman did have to start working on something else in the late 80s, and that happened to be an adaptation of David Brin's novel, The Postman. She had optioned the book and brought in screenwriter Eric Roth to write the adaptation with Tom Hanks attached. Oh, wow. This is the one that would end up being Kevin Costner, right? Yes, this is, of course, the one that would wind up, both directed by and start. starring the one and only Kevin Costner. That's for a different episode.

Yeah, second or third nail in his coffin after Waterworld will definitely need to cover that one. Yes, yes. And Kevin Jones, Gump's only big fan at Warner Brothers, had moved over to Paramount. But he had not forgotten about Forrest Gump. And he also knew that Warner Brothers wanted to make executive decision, which Paramount currently held the rights to. Great movie. It is a good movie. Love that movie. So Jones made a trade. Jones is like, listen, we will give you exactly. executive decision if Warner Brothers will give Paramount Forrest Gump. And Paramount said yes, Warner Brothers said yes, and the deal was made. Now, it should be noted, executive decision grossed $122 million

at the box office on a budget of about $55 million. It was pretty good. We'll get to how Forrest Gump did a little later. Yeah, an executive decision was vastly, I think, overshadowed by Air Force One when that came out a year or two later, I believe. So still good. Got to love a movie that kills Stephen Seagal in the first five minutes. That's true. Good decision. And Paramount had a brand new chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Group at this point, which is around 1992, and that is someone we have talked about before, Sherry Lansing. And she was cautiously optimistic about Forrest Gump, but she was under a lot of pressure. Paramount was being bought by Viacom, and her time at Paramount at the top was basically entirely dependent on the lineup of pictures that she greenlit. So this is definitely a risky bet,

Forrest Gump. Not a clear winner. Nevertheless, Grum was paid $350,000 up front for the rights to Forrest Gump, and he got a 3% share of the film's net profits. Remember that number. And Finerman, who had already been working with Eric Roth on the postman, brought him on to take another stab at the screenplay here. Now, while Finerman loved Forrest Gump, the book, Eric Roth thought it was bad.

He told Forbes, quote, I thought the book was goofy and farcical, even though the movie is goofy and farcical to an extent, I tried to give it a little more meaning. I just figured, what the hell? It was such a crazy story. Condide is the way I look at it. I thought I had the license to go anywhere I wanted with it. That was a lovely freedom. To me, that makes so much sense. I don't know if you've ever read Condide, but this is like, I totally understand what he's doing here through that lens. So rather than writing groom's screenplay, which stayed close to the book, Roth went back to the drawing board and started from scratch. And as he worked on the script, the hunt for a director and a forest began. Now, the first director attached was someone that we have discussed in the podcast. podcast before, but have never covered one of his movies. Barry Sondonfeld. Oh, that's interesting. That actually, if you think about something like Men in Black, you know, which would follow that,

and he handled a lot of special effects in his films as well, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I don't know if he was established and they certainly wouldn't have gotten the budget they got, I don't think, you know, that they would end up getting with. He'd made one movie at this point. He had made the Adams family, which was a pretty big success. Right. But on a 2020 Real Blend interview, Sanenfeld said, quote, when I was finishing Adam's family, the head of Paramount, was a guy named Gary Luchese. Gary had a novel called Forrest Gump. And he said, look, I've got

eight scripts, and they all suck. Can you read this book and tell me if you want to do it? So I read Gump, and the lead of Gump was actually a big fat guy who was really strong. He was like Confederacy of Dunces in many ways. And I said to Gary, well, here's what I would do. I would make Gump a runner instead of a big fat guy

and I'll send it to Tom Hanks, if you're okay with it. So thanks to Barry Sondentfeld. we have Tom Hanks. He called up Tom, and Tom said, I'll think about it. But back to Barry, he did not stick around for very long because he had the Adams family values on his radar and his loyalty to that franchise was a lot stronger than his loyalty to Forrest Gump. Again, it's spent seven years in limbo. This is not a sure thing at all. But the idea of Tom Hanks stuck around, and he'd already been working with Roth and Finerman to develop the postmen, of course, and he seemed perfect for the role.

A little bit about Tom Hanks, because we haven't really talked about him as a person a ton on the show before. He was born in Concord, California in 1956. He started bouncing from one household to the next when he was five and his parents divorced. He was the third child of four. Two of his siblings lived with his father, who was a nomadic cook who kind of ambled around from job to job. He rarely saw his mother who remarried three different times. So he had a very tumultuous upbringing that it sounds like he dealt with by being funny. He wasn't particularly good in school. He's not like a standout in sports or anything, but he was really funny. And he developed very good social skills. So he starts out in theater after graduating from Cal State University. And then he moved to New York where he worked with the

Riverside Shakespeare Company in Manhattan. And he started to audition for some TV. He auditioned for ABC. And of course, he was cast by Joyce Selznick in Bozum Buddies. I liked Bozum Buddies. What year was Bozum Buddies? 1980 to 1982. So very early. I've never seen it. It's cute. I mean, he's very cute. I'll check it out. I knew he had a guest appearance on Happy Days, and I thought he was on family ties for a couple episodes. But yeah, I never, never watched those and buddies. Well, his next big break was, of course, Ron Howard's Splash in 1984, which he auditioned for at a time when he said nobody wanted to work for Disney. He actually described Disney's studios back then as looking like, quote, a greyhound bus station in Selma, Alabama. It's like Popeye, the Black Cauldron. This was like live action at Disney was at its nadir at those. point in time. Except Splash ended up getting nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. It's great. Except on Disney Plus, they like blur out Daryl Hannah's butt at one point with fake digital hair when she gets out of the water. And it's just like, let the people see

Daryl Hannah's butt. Let us see her butt. Let us see her butt. Maybe they changed it. I just remember saying this a little while ago. Take that hair out of there. Get the hair out of her butt. It's kind of funny. When you first said that I thought you meant that they had like digitally painted. They gave her a hairy ass crack. So I was like, that's not better. And then I remember she has very long blonde hair. Anyway, so then in 1988, of course, we get big, which was an enormous success. And this really, like, solidifies him as pretty much a superstar.

So by the time Barry Saundfeld called him up, Hanks has an awful lot of power in the industry. Yeah, I was to say, what year is this pursuit happening? This would be early 90s, like probably around, I would think 92 is much. my guess. Yeah. Tom said that with the right script, he could be convinced to join the project, and he also was like, I have the perfect director for this. It's someone he has worked with before.

It's a woman. Penny Marshall? Penny Marshall. A league of their own. Yes, exactly. Got it. I love a league of their own. I know.

Penny Marshall is wonderful. We got to cover that one. Yes, we do. There's been a lot about that recently, actually. But Penny Marshall said, no thank you. It turns out one of her best friends was dying of lymphoma, and as she told Hank's, sometimes life is more important than show business. She wanted to be with her friend. Meanwhile, Eric Roth was still chugging along on the screenplay, which took him a year to complete, and in December of 1992, he handed in

his screenplay. So, in 2024, Scott Tobias wrote for The Guardian, quote, in Groom's novel, Forrest is more on the spectrum, with a low IQ and a massive frame that makes him seem oafish, but who likes Mark Twain is natural at chess and can do enough math in his head to be recruited by NASA. Eric Roth's screenplay turns him more into a lobotomized zealig. So there's a pretty massive change to the character of Forrest Gump with this screenplay from Eric Roth. But this screenplay was a big hit with the next director that they approached, and this was finally Robert Zemeckis.

In fact, he said, fuck your book, Winston Groom, I don't need to read it. I like this screenplay. That's all I need. But, Chris, it wasn't just the story in the screenplay that he liked. What do you think Robert Zemeckis was particularly drawn to in the script? This is the opportunity to use a lot of technology to bring all of these events to life. Yes, bingo. And he seems to have had a fascination with diving into the past and alternate versions of the past, obviously, with something like Back to the Future or Back to the Future Part 3.

And he was an effects wizard. That's right. I mean, death becomes her. I love Jeff Becomes her. Yeah. And who framed Roger Rabbit? That's right. He's the guy's a maestro.

He is. That's right. It's the technological leaps. Now, in the screenplay, Roth wrote brief descriptions like, We See Forrest getting his award from Lyndon Johnson, and it was pretty much entirely up to Zemeckis to figure out how the hell they would actually bring those scenes to life and, like, what would happen in those scenes.

So Zemeckis did request some additional changes to the screenplay because it was originally pretty overwritten, which even Roth admitted. Roth's script included actually more fantastical, surreal elements, like whenever Forrest saw Jenny, she had Angels' wings, Lieutenant Dan had a black cloud over his head. There was a line from Mama Gump, don't let anybody tell you your lock watermelon head, followed by Forrest imagining a whole room of people with watermelon heads.

I might have liked that. There was even a cartoon Curious George that was sitting on Forrest's shoulder talking to him, and Zemeckis said, get rid of all of this. Let's focus. This is not a Michelle gone on film. Yes, exactly. He's not around yet. Let's focus on the overarching love story between Forrest and Jenny.

Good call. Although some of that sounds fun, but you don't need it. Some other pretty big changes to the final script from the book. Chris, the entire running sequence, not in the book. Well, I would imagine if he hadn't been a runner in the book, right? Yep. And, you know, we've discussed this, but the book, Forrest is kind of aggressive. He's foul-mouthed.

He actually comes across as quite smart in certain instances. He displays moments of high intelligence, particularly with mathematics and physics. he's much more like what we were discussing with savant syndrome than where we actually end up in the movie. In fact, he actually goes to space in the book. Jenny also did not have what I think is, you know, heavily insinuated as a drug problem in the movie. And then the big one. In the novel, the quote was, being an idiot is no box of chocolates. But in the movie, of course, we get what?

Life is like a box of chocolates. You're an idiot. No, life is like a box of chocolates. you never know what you're going to get. Yes. So I was really interested in the, and maybe I'll talk about this at the end, but the response from, especially like the autistic community to this movie. And I was surprised that, I'm not surprised, but it seemed very overwhelmingly positive, especially in recent years. I was reading a lot of blog posts from autistic writers and whatnot. And one person basically made the point that Forrest takes everything literally. Yeah. And so because he's told so many times that he is low IQ, he's just internalized that and accepted it. That he's stupid. Yeah. And we have an audience accepted as well. But really, he displays very high intelligence throughout the movie, like, especially moral and emotional intelligence. I think the difference here is that Roth takes the intelligence level and applies it to an emotional arc versus in the book. It's much more applied to, like, you know, physics and mathematics and actual problems. But one point that this one writer,

who's who I want to put his name in, Ron Stouffer, Ron Stafer, put on his blog post that I thought was interesting is he said, you know, he has autism, Ron, and he was saying that he has no aptitude for math, but he's hyper-fixated on numbers, and he remembers all of these details, like dates and stuff. And he loved that Forrest Gump, you know, didn't you say you were waiting for the number seven bus? Like, he immediately notices that the woman's bus arrives. I'm taking the $24,562.42 that I got that's left after a new haircut and a new suit. So he obviously understands, you know, and he can do math better than the average in American clearly in that scene, you know, remembering you died on a Saturday morning. She had got the cancer and died on a Tuesday. That's what I was going to say. His memory is like picture perfect.

Yeah. Picture perfect, which from what I read online, seems like a consistent trait of that many people with autism have expressed. Like, they have an incredible memory for details and take everything literally. And, you know, so I just think it's interesting. I think it's different from the book. I don't think it's wrong at all. Yeah. It's very easy to, you know, I think, underestimate what Roth did with the character in the movie. And I'm glad that you shared that, you know, about people in the autism. community feeling positively about it. Because you're right, he's not an idiot. And I'm not saying it's universal.

I'm just saying it seems like a lot of people in the autistic community actually took the opposite perspective of like, Forrest is amazing. And everybody around him is an idiot. Well, that's true. I do think is what the movie is saying. That's literally what the movie is about. Yeah, everyone around him is fucking up. And Forrest is just flying through life.

But Chris, the changing of the chocolates, quote, in particular with something that Winston Groom hate it. He said, everywhere I go, people send me chocolates. I hate chocolates, and he hated that it was not his line. I prefer the line that they wrote. Yeah, it's better, you know. So Zemeckis was locked in, but Forrest himself still was not. Robert Zemeckis had a different top choice, and it was Bill Paxton.

Hmm, I mean, he does, I think he makes a lot of sense, too. He's just not as big a star, but I could see him doing the role. I could too. He has a similar sweetness to Tom Hanks that I think would have worked in this case. But the producers were like not big enough to carry this movie. No, I mean, this is right around Philadelphia, right? This is right after Philadelphia, one year after. So Philadelphia, I don't think, would have come out, but he would have at least been attached to it if not have filmed it.

Yeah. Once Hank's got his hands on the final screenplay, though, he said he was in and they dropped all the other choices and said, lock it in, boys. But Bob Zemeck has called him up and said, Tom, I cannot make a movie without the star of the movie being my soulmate. So you and I have to be joined at the hip, and they were. With Zemekis and Hanks finally on board, suddenly it was go time. And according to Groom, he said, I have never seen a movie get made so fast in my life from this point forward. Sally Field was cast as Mama Gump. Jody Foster, Nicole Kidman, and Demi Moore were all considered for the role of Jenny before Robin Wright landed it.

I think they got the right one there. Nicole Kidman could have been interesting. Yeah, I agree with you. Gary Seneas was cast as Lieutenant Dan, came a course from a very strong. stage and character actor background when he was 18 years old, he had co-founded Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater, but Forrest Gump was really his big mainstream breakthrough. And the role of Lieutenant Dan was very, very personal for Gary Sinise. He had actually been working with Vietnam veterans since the mid-80s. He had a long line of vets in his own family, his wife's two

brothers, her sister's husband, a Navy father who had actually developed film and photographs from War Zones. And he prepared for the role by watching documentaries and reading a book by Lewis Puller, who was a triple amputee who had stepped on a booby trap. And after his research, Cinesse went to Zemeckis and Roth with some concerns about the script. He basically said a lot of the stuff in here with Lieutenant Dan is not believable. He said, you know, he would not be like able to do these things at certain points in his recovery, like going to bars around Saigon. And Cineas said, we need to change this stuff to make it more realistic. And they actually did. Good. Now, the role of Bubba was not originally to be played by Michael T. Williamson. They offered it to someone else.

Do you have any guesses as to who they might have offered this to in the early 90s? He's a comedian. He became a very, very big comedian. But he wasn't a very big comedian yet? He was not. Dave Chappelle. Dave Chappelle. Okay.

Yeah, I was going to be Eddie Murphy before that, but he was already too big. That's right. Interesting. So Dave Chappelle turned down the role, saying that the script stunk. He basically felt like it had created a black friend whose only purpose was to make the white leader look smarter by comparison. It is worth noting that in the book, Bubba is white.

They met in college, and Bubba is quite a bit smarter in the book than he's portrayed in the movie. So, I mean, I'm not going to discount what Dave Chappelle is saying there. No, I won't either. When I watched it, I mean, yes, he is definitely the token black guy, you know, in the movie for sure. But I viewed him as equivalent in terms, like, he and Bubba were two peas in a pod, is kind of how I felt when they were both in. That's what he says. Me and Bubba was two peas in a pod.

In Vietnam. And it was Forrest's singular focus on whatever task. he has at hand, has met its match with Bubba's singular focus on getting back home and starting a shrimping, you know, business. And I liked that element of the story. I actually, you know, I remembered when I was younger watching this and thinking that Bubba was like really dumb. He's not at all. Like, upon rewatching it, he just comes from like a simpler background. That's really it with Bubba. I don't want to discount Dave Chappelle's criticism here because I actually, you know, he's correct. Like, they changed something from the book and it's maybe not serving Bubba as well.

as they could have developed that character, but he's also not what I remembered. Now, when it came to Michael T. Williamson, he was not a known actor at all. He was actually working as an acting coach, and he had already coached two students who auditioned for the role, and they didn't get it. He asked their blessing, if they were okay with him going out

for the same role, they said, yes. But his agent called him back and said, I'm sorry, I can't get you an audition. They don't know who the hell you are. But he didn't give up, and they squeezed him in on a Saturday. He stuffed his lip full of paper, and as soon as he walked in there,

he was Bubba. I know we've said this every time he pops up in a movie, but I love Michael T. Williamson. I do wonder if because he looked so different in this, it, like, impacted his ability to get roles as many roles as I think he deserved moving forward, but he's so good. If you haven't watched Justified, watch it. Yeah, no, it's as far as his natural persona as Forrest Gump is from Tom Hanks. It's farther, honestly. Like, when you watch other performances of his, like, I'm thinking particularly, you know, Lyme House on Justified, he is. Or heat. Or heat, yes. He can be very sin. sinister. Like, he's got a lot of weight to him, and it's, yeah, I just think he's a wonderful actor. So the cast was all set. But as Tom Hanks was figuring out his character, they hit a wall on one pretty crucial detail. What's Forrest Gump going to sound like? Should he have an accent? No accent? So they had Hanks read lines every single way trying to figure it out. He was really struggling with it.

And then it all changed as soon as they cast Michael Connor Humphreys as young Forrest Gump. Here is Tom Hanks on Graham Norton talking about it. I didn't realize that she were coming this time that in Forrest Gump, the famous voice that you use as Forest, it came from a specific person. Young Michael Connor Humphreys who played young Forrest Gump. We were trying to, Bob Zemeckis came to me, say, hey, we got a problem on this. You had to teach this kid how to talk the way you want to talk. And I thought, why don't I just talk the way he talks right now? And so we started hanging out with him. And he was from Mississippi, deep in Mississippi. And he had this hard G. at the end of this, if he said it wasn't thinking, it was thinking, it wasn't making, it was making,

and says, what does your father do? My dad makes grease, that's what he said. And he said, he make, I don't understand, is grease something you make? Yes. He says, what do you do with grease? Well, grease goes into all different sorts of products. I said, well like, what products?

Oh, grease goes into lips. And I was like, well, I'm not, this is it. This is it. So somewhere I have cassettes, hours and hours of me just making chit-chat with a very young Michael. But he doesn't talk like that anymore. No, no, no, he doesn't talk. It was just a, you know, we have seven, eight years old. He was a young man. And that's, that was the vernacular that we spoke in. And it was priceless. Oh, that's adorable. And, of course, a huge success for you. Meanwhile, the production team needed to figure out where Forrest Gump was going to be filmed. Now, naturally, production designer Rick Carter initially went to Alabama. But they pretty quickly discovered that real Alabama was not anything like what was described in Forest Gump. And so they were like, this is not it. They traveled around until they finally landed in Savannah, which is what you see with the bus stop, the old oak trees, dripping in Spanish moss behind him.

And that was the visual aesthetic they were looking for. But they still needed a house. So location scouts searched all over the country, and they couldn't find it until one scout drove up an old tree-lined oak alley in Yamassie, South Carolina, and arrived at Bluff Plantation. When Zemeckis saw the location, he absolutely loved it. He's like, this is it. This is Forrest Gump's childhood home. But there was a problem, Chris.

There was actually no home there. There was just a lodge used for weekend hunting. So the house that you see in Forrest Gump, the old Southern house, was built entirely from scratch by the team. Amazing. It is amazing. They studied Southern houses in the area.

They combined all the best features. They worked so hard. on this. They showed so many different versions to Zemeckis. They got it exactly what he wanted. They flew in artisans from all over the country, refinished the wood, so it looked like it had been there for hundreds of years. When I found out this was built for the movie, I was blown away. It looks incredible. Yeah, I would have guessed it was not. Maybe the interior. They are on a soundstage. For some of it, but there are also a lot of shots out of the foyer. You know what I mean? You can see it, I would mention too. We just talked about Bagonia and the house and that was also

completely built. It's a fraction of the size. But I love this. It's, this is the Hollywood magic. You know, these technicians come in and they, it's perfect. It is visually remarkable. It's, it's really sets the scene. It's so worth it. Well, Chris, everything was going great until Paramount decided to take a little luxie at the budget. And it became quickly apparent that the original $40 million was not going to cut it. They were short by at least $10 million, more like $15 million. And that figure was going to go up because Industrial Light and Magic was doing the visual. effects. So Sherry Lansing was really worried this whole thing is getting way too expensive. She wanted to cut two story arcs that she deemed unnecessary, the shrimping and Vietnam.

I was going to guess the running was going to be one that was going to be cut, but the running's probably relatively affordable because... Well, we'll get there. You could actually shoot some of that second unit, because my guess is a lot of those white shots are not Tom Hanks. They're not. Yeah. But Zemeckis said, no way. He was not going to cut those. And so Sherry Lansing, had a tough call to make, and Chris, she made it. Right before filming was set to begin, she called Zemeckis's agent and said, we need $10 million off this budget or this movie does not go ahead. And according to Zemeckis, this request took place 48 hours before cameras started rolling. Other sources say they were given a couple of weeks. I don't know. Either way,

the message was the same. But Zemeckis wasn't having it. He agreed to stay with Forrest Gump, though, and he worked with Tom Hanks on a deal. Hanks and Zemex each agreed to take a 50% pay cut of their salaries, which got them halfway, but in exchange, they would get a bigger share of the gross profits down the line. Lansing agreed, and she agreed to bump Paramount's investment up by $5 million getting it to what they needed. So Forrest Gump could finally move forward. And principal photography began the summer of 1993. Zemeckis brought in his longtime cinematographer, Don Burgess. Filming takes place all over the country. We're talking South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Los Angeles, Arizona, Maine, Montana. This was a huge production.

And while Hanks had found Forrest's accent before they started filming, he had not really found the character. According to Hanks, he said, quote, Bob said, look, I know what you're trying to do. I know how nervous you are and how self-conscious this can be before we get into the groove, but we're not going to use any of these first three days because I don't think you've got it. You haven't got the character. And I said, I don't. You're right.

And he just said, don't try so hard. And from that, everything settled down in a moment's notice. So they literally threw out everything they filmed in the first. first three days. Now, of course, they were going to be spending a lot of time in South Carolina. So production designer Rick Carter decided to also create Vietnam in South Carolina, which makes sense. There were tidal marshes and waterways that could kind of double for it. They had military advisor Dale Dye set up the camps exactly the way they were set up in actual Vietnam. For the helicopters, they filmed one or two real ones and then composited them into shots to make them look like there were more.

There's a lot of great compositing in that sequence. Yes. Because cutting behind those palms, trees. I'm guessing actually some of the palm trees were layered in two now that I think about it. And they do a really good job of layering in those distant low rising mountain ranges that you see in Vietnam beyond the rice fields. Yeah. It's really well done. They did an incredible job. And speaking of this, we have to talk about the visual effects in this movie. Now, aside from the more obvious effects like we discussed, there's a lot of things that you may not even notice that are incredible effects in this. The birds flowing out of the fields, the feather. The feather's amazing. The feather is amazing. I'm pretty sure that first crane shot, Lizzie, must be like a stitch of some, like when they go up to the sky and they stitch.

It's an incredible crane shot to bring you all the way down to Forest Feet. It's so good. Well, and the feather is shot on a blue screen and then blown around to kind of, you know. Right. They also speed up the tree shadows overhead when Forest is running to make it look more dreamlike. There's just tons of stuff happening all the time. They do some fun Texas switches when, like, Tom Hanks will cross screen and then the camera will pan and he's now way further ahead and it's clearly like they've swapped in another run. Right. You know what I'm saying? They do it when he jumps off the boat and comes up the dock.

There's a lot of fun practical effects that they do in this movie too. There's a lot, yes. Now, on the large scale, the production faced three visual effects hurdles that 90s technology had not yet caught up to. One, how do you convincingly turn a full-bodied man into an amputee? Two, how do you digitally swell a massive crowd, something we've talked about before. And of course, how do you insert Forrest Gump into archival footage? So, let's talk about problem number one first, because up until this point, film effects hid legs, usually through false floors and false beds. But in Forrest Gump, they did not want to do that. They wanted to make the audience think that they knew how the trick worked and then show them something that seemed

impossible to fake. There's one example I love so much in this movie. It might be what we're about to talk about. So in addition to painting out Gary Seneas's legs frame by frame, which is is incredibly painstaking, and they did do this. He wore blue stockings on set. They also added some stuff in, and maybe this is what you're thinking about. In one scene where Lieutenant Dan swings his legs around after falling off of his wheelchair,

they digitally insert a table next to him, where his real legs would have hit if they were there, which is so cool. Yeah, it's the New Year's. He falls off his wheelchair. There's a table that sits there that looks like a giant spool that's been turned on its side. They establish it.

they opened the scene with a shot of that table to establish it. So you know that table's there. And then in the wide shot, he swings his legs so close to it that you think, oh my, how could he possibly have done that? And if you pay very close attention and you're in high deaf and you pause it, you can maybe just make out the like mat cut where they inserted the table, but it's so well done. It's really smart. And I never would have noticed, you know, if I wasn't really looking for it. No, I love that. That's such a smart way to do this. But as you pointed out, it was not just digital. They also did have to rely on some practical effects. Zemeckis actually hired a magician to design a special optical illusion wheelchair. So the seat slanted back a little bit, and it had a platform in the

middle, which allowed Cines to bend and then tuck his legs in completely. So it actually looked normal from any angle, and this is if they needed to shoot around him. But he could only sit in it for about 10 minutes because it was incredibly uncomfortable. Yeah. All right, second, let's talk about the crowd. So this is, of course, the D.C. rally scene from the Lincoln Memorial. And to film a crowd that looked true to size, they would have needed about 250,000 people, which obviously can't do. Yeah, wasn't that like the Abby Hoffman rally? Yes. So the visual effects solution was to film 1,500 extras and rearrange them in every take into different quadrants and then using augmentation, multiply them, and move them to different parts of the frame. So this is, of course,

something that honestly wasn't really solved until Lord of the Rings, right? But they were shooting in November, it was freezing cold, and halfway through the day after lunch, Chris, half the extras just yeed it out of there. They left. It was too cold, which means the visual effects team had to do this with half the number of extras they had originally planned for. This was incredibly tedious. It took months for them to actually be able to complete this, and it honestly looks pretty great. Is it basically, if I'm remembering correctly, they did something very similar in Braveheart? Yes, they did. Although Braveheart, I think, was, a bit easier because they're panning down one long line, kind of. Versus this, you're actually

seeing like a full wide shot of everything. So they really had to fill it all in. Right. Yeah. Now, of course, Forrest Gump is probably most famous for what effect, Chris? The historical footage of various events that Forrest has been inserted into. That's right. desegregation, you know, in Alabama, the George Wallace scene meeting JFK. Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson. Yes, John Lennon. One of my favorite things is that I believe Lyndon Johnson was notorious for, I kid you not, like, showing off his penis. Yeah, he was. He had a very large penis and would show it to men to intimidate them at the Capitol.

And I just love that Forrest shows him his butt. I just think it's such a fun little Easter egg in this movie. It is funny. So at the time, there was a very primitive version of this effect that had been seen in things like Zellig, which you referenced and in the line of fire. But in comparison, the work in Forrest Gump is genuinely groundbreaking. They actually pioneered new CGI techniques under the Lerlis. leadership of ILM's Ken Ralston, and Ralston had served as a special effects supervisor for

six Zemeckis films at this point, including Forrest Gump. He'd won two of his four Oscars for Zemeckis films, which was Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Death Becomes Her, the two that you just referenced. So together, they had to basically invent the technology for this. According to Ralston, quote, in films that Bob Zemeckis makes, 20% of everything he wants to do is impossible up to that point. The problem is, in this case, they were still bound by reality. They could, only work with whatever archival footage they could find. So researchers poured through hundreds of hours of newsreel footage looking for anything that mirrored something close to what was in Eric Roth's script. And there were cases where they actually had to rewrite the stories around the clips that they

could find. For example, the storyline of Forrest playing football was because they found footage of Kennedy talking with the All-American football team. Right. But in the, I need to pay scene where Gump shakes hands with Kennedy, the scene was originally written for the Rose Garden, but they could. couldn't find a good comp of that anywhere. They did find a good shot of Kennedy's shaking hands, but the background wasn't right. So what they actually do in this, they rewrite it to take place in the Oval Office, and then they rotoscoped Kennedy out of the original footage and dropped him into footage with Tom Hanks that they had shot on a fake Oval Office set. I think that's why

that one actually looks good. Better to me than some of the other ones. I agree. I think when he's inserted, is it with Dick Cavett and John Lennon later? That one looks not good. I think that one's a little rougher because he's in the middle and we know everything around him is seamless. So I do think that the Kennedy one works particularly well. I agree, but it was unbelievably hard to get this. I can't imagine. Because they had to copy the lighting and shadows on Kennedy's face from different footage and replicate those inside the fake Oval Office. He had to perform against blue loose screens, he had to fit extremely specific marks to be in Kennedy's eyeline. It was crazy. The other issue is that the original footage was handheld. So it's jittery. It's 16 millimeter. It's

constantly moving and zooming in and out. So they had to literally replicate the exact camera setup as the original footage in order for it to look as good as it does. And I agree with you. I think this is the most successful one in the bunch. They're manually motion tracking across not just the three axes of, you know, up, down, sideways, but forward and back. But then, as you mentioned, Lizzie, the Zoom as well on top of that. It's amazing. Then, of course, they have to go in afterwards and make the footage that they've shot in the Oval Office look as aged and scratchy as Kennedy. And I agree with you, I think that match is better than when they're dropping him into the older footage. They also did some pretty crazy island of Dr. Moreau things where they would, like, cut off Lyndon

Johnson's head from one thing and composite it onto a stand-in's body in order to get that whole sequence where he shows off his butt. I was wondering if they did some mouth replacements how they would do animals, you know, like in the 90s. They look like the annoying orange sometimes. Yes. John Lennon in particular. The sponge monkeys from Quiznos. Yes. I love this thing. They are gone for you. I miss them. Bring that back. Yes. Yeah, the making people talk convincingly was really, really hard. They did use voice impersonators to create new dialogue, and then they tried to digitally alter the lip movements, which is what you're talking about. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But this actually brought up a lot of concerns about how this technique could be wielded in the future.

In 1994, Ken Ralston told the LA Times, we've opened a whole new can of worms. My feeling is that this is a gentle nudge pointing out the possibilities of a potentially horrific problem. We got the rights to the footage we used, but what's legal and what's moral doesn't necessarily mix. Yeah. Interesting parallels. It's, you know, parallels to AI everywhere. Now, I want to talk briefly about some of the practical effects in this movie because they are amazing. The scene of Forrest running and his leg braces bursting off of his legs, that's completely practical.

That's crazy. They removed the screws and the joints. They rigged them with small explosive charges, triggered by remote control. Wow. This obviously scared eight-year-old might. but the crew told him he was going to be fine, and he was. It looks amazing. I wondered if they were using a body double, but they weren't. No, no, it's him. He actually had a great time on this set. Apparently, he just played a lot of Legends of Zelda with Sally Field. Hey, great game. Great game. And with

Sally Field, what's not to like? Yeah, Sally Field, who had co-starred with Hanks, I think, like, I'm here 15 years earlier and all of a sudden she's his mom. I know. I know. Well, she starts out quite young. I know, yeah. They're only 10 years apart. Actually, the old age makeup on her is Very good. I agree. I said the same thing. I think it looks excellent because they don't do that much. It's very subtle. It's like Marlon Brando and the Godfather. It looks really good. I agree. And by the way, one last thing on Michael, before we go back to the effects, he, in the principal sex scene, they didn't tell him, obviously, what was going on at all. They said, oh, the principal is just doing some push-ups upstairs. Can you make the noise of someone doing push-ups? And that's what he does. Yeah. I actually like the weirdness of that scene quite a bit. The movie really does sink in. to some sentimentality sometimes that could be quicksand, but scenes like that give it the strangeness

it needs. I agree. I agree. Last thing here, I want to talk about that massive napalm strike when forest rescues Bubba because the way they did this is amazing. So they actually found a property in South Carolina that was supposed to be cleared for condominiums and they got permission to straight up blow up the whole thing. So that shot that looks like a continuous shot of forest running out the jungle. Here's how they did it. First, they filmed a stuntman, carrying another stuntman, running at the camera from quite a distance. As he runs closer, you'll notice when you're watching, he trips and dips down a little bit, pops back up. When he pops back up, that is Tom Hanks and Michael T. Williamson. He's not actually carrying Michael T. Michael T. is hoisted on a huge wire rig hanging

from a crane. That's how he's able to move as quickly as he is. And obviously the wires are painted out in post. Then they went in, rigged everything with giant tubes of, you know, pyro material and gasoline. And what they did was they shot the explosions at different speeds. And then they composited the shot. So they obviously blocked the actors in front of where the pyro was going to be. Then they rotoscope Tom and Bubba out of the original scene running, including all the little bushes and leaves that were overlapping their legs, add them back into the final scene. And then in the final composite, they also added in computer genesis. generated jets, the stuntman transitioning to Tom Hanks, the actors matted in, painting a new

matching foliage that was timed to the blast explosions. It's amazing. I really think that that shot looks so good. I agree. My only in modern times, not complaint, but the only thing that bumps me about that shot has nothing to do with the execution. It's actually a design choice, and I wonder if Zemeckis would agree. I think that the final explosion gets so close to Hanks and Williamson that I was waiting for an impact, because I've been trained by Hollywood movies for the characters to be blown forward when the explosion gets close. And since that doesn't happen, for some reason, it bumped me a little bit. Again, that has nothing to do with execution. I just noticed it and I was curious like, oh, you know, would

Zemeckis have done it a little differently now, for example? Interesting. But no, it's an incredible effect. Again, because the explosions are real, that effect is actually more believable than I would say the majority of explosions that we see now, you know, compting. Yes. Because it's Difficult to beat a real gasoline explosion captured on camera. It looks amazing. But even though it all looked incredible, and I think everybody on set knew that they were making something pretty groundbreaking, the studio did not.

They wouldn't even let Zemeckis get crew shirts at the end because there was no room in the budget. In a 2024 interview with Mark Maren, Zemeckis explained that there was just a massive disconnect between the crew and the studio, and it really was not a fun movie to make because of this. Paramount just didn't get it. And one sequence the studio especially did not understand was Forrest's marathon run across America. They kept saying, you have to cut this.

Now, I agree with you, Chris. Out of everything that you could cut, I actually think this is the most reasonable thing, although I like it. I like it too, but it is also, it's the last big chunk of the movie as well. And there's reason to be concerned about pacing at this point. Yeah, I think so. But as production flew past budget after budget, they started hiding overages to keep the cameras rolling. and they actually started shooting some scenes in secret. According to Den of Geek, Zemeckis and Hanks treated certain sequences that were deemed unnecessary

as basically indie movies, working with the support of producer Steve Starkey. Hanks and Zemeckis would disappear over the weekends with the bare minimum of crew, and they would shoot all those running moments before heading back to the main shoot in time for Monday morning. They once shot 27 days straight doing this. And also, you guess this, but many of those shots, it is not Tom Hanks even running. It's actually his brother, Jim Hanks, who traveled with a small unit to places like North Dakota. Yeah, I just guessed based on availability. It makes sense, but they have slightly different running styles.

Hank's brother has a more forward-leaning style where his legs kick out a lot further behind him. Chris is a runner. Tom's more of an upright. Tom Hanks, underrated cinematic runner. Closer to a Tom Cruise, very upright runner. Looks great. Looks fast. Well, it is funny, but apparently they tried using other doubles,

but they actually couldn't get close enough to Tom Hanks' run. And his brother told People magazine that it has to do with Gump's stiff, geeky stride. He said, that's a stupid Hanks thing. So that's why his brother ended up doing it. Nice. But as they reached the final days of filming Paramount had had it. The budget was completely blown and they were like, you're done. The tap is cut off.

But there was one scene left to shoot and it's the scene where Forrest decides to stop running. And Zemeca still wanted to shoot that one last scene. and he wanted to shoot it in Monument Valley. In Zemeckis's words, the guy who was running the studio at the time, he was screaming. He said, you realize what problems you're causing me in New York? You realize what problems? I said, I'm sorry. He said, shoot the goddamn thing in Griffith Park.

And Bob Zemeckis said, no. And as you'll remember, that scene is indeed shot in Monument Valley. So how did Zemechus do it? Well, they managed to scrape together the extra funds to pull together a skeleton crew and fly there for a one day shoot. But there was one other problem. It was now December. and there was a chance that it could snow.

And the studio was like, well, we're not paying for weather insurance. So you don't get to do this. And Zemeckis and Hank said, yes, we do. They joined forces and they personally paid for the weather insurance out of their own pocket to be able to capture that footage. Turned out to be a beautiful day. And Hank said that in return for writing that check to pull off that run, Zemeckis really allowed him to be a major collaborator in post-production,

where he could help Kraft Gump alongside Zemeckis. After this, principal photography wrapped in December of 1993, but the problems sure did not stop there. Now, you mentioned this, but this has one of the craziest soundtracks of all time. I had the CD of this. Did you have it? I don't think I did, but this was, I remember, you know, my dad was into CCR, and so, like, that was very noticeable. This was the first time I heard Sloop John B. I really liked that song.

Then you get into Leonard Skinner and everybody. I mean, it's got to have 50 top 40 hits throughout this movie. It's nuts. It's crazy. And executive music producer, Joel Sill, found himself up against the clock to license one of the most ambitious, as you pointed out, soundtracks of all time, because it was covering three decades. Yeah. And Paramount was like, uh, you have zero dollars.

And it's not like Warner Brothers, which has like Warner Brothers music, you know? No. No, they said you literally don't get any more money for this. And of course, licensing music is very expensive. And at this point, Paramount and Zemeckis were basically not. on speaking terms. They're not going to do him any favors. So Zemeckis was like, all right, you know what we're going to do? We're just going to put in all the music that we really like. I don't care what it costs. And we're going to show it to a test audience. And then we'll show the results of that test audience to Paramount. They did this. Of course, the audiences all highlighted the soundtrack and how much they loved it.

And Paramount eventually did open its wallets to pay for the songs. But they gave the staff six weeks to get the clearance, which is not enough time. So he actually brought in a clearance specialist named Jill Myers. And what she did was pretty revolutionary. She was like, we do not have time to negotiate with every single label individually. We literally can't do it. So they actually gathered like a hundred of the people that they needed to clear these songs into a screening room. They screened the rough cut and had Zemeckis explain why the music was important. And then at the end, they were like, are you in or are you out? And most of them agreed. It's very smart. Except for a few holdouts.

Initially, Sill actually struggled to get the doors music to clear it. They were very picky about what their music was included in, but they were brought in for a specific screening. And afterwards, they actually asked that more of their music get put in the movie. Can we get the skinnered out of here and get more of the doors? But actually, the biggest battle, Chris, was on a song that you mentioned. It was fortunate son. Oh. Here's why.

A little bit of a side quest here. but it is interesting. John Fogarty was in the middle of a 20-year-long legal battle with Saul Zense. Now, Credens Clearwater Revival had made a fortune for Saul Zense, who owned the copyrights to their songs, the vast majority of which were, of course, written, produced and sung by John Fogarty. After Cretton's Clearwater split up, John Fogarty was very unhappy with his deal, and he actually had to cede an even greater portion of his royalties to Saul Zense to get him out of the deal so that he could record elsewhere. And then to top things off, a lot of the money that he had made was lost in an offshore tax shelter deal, also arranged by Saul Zence and Fantasy, the studio that he had been recording with.

So, the real cherry on top is that Saul alleged that John Fogarty's song, The Old Man Down the Road, was an illegal remake of Credence's run through Centerfield, which Zence owned the copyright for. So this guy actually sued John Fogarty for plagiarizing himself. The Hutzpah. Yeah. All to say, by the mid-90s, John Fon's, John. Fogarty did not want his music used if Saul Zense was going to profit from it. I think that's a pretty reasonable standpoint to take at this point. But Bob Zemeckis had his heart set on Credence-Clearwater's fortunate son. It was absolutely perfect. They really tried to make a case for using it in the

movie and John Fogarty fought them tooth and nail. He actually called the president of Paramount pictures and said, please, please, please, don't use my music in this. It has to do with Saul's Entz. And you know what? Saul's Entz said, go right ahead and use it. And Bob Zamekis said, okay, and they did. Interesting. Yeah. Doesn't make me feel great about it. I think it's pretty shitty. I was trying to think of what else would make sense to go there. I get that it's the perfect song. It's an amazing song. Like, I understand that. And I understand that he didn't legally hold the rights to it, but you knew he did not want it in there and they did it anyway. Yeah. I was trying to think of a, They do all along the watchtower later in that sequence, right?

Yeah, that could totally have worked there. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, that's, yeah, it's too bad. I know. I mean, put the doors in there. Riders on the storm. There's plenty of things that could go in there. Just do the opening of a popocalyps now?

Yeah, just do that. Why not? Well, Forrest Gump opened in theaters on July 6, 1994, and it became a box office, Goliath. It grossed $330 million in the U.S. alone, and 661 million worldwide. It was the fourth highest grossing global release in history at that time. Also, sales of the novel went through the roof,

so Winston Groom was making kind of a lot of money on this. And with his newfound fame and fortune, he said he upgraded to a better brand of toilet paper. But he also had not forgotten about that 3% of net profits deal that he'd signed, to which Paramount said, what profits? Yeah, we're losing money on this movie. Uh-huh. because in May of 1995, a Paramount Studios financial statement was leaked that Forrest Gump was losing money.

According to them, Gump had not made a profit as of December 31st, 1994, and was still $62 million in the red, despite having sold more than $660 million in tickets worldwide. Here's how they kind of break this down. $73.5 million for promotion, prints, and advertising. $62 million for the costs of distribution to theaters, $62 million for fees to star Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis, who agreed, as we know, to defer their upfront fees in exchange for a percentage of gross revenues. Gross, not net. $6 million in interest charges for the film's financing and more. Now, they had had similar lawsuits in the past.

In fact, humorist Art Buchwald had gone through this ordeal over coming to America. And so Groom called him up and asked for advice and then hired the same lawyer that Buckwald had to take on Paramount. And this really pissed off Paramount because Groom was essentially suggesting that the studio was playing dirty with its accounting, which they maybe were a little bit. I was going to say, what? Who? Excuse me?

Yeah. And Paramount was like, Groom, just have some patience. You know, they even gave him a $250,000 check as like, and look, look, we're just trying to give you the money, no strings attached. And he ripped it up. He was like, no. You gave me 3% of the profits, which is worth way more than $250,000. Similarly, on Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black, I can't remember the writer's name, but it was

the same Hollywood math. Men in Black made Bucco Box, and he saw none of it. Well, you might like to know that less than three weeks after Groom and Paramount resolved their differences, they did settle. He also sold them the rights to his sequel, Gump & Co. which addressed the existence of the movie in an outright sale, which was worth well over a million dollars. At this point, of course, Groom backtracked, saying, oh, the recent flap with Paramount, you know, it was a misunderstanding that got out of hand. I'm glad you got your money, sir.

So obviously, Tom Hanks also made Boku bucks on this. He ended up walking away with about $65 million. And it led the pack at the 67th Annual Academy Awards with 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Actor, Director, and Adapted Screenplay. It was the most nominations of film had received since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. This would, of course, be superseded by Titanic, and then most recently by Sinners, which has now set the record for most Academy Award nominations. Now, Forrest Gump beat the Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction to win Best Picture. Bob Zemeckis took home, Best Director, Tom Hanks, Best Actor.

He won his second consecutive win, of course, after Philadelphia, and Eric Roth did win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Ken Ralston and the whole visual effects team also won, as did Arthur Schmidt, for Best Film Editing. Wasn't Hank's the first one to get back-to-back best actors since, like, Spencer Tracy, back in the 30s? Yes. And then who won score? It went to the Lion King, Hans Zimmer. Well, you know, well-deserved, candidly. And I love Sylvester's score in this movie, but this movie relies arguably more on the needle drops than it does on its score. In a lot of senses, it's actually very similar to Pulp Fiction. Both are highly episodic, somewhat unusually structured films that are sprawling, exploring very different aspects of

America, and they rely on an incredible number of pop-hit needle drops to propel the story forward. Very true. Now, Chris, you referenced this. We're not going to get into it a ton, because frankly, we don't have a ton of time, but I do think it's interesting that the National Review cited Forrest Gump multiple times as one of the best conservative movies of all time. And I think this is weird. It's interesting because everybody who made it is kind of like, that was not our intention at all. You know, this is about taking care of everyone. This is about lifting everyone up. In fact, Tom Hanks said the film is non-political and thus non-judgmental. I think the strongest case would be this is a libertarian film. Sure. It is a deeply centrist or apolitical film to the point

where at the moment when Forrest presumably will make a political statement, the mic is literally pulled away from him. Although, you will notice that Abby Hoffman said that that was beautiful and you nailed it. He did. So it suggests a wait in one direction potentially. Right, but you're right. They don't go for it. Or it suggests that Abby Hoffman is actually dumb. Yeah, it's true. I feel that perhaps a more moving message that could be taken from the movie is that it is morality, which I think it's interesting is clearly innate and derives from within. Forrest doesn't seem like a particularly religious person. For example, I know he starts going to church later in the film, and it's very fun. But it is morality that you need to make sure that your

morality is not hijacked by ideology, and that if your morality stays true, right? And it could be right-wing ideology, someone like George Wallace. It could be left-wing ideology. You know, you have Jenny's character, for example, but Forrest navigates it with a very personal sense of morality of right and wrong. And so maybe that's more an interpretation that makes sense. I also, I think it's interesting that they try to sort of claim this as a conservative movie. I don't think it's painting a particularly great picture of the military at all specifically. I agree. Someone said it was jingoistic and pro-American. I actually think they did a good job with Vietnam because they never showed the enemy. They never suggest that this is a good fight. They just saw the cost to American soldiers.

It's a mess. It's a confusing mess. The pointless deaths of all of these characters with no clear objective other than to find Charlie who to Forrest's point, we're just trying to find this guy Charlie. I have no idea who he is. Yeah, he doesn't even know what he's fighting for. And Lieutenant Dan is someone who who, you know, has lived his entire life thinking that it's his job to go out and get killed for America. And it's actually Forrest Gump that essentially says, no, your life is worth more than that. I agree. And he is, you know, furious with him for that initially. In fact, speaking of Gary Seney, he actually continued to work with Vietnam veterans after this movie.

The disabled American veterans invited him to their national convention, and they honored him with an award for his role as Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump. And after 9-11, Seneas became even more aggressive about supporting America's troops. He volunteered with the U.S.O. He formed the Lieutenant Dan band, performed for service members all over the world. And speaking of 9-11, it again comes back and has an impact on our story here today. I mentioned that this movie was of a different time. And what I meant, really, is that it was pre-9-11. They actually were going to try and make a sequel for this. Eric Roth was working on it. It was codenamed the canon. The faux title referred to a fake-out prologue, based on the short story, a fight with a canon by Victor Hugo. But

Eric Roth turned in the sequel script on September 10th, 2001. And as soon as the Twin Towers fell, they realized they could not make a movie in Forrest Gump's sort of rose-colored glasses view of America because it didn't really exist anymore. Roth, Feinerman, and all of the producers, quote, all felt this part of our history with Forrest Gump was done and that they would never pursue a sequel from that point forward. Chris, that wraps up our coverage of Forrest Gump. What went right? So much, if I may give a couple shoutouts before I do my official Wotment, right? A very precocious young Haley Joel Osment, he's adorable at the end of this film.

He's so good. He's so cute. He's so teeny. I really like him. I agree with you, Lizzie. I think Robin Wright is actually pretty transcendent in a role that could be viewed as one-dimensional. I don't think it's fair, and I think it's a little reductive to say that, you know, Jenny's the villain. Jenny's a selfish friend.

Well, she is selfish, but I mean. She's self-destructive, but we see it very much where that comes from. You know, I like this movie as a fish out of water story. I was, again, when I was trying to figure out, you know, what does the disabled community think about this movie? There was just some interesting things I'd like to call out that we didn't, you know, talk about Michelle Jace. She's an autistic artist and educator in Southern California. She wrote, Forrest Gump isn't a disability movie. You just made it into one.

It is a movie about all of the successes and heartbreaks in an American man's life. Some Americans use mobility equipment and have physical therapy. Americans can have speech delay. I agree with this. Like, if anything, he's actually, he's a professional athlete. Literally. Which is what we eventually reveal. He literally has the hand-eye coordination of Roger Federer. Multiple times over. He is incredibly successful as a college athlete. He becomes a ping-pong star.

Yeah. Like, he's a multi-sport athlete. So, like, we can set that aside, obviously. And I agree. I think this is somebody who is accepted and internalized a sluror that's given to him in the film. Right. But he doesn't allow it to define him in the end. And he actually is very much not that thing. I agree. Some people have written, this is a neurodivergent character written, like a neurodivergent mishmash pastiche written by neurotypical people. I think that's true. True, true. But I actually think Hank finds humanity without, it doesn't feel as exploitative as other representations of, you know, characters like this. I agree with that. And I also think that because it is, as you've said, a tall tale, it is a fairy tale in many ways. that that helps kind of soften the edges of this portrayal as well in the way that some other films didn't quite achieve the same thing. I agree. I have to give this one. I'm going to give it to Robert Zemeckis because I was going through his filmography, and I think Forrest Gump is his best movie. There are some others I maybe prefer who framed Roger Rabbit. I really like. Death Becomes

her always a really weird little place in my heart. Back to the Future is great. Contact? No, not a fan. Whoa, David's going to get you for that. I know. I think it's fine. Let me rephrase. It's an enjoyable movie. I don't think it's at the same level as some of these other ones.

All I'll say is I completely understand, or I think I understand, much of the criticism aimed at this movie. Yeah. I think so much of it is completely valid. That being said, this movie is a crazy accomplice. Like, he directed the shit out of this movie. It's just the set pieces, the momentum, the pace. Everything looks so good. 30 years later, everything looks so.

So good. I agree. As a movie, it's hard to beat. And so I just got to give it to Zemeckis. Chris, since you mentioned Zemeckis' filmography, and of course this came up and back to the future, but the star of Used Cars, do you know where Kurt Russell appears in this movie? No. Does his voice appear in something? Yeah. Oh, what's his voice appearing? He's Elvis. Oh, that's cool, because he played Elvis in the John Carpenter TV movie that they did as well. It's obviously not his body, but it is his voice. No, yeah. They did.

a great job with whoever played his face in the blurred out reflection that you see. Yeah, looks really good. That looked exactly like Elvis. Yeah. Last thing, I had Gary Seneas and Greg Kinnear face blindness in the 90s. I could not tell them apart. Gary Seneas is like if you turn Greg Keneer into a snake, I feel. Yeah, they're both wonderful. And then I also had Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer face blindness in the 90s. I don't know why he could not tell those various people apart. Okay. Kurt Russell, star of executive decision. Yes. Brings it full circle. Yes. I'm going to put what lies beneath and castaway, at least at the same level as Forscope. I'm sorry. I just love them. I think they're very entertaining. I have to give the what went right here to the effects team.

I think that what they did on this movie is... Stans to test of time. Well, because it's not showing off. I just, I love that example of them actually adding something into a scene to make the audience think they know how it's going to work and then it doesn't because of the way that they thought about this. It's just so inventive. It's so cool. You know, the archival footage is honestly like the least interesting part of the effects that they did in this to me. I think it's very fun. I think that example with Kennedy is incredible and that one does look really, really good. And we also have to remember that like, this had not been done before at this level. And it really was groundbreaking. It was amazing to see this in 1994. I have to give it to Ken Ralston, ILM and the entire visual effects team. It just blew me away. The more that I learned about it, I really, really loved it. You know, you mentioned they had a magician on set. Yeah.

A good visual effect works the same way as a good magic trick, right? Mm-hmm. You establish a baseline. You faint at what the audience is expecting, the misdirect, and then you reveal the trick, you know, as something that completely subverts what they were expecting. And a good effect establishes itself in the same way. And like you said, it's just picture perfect in some of these scenes. It's great.

So, Lizzie, are you ready to eat a giant bowl of crow about the genius that is, Robert Zemeckis. Sure. I know in the Back to the Future episode, I said I'm not sure that I really like Robert Semeckis. And then even in that episode, I believe I was looking at his filmography and going, well, wait a minute. Well, this one's pretty good. That one's also pretty good. I like that one. And I said, I didn't like Forrest Gump. And, you know, upon rewatching it for this episode, as I'm sure you can all tell, and we said at the top, I have changed my feelings on Forrest Gump, much in the way that you did, Chris. I do think it's worth a rewatch. I think it's more hopeful than I gave it credit for. It's certainly joyful. And if you just let it wash over you, it is a very

pleasant and lovely experience with perhaps some good messaging behind it. And you know what? I do like Robert Zemeckis. I love Death Becomes Her. I love Castaway. I love what lies beneath. I actually think what I should have said is I don't like Back to the Future. That's the truth. Well, and also post early 2000s, Zemeckis, I think most people would agree, has been a little more hit or miss, a little maybe more focus on the technology. Yeah. With some exceptions, the plane crash scene in flight is a master class on disaster directing. That scene is amazing.

It is the seamless integration of acting with Denzel Washington and effects and direction anyway. But, uh, all right, we will send that clip to Robert Zemeckis and pull him out of his depression. You're pretty good, I guess. From me, someone who can't do anything that you've done across your career. Wouldn't be a podcast without those types of takes. All right, guys, if you're liking this podcast, there's a few easy ways to support. us. Number one, just listen. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate it. Number two, you can leave us a rating and review on whatever podcatcher you're listening to us on. Number three, make sure you hit

follow and or subscribe on whatever podcatcher you are using to follow this show. Number four, you can get bonus episodes now. If you'd like, you can sign up by way of Spotify, Apple, or Patreon for $4.99 a month. You get access to at least one bonus episode a month. These are typically reviews of newer films. We are in the midst at the very tail end, I should say, of our best picture coverage this coming Friday. We are releasing our final best picture tandem, Train Dreams in Frankenstein. And then we're going to be doing a little Oscars live stream on our Patreon, which brings me to Patreon. Patreon is a platform that connects podcasters like ourselves with audience members like you. If you join our Patreon at $5, you get all the bonus episodes. You also get an

ad-free RSS feed and some other goodies, you know, some polls, some little musings by me, etc. And for $50, you can get a deeply problematic Forest Gump style shout out. No. Like one of these. Just kidding. You can do Jenny. You can do whoever you want. I'm going to read it. I'm just going to read it. I'm no Tom Hanks. Adrian Peng Korea. Angeline Renee Cook. Ben Shindleman. Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke. Cameron Smith. C. Grace B. Chris Leal. Chris Zaka. David Friskillante, Darren and Dale Conkling, Don Schiabel, Ellen Singleton, M. Zodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G., film it yourself.

Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, the Broken Glass Kids, Grace Potter, Half Greyhound, James McAvoy, Jared Ugg, Jason Frankel, JJ, JJ Rapido, Jory Hillpiper, Jose Emilano Santo de Giorgio, Karina Kanaba, Kate Elrington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgeslager McCoy, Lazy Freddie, Lena L.J, Lydia Howes, Mark Bertha, Mariposa's humans, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate the Knife, Nathan Santeno, Rosemary Southward, Rural Jura, Sadie, still just Sadie, Scott Oshita, Somnishinani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson, the Provost family, the O's, sound like O's, and there is no. Boone. Thank you all so much. We love you guys. All right. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Lizzie, for that fascinating dive into our favorite Republican film, Forrest Gump. We will see you guys next week with one of our first trips overseas. We're going to be discussing seven samurai in advance of some Star Wars coverage that we have coming since that was a big influence on Mr. George Lucas. And I am very excited. Great. I can't wait. To support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes. subscribe on Patreon, Apple, or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website, What Went Wrong Pod.com, for more info.

What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer, post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krebsaw.