Well, well, well..............Savannah, GA.........

Forrest Gump

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This article is about the film. For other uses, see Forrest Gump (disambiguation).

Forrest Gump
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Robert Zemeckis
Produced by	Wendy Finerman Steve Tisch Steve Starkey Charles Newirth
Screenplay by	Eric Roth
Based on	Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
Starring	Tom Hanks Robin Wright Gary Sinise Mykelti Williamson Sally Field
Music by	Alan Silvestri
Cinematography	Don Burgess
Edited by	Arthur Schmidt
Production company	Paramount Pictures
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	July 6, 1994
Running time	142 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$55 million[1]
Box office	$677.9 million[1]

Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic romantic-comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field. The story depicts several decades in the life of Forrest Gump, a slow-witted and naïve, but good-hearted and athletically prodigious man from Alabama who witnesses, and in some cases influences, some of the defining events of the latter half of the 20th century in the United States; more specifically, the period between Forrest's birth in 1944 and 1982. The film differs substantially from Winston Groom's novel on which it was based, including Gump's personality and several events that were depicted.

Principal photography took place in late 1993, mainly in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Extensive visual effects were used to incorporate the protagonist into archived footage and to develop other scenes. A comprehensive soundtrack was featured in the film, using music intended to pinpoint specific time periods portrayed on screen. Its commercial release made it a top-selling soundtrack, selling over twelve million copies worldwide.

Released in the United States on July 6, 1994, Forrest Gump became a commercial success as the top grossing film in North America released in that year, being the first major success for Paramount Pictures since the studio's sale to Viacom, earning over $677 million worldwide during its theatrical run. In 1995 it won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, Best Adapted Screenplay for Eric Roth, Best Visual Effects, and Best Film Editing. It also garnered multiple other awards and nominations, includingGolden Globes, People's Choice Awards, and Young Artist Awards, among others. Since the film's release varying interpretations have been made of the film's protagonist and its political symbolism. In 1996, a themed restaurant, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, opened based on the film and has since expanded to multiple locations worldwide. The scene of Gump running across the country is often referred to when real-life people attempt the feat.^[2] In 2011, the Library of Congress selected Forrest Gump for preservation in the United States National Film Registryas being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[3]

Contents

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Plot[edit]

In 1981, Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), a man with below-average intelligence, watches a feather fall from the sky at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia. As he sits down on a bench, he removes a copy of The Adventures of Curious George from his suitcase and places the feather inside the pages. He introduces himself and begins telling his life story to strangers who sit next to him on the bench, recounting his childhood in Greenbow, Alabama. As a child in the 1950s, Forrest (Michael Connor Humphreys) had to wear leg braces for which other children make fun of him. He lives with his single mother (Sally Field) in a very large house outside of town, which they rent rooms to travelers. His father apparently left and he never knew him. Despite his limited mental capacity, Mrs. Gump tells her son that "stupid is as stupid does" (which he later uses as a retort when called "stupid") and also assures him that he is no different from any of the other children. Forrest is admitted to public school despite his IQ being below the cut-off, but only after his mother agrees to a one night stand with the principal, Mr. Hancock (Sam Anderson). On his first bus ride to school, Forrest is rejected by nearly all of his peers except for Jenny Curran (Hanna R. Hall). He and Jenny become best friends, and he helps her hide from her abusive, alcoholic father. One day, while fleeing from bullies, Forrest's leg braces break apart and he discovers that he can run very fast. A few years later, Forrest inadvertently runs onto the field during a local high school football match and catches the attention of Coach Bryant from the University of Alabama who is scouting for players. Forrest attends the university on an athletic scholarship and becomes a college football star, earning him a spot on the College Football All-America Team and a trip to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy.

After graduating, Forrest enlists in the United States Army, where he befriends former shrimp fisherman Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue (Mykelti Williamson), and they agree to go into the shrimping business together once they end their service. Jenny (Robin Wright) meanwhile had gotten herself thrown out of college after she exposes herself on the cover of Playboy Magazine and "fulfills" her aspirations of becoming a famous folk singer by performing nude at a strip club. Forrest goes to one of her shows after seeing the cover and intervenes when she is harassed by club patrons. He tells her that his unit is being sent to Vietnam so Jenny tells Forrest that if he is ever in trouble: run. Once they arrive in Vietnam, they are assigned to First Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). One day while on patrol their platoon is ambushed. Forrest carries several wounded soldiers to safety including Lieutenant Dan and his friend Bubba, but Bubba is severely wounded and dies shortly thereafter. Forrest himself is also wounded in the buttocks and Lieutenant Dan, who has had both of his legs amputated due to his injuries, is furious at Forrest for leaving him a cripple and cheating him out of his destiny to die in battle, as all of his ancestors had. After he recovers from his wounds, Forrest travels to Washington DC where he receives the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Lyndon B. Johnson and goes to ananti-war rally where he reunites with Jenny, who is now living a hippie counterculture lifestyle with a commune of anti-war activists and has experimented with various substances includingLSD.

Forrest discovers an aptitude for ping pong and begins playing for the U.S. Army team, eventually competing against Chinese teams on a goodwill tour. After his return from China, he appears on the The Dick Cavett Show with John Lennon, which after describing his experience in China as best as he can, inspires Lennon to write the song "Imagine." He then encounters Lieutenant Dan, now a wheelchair-bound embittered drunk living on welfare. Dan is scornful of Forrest's plans to enter the shrimping business and mockingly promises to be Forrest's first mate if he ever succeeds. Forrest and Lieutenant Dan spend New Years together. He visits the White House again and meets President Richard Nixon, who provides him a room at theWatergate hotel, where Forrest inadvertently helps expose the Watergate scandal.

Forrest is discharged from the military as a sergeant and uses money from a ping pong endorsement to buy a shrimping boat, fulfilling his wartime promise to Bubba. Lieutenant Dan keeps his own promise and joins Forrest as first mate. They initially have little luck, but after Hurricane Carmen wrecks every other shrimping boat in the region, the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company becomes a huge success. Both of them are wealthy. Forrest returns home to care for his mother when she becomes terminally ill and passes away. He leaves the company in the hands of Dan, who invests the proceeds of the company in shares of the recently founded Apple Computers, which Forrest assumes is "some kind of fruit company," making them both more wealthy. He gives most of his money to various causes (such as taking care of Bubba's family) and continues to live in the house where he grew up.

Jenny returns to visit Forrest and stays with him. He proposes but she turns him down. They have sex, but she quietly leaves the next morning. Distraught at discovering this, Forrest decides to go for a run, which turns into a three-year coast-to-coast marathon. Forrest becomes a celebrity, attracting a band of followers. One day he stops his marathon suddenly and returns home, where he receives a letter from Jenny, who had seen him on the news during his running, asking to meet.

This brings Forrest to the bus stop where he began telling his story at the start of the film. During his reunion with Jenny, she introduces him to her young son, also named Forrest (Haley Joel Osment). She says that the boy is named for his father, which Forrest assumes is someone else named Forrest until she tells him that he himself is the father. Jenny finds out that she is suffering from an unknown viral illness, presumably HIV/AIDS. She proposes and he accepts, and they return to Alabama with Forrest Jr. and marry. At the wedding, Lieutenant Dan, who now has titanium alloy prosthetic legs and can walk, attends as well as his fiancée.

Eventually, Jenny dies of her illness. Though he misses her terribly, he becomes a devoted father to Forrest Jr. Speaking to Jenny's tombstone, Forrest tearfully says he does not know if life has a meaning or purpose like Lieutenant Dan said, or if life is entirely random, like his mother said - but he has a feeling that, somehow, "maybe it's both." The film ends with Forrest waiting with his son for the bus to pick him up for his first day of school, and watching the feather float off in the wind.

Cast[edit]

Tom Hanks (left) and Gary Sinise on the film set in 1993.

• Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump: though at an early age he is deemed to have a below average IQ of 75, he has an endearing character and shows devotion to his loved ones and duties, character traits which bring him into many life-changing situations. Along the way, he encounters many historical figures and events throughout his life. John Travolta was the original choice to play the title role, and admits passing on the role was a mistake.^[4][5] Bill Murray was also considered for the role.^[6] Hanks revealed that he signed onto the film after an hour and a half of reading the script.^[7] He initially wanted to ease Forrest's pronounced Southern accent, but was eventually persuaded by director Bob Zemeckis to portray the heavy accent stressed in the novel.^[7] Hanks agreed to take the role only on the condition that the film was historically accurate. Michael Conner Humphreys portrayed the young Forrest Gump. Hanks revealed in interviews that after hearing Michael's unique accented drawl, he incorporated it into the older character's accent. Winston Groom, who wrote the original novel, describes the film as having taken the "rough edges" off of the character, and envisioned him being played by John Goodman.^[8]
• Robin Wright as Jenny Curran: Forrest's childhood friend whom he immediately falls in love with and never stops loving throughout his life. A victim of child sexual abuse at the hands of her bitterly widowed father, Jenny embarks on a different path than Forrest, leading a self-destructive life and becoming part of the hippie movement in the 1960s and the 1970s/1980s drug culture. She re-enters Forrest's life at various times in adulthood. Jenny eventually becomes a waitress in Savannah, Georgia, where she lives in an apartment with her (and Forrest's) son, Forrest Jr. They eventually get married, but soon afterwards she dies of an unspecified illness caused by a kind of virus, though it is heavily implied to be HIV/AIDS. Hanna R. Hall portrayed the young Jenny.
• Gary Sinise as Lieutenant Dan Taylor: Forrest and Bubba Blue's platoon leader during the Vietnam War, whose ancestors have died in every American war and regards it as his destiny to do the same. After losing his legs in an ambush and being rescued against his will by Forrest, he is initially bitter and antagonistic towards Forrest for leaving him a "cripple" and denying him his family's destiny, falling into a deep depression. He later serves as Forrest's first mate at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, gives most of the orders, and regains his will to live. He ultimately forgives and thanks Forrest for saving his life. By the end of the film, he is engaged to be married and is sporting "magic legs" – titanium alloy prosthetics which allow him to walk again.
• Mykelti Williamson as Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue: Bubba is Forrest's friend whom he meets upon joining the Army. Bubba was originally supposed to be the senior partner in the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, but due to his death in Vietnam, their platoon leader, Dan Taylor, took his place. The company posthumously carried his name. Forrest and Dan later gave Bubba's mother Bubba's share of the business. Throughout filming, Williamson wore a lip attachment to create Bubba's protruding lip.^[9] David Alan Grier, Ice Cube and Dave Chappelle were all offered the role before turning it down.^[6][10] Chappelle claimed he believed the film would be unsuccessful and has also admitted that he regrets not taking the role.^[6]
• Sally Field as Mrs. Gump: Forrest's devoted mother, who raises him after his father abandons them. Field reflected on the character, "She's a woman who loves her son unconditionally. ... A lot of her dialogue sounds like slogans, and that's just what she intends."^[11]
• Haley Joel Osment as Forrest Gump, Jr.: Forrest and Jenny's son. Osment was cast in the film after the casting director had noticed him in a Pizza Hut commercial.^[12]
• Peter Dobson as Elvis: a house guest Forrest encounters. Although Kurt Russell was uncredited, he provided the voice over for Elvis in the scene where Elvis meets Forrest.^[13]
• Dick Cavett as himself: Cavett played the 1970s version of himself, with makeup applied to make him appear younger. Consequently, Cavett is the only well-known figure in the film to play a cameo role rather than be represented through the use of archival footage like John Lennon or President John F. Kennedy^[14]
• Sam Anderson as Principal Hancock: Forrest's elementary school principal.
• Geoffrey Blake as Wesley: A member of the SDS group and Jenny's abusive boyfriend.
• Siobhan Fallon Hogan as Dorothy Harris: The school bus driver who drives both Forrest, and later his son, to school.
• Sonny Shroyer as Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant: Forrest's football coach at the University of Alabama.
• Grand L. Bush, Michael Jace, Conor Kennelly, and Teddy Lane Jr. as the Black Panthers: Members of an organization that protests the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson, and anti-black racism.

Production[edit]

Script[edit]

Main article: Forrest Gump (novel)

"The writer, Eric Roth, departed substantially from the book. We flipped the two elements of the book, making the love story primary and the fantastic adventures secondary. Also, the book was cynical and colder than the movie. In the movie, Gump is a completely decent character, always true to his word. He has no agenda and no opinion about anything except Jenny, his mother and God."

—director Robert Zemeckis^[15]

The film is based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom. Both center on the character of Forrest Gump. However, the film primarily focuses on the first eleven chapters of the novel, before skipping ahead to the end of the novel with the founding of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and the meeting with Forrest, Jr. In addition to skipping some parts of the novel, the film adds several aspects to Gump's life that do not occur in the novel, such as his needing leg braces as a child and his run across the United States.^[16]

Gump's core character and personality are also changed from the novel; among other things his film character is less of anautistic savant—in the novel, while playing football at the university, he fails craft and gym, but receives a perfect score in an advanced physics class he is enrolled in by his coach to satisfy his college requirements.^[16] The novel also features Gump as an astronaut, a professional wrestler, and a chess player.^[16]

Two directors were offered the opportunity to direct the film before Robert Zemeckis was selected. Terry Gilliam turned down the offer to direct.^[17] Barry Sonnenfeld was attached to the film, but left to direct Addams Family Values.^[18]

Filming[edit]

Filming began in August 1993 and ended in December of that year.^[19] Although most of the film is set in Alabama, filming took place mainly in and around Beaufort, South Carolina, as well as parts of coastal Virginia and North Carolina,^[7] including a running shot on the Blue Ridge Parkway.^[20] Downtown portions of the fictional town of Greenbow were filmed in Varnville, South Carolina.^[21] The scene of Forrest running through Vietnam while under fire was filmed on Fripp Island, South Carolina.^[22] Additional filming took place on the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina and along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Boone, North Carolina. The most notable place was Grandfather Mountain where a part of the road is named "Forrest Gump Curve".^[23] The Gump family home set was built along the Combahee River near Yemassee, South Carolina and the nearby land was used to film Curran's home as well as some of the Vietnam scenes.^[24] Over 20 palmetto trees were planted to improve the Vietnam scenes.^[24] Forrest Gump narrated his life's story in Chippewa Square in Savannah, Georgia as he sat at a bus stop bench. There were other scenes filmed in and around the Savannah area as well, including a running shot on the Richard V. Woods Memorial Bridge in Beaufort while he was being interviewed by the press, and on West Bay Street in Savannah.^[24] Most of the college campus scenes were filmed in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California. The lighthouse that Forrest runs across to reach the Atlantic Ocean the first time is the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde, Maine.

Visual effects[edit]

Gump with President John F. Kennedy. A variety of visual effects were used to incorporate Tom Hanks into archive footage with various historical figures and events.

Ken Ralston and his team at Industrial Light & Magic were responsible for the film's visual effects. Using CGI techniques, it was possible to depict Gump meeting deceased personages and shaking their hands. Hanks was first shot against a blue screen along with reference markers so that he could line up with the archive footage.^[25] To record the voices of the historical figures, voice doubles were hired and special effects were used to alterlip-syncing for the new dialogue.^[15] Archival footage was used and with the help of such techniques as chroma key, image warping, morphing, androtoscoping, Hanks was integrated into it.

In one Vietnam War scene, Gump carries Bubba away from an incoming napalm attack. To create the effect, stunt actors were initially used forcompositing purposes. Then, Hanks and Williamson were filmed, with Williamson supported by a cable wire as Hanks ran with him. The explosion was then filmed, and the actors were digitally added to appear just in front of the explosions. The jet fighters and napalm canisters were also added by CGI.^[26]

The CGI removal of actor Gary Sinise's legs, after his character had them amputated, was achieved by wrapping his legs with a blue fabric, which later facilitated the work of the "roto-paint" team to paint out his legs from every single frame. At one point, while hoisting himself into his wheelchair, his legs are used for support.^[27]

The scene where Forrest spots Jenny at a peace rally at the Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., required visual effects to create the large crowd of people. Over two days of filming, approximately 1,500 extras were used.^[28] At each successive take, the extras were rearranged and moved into a different quadrant away from the camera. With the help of computers, the extras were multiplied to create a crowd of several hundred thousand people.^[7][28]

Release[edit]

Critical reception[edit]

The film received generally positive reviews. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 72% of critics gave the film a positive review based on a sample of 79 reviews.^[29]At the website Metacritic, the film earned a rating of 82/100 based on 19 reviews by mainstream critics.^[30]

The story was commended by several critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "I've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I've never seen a movie quite like 'Forrest Gump.' Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a comedy, I guess. Or maybe a drama. Or a dream. The screenplay by Eric Roth has the complexity of modern fiction...The performance is a breathtaking balancing act between comedy and sadness, in a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths...What a magical movie."^[31] Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote that the film "has been very well worked out on all levels, and manages the difficult feat of being an intimate, even delicate tale played with an appealingly light touch against an epic backdrop."^[32] The film did receive notable pans from several major reviewers. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker called the film "Warm, wise, and wearisome as hell."^[33] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly said that the film "reduces the tumult of the last few decades to a virtual-reality theme park: a baby-boomer version of Disney's America."^[34]

Critics had mixed views on the main character. Gump has been compared with various characters and people including Huckleberry Finn, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan.^[35][36][37] Peter Chomo writes that Gump acts as a "social mediator and as an agent of redemption in divided times".^[38] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Gump "everything we admire in the American character – honest, brave, loyal."^[39] The New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin called Gump a "hollow man" who is "self-congratulatory in his blissful ignorance, warmly embraced as the embodiment of absolutely nothing."^[40] Marc Vincenti of Palo Alto Weekly called the character "a pitiful stooge taking the pie of life in the face, thoughtfully licking his fingers."^[41] Bruce Kawin and Gerald Mast's textbook on film history notes that Forrest Gump's dimness was a metaphor for glamorized nostalgia in that he represented a blank slate by which the Baby Boomer generation projected their memories of those events.^[42]

The film is commonly seen as a polarizing one for audiences, with Entertainment Weekly writing in 2004, "Nearly a decade after it earned gazillions and swept the Oscars, Robert Zemeckis's ode to 20th-century America still represents one of cinema's most clearly drawn lines in the sand. One half of folks see it as an artificial piece of pop melodrama, while everyone else raves that it's sweet as a box of chocolates."^[43]

Box office performance[edit]

Produced on a budget of $55 million, Forrest Gump opened in 1,595 theaters in its first weekend of domestic release, earning $24,450,602.^[1] Motion picture business consultant and screenwriter Jeffrey Hilton suggested to producer Wendy Finerman to double the P&A (film marketing budget) based on his viewing of an early print of the film. The budget was immediately increased, per his advice. The film placed first in the weekend's box office, narrowly beating The Lion King, which was in its fourth week of release.^[1] For the first ten weeks of its release, the film held the number one position at the box office.^[44] The film remained in theaters for 42 weeks, earning $329.7 million in the United States and Canada, making it the fourth-highest grossing film at that time (behind only E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars IV: A New Hope, and Jurassic Park).^[44][45]

The film took 66 days to surpass $250 million and was the fastest grossing Paramount film to pass $100 million, $200 million, and $300 million in box office receipts (at the time of its release).^[46][47][48] The film had gross receipts of $329,694,499 in the U.S. and Canada and $347,693,217 in international markets for a total of $677,387,716 worldwide.^[1] Even with such revenue, the film was known as a "successful failure"—due to distributors' and exhibitors' high fees, Paramount's "losses" clocked in at $62 million, leaving executives realizing the necessity of better deals.^[49] This has, however, also been associated with Hollywood accounting, where expenses are inflated in order to minimize profit sharing. It is Robert Zemeckis' highest-grossing film to date.

Home media[edit]

Forrest Gump was first released on VHS tape on April 27, 1995, as a two-disc Laserdisc set on April 28, 1995, (including the "Through the Eyes of Forrest" special feature), before being released in a two-disc DVD set on August 28, 2001. Special features included director and producer commentaries, production featurettes, and screen tests.^[50] The film was released on Blu-ray disc in November 2009.^[51]

Accolades[edit]

Main article: List of accolades received by Forrest Gump

The film won the 67th Academy Awards for the Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Director, Best Visual Effects, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. The film was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards, winning three of them: Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Best Director – Motion Picture, and Best Motion Picture – Drama. The film was also nominated for six Saturn Awards and won two for Best Fantasy Film and Best Supporting Actor (Film).

In addition to the film's multiple awards and nominations, it has also been recognized by the American Film Institute on several of its lists. The film ranks 37th on 100 Years...100 Cheers, 71st on 100 Years...100 Movies, and 76th on 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition). In addition, the quote "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get," was ranked 40th on 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.^[52] The film also ranked at number 240 on Empire‍ '​s list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.^[53]

In December 2011, Forrest Gump was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.^[54] The Registry said that the film was "honored for its technological innovations (the digital insertion of Gump seamlessly into vintage archival footage), its resonance within the culture that has elevated Gump (and what he represents in terms of American innocence) to the status of folk hero, and its attempt to engage both playfully and seriously with contentious aspects of the era's traumatic history."^[55]

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #71
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
  • Forrest Gump – Nominated Hero
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." – #40
  • "Mama says, 'Stupid is as stupid does.'" – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers – #37
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #76
• AFI's 10 Top 10 – Nominated Epic Film

Author controversy[edit]

Winston Groom was paid $350,000 for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump and was contracted for a 3 percent share of the film's net profits.^[56] However, Paramount and the film's producers did not pay him, using Hollywood accounting to posit that the blockbuster film lost money. Tom Hanks, by contrast, contracted for the film's gross receipts instead of a salary, and he and director Zemeckis each received $40 million.^[56][57] Additionally, Groom was not mentioned once in any of the film's six Oscar-winner speeches.^[58]

Groom's dispute with Paramount was later effectively resolved after Groom declared he was satisfied with Paramount's explanation of their accounting, this coinciding with Groom receiving a seven-figure contract with Paramount for film rights to another of his books, Gump & Co.^[59]

Symbolism[edit]

Feather[edit]

"I don't want to sound like a bad version of 'the child within'. But the childlike innocence of Forrest Gump is what we all once had. It's an emotional journey. You laugh and cry. It does what movies are supposed to do: make you feel alive."

—producer Wendy Finerman^[37]

Various interpretations have been suggested for the feather present at the opening and conclusion of the film. Sarah Lyall ofThe New York Times noted several suggestions that were made about the feather: "Does the white feather symbolize the unbearable lightness of being? Forrest Gump's impaired intellect? The randomness of experience?"^[60] Hanks interpreted the feather as: "Our destiny is only defined by how we deal with the chance elements to our life and that's kind of the embodiment of the feather as it comes in. Here is this thing that can land anywhere and that it lands at your feet. It has theological implications that are really huge."^[61] Sally Field compared the feather to fate, saying: "It blows in the wind and just touches down here or there. Was it planned or was it just perchance?"^[62] Visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston compared the feather to an abstract painting: "It can mean so many things to so many different people."^[63]

The feather is stored in a book titled Curious George, Forrest's favorite book, which his mother read to him, connecting the scene's present time with his childhood in the 1940s. The placement of the feather in the book is directly on a picture of the monkey walking on a tightrope. Whether that was intentional or not, it is very symbolic. The feather also has a correlation with Jenny's constant obsession with "becoming a bird and flying far far away" due to the abuse (sexual and physical) she endured from her father. She goes as far in the film as to ask Forrest "if [she] jumped off the bridge, could [she] fly?"

Political interpretations[edit]

In Tom Hanks' words, "The film is non-political and thus non-judgmental."^[37] Nevertheless, in 1994, CNN's Crossfire debated whether the film promoted conservative values or was an indictment of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Thomas Byers, in a Modern Fiction Studies article, called the film "an aggressively conservative film".^[64]

"...all over the political map, people have been calling Forrest their own. But, Forrest Gump isn't about politics or conservative values. It's about humanity, it's about respect, tolerance and unconditional love."

—producer Steve Tisch^[64]

It has been noted that while Gump follows a very conservative lifestyle, Jenny's life is full of countercultural embrace, complete with drug usage, promiscuity, and antiwar rallies, and that their eventual marriage might be a kind of reconciliation.^[31] Jennifer Hyland Wang argued in a Cinema Journal article that Jenny's death to an unnamed virus "...symbolizes the death of liberal America and the death of the protests that defined a decade [1960s]." She also notes that the film's screenwriter, Eric Roth, when developing the screenplay from the novel, had "...transferred all of Gump's flaws and most of the excesses committed by Americans in the 1960s and 1970s to her [Jenny]."^[38]

Other commentators believe that the film forecast the 1994 Republican Revolution and used the image of Forrest Gump to promote movement leader Newt Gingrich's traditional, conservative values. Jennifer Hyland Wang observes that the film idealizes the 1950s, as evidenced by the lack of "whites only" signs in Gump's southern childhood, and "revisions" the 1960s as a period of social conflict and confusion. She argues that this sharp contrast between the decades criticizes the counterculture values and reaffirms conservatism.^[65] As viewed by political scientist Joe Paskett,^[33] this film is "one of the best films of all time".^[66] Wang argued that the film was used by Republican politicians to illustrate a "traditional version of recent history" to gear voters towards their ideology for the congressional elections.^[38] In addition, presidential candidate Bob Dole cited the film's message in influencing his campaign due to its "...message that has made [the film] one of Hollywood's all-time greatest box office hits: no matter how great the adversity, the American Dream is within everybody's reach."^[38]

In 1995, National Review included Forrest Gump in its list of the "Best 100 Conservative Movies" of all time.^[67] Then, in 2009, the magazine ranked the film number four on its 25 Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years list.^[68] "Tom Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s. The love of his life, wonderfully played by Robin Wright Penn, chooses a different path; she becomes a drug-addled hippie, with disastrous results."^[68]

James Burton, a communication arts professor at Salisbury University, argued that conservatives claimed Forrest Gump as their own due less to the content of the film and more to the historical and cultural context of 1994. Burton claimed that the film's content and advertising campaign were affected by the cultural climate of the 1990s, which emphasized family values and "American values"—values epitomized in the successful book Hollywood vs. America. He claimed that this climate influenced the apolitical nature of the film, which allowed for many different political interpretations.^[69]

Burton points out that many conservative critics and magazines (John Simon, James Bowman, the World Report) initially either criticized the film or praised it only for its non-political elements. Only after the popularity of the film was well-established did conservatives embrace the film as an affirmation of traditional values. Burton implies that the liberal-left could have prevented the conservatives from claiming rights to the film, had it chosen to vocalize elements of the film such as its criticism of military values. Instead, the liberal-left focused on what the film omitted, such as the feminist and civil rights movements.^[69]

Some commentators see the conservative readings of Forrest Gump as indicants of the death of irony in American culture. Vivian Sobchack notes that the film's humor and irony relies on the assumption of the audience's historical (self-) consciousness.^[69]

Soundtrack[edit]

Main articles: Forrest Gump (soundtrack) and Forrest Gump – Original Motion Picture Score

The 32-song soundtrack from the film was released on July 6, 1994. With the exception of a lengthy suite from Alan Silvestri's score, all the songs are previously released; the soundtrack includes songs from Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Aretha Franklin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Three Dog Night, The Byrds, The Doors, The Mamas & the Papas, The Doobie Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Seger, and Buffalo Springfield among others. Music producer Joel Sill reflected on compiling the soundtrack: "We wanted to have very recognizable material that would pinpoint time periods, yet we didn't want to interfere with what was happening cinematically."^[70] The two-disc album has a variety of music from the 1950s–1980s performed by American artists. According to Sills, this was due to Zemeckis' request, "All the material in there is American. Bob (Zemeckis) felt strongly about it. He felt that Forrest wouldn't buy anything but American."^[70]

The soundtrack reached a peak of number 2 on the Billboard album chart.^[70] The soundtrack went on to sell twelve million copies, and is one of the top selling albums in the United States.^[71] The score for the film was composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri and released on August 2, 1994.

Possible sequel[edit]

Main article: Gump and Co.

The screenplay for the sequel was written by Eric Roth in 2001. It is based on the original novel's sequel, Gump and Co. that was written by Winston Groom in 1995. Roth's script begins with Forrest sitting on a bench waiting for his son to return from school. After the September 11 attacks, Roth, Zemeckis, and Hanks decided the story was no longer "relevant."^[72] In March 2007, however, it was reported that Paramount producers took another look at the screenplay.^[73]

On the very first page of the sequel novel, Forrest Gump tells readers "Don't never let nobody make a movie of your life's story," though "Whether they get it right or wrong, it doesn't matter."^[74] The first chapter of the book suggests that the real-life events surrounding the film have been incorporated into Forrest's storyline, and that Forrest got a lot of media attention as a result of the film.^[16] During the course of the sequel novel, Gump runs into Tom Hanks and at the end of the novel is the film's release, including Gump going on The David Letterman Show and attending the Academy Awards.