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I Gotta Pee
21 Plays5 days ago
Join us as we discuss the complicated and weird novel Forrest Gump and it's beloved 1996 movie adaptation.
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Transcript
Introduction to the podcast and hosts
00:00:01
Speaker
Two nerds went to college and found each other in the English department basement and became instant friends. Eight years and three degrees later, they're reunited.
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast.
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to Book Club The Movie The Podcast, where we read, watch, and discuss books and their film adaptations. I'm your host, Jen. And I'm your other host, Em. We hope you read the book. But if you didn't, here's the summary.
1986 and the origins of 'Forrest Gump'
00:00:56
Speaker
It is 1986. Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. The Iran-Contra affair was exposed to the world. Top Gun was released in theaters and Winston Groom published Forrest Gump, though it would not become a bestseller until the movie came out in 1994.
Differences between the book and the movie
00:01:13
Speaker
Much like the movie, the book is told through first-person narration by Forrest himself. He describes his life in a series of events, some of which made it into the movie, including playing ping pong and football, Vietnam, and striking it rich with a shrimp business.
00:01:28
Speaker
Unlike the movie, Forrest worked as a folk musician, an astronaut, chess champion, professional wrestler, swamp thing, and eventually a busker. All the while, he is in love with Jenny and tries his best to do the right thing, but cannot stop screwing it up.
00:01:45
Speaker
So I actually think that they did a good job of adapting the narrative style. The book is like it's all written first person from from Forrest Gump's perspective, although it's like, you know, every sentence starts with i pretty much. Right. It's not like the the kind of first person where it's like, I'm telling the story, but then I'm going to give you a paragraph of exposition to set the scene or whatever. It's like it's very conversational. it's It's a monologue. I think the novel is written as a monologue. And the way that they adapted that into the movie, I think, is really interesting because we do have like a voiceover thread going throughout the movie with Tom Hanks playing Forrest Gump narrating. um
00:02:35
Speaker
ah And it's, you know, like narrating our transitions from thing to thing. Right. But then we always get these we get these scenes, we get these breaks where we come back to the place where he is. So for most of the story, the story present or whatever, he's sitting on a bus bench um in Savannah, Georgia, waiting for bus number nine to come so that he can get a ride to Jenny's apartment to see her, you know, like and he's just like.
00:03:04
Speaker
rambling on and on to anyone who's sitting at the bus stop about his life story um but and which only ends up being about i think like three or four people total throughout the movie um i mean there was the nurse lady with the nice shoes and you can always tell her feet were hurting because she just got off work yeah um and then there was the the mother and her kid
Narrative techniques in the movie adaptation
00:03:31
Speaker
Right. and then And then it was the old man who then laughed his ass off because he didn't realize who he was sitting next to. Right. And then it was the elderly woman who then said little
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah. And then sweet old lady who's like, you don't even need a bus. Right. She's like, it's like five or blocks that way. And he's like. what a thanks I gotta to go and then he just like he does this little weird run thing yeah oh my gosh he's gone anyway so I think that that was like a really clever way to make it a monologue but make it more interesting because I think if they had done like a exact adaptation of the book it would just be like you know a split screen anytime there was another scene and it's like we would get Forrest Gump on the bench and then we would get like the war right because it's all through his and he would just be narrating it all it'd be like an episode a really long episode of like drunk history
00:04:30
Speaker
Right. Like that's what I feel like the book would translate to. um Oh, I was going to say it would be like a a really long episode of How I Met Your Mother. Yeah. Or or something like that. Yeah.
00:04:44
Speaker
Anyway, so I think that they they i'm I'm content with how they decided to adapt the narrative style because it feels inspired by the monologue form, but not necessarily like fully beholden to it so yeah um i think it works i think it works
00:05:10
Speaker
So let's talk about the yellow elephant in the room, Emily.
The use of humor and repetition in the book
00:05:15
Speaker
There's so much pee in the book. There's so much pee. I believe in the movie, I think he only says it once, right? And it's to the president. After he's had the 15 Dr. Peppers or whatever. Yes, he drank 15 Dr. Peppers. And then the president asks him, like, how do you feel? And he says, I got a pee. And he's like, oh, I think he has to pee. And it's like, great, you, cool. Aha. Anyway, I went through and I mean, I have a post-it note on every single page where it happens. ah
00:05:45
Speaker
There's like eight... like 17 times fully, like throughout the book, he says something about pee, needing to pee, or the orangutan peeing.
00:05:57
Speaker
There's just piss everywhere. It's just a whole piss party. And even on one page ah of the 17, eight of them is just from whenever, spoiler alert, ah he he runs for Senate because that makes sense. ah And he's in an auditorium.
00:06:15
Speaker
And he's he's you know answering questions and and they ask him something like, what's the most pressing issue at the moment? And he doesn't know what to say. So he says, I got to pee. And then the whole auditorium, because they love that. And I mean, I think if I had read this in 2015 I would have been like, oh, that's stupid. A crowd would never. But nowadays I'm like, yeah, that sounds right. The whole auditorium starts chanting, we got to pee. We got to pee. And and it becomes...
00:06:45
Speaker
you know, the campaign slogan. And even his, ah like, competitor. Yeah, his opponent then adopts a new- gotta pee too! Yeah, I gotta pee too.
00:06:57
Speaker
It's ridiculous. And then at one point, whenever he's ah acting as the creature from the Blue Lagoon, he just pees in this rubber suit. And and yeah onto Raquel Welch Basically so he's just pee No it was before he was Holding her it was while he was having a break In the water um That you know He peed and then he didn't realize It wouldn't run out his leg because it's a Rubber suit and so It kind of just Whatever hung out there and She's like oh my god Did you pee it smells like pee I didn't pee did you pee Yeah
00:07:36
Speaker
Poor Raquel Welch. I wonder how she felt about being portrayed in the book. book Yeah, I wonder if she even knew. i doubt she did. because Somebody had to have told her. Somebody had to have been like, hey, this guy wrote a book about you getting peed on.
00:07:56
Speaker
She didn't get peed on. It wasn't like a golden shower. It's just he peed in his rubber suit and then had to pick her up. And that was part of his job. Like that was his role. So it's a misunderstanding. um He didn't pee on her.
00:08:12
Speaker
So, but yeah, i I just feel like it's okay. I have two thoughts about this. One, I feel like Winston Groom took a cheap shot. It's like every time where we could have gotten deeper or he could have said something meaningful in the book. Instead, it's like, gotta pee.
00:08:30
Speaker
is what he said so that's it just it feels really cheap to me narratively writing wise web like come on dude do better um and the other the second thing is like I feel like I have well not I feel like I have this my AP world history teacher in high school I don't know why, but one time in class he was just like, it's every man's dream to like find a cliff and pee off of it. like That's the best feeling in the world.
00:09:05
Speaker
It's something I just remember very clearly. I don't remember the context of that comment. I'm sure it was in context. This teacher, i'm not going to say his name, but he was beloved by all and he was a great teacher.
00:09:19
Speaker
um and a goofy and had like frequent conversations with this robot on the internet that he'd share with us um it was goofy anyway he's a funny guy um but that was something that i was like really like that's the epitome of like the male desire goals just to pee off the side of a cliff like having that feeling and i'm like so anyway so i just feel like winston groom's like I gotta pee.
00:09:51
Speaker
Like, that's that's the thing. I mean, I have another supportive anecdote to offer on the subject of men going pee. Please do. So at a restaurant that I worked at in the past, I'm not going to name it. There's been several of them. But one of them that I worked at in the past, men would not pee into the urinal. There was pee all over the place. Always. Constantly. was awful. Yeah. So we took a date dot sticker, one of the stickers that you put on ah like the top of your... ah
00:10:24
Speaker
food containers and stuff and then you write the the date the best by date on it we took a ah food sticker like a dark blue one and we put it on the inside of the urinal kind catty like just in the urinal and then the the peeing everywhere stopped they were all trying to hit the sticker ah the pee stayed in the urinal and then and then eventually i mean that sticker would get washed away because they're water soluble. And we just add another one in the same spot again.
00:10:55
Speaker
my God. Give them give them a yeah a job. Give them a task to complete. Give them a goal. Maybe it would be funnier to a man, I guess is what I'm saying.
00:11:06
Speaker
I mean, i I just think it was bizarre that pee came up so often. I mean, and not even just the phrase, gotta pee. I mean, like, just urine
Comparison of Jenny's character in book vs. movie
00:11:17
Speaker
in general came up constantly through the book. That's why think it's a guy thing.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah, it has to be. They have some sort of obsession or fascination with urinating. ah should have asked Jason about this. He would have had a good answer. So what did you think about Jenny's narrative?
00:11:36
Speaker
Oh, so the movie did her dirty. um I totally prefer her arc in the book. um You know, in the book, she gets to be happy. She gets when Forrest doesn't want to settle down, essentially. She's like, all right, bye. And she leaves and she goes to find somebody to settle down with. don't fully agree with like her misleading him to believe that he fathered her child rather than forest fathering her child but um you know in the book you know she was like kind of like a hippie for a while she maybe was like fringe on the fringes of like political beliefs but um she wasn't like doing hard, hard drugs with needles and whatnot. um She wasn't, ah you know, I don't, she wasn't like a sex worker, which no shame in that sex work is work, but um she just, in the movie, they gave her a much harder life. um
00:12:38
Speaker
In the book, she also like her mom didn't die. um She, i don't, her dad's not really mentioned in the book at all, But she's, yeah it's not mentioned that she's molested as a child. um Yeah, I mean, they just, they tore her down from the very beginning. yeah The book didn't, not the book, oh my goodness, the movie didn't even give her a chance.
00:13:01
Speaker
They only really talked about like these giant lofty dreams that she had and and then her just trying to figure herself out. Yeah. I didn't think she was allowed to be happy the movie.
00:13:15
Speaker
I do think that she was like a little bit happy in kind of one of the, one of the ending scenes that we see her in. Like when she, um when she, when Forrest comes and visit her, visits her at her apartment in Savannah, Georgia, and she answers the door, she looks really like healthy and happy there. And um she's,
00:13:39
Speaker
you know, really happy to have Forrest Jr. is like, you know, she gives off really good vibes there. i think she's yeah feeling really great as a mother, like feeling like that's a good thing for her. So, but then it's like immediately shadowed by the fact that she's dying, which is sad.
00:13:56
Speaker
And I kind of, I even took her... having Forrest Jr. and then having Forrest Sr. come meet him and everything, I kind of took that as she's finally accepting what she should have been doing all along, quote unquote, ah that she should have been...
00:14:15
Speaker
trying to live with like these traditional values of having a baby and settling down with Forrest. And I feel like that was the only time that, yeah, she was allowed to be happy. But again, she still had to be punished for the decisions that she made earlier in regards to like second wave feminism and the drug use.
00:14:37
Speaker
Right. And being a a little bit of a political radical. i felt like i felt like the movie was very pro-America and very anti-women's liberation in that way.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, like she couldn't have a whole life without being married to Forrest. Yeah. Felt very... ah Traditional wife, trad wife to me.
00:15:04
Speaker
I feel like it's I feel like it's was maybe less intentional. Right. Like I won't say totally unintentional, but i don't think that they were like, well, Jenny has to lead this life on the fringe and then come to her senses when she's dying. That Forrest was the one for her. i guess what I'm saying is like she feels a lot happier.
00:15:30
Speaker
It doesn't you know, she asks for us to marry her right um at the park right after their apartment scene or her apartment scene. um So, I mean, she's asking him to marry her because he's already asked her once and she was like, no, you don't want to marry me.
00:15:52
Speaker
I mean, i don't want to i don't want to downplay, you know, marriage and settling down and all of that. Like, if that's something that you truly want to do, you should do it. I mean, i got married. i I don't want to say that that's a bad thing, but it wasn't what she envisioned for her life.
00:16:10
Speaker
When she was younger, true. Yeah, when she was younger. I just feel like when Forrest came into the apartment, she was already happy. She was already feeling, like, settled. And that was without yeah without him being her husband. Yeah. um And then she was like, I'm dying.
00:16:27
Speaker
Will you marry me? um Which is probably because, like, hey, like, I've got your kid. Yeah. You know, in part. But also because I think she's always, like, loved him and, like...
00:16:38
Speaker
always wanted to be with him but just not you know not wanting to do the thing you should like you feel like you you should do not not doing the thing you think you wanted or that you want to do because you feel like you have to do it or you should do it out of obligation you mean not out of obligation because i don't think she felt like she was obligated to marry him but just like
00:17:03
Speaker
You know, i know we were meant for each other, but because of that, i I want to run in every other direction or something like that kind of thing. I don't know. um I don't think that they were intentionally trying to like do away with the second wave of feminism. i think it was like an unintentional, unintentional consequence of how they rewrote her narrative.
00:17:31
Speaker
I just hate how they rewrote her narrative. I hate it. Yeah. So much. Yeah. So in the book, Jenny gets married to a nice man and leads him to believe that the baby, i.e. Forrest Gump Jr., is her husband's, not Forrest Gump, in the book.
00:17:46
Speaker
Um, and that's like not the best because, you know, in the book, she and Forrest do get a scene together in Savannah, Georgia, like in a park. And that's where she's like, that's your kid.
00:17:59
Speaker
And his dad doesn't know that it's not his kid because after I left you, I realized I was pregnant and then I needed to find somebody real fast. Um, and i don't know that she's really that happy in her marriage. I think she's just like,
00:18:17
Speaker
I'm content with my decision i made my decision I'm content with it you know um but she's not like full of joy and you know vigor yeah um we also only see her for a few minutes right it's in the book it's not that long um yeah And then, of course, like like you said a minute ago, like in the movie, even though she maybe finally like gets to marry Forrest and that feels really good and she maybe is really happy, um she still has to face the consequences of her party years.
00:18:56
Speaker
And so she dies of a virus in the movie, which people think is AIDS. um It's never named in movie, right? named in the movie Yeah. So we don't actually know if it's AIDS or hepatitis C or what it whatever it is.
00:19:11
Speaker
In the second book, it's hepatitis C, which is ah bloodborne from like sharing needles and stuff. All right. So tell me about Lieutenant Dan's
Lieutenant Dan's portrayal
00:19:21
Speaker
narrative. Lieutenant Dan.
00:19:24
Speaker
is so different. Like, he is a completely different character in the movie and the book. It's not even the same person. Because in the book, he's actually an intellectual. He's a history teacher. He reads a lot. He's he's very well-spoken. He's not this... He's not this, like, almost comic book hero.
00:19:44
Speaker
That he was in the movie. He doesn't have a family history of dying in American wars. He's a history teacher. And I don't know why he doesn't go back to teaching history. i think in the book, it was just that he couldn't get into the... Oh, it was because his class was on the second floor and he couldn't get to the second floor. oh my god. so he quit Yeah, so he quit being a teacher. i mean, I believe that we don't really have the best ah disabilityability disability.
00:20:13
Speaker
here, but good lord. So he quit being a teacher after the war and after he lost his legs. He didn't have a wheelchair either, which I thought was really weird. He basically like rolls around on a little scooter, like the kind that you would use to lay down on your back to go underneath cars to work.
00:20:31
Speaker
um He just scoots around on one of those, which is just absurd. And also, ah Forrest and Lieutenant Dan, they didn't meet until they got into the army hospital. um So they weren't, Forrest didn't save his life or anything the way that he did ah in the movie either. So their relationship is a little bit different too. And Lieutenant Dan does come up and they do become very close friends, but he's, it's just not the same.
00:20:55
Speaker
He was missing his legs too in the book, but it wasn't treated as this great big deal. It wasn't as, uh heartbreaking as it was in the movie and i kind of wonder if that's because we're only in forest's brain like seeing through his eyes basically through the book and he's not the most reliable narrator at times so maybe forest just didn't notice and one other just bizarre detail is They go to see Jenny at an apartment while she was working at a tire retreading company.
00:21:30
Speaker
And ah Lieutenant Dan's like, oh, I got to go the bathroom. I got to pee again. And so he goes into the bathroom and Jenny's like, oh, well, does he need help? And Forrest is like, no, he doesn't need help. And then internally he thinks, yeah, all all Dan does is he pees into his shoe and then he pours it into the toilet.
00:21:47
Speaker
First of all, why does Dan have shoes? He doesn't have legs. Yeah.
00:21:52
Speaker
Also, that's just another weird P detail. P-tail. P-tail! In the book, he doesn't get married either. um so just ah He's a very happy bum who lives under a ah trash bag, basically.
00:22:11
Speaker
Well, he's kind of crotchety until he realizes it's Forrest every time Forrest stumbles upon him. yeah. So, yeah. But he's not as, like... I think he's actually more complex in the movie than he is in the book. much more complex in the movie. Yeah. Yeah, but they don't have as much of a relationship until they get to the army hospital, so it's not like Forrest saved his life. so Correct. Yeah, it was just kind of weird.
00:22:42
Speaker
So what did you think about Forrest's narrative and how that changed?
Forrest Gump's character differences
00:22:46
Speaker
Ooh, so... This a big one. It's a really big one. um Forrest was a lot dumber in the movie. Like, he... In the book, he kind of like comes of age, becomes more capable, and then has great abilities. Like he's a savant for like mathematics. He's really great like at music.
00:23:09
Speaker
ah He has a brain like a computer is like something that people tell him, you know. And he understands um whatever that like physics class is that they put him in because it's supposed to Intermediate light. Yeah, intermediate light. Like what? Yeah. And he just gets it. Like he, he took a week or two with the textbook and then he understood it. um So yeah, in the book, he has um really great abilities and actually like, you know, has the ability for growth and change. um But in the movie, he's just has like really dumb luck, like really stupid, good luck. Yeah.
00:23:51
Speaker
He's, of course, like persistent and determined in the movie, um but it all just comes down to the look, like a hurricane destroying all of your competition trim boats and then your business takes off.
00:24:06
Speaker
I did like how in the movie, though, he did get to graduate college. In the book, I was a little bummed if they were like, your grades are too bad to be in college. Get out. But they had to leave a lot of that out. for fairly obvious reasons because it gets pretty insane in the book um which we can get to after we talk about race in the movie and especially um forest the character forest in the movie getting credit where credit is not due so you want to tell us little bit about that em
00:24:40
Speaker
ah So whenever I first researched all of this, I read an order an article off of JSTOR ah from Jennifer Hyland Wang that published back in
Critique of movie's historical and racial portrayal
00:24:50
Speaker
2000.
00:24:50
Speaker
Her entire thesis was just that Forrest Gump is a really racist and sexist movie, and it is. And just because something's problematic doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it. But I think these are good things to know. ah For example...
00:25:03
Speaker
The movie shows him dancing with Elvis ah to Hound Dog. a And then that's how Elvis learned his little hip-shaking dance moves. When in reality, ah those dances were taken from Black artists like Calvin Newborn and Bo Diddley.
00:25:21
Speaker
Elvis didn't invent them and neither did a little kid. um The Black Panthers were being used just as a prop in the movie. Yeah. And kind of being tied to Jenny like that, it made them see that seem even more negative.
00:25:36
Speaker
ah The Black Panthers were a really important group in the country. It helped to protect, like, Black neighborhoods and stuff. Like, they they were important. And they were just barely shown in a blip. And the one white guy that was, like, a part of them or whoever, whatever he was supposed to be, was super violent. And, I mean, that was my first, like, introduction to the Black Panthers.
00:25:55
Speaker
It wasn't really accurate at all. Like, they were... They did good. The movie also showed Forrest like helping black students walk into the University of Alabama. And it just, that they gave me the ick because that didn't happen.
00:26:09
Speaker
The movie also took away the Watergate scandal, which it showed Forrest standing at his window in the Watergate hotel and saying, oh, hey, I think there are any, he's on the phone. And he says, hey, I think their power is not working. I see a bunch of flashlights over there. In reality, it was a black security guard. His name was Frank Wills. And I think he died in like 2000 or 2001. But he was the one to call the cops.
00:26:31
Speaker
He was out doing his patrol on the back lot. And he noticed that there was a piece of duct tape over the lock, like the actual locking mechanism. I forget. It's like called the tongue, I think. The door was being held open with duct tape and he noticed it. So he's like, oh, that's weird and took the duct tape off and walked away. He came back a second time and the duct tape was back. And he's like, OK, this is not good and calls the cops.
00:26:52
Speaker
None of these are racial, but still giving him credit. In a roundabout way, gave the smiley face that you see everywhere, like at Walmart and on T-shirts and just it's it's a smiley face. You picture it and that's you're probably thinking of the right one.
00:27:05
Speaker
But he wiped his face off on this man's T-shirt. leaving a perfect smiley face. So giving credit to Forrest for that design, when in reality, the man's name was Harvey Bell or Harvey Ball. ah He never applied for the trademark and he only got $45 for the design. Whereas how in the movie, they made it seem like Forrest and his muddy face allowed this man to become a millionaire.
00:27:28
Speaker
Didn't happen. Kind of the same thing with shit happens. Back in 1983, this college professor, ah she would actually ah take down quotes from students through the years. She was doing like a linguistic study with her students and they would write down different phrases and stuff. And one year shit happens was on there and it made it to her published list. And now everybody always says that the teacher wrote it. And she's like, I didn't write it. It was a student, which I think is very silly. And then less less of stealing things, but definitely just
00:28:01
Speaker
I think they could have done more with it. ah Lots of people have actually walked or run all the way across the country. ah Extreme distance running and walking was not a new thing ah in the 80s whenever Forrest Gump did this. It's actually been around since like the 19th century because we didn't have TV then.
00:28:19
Speaker
And I guess nobody liked to read books. So they'd watch people walk. Fascinating. ah In 2016, Robert Pope actually ran across the country along the exact same route that Forrest did in the movie, but it only took him 422 days and he ran 15,700 miles.
00:28:39
Speaker
Insane.
Criticism of the book's writing style
00:28:43
Speaker
So, things we hated. What did you hate, Jenny? Fucking hated this book. I hated the book so much. You need to be more specific than that. need to be eloquent.
00:28:55
Speaker
um So I hated the book. I hated the book so much because it's bad writing and I have low tolerance for bad writing. unfortunately. um I don't know what that's about, but honestly, I don't think I would have liked the book when i was like before I went to school for creative writing. um So as a high schooler, I still don't think I would have liked the book. um It's just not very
00:29:28
Speaker
narratively interesting um it's like it's a monologue i've said this already i don't know if we're gonna cut or not but the book is a a very very long monologue essentially and that's just not fun to read it doesn't give you any setting, any place. It doesn't give you like, very good descriptions of people and that you're interacting with. Like, our narrator is unreliable, but not in an interesting way. He's not unreliable because he
00:30:07
Speaker
you know has, like, has a tendency to lie or, like, whatever. He's just, like, unreliable because he's stupid, but he's not stupid. I mean...
00:30:22
Speaker
Maybe he has lower IQ whatever, but like he's not dumb. He figures shit out. He grows. He's he's capable of change. He's just very flat. He's a very flat character in the book. So yeah, I hated it.
00:30:36
Speaker
I hated it so much. and i so Also, let's point out, so also also, also, also, the book was not successful until the movie came out. It only sold about 30,000 copies, which is like not a whole lot with books. I mean, that does feel like a lot having never written or published a book. for me um but it's not it was not a bestseller um people did not like it it had really negative anonymous reviews um and i think people are also like winston groom you can do better we know you can do better because you've published better um
00:31:19
Speaker
So yeah, it was not successful until the movie came out, and then it sold over a million copies. I think your hatred clouded a few things, which is totally fair, because this is not the best book that's ever been written. However...
00:31:36
Speaker
I still, I was fine with the way that it was narrated. I was okay with it being in, you know, first person and the monologue feeling. i was fine with all of that. I don't care. I'm on board. But I kind of like books that tend to have a different voice to them.
00:31:51
Speaker
I like voicey. You know, yeah. love voicey. But that's not, it was only voice. It needs to have voice and exposition. It has no exposition.
00:32:03
Speaker
Like, it's like, well, and then I went and did this, and then this XYZ thing happened, and so then I did this. i mean, it really took the...
00:32:14
Speaker
it really took the ah and therefore approach, which I did find, I found that to be interesting. It wasn't first I did this and then I did this and then I did this. That would have been truly boring. Instead it was, i did this, therefore this happened because that happened, then this happened. At least everything is very connected.
00:32:41
Speaker
it flowed well, even though it was bananas. You know, I mean, like it it was, it's hard for me to explain. I don't think it was quite as bad as you're saying it was, but I don't think it was good. had no structure.
00:33:01
Speaker
I mean, it did have structure. It had a beginning, middle and end. No, what's the middle? The middle part is probably papua New Guinea. maybe maybe Maybe in like the number of pages, but that's like like not the midpoint of an arc. It had a a bunch of rise and fall. And I feel like his character and his character development...
00:33:26
Speaker
kind of had a little bit of an arc because the I mean the entire time and it it happens throughout the book is him saying I just tried to do the right thing and that's all he's doing he's just trying to do the right thing and he does try he doesn't do a very good job of it but he does try and I think that's that's his arc is him trying to do He's trying to do the right thing and he keeps falling short.
00:33:53
Speaker
But he never, never figures it out. He never does the right thing. don't know. I think him leaving his company in charge of other people and going and just being a person was pretty good.
00:34:06
Speaker
yeah, that's not like doing a thing. It's not presented as like ah a resolution or or anything like that, though. It's just it's another, well, this happened. So then they suggested I leave. So then I did.
00:34:19
Speaker
And so then I went and did this thing. And then pretty soon people started putting coins in my cup because I was playing the harmonica. And then I had enough money to get me a keyboard. And then had Like it's, it is, it I don't, I mean. it did feel very rambling. Is it the rambling part that maybe bothered you more?
00:34:40
Speaker
It's not a story. It's very, very fast pace. and It's not, it's not the pace. It's not a pace thing because it's not fast paced. think it's really slow actually. Like it's, it's slow because it's, it's boring. Like, and it's boring because we don't know Everyone else is just like a caricature of a person in his life. Like we don't really get to know them because Forrest is like a self-obsessed narrator because it's a monologue because he's just he has a captive audience on a bus bench telling his story. That's the equivalent.
00:35:18
Speaker
You said like I don't remember what you said exactly that triggered this, but it's almost like the use of the characters are flat. 100%. I don't think he understands emotion. Because Mama, in the book, is just weepy and she cries all the time and she's sad. She's sad woman. That's her character, is sad woman. And Jenny is freaking disappointed and annoyed.
00:35:40
Speaker
so that's her character. She's disappointed and annoyed. Right. And then Lieutenant Dan... I think might be the most complex character in the whole book.
00:35:51
Speaker
And he's not complex. He's just, he's not that complex. An unhoused veteran dude.
00:36:00
Speaker
Who's like a little bit goofy sometimes. Yeah. So, I mean, he's he's not, nobody is, like, fully formed. Not even Forrest. Not even Forrest is fully formed. Because it's like things are just happening to him. Yeah.
00:36:14
Speaker
And it's not until, like, the end when he goes to find his mama when she's working at the, like, pants pressing shop. shop dry cleaning store or whatever that he's like I got a plan and she's like how you got a plan when you an idiot kind of thing yeah and he's like oh just trust me I got a plan so it's like I don't know.
00:36:38
Speaker
I don't know. I don't. I guess the arc is he finally got to the shrimping business. He finally got enough money to be able to go do the shrimping stuff. And then that ended up being the right thing. But it's still like.
00:36:50
Speaker
That's the only thing that he did with like intention. And all the other stuff is like interrupting. Yes. And I do want to compare the shrimp business in the book versus the shrimp business in the movie, because they're two completely different business plans.
00:37:07
Speaker
Yeah. Like one, one takes work and knowledge that he gained from his time in Vietnam. And the other one was just dumb luck.
00:37:18
Speaker
And Dan was on the boat with him. Right. That's it. I think that that, that alone, if we took out a lot of the other crazy shit that happened, if this had just been a book about some guy who's not very smart building a shrimp business, it probably would have been better. high for i think all of the chaos in the book that happened really clouded everything else. Because yeah, there wasn't as much character development as we would like to have. There was no character development.
00:37:53
Speaker
There was like, they were completely, they're not even thawed. They're still frozen characters. Yeah. if we want to do like I still feel like the tiniest bit. I think at the end of the book, he kind of like... There's an there's a level of acceptance there that he's not...
00:38:14
Speaker
gonna be happy he's not i mean there's some kind of not gonna be fully fulfilled because jenny current is already happy in another marriage better than him and that's the way he can be fulfilled like he's a yeah he's done bubba yes bubba's memory you know honor or whatever by doing the shrimp in business but yeah i feel like a whole bunch of these threads need to be taken away if it was just about music and shrimp business i think it would have been a whole lot better and vietnam Yeah.
00:38:46
Speaker
Well, you have to have Vietnam in order to have shrimp business. Yeah. maybe Maybe that's the issue is everything else is so outrageous that we're not left to, there's no space to be left to wonder about like in the quirkiness of life, I guess, which maybe a picker-esque novel is supposed to get at the quirkiness of life of just like you know, i ended up here, you know, I never met you, but somehow I ended up here and that's just quirky and beautiful. And let me just wonder at that.
00:39:24
Speaker
Um, The novel doesn't give a space for that because it, I think because of partially the form. I mean, yeah, first person, great. But it's it's almost like first person limited because Forrest doesn't have a lot of thoughts. Yeah.
00:39:45
Speaker
That's terrible to say, but he does. He does have a lot of thoughts. The entire book is his thoughts. They're just not very deep thoughts. Well, and the whole point of having like first person, like first person close, you know, is like a monologue format. You'd think that we would get to see inside his head more. And we just don't. It's first person limited, even though it's written as a monologue.
00:40:11
Speaker
This book took me on a really not fun wild ride. And I was like, fuck you, book. It was a wild ride, though. Are you so happy that i recommended this book?
00:40:22
Speaker
I'm not. But it's one of those things where, like, whenever, like, I was in high school and people would be like, hey, I just saw this really disturbing thing on the internet.
00:40:33
Speaker
And now I have to share it with my friend so that way they can also be disturbed and just carry that with them too. Because there's some things that you cannot unsee and I've seen them. Yeah. And this is a book that you can't unread.
00:40:46
Speaker
Right. No hate to Winston Groom because this did turn into like a big cultural phenomenon. You know, like that movie was, is one of the biggest movies of our lifetime.
00:40:57
Speaker
All the hate to Winston Groom. Why did you do this? He's dead. You can't hate the dead. Can you? Yes, you can, but we shouldn't. I don't know the man personally. He didn't mean to cost me so much strife over the last week. I do like the voiciness.
00:41:13
Speaker
I'll give you that. I hate, I hate that it's like, ah ah so I just opened up to a random page, right? Page 114. I don't know what chapter we're in. think we have the same book. Hold on. Chapter 13.
00:41:31
Speaker
Wait, what page? 114. Okay. So we get this. um I'm going to read the first part of the last paragraph. Okay.
00:41:42
Speaker
Around and around the earth we go. Day and night go by every hour or so. And it sort of put a different perspective on things.
00:41:55
Speaker
I mean, here I am doing this, and when I get back, or should I say if I get back, what then? Like, it's not around and around.
00:42:08
Speaker
It's around and around the Earth we go. i can't fucking stand that.
00:42:16
Speaker
But it's also, and this is something that I was thinking – But it's still perspective, which has more than two syllables. And furthermore, which is more than two syllables.
00:42:29
Speaker
ah He's able to, like, he writes, like... It's not the number of syllables. It's that we can't have the D on around. We can't have the D on and. I think part of that is, like, his... ah his accent no you know no no no no this is what i mean by bad cheap writing is yeah you get at an accent by the syntax by the structure of how sentences are put together that's how you get the the accent you can still write out the full goddamn words yeah you know what i am so excited for you to read no
00:43:04
Speaker
I'm so excited. I'm going to make it happen probably next season. I have to, because it is one of my favorite books. I am so excited for you to read Flowers for Algernon. If you think you hate this writing, oh baby, you ain't seen nothing yet. i hate it. You're going to burst a blood vessel in your eye over
Problematic themes in the book
00:43:29
Speaker
it. You're going to hate I'm going to give you an aneurysm.
00:43:33
Speaker
I mean, I'm just like going to hate it. any Anything, the word anything or the word nothing or the word being or doing or seeing or crying.
00:43:45
Speaker
There's no G. Right there's not We're not allowed to have the G Something And it's it's like at the top of it we've got Now listen here she say We has got to do something ah something About this ape We don't get the A on about We don't get the G on something
00:44:09
Speaker
fucking hate it hate it so much Fucking book Okay I'm done hating on it Sorry I hate it so much I don't hate you for recommending it. I'm glad I get to talk about it because normally I'm just like very pleasant and I'm a yes person. Yeah. Now I get to be a fucking no person, which is fun.
00:44:30
Speaker
I'm so excited. So let's talk about your thing. We're not doing Flowers of Alternon next season. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. It is so good. It's a short book. It's really, it's a short book and it is so good. and oh my God, it's the best. oh You're going hate it. I love it. It's so good. Oh my god, it's amazing. And the movie is, like oh my goodness, it is lovely.
00:44:54
Speaker
Oh, and it's problematic too, but for different reasons. I am so excited. This book was problematic as hell. The movie is problematic as hell. i didn't I'll talk about, anyway, I hated the soundtrack. Oh my god, I hate this. Now we need to get
Music's role in book vs. movie
00:45:08
Speaker
into what you hate. I don't mind the sign soundtrack. and I hate the soundtrack. It is saccharine. It is sicky, sweet, and cheesy.
00:45:16
Speaker
It smells like old Parmesan. It's gross. I hate it. If I talked to Mike C. from MSU about this, he would agree with me. It's just, it's trying to force you into- Mike Trudy?
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah, we talked about this kind of thing. Um, Like really, these really like sweet, sappy movies, like A Dog's Purpose. And just that kind of crap where they make the music swell and lovely and piano and flutes and whatever. And just, I hate I hated it so much. Watching him get chased down his driveway by the boys in the truck and the music is playing and it's like, oh, it's it's really, oh this music says that he's running and it's like, that's great. I think it would have been a lot more impactful had there been no music.
00:46:10
Speaker
If it had just been the sound of his feet beating the dirt and then the the old truck behind him, that would have been such a cool scene, I think. But instead...
00:46:22
Speaker
It was like the soundtrack to to Toy Story playing in the background. And I just, I hated it. I hated it. It turned every single like moment that could have been so powerful into just cheesy, sicky, sweet crap. I hated it.
00:46:43
Speaker
The soundtrack didn't bother me. I thought it was lovely. I get a visceral reaction to it. Interesting. Yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker
Let's talk about what didn't make the cut. Em, you had feelings about the soundtrack in the movie. Yeah. um But you're also like a music-y person. um Yeah. I.e. a musician. Yeah. I wouldn't go that far anymore. okay Well, you're ah you're a you have a musician's history. so tell me a little bit about how music went down in the book versus what didn't make it in the movie. Yeah.
00:47:21
Speaker
So music was a really big thing in the book. I mean, he, they use the word savant and he had like near magical abilities with math and, and all this stuff, but music was one of them. ah And Bubba actually in the book was the one that showed him the harmonica and kind of how to play, but Forrest picked it up immediately. It was one of those things where he just understood it.
00:47:48
Speaker
He didn't even have to think about it. He could just do it. And they actually met in college in the book, too. They met in college. And then they just so happened to run into each other in Vietnam. And they weren't even in the same company. But Bubba, like, had get transferred because a lot of Forrest's company died, were killed. I thought it was Bubba's company because Forrest's company came in to relieve them.
00:48:12
Speaker
But there wasn't anybody left. I think Bubba transitioned to Forest Company, though. yeah Yeah. Yeah. That's what happened because all of Bubba's company, oh there weren't that many of them left.
00:48:23
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Anyway. um So, yeah, music was a really big part of the book, um especially as ah For Jenny, specifically, like her character, they she had a pretty successful band going. ah The movie didn't even allow her that. They let her play guitar during like ah an all nude show. In a thong. had a topless bar in a thong, in a like a clear thong.
00:48:50
Speaker
But her band was the cracked eggs. Yeah, the cracked eggs, they had a record deal. Like, they they were going to make money. It was going to be a big thing. And Forrest shit the bed or piss the bed, whichever. ah He would not stop smoking marijuana. Like, he was the one with the with the closer, I mean, I don't know. if Does weed count as a drug?
00:49:13
Speaker
I think it did in the 90s and then like I think that part of the book probably is in like the 70s maybe. i don't fucking know. For the sake of this episode, we're going to call it a drug. So Forrest had a drug problem. He was just smoking marijuana all the time constantly and Jenny was even like, dude, you are overdoing it. You need to calm down. And he was just like, I don't want to. Forrest Gump. and And he ends up cheating on her with two women like in an alley. and He didn't... i mean
00:49:44
Speaker
he didn't seek that out and yeah you know i think i'm not defending him necessarily because he did cross a line and it wasn't cool but also you know i don't know i think like with how deep their relationship should have been not that the book told us it was this deep in any way but um based on how much they'd been together i guess um yeah You'd think that would have been like a Whoa what's going on here it needs to stop immediately and I'm mad at you but we're going to talk through it And figure our shit out because This is unlike you You're obsessed with me You wouldn't normally cheat on me And he was like he was just like really really stoned And then two ladies are like Oh my god are you like the harmonica guy For the cracked eggs and he was like Uh and they're like feel our tits or whatever like um here you know it's not like he was like
00:50:46
Speaker
I'm a cheat on Jenny. but wasn't that like he was just really stoned. And then these, these ladies came up and were like, Oh my God, somebody famous. So I think, and this is just me.
00:50:57
Speaker
i He'd already screwed up in the past, not with cheating, but he had already been like a complete dumbass around into her before. This was her really giving him a big chance. She was letting him in on her success in her band She let him in there and then he smoked a ton of weed and she even told him, you need to stop smoking so much weed.
00:51:19
Speaker
You need to stop this. She was the voice of reason and he ignored it and then got into trouble. I would have broken up with him too because i already told him to stop and he didn't stop. I think for me it would have been the second to last straw, right? it would have been like, okay, I understand you were super high. You didn't understand fully what was happening until it was happening. And then it was like too late. And then I walked in like there wasn't enough time for you to really react.
00:51:45
Speaker
But you crossed a line. You're on thin ice. You need to stop smoking weed. And if you refuse to stop, then we're done. Like, I think that's how I would have. I don't know. You're more forgiving than me.
00:51:58
Speaker
I digress. Music is a really, really big component in the book. That's the thing that saves him from... I don't even want to say the words because I feel it this book had a lot of racist elements to it. Whenever he was in Papua New Guinea, music is what kind of saved him.
00:52:15
Speaker
Like chess was for a while of all things. And then music saved him. Yeah. And then that's how he ends the book too, is also that he gives up Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
00:52:28
Speaker
He just becomes like a traveling music man, like a busker. Like he just. Yeah. He just goes and plays harmonica everywhere. and that's just like it what brings him happiness.
00:52:38
Speaker
Yeah. Brings him something. Yeah. I would have loved to see Tom Hanks play the accordion, not the accordion. Jesus Christ. Well, that would be good too. But the harmonica.
00:52:51
Speaker
Something we haven't talked about yet. We've talked around few times is in the novel, Forrest Gump goes to fucking outer space.
Forrest's outrageous adventures in the book
00:53:04
Speaker
Em, tell us about that. So this is like one of my favorite parts of that freaking book because it's just so ridiculous. And I don't like it though also because there's so much P. P is a very central, it's an important piece of this whole like narrative. Like without P, things probably would have just gone Like normal and he would have been able to actually do math, which we never see him do in space. He never does math once in space. I think he only ever does math in, I don't know.
00:53:36
Speaker
he wo he was also like the third backup. He was only on there if like the backup computer, like they had the computer, the backup computer and then him. So, and by the time they maybe needed him to step in and do the math calculations, they were hurtling back to Earth. So he's like, I'm a little busy dying here. um so no.
00:53:59
Speaker
So listen, I think him going to space and being an astronaut isn't even the craziest part of it. I think even even weirder still, because you remember why he was going to space, right? It's because he took his Medal of Honor and he threw it at like the Secretary of State. and so He just threw it and it accidentally hit the Secretary. but he didn't have an aiming for him. I know, but still it it hit them. So he was facing like they, he got arrested and they said, okay, here's the deal. You math jockey, you can either go to prison for 10 years or because this makes perfect sense, or you can go to NASA instead. do you want to be an astronaut, be a little space boy, or you want to go to prison like a bad boy? And he was like, oh, I'll do space boy.
00:54:49
Speaker
That makes no sense. There's like this whole thing where like if your child is being an asshole, then you send them to the military or to military school, right? That's a punishment. I don't think becoming an astronaut and going to space is a punishment. I think it is. for for Yeah, you do. But for the average person who's not terrified of space, I think that's not an effective punishment for assaulting the Secretary of State, even if it's by accident.
00:55:19
Speaker
I'll be perfectly clear here. i would 1000% take 10 years of prison over going to outer space. I think it just depends on who's sending me to space, but I'd probably pick space just with the knowledge that I'm going to puke the entire time because I have really bad motion sickness. Anyway, hi Forrest does not do any math in space at all. Not once. He does pee in a jar and he tells us all about it and how that worked.
00:55:45
Speaker
And then he also talks about the orangutan that they also have in space for some reason. And also, that's the other thing that doesn't make any sense. Like, if you're going to send a monkey into space, fine. Send a monkey or an ape into space. I'm OK with that. It was... ah The Captain, ah no, Major Fritch, which I think that Winston Groom maybe didn't like women and wanted to call her a Major Bitch. So he was like, that's too on the nose. What rhymes with bitch? It's Fritch. So Major Fritch and a nice, friendly female orangutan named Sue and Forrest get onto this onto the rocket.
00:56:25
Speaker
And then something goes wrong. So they all have to get off of the rocket. And then somehow... The geniuses that work at NASA and know exactly what they're doing, they know how to send human beings in a tube into space. They somehow mixed up the orangutans. So instead of sending the friendly female Sue up into space with them, they sent up mean man Sue.
00:56:50
Speaker
like a male orangutan who they just named Sue because that's the only name available to orangutans I guess I don't know why they couldn't have named him like Nate when they were like hey you sent the wrong monkey they were like well make it the right one as far as you're concerned that's Sue and they're like that's not who Sue is they're like ill it is now so that's how we don't know his real name NASA was really just washing their hands of the whole situation you think you want the right monkey for it I'll just say like The scene of them like reentering Earth is like precisely why I'm not interested in ever going to outer space, like of just hurtling back to the Earth and like having no control. and like, am I going to burn up into a fine dust? I don't know. So I think as far as hurtling back down to the Earth goes, as long as you don't have a big, angry male orangutan in there tossing jars of pee,
00:57:46
Speaker
um i think you'll be okay sue's the one who saved them sue's the one who pulled the like parachute lever or whatever they kept them rat only after only after they had a little like pee parade because he grabbed i'm fine with that i don't give a shit about a monkey throwing his pee at me it's fine forest forest thought that he could get the pee like the the orangutan who was being an asshole not listening to them he was like oh yeah i can just grab this monkey's penis and put it in a jar and then he'll pee there and it'll be good because my name is forrest gump and i'm obsessed with piss and and that doesn't happen instead sue the orangutan pees and it hits ah major fritch in the face
00:58:31
Speaker
And then other P gets all over like their like equipment. I just don't understand what the purpose of the, of the space exploration was. I mean, I know that they were like, just trying to figure out what body type would be best as far as like a space mission would go.
00:58:46
Speaker
So they picked the tallest motherfucker that they could find anyway. They go to space. They learn nothing. They play with P and then they crash land in New Guinea.
00:58:58
Speaker
Do you want to talk about New Guinea or shall I talk about New Guinea?
Racial insensitivity in the book's portrayal of New Guinea
00:59:01
Speaker
um Well, just they landed crash land in New Guinea um and they're found by a canna cannibal tribe. I don't know that we ever learn what the tribe is, who the tribe is.
00:59:14
Speaker
and it's super freaking racist. Yeah. Talk more about that. So the particular like tribe that, Winston Groom decided to make a character out of. ah They do, I don't know if they still do now, but in the past they have practiced ah ritual cannibalism, but this was only with people who died already. They weren't killing people with the express intent of eating them. So like if I were a member of that tribe and like my mother or father passed, then because I loved them and they were part of my family, part of the ritual is to eat
00:59:49
Speaker
Eat them, you know, to use their body to nourish myself and my soul. And it was seen as a way of ah the family members like ingesting the evil spirit that just so happens to inhabit the body, thereby releasing it.
01:00:05
Speaker
everything is is beautiful and good after that, right? And that's not what he did in the book. In the book, he had, like, the the leader of the tribe was a Yale-educated man who spoke in a very posh accent per the audiobook, which was really weird. And... ah He just so happened to also be like a chess grandmaster or whatever and taught Forrest how to play chess.
01:00:30
Speaker
And it was just really bizarre and out of pocket. If this scene, if this like whole part of the book didn't exist, I think I would like it a whole lot better. Well, and that's goes back to my point of hating the book of like, everyone is a caricature.
01:00:44
Speaker
Right? that's It's so offensive because there's nothing that we like learn that's genuine about this tribe. like We don't even know what the tribe is. As Forrest is leaving this caricature island um and Major Fritch decides to stay behind because she did fall in love with one of the men in the tribe. And and's if you treated her great and they just want to have a happy family, that's awesome. I love it for them. I actually like that part where she's like, I did like that part. I found a man who loves me and gets me and I want him. So I'm staying.
01:01:18
Speaker
Great. You stay, girl. You do that. That's a plot point everybody can agree with. It was always my dream to live in the jungle. i love trees.
01:01:29
Speaker
Really, it was. I was like, why can't Tarzan be real? And why can't Tarzan be me? um Sue does stay behind, too. ah Because Sue and Forrest can like speak telepathically or something. I don't even think that the way that they described the language in the book.
01:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, the way that they described the language that they were using together in the book made just about as much sense as what I just said. So going leave it at that. yeah They figured out a way to communicate, right which is admirable. right But weird, because it comes up again.
01:02:03
Speaker
So yeah, some other stuff that didn't make sense to have in the movie because the NASA part in Going to Outer Space was cut. um So in New Guinea, Forrest Gump learns chess from this guy named Sam, and like a leader of the New Guinea tribe.
01:02:21
Speaker
And then like his savant... ness takes over and he becomes amazing at chess and just like whoops Sam every time and Sam's like when I will not beat you like then you know when I can beat you you're dead basically like I'm not going to kill you until then which he didn't even say that out loud that was just like the gist yeah but Forrest was able to figure that out with zero information which seems like what a smart person would be able to do
01:02:53
Speaker
But he can't figure out anything else going on in the world. In the book later, Forrest like stumbles upon like a chess tournament and then like plays like a retired chess master guy um who like then later sponsors him and is like, you should play chess and we'll split the earnings 50-50. The way that he wins the chess match. Do you remember that?
01:03:18
Speaker
Oh, he does the Papua New Guinea. He he does the New Guinea. Nope. Not even that. What's it called? um Nope. Nope. Nope. He had names for things. I'm not talking about a chess move. Do you remember what he did that helped him to win?
01:03:32
Speaker
Was he like, I got a P? No, he farted. oh right. Right. He farted and that ruined his opponent's concentration or whatever. Yeah, he described it as he ripped ah ah um a baked bean fart so loud it sounded like a sheet being torn in half ah or something. So he farted, and that's how he won.
01:03:54
Speaker
And none of the chess nerds could really come up with a good enough excuse for why he shouldn't get money. Right. he did That's stupid. Forrest Gump also plays, like, he also has a brief stint as a professional wrestler. And his character is the dunce and he wears like a dunce hat and like a diaper, which is really stupid.
01:04:15
Speaker
It's stupid, but also like um insulting. I didn't like that. Oh yeah. Like, ew. And all of this is like sequential, right? Because he didn't throw the metal. And didn't go to jail and then wasn't given the option to go to prison or space and then, you know, didn't go to outer space and then didn't crash land in New Guinea and then didn't get rescued and then didn't go to Indiana or whatever to find Jenny.
01:04:41
Speaker
um And luck into or just happen chance become a professional wrestler and then like it's all connected so they just like cut all of that out of the movie which I think is good smart. That's totally fine. I did not need to see Tom Hanks in a diaper. Right. um And also there was like um in the in the book, there was a brief cameo where he's an actor, where Forrest Gump is asked to come onto a set because he'd be perfect for this role. And the role is a like creepy character.
01:05:16
Speaker
lake monster he's the he's the creature from the black lagoon i used to play that ping ball game at pizza hut right so um and his job is just to like come out of the water and scoop raquel welch up and take her off into some woods and it's dumb and then because this reads like a men's magazine raquel welch is completely nude During most of her time in this book, she is nude. So that thing happens while he's supposed to be at a chess tournament. um But it all happens while he's on like a break from the chess tournament. Like they're, I don't know if it's just like they're done for the day and then they'll resume the next day or what. So it's just a hot mess. And then,
01:06:01
Speaker
um finally after he wins he goes back to the chess tournament he wins that's when he gets the money and he's like i'm finally gonna do the shrimp thing so then he goes and does the shrimp thing so it's like we cut everything out from kind of like his um medal of honor what is it called that he gets um I don't remember which medal he actually got in the book because I know that in the movie it's the Congressional Medal of Honor. i think that's what it was in the book, I think that's what he did get.
01:06:33
Speaker
i thought he would get, like, a Purple Heart, too. I feel like essentially we cut everything from that point to the shrimping business. Like, everything in the book that happens between those two things is cut. Mm-hmm.
01:06:54
Speaker
But in the movie, we go from from Congressional Medal of Honor and like he gives it to Jenny. And then she like leaves and goes to Berkeley, back to Berkeley with that. And then it's like he's like, all right.
01:07:08
Speaker
Well, he he plays ping pong after that. So it's a tiny bit out of order. He plays ping pong. And then as soon as he's discharged from the army, he goes home. whereas in the He just doesn't want to go home in the book, it seems. He doesn't go back home until almost the end. In the novel, he's like, yeah I should really go home, but I gotta find Jenny.
01:07:29
Speaker
That's how it is every single time. And then it's like his dumb ass either does something that keeps him from finding Jenny or he does find Jenny and he fucks it up. um So yeah It's like as soon as he's discharged in the movie He goes straight home And the home doesn't catch on fire His mom is in the poll house um His mom doesn't run off with the protestant Or whatever like I know that was all very very weird I'm like okay is he Catholic? I'm like why are why is he suddenly Catholic? I didn't think he was Catholic the whole time
01:08:06
Speaker
I didn't like Mama's character in the book either, but again, because she was just so... one-dimensional like she had no she just was crying the whole time she also mean i didn't realize this like at the beginning of the book but at the end of the book when he finally does go home and he goes back to mama and he's like don't worry i got a plan and she's like you've got a plan how could you have a plan when you're a certified old idiot or whatever and it's like oh ah she's part of the problem of why he thinks he's so dumb is because she tells him he's so dumb all the time and like she doesn't do it in like a mean way necessarily not like oh you're a dumbass she's just like oh how on earth could you be capable of that because you're a certifiable idiot like i know it's like she's just very matter of fact about it she's like this is just how it is you're too stupid to think of any kind of plan
01:09:06
Speaker
This is your limitation. Right. and And it's the shrimp business is one of my biggest complaints about the movie specifically other I mean, other than the way that they treated Jenny and all of that.
01:09:20
Speaker
The shrimp business is something that he genuinely built and put together in the book. He learned how to farm them in Vietnam. That was something that he as a person found a way to be capable of doing. Whereas how in the movie, it is basically handed to him right on a silver platter because all of the people around him lost everything.
01:09:41
Speaker
yep And he lucked out and was able to pick it all up behind them. In the book, he he does run for Senate, and that just goes south. Right. Yeah.
01:09:53
Speaker
They learn about his checkered past. Yeah. And I'm like, well, they had different standards back then. Like, nobody nobody did a a background check to see that he was facing, like, a felony charge. Nobody looked into that. Okay. But honestly, looking at, like, ah things right now, that makes sense. That tracks. Totally tracks. Yeah.
01:10:15
Speaker
they we wouldn't care about that so much now we'd be like yeah this man's gotta be put him in office oh okay you to talk about the sequel i will talk about the sequel so there's a second book and i don't think i'm going to read it i'm not i guarantee you i'm not you couldn't pay me enough money to read it Don't worry, because it's not going to happen, at least not for this podcast.
Cancelled sequel and potential storylines
01:10:42
Speaker
So there was a sequel. There were two Forrest Gump books total. In the first book, the one that we're discussing today, Jenny does not die at the end. She is married and she leaves and is she's got she's got her life figured out. She's gold right now. It might not be the glamorous life that she expected, but she's living it and it's good. In the sequel, that's when Jenny dies, and she dies of ah hepatitis C. Like, it's confirmed in the book that it's hepatitis C. However, there was a script written for the second movie, a sequel to Forrest Gump. And they were going to ah have Forrest Jr., Jenny and Forrest's son, ah deal with AIDS and the AIDS crisis. my God. So...
01:11:29
Speaker
And ah the article that I read on it was really going to introduce a whole bunch of things such as Forrest Gump being in the white Ford Bronco with OJ Simpson as he was like fleeing the police. And I believe he was going to be at a bombing in and Oklahoma and just a whole bunch of like really dark things. This is going to be a very dark movie. And the script actually got turned in to the studio, i believe, on September 10th, 2001. And then the next day, September 11th happened, and it really put a lot of things in perspective. And they decided not to make the movie.
01:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. Thank God. Yeah.
01:12:18
Speaker
I was happy to rewatch the movie. um I'm a little disappointed. I'll never get the hours I spent reading the book back in my life. But it's fine. There's a first time for everything and a last. So, Em, are you a book nerd or a movie buff?
01:12:39
Speaker
Okay. So... I don't think I'm ever going to feel the need to read the book again. ah Because this was like the second or third time because I have written a but ah paper on it before.
01:12:52
Speaker
um i don't think I'll ever read it again. So I'm not a book nerd. But also, if it ever comes on TV...
01:13:03
Speaker
I won't necessarily turn it off, but I don't think I'm ever going to have an afternoon where i'm like, I really need to watch Forrest Gump again. i don't think that's going to happen. so I abstain no you're not gonna be either one no I can't because I know but if I had okay so if both of them were dangling off of the cliff and I could only save one i would probably save the movie okay but I wouldn't talk to him anymore after that okay all right i was like you have to pick one come on abstain well I kind of did
01:13:39
Speaker
Okay, well, I'm... I'm begrudgingly picked to the movie. I'm totally a buff. I am unapologetically a movie buff on this one. i fucking hate the book. We not covered that at length already. um i would throw the book off a cliff.
01:13:54
Speaker
Even though he died in 2020, but I'm always afraid of hurting anybody's feelings. I'm sorry, Winston Groom.
01:14:07
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast. Watch for new episodes out the third Thursday each month. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
01:14:19
Speaker
Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Book Club, the movie. You can also find us on Patreon, Facebook, or on our website, bookclubthemovie.com. This podcast was created and produced by Jen Moyer and M. Lord.
01:14:32
Speaker
Our music and mixing is by Jason Lord of Studio Topaz. Voice acted by Ethan Gallardo. And we just want to give a big thank you to our friends and family for your love and support.
01:14:44
Speaker
And thank you, dear listener, for joining our book club. See you next time, nerds. And buffs. Bye!
01:14:57
Speaker
Can't see the appeal, no. Okay, alright, well. That's an answer. Didn't say it was going to be helpful. You didn't give me forewarning, but no, I don't understand myself.
01:15:09
Speaker
Hey, that that's fine. We just needed the the male opinion, i guess. Well, good thanks for your help. Yep.
01:15:19
Speaker
Appreciate you. Enjoy your movie on AIDS. So Adam says, no, i don't know what you're talking about. That's weird. I asked Jason, I said, are all men obsessed with peeing on stuff? The book has so much pee in it.
01:15:31
Speaker
And Jason responded with, it's actually the opposite. I believe men hate peeing. We love pooping though. All right. Well, interesting.
01:15:42
Speaker
There you have it.