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Ep. 15: How 'Forrest Gump' Fumbles Storytelling and Substance
13 Plays7 months ago
This week, Nate and Chris take a critical look at 'Forrest Gump'—both the chaotic novel by Winston Groom and the sentimental, Oscar-sweeping film adaptation. While the movie has long been a fan favorite and cultural touchstone, its politics are murky and its themes baffling. And the book? Let's just say it didn't age well. From problematic portrayals to incoherent narrative choices, we ask the question: why did this story become the classic it did? Spoiler alert: nostalgia might be doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Also: a very cursed trip to the moon, an orangutan named Sue, and the unfortunate case of Hollywood math.
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Hosts: Nate Day, Chris Anderson
Producer: Nate Day
"Adaptation Theme"
- Written by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow
- Performed by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow, Nate Day
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Transcript
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Podcast Introduction & Book Discussion
00:01:07
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Music
00:01:17
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All right, welcome to Adaptation, the Book to Movie podcast.
00:01:20
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I'm Nate.
00:01:21
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And I'm Chris.
00:01:22
Speaker
And today we are talking about the book and the movie Forrest Gump.
00:01:28
Speaker
But before we dive into that conversation, Chris, how are you doing?
00:01:32
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I am doing wonderful, Nate.
00:01:34
Speaker
How are you today?
00:01:36
Speaker
I'm doing well as well.
00:01:38
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You're coming to us live from New York.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker
New city every time.
00:01:43
Speaker
That's all right.
00:01:44
Speaker
That's a fun way to do it, though.
00:01:47
Speaker
That's going to be our new goal.
00:01:48
Speaker
Okay, good.
00:01:50
Speaker
That'll be fun.
00:01:50
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Just remember to pack your mic wherever you go.
00:01:53
Speaker
Everywhere.
00:01:53
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Yep.
00:01:54
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Yep.
00:01:55
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What you been up to?
00:01:56
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What you been reading?
00:01:58
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So I've finished a couple books in between since we last chatted.
00:02:04
Speaker
I've always meant to get to Alice in Wonderland.
00:02:07
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I think we'll probably inevitably discuss it eventually.
00:02:11
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And I believe this is a twofer.
00:02:13
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I just found the first one on the library app, but the Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
00:02:20
Speaker
Um, so I'm not actually certain which one, if they were back to back, if they were together, but that was a cool little read.
00:02:28
Speaker
Uh, I don't know how long, probably 20 years since I saw the movie.
00:02:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:31
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So that was fun and a really cool book.
00:02:34
Speaker
I definitely recommend called all the Shah's men.
00:02:37
Speaker
Uh, I believe Steven Kinsner is the author.
00:02:40
Speaker
Have you heard of that?
00:02:41
Speaker
No, I don't think I have.
00:02:43
Speaker
Very fascinating.
00:02:44
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It is about how Iran had finally established their own democratic rule and a democratically elected prime minister in the 1950s.
00:02:56
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And the U.S. busted in there and completely demolished it and helped reinstall the Shah, the monarchy, and more or less caused all of the problems that are happening today.
00:03:11
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Yeah, that's pretty on brand.
00:03:15
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Yep, yep, great pattern of it.
00:03:17
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Yeah, yeah.
00:03:19
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Oh boy, I think we'll get a little into American politics in today's discussion too, so interesting parallels sort of between that book and Forrest Gump.
00:03:30
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What art imitates, no, life...
00:03:33
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What, which one, what imitates what?
00:03:35
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Life imitates art?
00:03:36
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Yeah.
00:03:37
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Yeah.
00:03:37
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Or art imitates.
00:03:38
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I think the phrase is life imitates art, but I don't know.
00:03:41
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Both, both happen.
00:03:42
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Yeah.
00:03:42
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I don't remember.
00:03:43
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But yeah, that was a fascinating book.
00:03:45
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Highly recommend that.
00:03:46
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What's been, what's been on the, on the screens for you?
00:03:49
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What have you been watching?
00:03:50
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The new ones I've been watching.
00:03:51
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I saw the Fantastic Four movie, which I thought was actually decent.
00:03:55
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I'm a little superheroed out, but not a bad movie.
00:03:58
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I didn't think.
00:03:59
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Um,
00:04:00
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That was with Pedro Pascal, right?
00:04:02
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Uh-huh.
00:04:03
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For some reason, I feel like he's not in it a ton.
00:04:05
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Like, I don't feel like he was quite as big a deal as the marketing campaign made it out to be.
00:04:10
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But maybe that's just the nature of a movie having four leads, you know, lead characters.
00:04:15
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Yeah.
00:04:16
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But he was good.
00:04:17
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Decent, decent movie for sure.
00:04:18
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And then just last night, I think I watched Happy Gilmore 2.
00:04:22
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Have you gotten around to that one yet?
00:04:24
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Yeah.
00:04:24
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I have not yet.
00:04:25
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I've been waiting to watch it.
00:04:26
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All three of us want to watch it here at the house.
00:04:28
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So we've been waiting for a time when we're all together, but I've heard nothing but good things.
00:04:34
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It's fun.
00:04:35
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It's obviously not like a masterpiece, but you know, that's not what they were going for.
00:04:41
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So it's a good time.
00:04:42
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I think it's, you know, faithful enough to the original while still sort of being on par with like who Adam Sandler is now and kind of who he's become and
00:04:52
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It certainly could have been a lot worse.
00:04:55
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I have grown fonder and fonder of that man as the years go by.
00:04:59
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Yeah, he's I think he's still a very great comedic actor, but he's also an incredible dramatic actor as well.
00:05:05
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He every like two or three years, he stars in a drama from, you know, like an auteur director and is just like unbelievably good.
00:05:14
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Yeah, yeah.
00:05:15
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So I like him a lot.
00:05:17
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Agreed.
00:05:18
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Agreed.
00:05:19
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Introduction to 'Forrest Gump'
00:05:21
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Well, let's dive into our conversation here.
00:05:23
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Forrest Gump, remind me who wrote this?
00:05:26
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This is by a gentleman named Winston Groom.
00:05:32
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Winston Groom Jr., I believe, technically.
00:05:34
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Okay, well, let's get into it.
00:05:36
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Tell me about Winston's book.
00:05:38
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Yeah, Winston Francis Groom Jr., published in 86, essentially around that period in America, similar to...
00:05:49
Speaker
Oh, my gosh, what did we just talk about?
00:05:50
Speaker
Remains of the Day.
00:05:51
Speaker
Goodness gracious.
00:05:53
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It's kind of told as a series of, I guess, not memories of him.
00:05:57
Speaker
It's a gentleman's life, right?
00:06:00
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A bunch of scenes from his life.
00:06:01
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So starting as a child, going through the Vietnam War, going through Lyndon Johnson's presidency and Nixon.
00:06:09
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So I think I was trying to think of this, probably the most current, most modern setting that we've discussed yet.
00:06:15
Speaker
Does that sound right?
00:06:17
Speaker
Jurassic Park was probably set in the 90s as well.
00:06:22
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Yeah.
00:06:22
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OK.
00:06:23
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OK.
00:06:24
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But certainly the most modern and just.
00:06:26
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almost purely wandering around america yeah okay brief synopsis a gentleman with a low iq but also a math savant and also a ripped giant six six 240 pounds in high school goes through this life of absolutely insane scenes just one to the next yeah um
00:06:49
Speaker
Essentially, the first, I'm going to say about 40% of the book was basically the movie.
00:06:54
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Okay.
00:06:54
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Same scenes, including, I don't know if you knew about some of these ones that didn't make the movie, becoming a chess champion, saving Mao Zedong from drowning in a river while he's in China.
00:07:06
Speaker
What?
00:07:08
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Spending four years with a tribe of cannibals in New Guinea after a failed NASA launch.
00:07:15
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:07:15
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where he was on a ship with a woman and an orangutan being sent to the moon.
00:07:21
Speaker
Oh my God, what?
00:07:23
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Being a professional wrestler named The Dunce, in which he was also dressed up in a diaper, as well as peeing himself in the Creature costume in a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon while holding a naked Raquel Welch in his arms.
00:07:40
Speaker
what the hell etc etc etc yep yep it became so clear so quickly uh why they pared down what they did for the movie yeah no kidding that's like problematic really problematic boy oh boy this book
00:08:00
Speaker
It was not very well received initially selling an estimated 30,000 copies in 86 the years thereafter did not become a bestseller until the Tom Hanks film came out I think a decade later is that correct.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, a little, yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
94, yeah.
00:08:17
Speaker
94.
00:08:17
Speaker
30,000 copies, that's got to be nothing for a book, right?
00:08:20
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That's got to be like a bomb.
00:08:22
Speaker
Correct.
00:08:22
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:08:23
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Yes.
00:08:23
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I wrote here fairly autobiographical.
00:08:25
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Clearly not.
00:08:26
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It wasn't based on him.
00:08:28
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But you saw the similarities.
00:08:31
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He is also from Alabama.
00:08:33
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He was also a soldier in Vietnam.
00:08:35
Speaker
And he said the idea for the character or the story was based on a disabled boy his dad grew up with.
00:08:42
Speaker
He in an interview, he said the book kind of wrote itself.
00:08:47
Speaker
Well, not kind of his words verbatim Forrest Gump wrote itself.
00:08:51
Speaker
I did it in six weeks.
00:08:52
Speaker
And in my opinion, you can tell.
00:08:56
Speaker
Really?
00:08:56
Speaker
I mean, outside of the narrative, it's like poorly written.
00:09:00
Speaker
Outside of the narrative, including the narrative, it's poorly written.
00:09:03
Speaker
And deliberately, I mean, it's intended to be first-person view from a gentleman who, again, has a very low IQ.
00:09:10
Speaker
So deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes...
00:09:14
Speaker
But there's no development on that front, including like, yeah, he's chosen by NASA to be on a flight to the moon.
00:09:24
Speaker
And his language has never changed in this entire time in this wild menagerie of experiences.
00:09:30
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:09:32
Speaker
Incredibly gratuitous language, foul racial slurs abounding through the entire book.
00:09:40
Speaker
What?
00:09:41
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I know I was really surprised when I saw when it was published because the whole time I'm reading it in my head, I'm thinking, well, maybe it was, you know, written in the 20s when this is what everybody said.
00:09:53
Speaker
No, written in 86.
00:09:56
Speaker
The name Forrest is actually he is named after a grand wizard in the Ku Klux Klan.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:06
Speaker
Nathan Bedford Forrest.
00:10:08
Speaker
Right.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, it very quickly leaned away from this is a plot mechanism, that being a not super intelligent guy, just the way that he would talk to like...
00:10:23
Speaker
I guess I didn't intend to be here to accuse anyone of anything, but like, did you just want to write the N word a bunch in a book and get away with it because you're an author?
00:10:32
Speaker
Like, absolutely unnecessary.
00:10:34
Speaker
Did not add anything to the story.
00:10:36
Speaker
Well, yeah, sure.
00:10:38
Speaker
It was a slog to get through.
00:10:39
Speaker
This is as close as I've been in a while to not finishing a book.
00:10:44
Speaker
Wow.
00:10:45
Speaker
Wow.
00:10:46
Speaker
And unsurprisingly, won no awards for the book besides becoming a bestseller after the movie came out at the end of a period which Groom himself called eight years of production hell.
Adaptation Challenges of 'Forrest Gump'
00:10:59
Speaker
They had a terrible time getting it there because of how he described the character physically.
00:11:04
Speaker
They had a tough time finding actors for it.
00:11:07
Speaker
Some they said they considered and maybe you saw this as well.
00:11:11
Speaker
Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman.
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:14
Speaker
And then ended up with Tom Hanks.
00:11:16
Speaker
And they told him to, you know, write it differently because that's who they went with.
00:11:20
Speaker
Right.
00:11:20
Speaker
Won no awards for any other books he wrote.
00:11:24
Speaker
I am just astoundingly unimpressed.
00:11:26
Speaker
Wow.
00:11:27
Speaker
Well, dang, I'm sorry that this was my suggestion.
00:11:31
Speaker
I'm sorry I put you through this.
00:11:33
Speaker
No.
00:11:33
Speaker
Well, you know what?
00:11:35
Speaker
I'm glad that we finally I was like, wow, we're getting nothing but bangers.
00:11:39
Speaker
This is getting better.
00:11:40
Speaker
I mean, obviously, we just did one of my top five books ever last episode.
00:11:44
Speaker
So it had to come eventually.
00:11:46
Speaker
But it's also interesting.
00:11:49
Speaker
I believe this is the first one we've done where I saw the movie before I read the book.
00:11:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:11:56
Speaker
And there was a strange flip where the first, again, I'm going to guess 40%, I didn't look exactly where,
00:12:07
Speaker
was basically exactly what happened in the movie.
00:12:10
Speaker
And it was not terribly entertaining because I knew what was coming at the end of each one, right?
00:12:17
Speaker
There's this crazy foil at the end of each absolutely insane plot.
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, he's having this illustrious football career and then fails out of college.
00:12:25
Speaker
So it's done.
00:12:26
Speaker
And then, yeah, he's this ping pong champion.
00:12:30
Speaker
And then in front of the president, he says he has to pee.
00:12:33
Speaker
So it's foil, you know, one thing after another, right?
00:12:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:12:37
Speaker
And then it got into new stuff.
00:12:39
Speaker
And so for the next, we'll call it 20% of the book, it was kind of interesting again.
00:12:44
Speaker
But it was just so clearly this model of absolutely ridiculous, impossible.
00:12:50
Speaker
And supposedly his point was, oh, yeah, anyone can do anything.
00:12:56
Speaker
I don't know, some sort of empowerment.
00:12:58
Speaker
Don't judge people by their cover or something.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:01
Speaker
But in book form, it just winds up.
00:13:04
Speaker
It gets more and more ludicrous.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
To the point where they're he's playing chess with a guy who went to Yale and is now the head of a tribe of cannibals in New Guinea and speaks perfect English, but then still tries to eat him and his friend.
00:13:17
Speaker
Like, just come on, dude.
00:13:19
Speaker
Again, the best synopsis possible is it took him six weeks to write.
00:13:25
Speaker
And you can tell.
00:13:27
Speaker
I found I found a fairly interesting because first I thought I was being hypercritical.
00:13:32
Speaker
So I looked up the New York Times review of it in 86 when it came out.
00:13:40
Speaker
And and their example is OK.
00:13:43
Speaker
So he tried to use all of these different situations as I don't know, caricatures, examples of situations.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
They refer to the wrestling part, the part where he's a wrestler.
00:13:57
Speaker
And that was the most glaring example to them because they say, what is the point?
00:14:03
Speaker
Why satirize professional wrestling, for example?
00:14:06
Speaker
It is a tired exercise.
00:14:09
Speaker
This meretricious sport has been, for years, its own best parody.
00:14:14
Speaker
And that was their example of it becoming just way too predictable and becoming stale, and I could not agree more.
00:14:20
Speaker
Interesting.
00:14:21
Speaker
So maybe that would be less stale if you had not seen the movie, but I don't imagine that that's the case.
00:14:27
Speaker
I think it feels this way no matter what.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:29
Speaker
So that's my take on the book, and I would love to hear better news about the movie.
00:14:36
Speaker
Well, I don't know if it's that much better, to be honest with you.
00:14:40
Speaker
It starts good, but a lot of similar, there's going to be a lot of similar themes in our conversation here.
00:14:45
Speaker
The movie comes out in 1994, directed by Robert Zemeckis, who is kind of one of the living greats at this time, and especially for like critical and commercial success.
00:14:56
Speaker
For example, he's behind the...
00:14:59
Speaker
Back to the Future.
00:15:00
Speaker
Okay, okay.
00:15:01
Speaker
Just a really competent storyteller.
00:15:04
Speaker
And Tom Hanks, it's still fairly early in his career, but he is a star by this time.
00:15:09
Speaker
I believe he's even been Oscar nominated for big at this point.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
I just rewatched.
00:15:16
Speaker
Speaking of movies that you rewatch and you're like, yeah, little problematic.
00:15:20
Speaker
Fair.
00:15:20
Speaker
Big is what I mean.
00:15:21
Speaker
Fair.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yep.
00:15:22
Speaker
For sure.
00:15:24
Speaker
Also stars Robin Wright, Sally Field, and Gary, I believe it's pronounced Sinise.
00:15:29
Speaker
I didn't know Sally Field was in this.
00:15:31
Speaker
She is his mom.
00:15:33
Speaker
So not a very big role, honestly.
00:15:36
Speaker
She probably has maybe eight minutes of screen time.
00:15:39
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:41
Speaker
I think it was just an opportunity to get a little bit of America injected into the casting by putting another sort of living legend in the role there.
00:15:52
Speaker
Another book plug here, if you've not read it, her memoirs, Autobiography, is a fantastic book.
00:15:58
Speaker
Really?
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, she has an interesting story, an interesting career.
00:16:02
Speaker
Yes.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:05
Speaker
I'm glad that you brought that up, though, about Zemeckis, because I saw that that was the director and I don't recall ever seeing this name.
00:16:11
Speaker
So I was wondering, he was bigger at this time period?
00:16:14
Speaker
Yes.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:16
Speaker
He's had a hard time the last couple of years making good movies.
00:16:19
Speaker
He directed the live action Disney Pinocchio remake, which I think is the worst movie I've ever seen.
00:16:25
Speaker
It is so...
00:16:26
Speaker
Bad.
00:16:27
Speaker
I'm not exaggerating.
00:16:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:30
Speaker
Death Becomes Her.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, he was a big deal in like the 80s and 90s.
00:16:34
Speaker
Flight was him with Denzel.
00:16:36
Speaker
He's made some really good stuff, but recent stuff is honestly so unbelievably bad.
00:16:42
Speaker
Interesting.
00:16:42
Speaker
It's really sad.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:44
Speaker
So our man peaked.
00:16:46
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:47
Speaker
And this movie was nominated for 13 Oscars.
00:16:50
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, huge number.
00:16:53
Speaker
One six, which is a big number to go home with as well, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Hanks, Best Director for Zemeckis, and Best Adapted Screenplay as well.
00:17:05
Speaker
It was a huge box office success, a huge hit at the time, which is why the book turned around and became so successful, right?
00:17:12
Speaker
Yep, yep.
00:17:14
Speaker
And...
00:17:14
Speaker
At the time, in the mid-90s, it was considered one of the greatest American films ever made.
00:17:21
Speaker
It's sort of a life-affirming, triumphant story.
00:17:25
Speaker
Like you said, there's a very thin theme of anybody can do anything and you can overcome the obstacles in front of you.
00:17:35
Speaker
It plays out very similarly to the book where you have just these sort of wacky adventures with this guy who is low IQ and has some physical disabilities as well, which I believe is an addition to the movie.
00:17:48
Speaker
He had to wear leg braces as a child.
00:17:50
Speaker
Yep, not part of the book.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:53
Speaker
I bet you that was so... Well, Broome specified when they couldn't find an actor to play him, they asked him to rewrite...
00:18:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:02
Speaker
The character to fit someone they could find.
00:18:05
Speaker
So I wonder if that was the response.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'm curious.
00:18:09
Speaker
I didn't look much into like how they found this story.
00:18:12
Speaker
And honestly, when you said that it spent eight years in pre-production hell, I was sort of surprised just because I hadn't, I didn't come across that.
00:18:21
Speaker
But a lot of times they're trying to figure out a book like this one, they're trying to figure out what adventures to include and which ones to exclude and which ones can we turn into a sort of thematic through line.
00:18:33
Speaker
You know, that all makes sense, especially with a text sort of as chaotic as this one.
00:18:38
Speaker
So like I said, when it came out, very well regarded film.
00:18:42
Speaker
Perception since then has been shifting.
00:18:44
Speaker
As early as 2004, Entertainment Weekly noted in a story that audiences were becoming divided on it.
00:18:50
Speaker
At that point, it was mostly just in terms of some people feeling it was great and others feeling that it was sort of just kitschy melodrama.
00:18:57
Speaker
It was sort of silly that this one story contains or the story of this one man, you know, influencing some of the greatest moments in history and, of course, having multiple careers in athletics and like it was just a little bit too much for some people.
Political Themes in 'Forrest Gump'
00:19:14
Speaker
In 2015, The Hollywood Reporter published or they conducted a survey of Academy voters, people that vote in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is the organization that gives out the Oscars.
00:19:27
Speaker
And they found that upon reconsideration, most Academy members would have instead given Best Picture awards.
00:19:33
Speaker
to the Shawshank Redemption over this movie.
00:19:37
Speaker
So at the time, Forrest Gump received best picture over Shawshank Redemption.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yes, I'm ready to throw my computer out the window.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, I am too, actually, because I love that movie, and I assume we'll get to it at some point.
00:19:55
Speaker
Phenomenal movie.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I just can't really believe that Forrest Gump won over it.
00:20:00
Speaker
In the time since it's been released as well, people have been reevaluating this movie politically.
00:20:07
Speaker
It's pretty conservative.
00:20:09
Speaker
It's somewhat nationalist, and in its themes, he's both a military veteran and an Olympic champion.
00:20:17
Speaker
athlete representing America at all times met several presidents, including Nixon, which I always was like, why the hell would they put that?
00:20:27
Speaker
That's the president, one of the presidents that they chose.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's really funny in the book.
00:20:35
Speaker
I guess it's funny in the movie too, but he meets, in the movie he meets Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:42
Speaker
And I just remember being like, why include Nixon?
00:20:46
Speaker
That encounter was not as funny as the ones with Kennedy and Johnson in the movie, so I don't know.
00:20:52
Speaker
It was just always so bizarre to me that they included a, you know, famously bad dude.
00:20:59
Speaker
Well, that's what happens in the book.
00:21:01
Speaker
He shows up.
00:21:02
Speaker
I don't remember exactly.
00:21:03
Speaker
He says some innocuous word and Nixon goes, tape?
00:21:06
Speaker
What tapes?
00:21:07
Speaker
Did he say tapes?
00:21:07
Speaker
There are no tapes.
00:21:08
Speaker
And they were like, no, Mr. President, he didn't say tapes.
00:21:12
Speaker
And he's like shuffled out.
00:21:13
Speaker
Right.
00:21:14
Speaker
It's loosely, yeah, similar to that.
00:21:16
Speaker
It's loosely related to Watergate in the movie as well.
00:21:20
Speaker
I just, I don't know.
00:21:21
Speaker
Once like Nixon showed up on screen, I was just like, what are you even saying?
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker
America or whatever the theme of this movie is by including him in the story.
00:21:32
Speaker
But to this point, I'm not just some like whiny liberal that's too woke to enjoy a movie.
00:21:39
Speaker
This film was strongly embraced in 1994 by
00:21:43
Speaker
conservative politicians and was a symbol that was referenced like in speeches and in like logos and iconography throughout the 1994 Republican Revolution, which was just a sort of rise in conservatism in the United States and sort of strategic campaigning, a movement that was led by Newt Gingrich, actually, who's kind of one of the demons of...
00:22:07
Speaker
Modern America.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:10
Speaker
They are pretty mad at him for saving Mao Zedong in the book.
00:22:15
Speaker
Multiple different people just immediately go, why didn't you let him drown?
00:22:20
Speaker
Which is a wild thing to say and write.
00:22:23
Speaker
It is really crazy too.
00:22:25
Speaker
There's a handful of times when he meets Kennedy, Forrest Gump's narration is like, and then a couple months after I met him, for no reason at all, somebody shot and killed that man.
00:22:35
Speaker
And I'm like, whoa, you cannot skip over why people killed Kennedy.
00:22:41
Speaker
It's not for no particular reason.
00:22:43
Speaker
And I understand that he's supposed to be low IQ, but that does not mean that he can't understand.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:49
Speaker
Anyway, the politics of this are just so...
00:22:54
Speaker
Messy and maybe I wouldn't have viewed it that way if I was living in a different America than the one we are in 2025 but yeah fair fair point fair point but we're not so it's on it honestly feels ambiguous throughout the book because it's supposed to be fairly modern and he's saying all of these horrific racial slurs and but then anytime anyone asks him about his time in Vietnam he just goes it's a load of shit nearly oh
00:23:22
Speaker
Okay, so is this pro or against, or are you trying to suggest that he's too dumb to understand?
00:23:28
Speaker
I don't, it's.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly a problem I had with the movie, too, is I was like, I don't understand what you're trying to say, what you're trying to tell.
00:23:37
Speaker
Well, I think you described it well.
00:23:38
Speaker
You said it was a thin attempt.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:42
Speaker
I think that's exactly what it was.
00:23:43
Speaker
And I know that this take is probably going to be a bummer for some people to hear, but I just don't love the movie anymore either.
00:23:51
Speaker
And I mean, I grew up loving it because I just, everybody did, you know.
00:23:56
Speaker
Upon rewatching it, I was like, this one's not for me.
00:24:00
Speaker
Fair.
00:24:01
Speaker
With that, let's take a quick break, stick around, and when we come back, we will have a discussion about the movie and the book.
00:24:11
Speaker
And we're back.
00:24:13
Speaker
Those are so awkward to record because Chris and I didn't take a break.
00:24:17
Speaker
That was just one second for us.
00:24:18
Speaker
Anyway, we like to ping pong these questions, no pun intended, for the story of Forrest Gump.
00:24:26
Speaker
So Chris, why don't you kick us off?
Book vs. Movie Inconsistencies
00:24:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:30
Speaker
I was I've kept thinking this the whole time I was reading.
00:24:34
Speaker
So at any point in the movie, did you feel your suspension of disbelief falter?
00:24:40
Speaker
Like, okay, this is this is believable.
00:24:42
Speaker
This is believable.
00:24:43
Speaker
This is no longer believable.
00:24:44
Speaker
100%.
00:24:45
Speaker
The movie starts off fairly endearingly.
00:24:49
Speaker
Because his mother is trying to get Forrest.
00:24:53
Speaker
Actually, what's wild is that the movie starts with, I was named after a KKK leader.
00:24:58
Speaker
Again, a moment of like, what the hell are the politics of this movie?
00:25:03
Speaker
And then his mom's trying to get him into a good school so that he can have the best education, despite the fact that he has a lower IQ and the headmaster or admissions officer or whatever of the school is kind of a jerk.
00:25:15
Speaker
And
00:25:16
Speaker
And she's insisting that he can do it.
00:25:18
Speaker
So you really start the movie like rooting for Forrest and being like, hell yeah, hell yeah.
00:25:24
Speaker
My first moment where I was like, what the hell?
00:25:28
Speaker
Was he has leg braces on in this movie because he walks funny.
00:25:32
Speaker
He's getting chased by bullies.
00:25:33
Speaker
And of course, they're like kicking his ass because he can't move very quickly.
00:25:36
Speaker
And these braces from like the probably the 60s.
00:25:39
Speaker
Then one day it just like it works and he's able to start running and the braces fall off piece by piece while he's running down the road from these bullies.
00:25:49
Speaker
And I was like, I don't.
00:25:51
Speaker
No, if this is supposed to be symbolic, you know, of him like shedding the things that were holding him back, but then he never has to wear the braces again.
00:25:59
Speaker
And from that moment on, pretty much, I'm like, okay, I just can't buy into it anymore.
00:26:05
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:07
Speaker
Okay, so pretty immediately.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, pretty quick.
00:26:10
Speaker
Starting with a scene that wasn't even in the original book.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:15
Speaker
When do you lose it reading the book?
00:26:17
Speaker
The book felt more believable, felt less family-friendly, endearing.
00:26:23
Speaker
But honestly, all of that, you could kind of stick with it, even through, you know, pushing him through and getting into a college and then flunking out and then going in the army.
00:26:34
Speaker
Even the crazy like, OK, yeah, he's again in the book, a giant throwing guys over his shoulders, running with them.
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:42
Speaker
I think the problem with the book is to scale, it's about the same amount of time.
00:26:47
Speaker
There are so many of these episodes that by again, something like 40 or 50% of the way in, even like continuing to rekindle these contacts with Jenny and get back together.
00:27:02
Speaker
Does he play the harmonica in the movie?
00:27:06
Speaker
No.
00:27:08
Speaker
Forgot that part entirely.
00:27:09
Speaker
He's a professional musician for a while.
00:27:12
Speaker
Someone teaches him, I think,
00:27:15
Speaker
Bubba teaches him to play harmonica while they're in school, goes up to Boston to find Jenny and just runs into her because he remembers her saying she was playing music at a cafe in Harvard.
00:27:28
Speaker
And it was something around there like, OK, so he just keeps happening to run into the exact same people, runs into Lieutenant Dan when he comes back.
00:27:36
Speaker
It was like the ultimate in plot armor.
00:27:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:41
Speaker
Like, this is ridiculous, but plausible.
00:27:44
Speaker
The reason it falls apart, even more ridiculous, maybe plausible.
00:27:49
Speaker
To be followed up so immediately, like each one was more ridiculous than the next.
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:55
Speaker
Just clearly no attempt at, I don't know, I don't want to say keeping it realistic.
00:28:01
Speaker
Because ostensibly, the bones of this are realistic.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like sci-fi or anything like that.
00:28:07
Speaker
Right, right.
00:28:08
Speaker
But just the continuous beating you over the head with.
00:28:12
Speaker
And then it feels like you're watching an improv group.
00:28:19
Speaker
But they already did a two-hour set earlier.
00:28:23
Speaker
You're at the late night set.
00:28:24
Speaker
It's 11 p.m.
00:28:25
Speaker
They're running on fumes.
00:28:27
Speaker
And they have run out of the ability to be clever.
00:28:30
Speaker
That's what it felt like.
00:28:32
Speaker
Totally.
00:28:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:28:33
Speaker
Yeah, you're so right.
00:28:35
Speaker
The least plausible thing, yeah, is that he does all of this by the time he's like 40 or something, you know?
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:42
Speaker
I'm like, I can't even...
00:28:45
Speaker
I'm just fighting to get through the day, man.
00:28:47
Speaker
The book ends with him getting back to the South, finally starting the shrimp business and it becoming a wildly successful multimillion dollar business.
00:29:00
Speaker
He like goes and rounds up the misfit toys, all of the other football players he played with in college, Bubba's dad, his mom is the accountant, his chess master that took him under his wing that I believe is also entirely skipped in the movie.
00:29:14
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:29:15
Speaker
comes in and they have him run for Senate.
00:29:19
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:29:21
Speaker
On the, on the campaign slogan, I gotta pee.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:28
Speaker
And by that point, you are not even attempting anymore.
00:29:32
Speaker
And you're just watching this dumpster fire.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:35
Speaker
So that's why to me, it was the sheer volume, not necessarily a particular scene.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:41
Speaker
And so I was curious with so many fewer of these happenings in the movie, if it felt the same or if they kept you along with it for the full ride.
00:29:51
Speaker
No, felt the same.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, good.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much almost from the jump.
00:29:56
Speaker
I thought the way the character of Jenny was portrayed was really interesting.
00:30:00
Speaker
Again, one of the more conservative parts of the movie, I think, is that she's sort of, I don't think villainized is the right word, but she's a freaking hot damn mess.
00:30:09
Speaker
And she...
00:30:09
Speaker
you know, dies prematurely and she's the only character that's like questioning the status quo and engaging in the counterculture and things like that.
00:30:18
Speaker
I found very interesting.
00:30:20
Speaker
A question I had for you regarding Jenny.
00:30:23
Speaker
Do they say in the book, what kills Jenny?
00:30:26
Speaker
Because there's strong implications in the movie, but it's just a virus, quote unquote virus.
00:30:33
Speaker
She doesn't die in the book.
00:30:35
Speaker
What?
00:30:36
Speaker
Are you kidding?
00:30:38
Speaker
She gives birth to Forrest's son while married to another man.
00:30:42
Speaker
Names him Forrest.
00:30:45
Speaker
Forrest runs off to, I believe, Savannah, Georgia after meeting her, says, now this multi-million dollar shrimp company that he started says, give 10% of the profits to mom, 10% to Bubba's dad, and send the rest to Jenny to send my son Forrest to college.
00:31:04
Speaker
And him and the orangutan, the male orangutan, Sue, that he went to the moon with, and Lieutenant Dan...
00:31:13
Speaker
run off, and he starts a one-man band.
00:31:17
Speaker
He's playing harmonica and people love it, so he goes in to buy harmonicas and other keys.
00:31:21
Speaker
They have a keyboard.
00:31:22
Speaker
He buys that too, figures out he can play them at the same time.
00:31:25
Speaker
He goes back again, gets a drum set, figures out he can play all three at the same time, abandons this multi-million dollar shrimp business, sends all of the proceeds to Jenny to send their son to college, and plays music for the second time in his life professionally.
00:31:44
Speaker
I'm speechless.
00:31:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:48
Speaker
So nothing about a virus.
00:31:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:52
Speaker
Well, Jesus Christ.
00:31:55
Speaker
I'm kind of bowled over right now.
00:31:57
Speaker
Now I'm trying to... Okay.
00:31:58
Speaker
Jenny's story in the movie.
00:32:01
Speaker
There is no other man.
00:32:02
Speaker
She doesn't get married to somebody else.
00:32:05
Speaker
She does have Forrest's kid.
00:32:06
Speaker
Her and Forrest get back in touch.
00:32:10
Speaker
And she says, I'm dying.
00:32:11
Speaker
I have a virus.
00:32:12
Speaker
And it's, I think it's pretty heavily implied that it's AIDS because she takes place in the 80s, probably the early 80s, which is before she says, actually, she says the doctors don't know what it is.
00:32:25
Speaker
And I don't think we really knew.
00:32:27
Speaker
what aids was until like 83 or something like that so the timeline is what really implies to me that she probably died of aids but nobody says it which is kind of another moment of like what is this story saying what are the politics yeah another chance to maybe say something real just yeah swerved yeah and then she dies and forest raises little forest oh
00:32:53
Speaker
Which he's able to do because Lieutenant Dan invested on behalf of Forrest in Apple computers.
Character Fate and Symbolism
00:33:03
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:33:06
Speaker
And Forrest thinks it's a fruit company.
00:33:08
Speaker
I mean, on brand.
00:33:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:11
Speaker
Wow.
00:33:11
Speaker
That sucks.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, it does.
00:33:16
Speaker
Okay, what's next?
00:33:20
Speaker
I, too, am bowled over.
00:33:21
Speaker
That absolutely sucks.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:24
Speaker
Yeah, geez.
00:33:26
Speaker
Well, I saw this.
00:33:27
Speaker
I glanced at the question.
00:33:28
Speaker
Again, I tried not to read them before we started today, and I just saw the word virus and thought, oh, no, what did they do?
00:33:34
Speaker
They killed her.
00:33:36
Speaker
Great.
00:33:38
Speaker
All right.
00:33:38
Speaker
What else do you got?
00:33:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:41
Speaker
I feel like in the discussion, and I thought this might be the case, we've kind of answered this.
00:33:45
Speaker
But again, as I was reading, I was very curious.
00:33:49
Speaker
Did you walk away from the movie feeling like there was an overall takeaway or moral that was intended to resonate with you?
00:33:58
Speaker
Not, certainly not strong.
00:34:00
Speaker
Like I said, the theme of like, you know, affirming life is pretty thin.
00:34:06
Speaker
But no, I, that's, it's interesting that you wrote this question because one of the things, when I was thinking about this movie after rewatching it, which, you know, this is probably like my fourth or fifth time seeing this movie.
00:34:18
Speaker
I've seen it many times.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:20
Speaker
I was like, I just don't know that that movie said anything besides maybe follow the rules.
00:34:26
Speaker
Because like I said, Jenny doesn't follow the rules and ends up dead.
00:34:30
Speaker
And Forrest does follow the rules.
00:34:33
Speaker
You know, he does what he's told in the military and he does what he's told to build a successful shrimping business.
00:34:39
Speaker
And he ends up with a pretty happy life.
00:34:41
Speaker
But that's a bad theme.
00:34:45
Speaker
And not just because I don't like to follow rules.
00:34:47
Speaker
It's just...
00:34:49
Speaker
Also, just a pretty weak argument.
00:34:53
Speaker
Objectively a bad, like that was the theme of Pinocchio.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that's why Robert Zemeckis liked it and made both of these movies.
00:35:02
Speaker
And Tom Hanks is actually in both of those movies.
00:35:04
Speaker
Did we just uncover the conspiracy of the century?
00:35:07
Speaker
Maybe.
00:35:07
Speaker
Pretty lame conspiracy.
00:35:11
Speaker
Anyway, yeah, the answer to your question is that no, there was nothing that, you know, left an impression on me.
00:35:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:19
Speaker
And I assume the book was the same.
00:35:21
Speaker
That's why I asked, because I was like, did they tie this together?
00:35:25
Speaker
I mean, I found bits and pieces actively looking for what moral takeaway did people have, and I disagreed.
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:35
Speaker
And more to the point, I found no reason to believe that was in any way Broom's goal going into it.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:43
Speaker
Okay, my last question is the feather present in the book, the movie opens and closes with a feather blowing around.
00:35:51
Speaker
And it's become one of the bigger talking points about the movie because everybody has a different interpretation of the symbolism behind it.
00:36:00
Speaker
And I was curious if it was in the book and whether the symbolism was maybe any clearer.
00:36:06
Speaker
No feathers.
00:36:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:09
Speaker
Interesting.
00:36:11
Speaker
The only object that consistently pops up is shrimp.
00:36:17
Speaker
Shrimp.
00:36:18
Speaker
Honestly.
00:36:20
Speaker
Boy, they really reworked this, huh?
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah, definitely some creative liberties.
00:36:26
Speaker
And yeah, this feather specifically, everybody that was asked about it has had different answers, including like the production designer whose job it was to find or create
00:36:37
Speaker
the perfect feather for these shots and Zemeckis and Hanks and Sally Field have all been asked about it and they all have something different to say which is kind of cool artistically that it's open to so much interpretation but I also just considering how the movie doesn't say anything to me I'm like why why do we have this visual motif I mean maybe that's the point you float around like a feather and sometimes good things happen and sometimes bad things happen I don't know I
00:37:04
Speaker
Because the plot carried so little they needed anything to latch on to.
00:37:07
Speaker
Yeah, I guess so.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:10
Speaker
He this was as close to a I mean, I have no fun facts.
00:37:13
Speaker
This wasn't a fun book as close to a fun fact.
00:37:17
Speaker
And I think most telling about the story and the author, perhaps he ended up having to sue to receive any portion of the percentages.
00:37:27
Speaker
from the movie he was given 350 000 for the initial movie rights and then he claims they did what he called hollywood math quote unquote hollywood math to deflate the profits so even though he had a three percent interest or whatever he received nothing and ended up having to sue them to settle on like a
Legal and Financial Issues
00:37:50
Speaker
seven figure settlement after the fact wow that sucks
00:37:55
Speaker
That Hollywood math is a real thing.
00:37:56
Speaker
A lot of people get screwed because they can just kind of misreport.
00:38:01
Speaker
Based on how the book did, I think he's lucky he got a penny.
00:38:06
Speaker
this book was nothing till they made it a movie i know i wish i had seen how this story like came across the right person's desk if only 30 000 copies were sold what are the odds that honestly i don't know that's crazy well and he said he said the production was an eight-year hell of a time so clearly it like went into production right away yeah i don't well what did he say it was yeah it was like originally with warner brothers and then they turned it over to paramount
00:38:35
Speaker
Yep.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:38:38
Speaker
Which is usually not a good sign.
00:38:40
Speaker
Right.
00:38:41
Speaker
And part of it, too, I wish I had written this down.
00:38:44
Speaker
The studio wanted to cut, I believe, the running scene when he runs across the country, which I don't think happens in the book, right?
00:38:50
Speaker
Nope, not in the book.
00:38:52
Speaker
Yep.
00:38:52
Speaker
And I forget what their reasoning was besides the fact that it's nuts.
00:38:56
Speaker
And I think Tom Hanks financed that sequence himself.
00:38:59
Speaker
He paid for it himself.
00:39:01
Speaker
Was he just really dug it or what?
00:39:03
Speaker
I guess.
00:39:04
Speaker
I don't know.
00:39:05
Speaker
And the studio was like, fine, I guess, if you're paying for it.
00:39:09
Speaker
I just have to imagine like there is a very realistic timeline where they take a swing on a new unknown actor, think they're doing something real bold.
00:39:19
Speaker
And it was not Tom Hanks who starred in this.
00:39:22
Speaker
And...
00:39:24
Speaker
It just became one of those like straight to TV movies and no one ever heard about it.
00:39:28
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:39:29
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
There's just so much lunacy involved from square one to today.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:38
Speaker
You know, what an odd one.
00:39:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:41
Speaker
I assume I know the answer to this, but who or do you whatsoever recommend this book?
00:39:48
Speaker
We've, we've got, we've got the same sheet of paper in front of us.
00:39:50
Speaker
What's that say, Nate?
00:39:51
Speaker
That's a big old nope.
00:39:53
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:39:54
Speaker
You wouldn't recommend it to a single soul?
00:39:56
Speaker
I want that time back.
00:39:59
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:39:59
Speaker
Now I really feel guilty for suggesting this one.
00:40:02
Speaker
No, you know what?
00:40:03
Speaker
It was curious.
00:40:04
Speaker
For one thing, we had to have a not fun one eventually, right?
00:40:08
Speaker
It was getting dull to just say 10 out of 10 recommend this to everybody every single time.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:14
Speaker
Okay, no, let me be realistic.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
00:40:16
Speaker
If you, you know what, if you really enjoyed like the Americana literature, like here in the US, you'll recognize all of the places.
00:40:28
Speaker
I think he does do to his credit.
00:40:30
Speaker
I think he does make the scenes vaguely more realistic in the book than they are in the movie.
00:40:36
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:40:37
Speaker
Interesting.
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:40
Speaker
Weird, weird choices all around.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah, my recommendation is similar.
00:40:45
Speaker
I have it written down here.
00:40:46
Speaker
I recommend it to folks that would be unbothered by the politics and problematic representation.
00:40:53
Speaker
But, you know, it's like a Tom Hanks classic if you're a big fan of his.
00:40:58
Speaker
If you're a fan of this sort of micro epics like this movie or...
00:41:03
Speaker
Well, if you're a fan of this movie, you'd like this movie.
00:41:06
Speaker
It's very similar to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for me, which is infused with Americana.
00:41:13
Speaker
It's a long story.
00:41:14
Speaker
They're very similar, like cases of an average Joe who's actually not really all that average, but coming across like historical figures and like you said, historical places and things like that.
00:41:26
Speaker
So I also wrote audiences maybe over 40 or even maybe over 50 just because...
00:41:33
Speaker
Like I said, the movie is just watching it through the lens of 2025.
00:41:36
Speaker
It's just really tough to get past.
00:41:39
Speaker
Yep.
00:41:40
Speaker
I kept trying to remind myself of that.
00:41:43
Speaker
But what?
00:41:45
Speaker
25, 15, oh, 595.
00:41:47
Speaker
40 years ago was not long ago enough to try to excuse.
00:41:51
Speaker
Don't judge history by modern morals.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:53
Speaker
You know?
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:56
Speaker
I am going to argue that does not apply here.
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:00
Speaker
Good.
00:42:01
Speaker
I did laugh out loud when I saw your recommendation.
00:42:04
Speaker
Audience is over 40.
00:42:08
Speaker
Mostly if it's like built into you that this movie is a good classic, then, you know, you'll like it.
00:42:14
Speaker
But again, I feel like I'm saying you'll like this movie if you'll like this movie.
00:42:17
Speaker
I think here's what here's I think a positive way to reframe it.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:21
Speaker
The approach to the storytelling.
00:42:25
Speaker
I think there are more enjoyable examples.
00:42:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:31
Speaker
So ignoring the problematic aspects, like you said, Benjamin Button, see someone's life, episodic touches of reality, obviously a significant touch of unreality, but in a less unpleasant way.
00:42:47
Speaker
I get this.
00:42:48
Speaker
This is not better.
00:42:51
Speaker
You're right, though.
00:42:52
Speaker
But what did you rate this on Goodreads?
00:42:55
Speaker
I gave it a three because, again, I've tried to adhere to my own rule of if I'm going to give it a one or a two, I should just not read it.
00:43:04
Speaker
But honestly, I think I'm going to go back in and give it a two.
00:43:08
Speaker
I did not.
00:43:09
Speaker
It was truly a slog.
00:43:11
Speaker
If we were not talking about it on the podcast, I would not have finished it.
00:43:15
Speaker
Wow.
00:43:16
Speaker
And it's not a long book.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions, too.
00:43:21
Speaker
How long is it?
00:43:22
Speaker
It's like 26 chapters.
00:43:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:43:25
Speaker
It's not.
00:43:26
Speaker
And I had to keep I kept rewarding myself with other books.
00:43:30
Speaker
I'd get through a chapter of this and then go enjoy something else for a little while.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:34
Speaker
It's like homework.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
How about the how about the letterbox?
00:43:39
Speaker
How about the movie rating?
00:43:41
Speaker
I gave this one 2.5 stars just because, like I said, this movie is so confused about its thematic questions.
00:43:48
Speaker
Do we set our own path or is our destiny laid out for us?
00:43:52
Speaker
Is I think something that it bounces back and forth between and provides no insight or answer?
00:43:59
Speaker
Ask the question but does not answer it.
00:44:01
Speaker
Which is maybe supposed to be the point that there isn't an answer to that, but that doesn't leave you feeling settled.
00:44:08
Speaker
And then, of course, there's a lot of problematic politics in the movie as well.
00:44:11
Speaker
So not a high rating for me, unfortunately.
00:44:15
Speaker
Your analysis is very curious to me because, again, I think this is the first one I saw the movie before I read it.
00:44:22
Speaker
And I have quite fond memories of this movie.
00:44:25
Speaker
Right.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:27
Speaker
20 years ago, I thought it was awesome.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, so did I. And I mean, I used to go to Bubba Gump's for my birthday.
00:44:33
Speaker
Yep.
00:44:35
Speaker
I had very fond feelings of this movie.
00:44:37
Speaker
And maybe again, maybe it's I'm just watching it through a new lens because of the world we live in.
00:44:42
Speaker
But boy, I was disappointed.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:44:46
Speaker
No, that's very curious.
00:44:48
Speaker
I it makes me wonder how I would feel if I rewatched it, because as we've discussed, you certainly watch movies more critically than I do.
00:44:56
Speaker
Sure.
00:44:57
Speaker
And I definitely love Tom Hanks always.
00:45:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:01
Speaker
So I don't, I don't know that I would not enjoy it at this point, but I also don't know that it would be worth it.
00:45:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:08
Speaker
Now you kind of got the sour taste in your mouth.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:11
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:45:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:14
Speaker
Interesting.
00:45:15
Speaker
Well, at least it made for good discussion, even if we did rag on a beloved classic.
00:45:21
Speaker
You know what?
00:45:22
Speaker
I was excited to finally hear one of, because it's so fascinating.
00:45:27
Speaker
I think the most interesting question to come out of it is, yeah, we both had a similar, I was worried I was going to come in and have disliked it and you were going to be like, same fantastic classic it always was.
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:39
Speaker
I thought I was expecting that, which is kind of why I suggested it when we had our planning session.
00:45:45
Speaker
But yeah, I was really surprised when I was watching it.
00:45:48
Speaker
And, you know, I go into it sort of blind.
00:45:50
Speaker
I don't look up what the modern take is on it.
00:45:53
Speaker
And so I was like, am I just being like a whiny, woke, 20-something millennial?
00:45:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:59
Speaker
And then looked into it and was like, no, I am not.
00:46:03
Speaker
That's why I looked up what was its critical reception in 86 when it was published.
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:10
Speaker
And they were saying the exact same thing then.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yep.
00:46:13
Speaker
Which made me feel a lot better.
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:46:16
Speaker
I think our next text, though, is going to be one that we're both going to
Next Discussion Preview
00:46:20
Speaker
enjoy.
00:46:20
Speaker
I've seen the movie before.
00:46:21
Speaker
I don't know if you've read the book.
00:46:23
Speaker
Is this the one?
00:46:24
Speaker
Not Christian Bale.
00:46:25
Speaker
Who's the guy?
00:46:27
Speaker
Oh, it is.
00:46:27
Speaker
It was sort of his breakout role.
00:46:29
Speaker
The next text that we're doing is American Psycho, written by Brett Easton Ellis, and the movie is directed by Mary Heron.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think I've seen some.
00:46:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's also become a source for a lot of memes.
00:46:44
Speaker
A lot of jokes and memes come from this movie, too.
00:46:47
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:46:47
Speaker
Oh, I'm so excited to read it, especially because I cannot remember the movie.
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited.
00:46:52
Speaker
It's just an interesting commentary one.
00:46:54
Speaker
So if you're so inclined to read and watch along with us, that'll be the next one that we talk about here on the pod.
00:47:02
Speaker
Yeah, let us know again, as always, if you've got something you want to hear us talk about.
00:47:06
Speaker
Tell us.
00:47:08
Speaker
Well, great conversation today, Chris.
00:47:10
Speaker
And thank you all for joining us for our discussion on Forrest Gump.
00:47:13
Speaker
Please forgive our hate on a beloved classic, but sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and rethink some things and put on your critical thinking cap, I guess.
00:47:24
Speaker
Yep.
00:47:25
Speaker
So I'd encourage you to rewatch and reread and do the same.
00:47:28
Speaker
But thank you again for joining us and we will see you next time.
00:47:33
Speaker
Bye.
00:47:35
Speaker
That's the show for today.
00:47:36
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in.
00:47:37
Speaker
Let us know in the comments what you're reading, what you're watching, and what adaptations you'd like us to cover.
00:47:42
Speaker
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at adaptation underscore pod and on Twitter at adapt pod.
00:47:47
Speaker
See you next time.