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The Rewatchables ·

Forrest Gump

year 1994decade 90sdirector Robert Zemeckisgenre Comedygenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Sean Fennessey
All 16 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 17:42

The Vietnam rally

It was hard to come up with more than three candidates. The first is Forrest playing football, with a clip, and a tangent on Forrest as a kick returner against Devin Hester and Desmond Howard: he has no escapability, runs in a straight line and turns left like a car, so Alabama's blocking schemes deserve credit, and he is dubbed the best white kick returner ever.

There are only two football scenes and a host could have watched a hundred; Bear Bryant's reaction when Forrest breaks one is loved. One host did not know the coach was meant to be Bear Bryant on first viewing, the hat now gives it away; Alabama football was down when the film came out and is back, and the school was a smart choice because it carried Bear Bryant and the integration material.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 55:32

"life is like a box of chocolates you never know what you're going to get"

The nominated lines are the box of chocolates line, 'you don't know what love is', which is a really mean thing to say to somebody, 'sorry i had a fight at your black panther rally', 'stupid is as stupid does' and 'I'm not a smart man but I know what love is'. Both hosts agree the box of chocolates line is the signature quote of the movie, though pop culture instantly made it a cliche. Nearly an hour in, the hosts are proud that neither has done a Forrest Gump accent.

The film

Forrest Gump (1994)

Directed by Robert Zemeckis · Comedy / Drama

142 minutes

IMDbLetterboxdJustWatch
Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Tom Hanks Forrest Gump
Michael Conner Humphreys young Forrest Gump
Robin Wright Jenny Curran
Hanna R. Hall young Jenny Curran
Gary Sinise Lieutenant Dan Taylor
Mykelti Williamson Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue
Sally Field Mrs. Gump
Haley Joel Osment Forrest Gump Jr
Peter Dobson Elvis Presley
Dick Cavett himself

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

17:42

Most Rewatchable Scene

The Vietnam rally

The Vietnam rally

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:42Read transcript
  • It was hard to come up with more than three candidates. The first is Forrest playing football, with a clip, and a tangent on Forrest as a kick returner against Devin Hester and Desmond Howard: he has no escapability, runs in a straight line and turns left like a car, so Alabama's blocking schemes deserve credit, and he is dubbed the best white kick returner ever.
  • There are only two football scenes and a host could have watched a hundred; Bear Bryant's reaction when Forrest breaks one is loved. One host did not know the coach was meant to be Bear Bryant on first viewing, the hat now gives it away; Alabama football was down when the film came out and is back, and the school was a smart choice because it carried Bear Bryant and the integration material.
  • A second favorite is the scene in which Forrest's first intimate moment with Jenny ends abruptly, which one host and his friends imitated at bars for the rest of the nineties; it is given a zero percent chance of being the pick.
  • The Vietnam rally crowd was built with about 1,500 extras who were filmed on one side, moved to the other side and composited so it looked like 35,000 people.
  • The rally is fantastic: the fake Abby Hoffman (as transcribed) saying 'Forrest' very sharply, then the two running through the pool to meet each other feels like an iconic movie moment, and one host calls it the best scene in the movie.
  • Forrest getting rich while Jenny comes back is a great four-minute montage, with the lawn mowing and the bought church. The running scene is called appalling but its music choices are incredible, Jackson Brown's (as transcribed) Running on Empty straight into Bob Seeger's (as transcribed) Against the Wind, very late seventies; Zemeckis loves the obvious musical cue, as with Joe Cocker's Feeling Alright in Flight when Denzel falls off the wagon, and only Scorsese is worse.
  • Forrest meeting his son, with the exchange about the boy being named after his daddy, is a great, touching scene; Haley Joel Osment is incredible at about two years old. The meeting, the wedding and Lieutenant Dan's arrival can be lumped together.
  • One host picks the Vietnam rally as the best scene; the other agrees, offers the hurricane with Lieutenant Dan going to war on top of the mast as a fun candidate he had forgotten, and goes with the rally too. The film has no knock-your-socks-off scenes like Shawshank's opera scene, but the rally is pretty good.
  • The football scene connects directly to the previous scene where Forrest learns to run, so it is less individuated than scenes in other movies. 'Run, Forrest, run' with little Jenny and the braces breaking off is a candidate but short; the principal sleeping with Sally Field so Forrest can stay in school is funny but was hesitated over, and the first-encounter scene is not getting any votes.
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23:14

What’s Aged the Best?

Robin Wright; the redemption of Lieutenant Dan and Sinise's performance; the soundtrack, disputed and also filed unde...

Robin Wright; the redemption of Lieutenant Dan and Sinise's performance; the soundtrack, disputed and also filed under what aged worst

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:23:14Read transcript
  • Robin Wright looks great; one host is in her corner and in Michelle Pfeiffer's corner for life.
  • The soundtrack has smart choices, like the Midnight Cowboy theme when Forrest wheels Lieutenant Dan around New York in 1970, with Sinise hitting a cab and saying 'I'm walking here' from a wheelchair. One host found it too on the nose and hokey as an adult, the other liked it as over the top. There are at least four and in fact six Doors songs; rock critics consider the Doors terrible, but Zemeckis is not a rock critic.
  • The gimmick of Forrest intersecting with fifty years of American history should not have worked but is enjoyed, moving from Vietnam to the disco and post-disco eras; whether the scenes with historical figures actually work is saved for what aged worst.
  • The soundtrack identified cool songs for young people but is the most obvious soundtrack of all time; it set up a bad run of Creedence and Fortunate Son in every movie and calcified classic rock as the soundtrack for boomer filmmakers through the nineties, so it goes in what aged worst too. One host just likes hearing Running on Empty and the Doors because he never listens to classic rock anymore, like a jukebox from a dead era.
  • Movies have ruined songs: Sloop John B, Sugar Pie Honey Bunch by the Four Tops in Disney sports movies like Remember the Titans, and Ain't No Mountain High Enough.
  • The redemption of Lieutenant Dan has aged really nicely, with his wife Susan, titanium legs and the Apple investment; Sinise's performance is awesome.
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26:55

What’s Aged the Worst?

The soundtrack's obviousness; the CGI, especially John Lennon's mouth; Forrest's mother sleeping with the principal; ...

The soundtrack's obviousness; the CGI, especially John Lennon's mouth; Forrest's mother sleeping with the principal; the three-and-a-half-year run; Bubba; Jenny's journey, defended; Sally Field being only ten years older than Hanks

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:26:55Read transcript
  • The CGI was groundbreaking in 1994 but the Ringer office could do better now, and Jurassic Park a year earlier had much better CGI. John Lennon talking with his mouth moving to different words looks like the Ringer's social videos such as Bill Belichick as Scarface; the ping pong ball, by contrast, looks great.
  • Zemeckis and Hanks made a great deal of money from this film and Zemeckis also made Back to the Future, so the hosts ask him to spend 1.5 million on the CGI for a 25th anniversary home release; George Lucas did that with the original Star Wars trilogy and people flipped out, and Star Wars fans are called lunatics, with the producer asked to cut the remark and then told not to.
  • Forrest's mother sleeping with the school principal is a delightful scene that has probably aged badly in certain corners.
  • Forrest ran for three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours, from July 5, 1976 to September 19, 1979.
  • Somebody running for three and a half years is absurd: who was getting his checks from the shrimp company, who ran the bank, who mowed his lawn; the defense is that he was a simple man who did not need possessions. The scene is called absolutely idiotic, nine months would have been fine, no decade exists where anyone would do that, and he does it in the same pair of Nike Cortez.
  • The movie is meant to be a parable, but the run is more than ridiculous, one of the few parts that should not make sense on screen. One thing to like is that he breaks out the Castaway beard as foreshadowing, though the makeup is not good; in Castaway it was real, and the lesson was learned.
  • Bubba has not aged well, too broad as a character, a second superhero with the same power; the counter is that two undereducated guys with sweethearts underscores the friendship of dumbass soulmates.
  • Jenny's journey is a tough thirty-year stretch of a rough home, bad men, coke and heroin, but the film showed many young people the effects of child abuse, an honest if not raw attempt; it is a little facile that everything in her life traces back to her childhood, and unfortunate that everything that happens to Forrest is great and everything that happens to Jenny is bad, yet Robin Wright is so empathetic that the character works and it has not aged poorly.
  • Sally Field is only ten years older than Tom Hanks and they co-starred in Punchline ten years earlier, which is obvious when Forrest comes home from Vietnam and she is aged up; it looks like someone twenty years old cancelled at the last second and they had to audible.
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33:52

Casting What-Ifs

Harry Anderson was Zemeckis's first choice for Forrest; Bill Murray, John Travolta and Chevy Chase turned it down; Da...

Harry Anderson was Zemeckis's first choice for Forrest; Bill Murray, John Travolta and Chevy Chase turned it down; David Alan Greer (as transcribed), Dave Chappelle and Ice Cube turned down Bubba and Tupac auditioned; Jodie Foster, Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore turned down Jenny; Terry Gilliam and Barry Sonnenfield (as transcribed) turned down directing

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:33:52Read transcript
  • Robert Zemeckis's first choice for the title role was Harry Anderson, who was unavailable because of a commitment to Dave's World on CBS. — Sean Fennessey
  • The late Harry Anderson as Forrest Gump is dumbfounding; it might have been good but a different, smaller movie, and Anderson was not that famous even then.
  • Bill Murray, John Travolta and Chevy Chase turned down Forrest; Travolta has called it one of the biggest regrets of his career. The hosts think Travolta would have been terrible, that he kind of played Forrest Gump in Phenomenon, which one still rides for, and that Michael was him trying to get back to that moment.
  • David Alan Greer (as transcribed), Dave Chappelle and Ice Cube turned down Bubba. Ice Cube refused to play an idiot and is literally too smart for the part; Chappelle thought the movie would bomb, regretted it and worked with Hanks four years later on You Got Mail (as transcribed); Tupac auditioned for Bubba, which would not have worked. Bubba's name is Buford Blue.
  • Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman turned down Jenny and both could have been good; Demi Moore also turned it down and would have been too old to pull off the high school and college stretch that Robin Wright managed, with a tangent on when Striptease came out.
  • Terry Gilliam and Barry Sonnenfield (as transcribed) turned down directing; Gilliam's version would have been amazing and a lot different. Hanks was probably not the first choice because he was unavailable. Bill Murray would not work: he only played dumb as Carl in Caddyshack, for comedy, and What About Bob is the craziest he has gone.
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37:00

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Dick Cavett

Dick Cavett

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:37:00Read transcript
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37:28

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Gary Sinise

Gary Sinise

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:37:28Read transcript
  • There was no Joey Pants in this one and no recognizable that-guy. The award was just launched for the that-guy who eventually stopped being a that-guy, and Gary Sinise arguably qualifies: he may not have been Gary Sinise yet, this movie may have made him Gary Sinise, and Chicago theater people from the Steppenwolf era would have known him.
  • Immediately before this he starred in ABC's adaptation of The Stand, which one host thought was great; he was in A Midnight Clear and an Of Mice and Men adaptation but had done little in movies, so the award goes to him.
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38:15

Half-Assed Internet Research

Hanks took percentage points instead of a salary and made over $40 million; Jim Hanks doubled in the running scenes; ...

Hanks took percentage points instead of a salary and made over $40 million; Jim Hanks doubled in the running scenes; Eric Roth's 2001 sequel script from Gump and Company was dropped after 9/11; what Forrest says when the rally microphone cuts out; Jenny's tombstone birthday is the day of the Trinity test; the run was inspired by Louis Michael Figueroa's 1982 run; the Savannah bench went to the Smithsonian; Bubba Gump has 33 locations; Kurt Russell voiced Elvis; Warner Brothers traded the rights for Executive Decision; a cut scene of Forrest distracting dogs attacking Martin Luther King; Jenny's gift shoes were 1974 Nike Cortez; six Doors songs

In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:15Read transcript
  • Tom Hanks was not paid for the film but took percentage points and made over 40 million dollars; the film is based on the 1986 novel; Hanks's younger brother Jim Hanks doubled for him in the running scenes, and nobody has heard of Jim Hanks, prompting a joke about parents giving every son a three-letter name.
  • Eric Roth wrote a sequel screenplay in 2001 based on Winston Groom's follow-up novel Gump and Company, opening with Forrest 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. The hosts are glad there is no extended universe and agree a Forrest Gump 2 would have been a big mistake.
  • When the microphone cuts out at the Vietnam rally, the lost lines are that sometimes people who go to Vietnam go home to their mamas without any legs, sometimes they don't go home at all, that's a bad thing, and that's all there is to say about that.
  • Jenny's birthday on her tombstone, July 16, 1945, is the same day as the Trinity test, the first atomic bomb detonation; whether it was purposeful is left uncertain, someone is working hard on connections, and joke that Jenny was the atomic bomb of Forrest's life.
  • The running was inspired by a real event: in 1982 Louis Michael Figueroa, aged sixteen, ran from New Jersey to San Francisco for the American Cancer Society, somehow stretched into three and a half years. The park bench was in Savannah's Chippewa Square and was sent to the Smithsonian; Bubba Gump now has 33 locations including the Santa Monica pier, where one host has never eaten and the other says he is not missing much; Kurt Russell voiced Elvis and famously played Elvis in a John Carpenter movie, and Val Kilmer was the Elvis in True Romance.
  • In 1988 Warner Brothers gave up the rights to the film in exchange for the rights to Executive Decision, released in 1996, because the studio felt the project had lost commercial promise after Rain Man; the hosts call it the Harden trade for movies and joke that Steven Adams was thrown in.
  • A planned effects shot had Forrest running into Martin Luther King and his supporters and distracting the dogs attacking them by playing fetch; cutting it was a strong edit that probably saved the movie. The hosts also note that Forrest is literally a descendant of the Ku Klux Klan, with the sheet-pulling scene, which would not make a 2018 version, and agree nobody wants Woke Gump.
  • The shoes Jenny gives Forrest were Nike's 1974 Cortez running shoes.
  • Is wearing replicas of the Cortez shoes right now. — Bill Simmons
  • The six Doors songs are Soul Kitchen, Hello I Love You, People Are Strange, Break On Through, Peace Frog and Love Her Madly; Soul Kitchen is liked but the use is obvious, especially in Vietnam. One host is accused of destroying Zemeckis for obvious musical taste while giving Scorsese a pass for Gimme Shelter in seven movies; the reply is that Scorsese's reuse of the same nine Stones songs is annoying but not literal, whereas the songs chosen by Zemeckis are literally about the feeling being conveyed.
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43:27

Apex Mountain

Tom Hanks; Gary Sinise; Robin Wright; Michael T. Williamson (as transcribed)

Tom Hanks; Gary Sinise; Robin Wright; Michael T. Williamson (as transcribed)

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:43:27Read transcript
  • Tom Hanks with back-to-back Oscars makes the case. One host wonders whether it should be Castaway; the other argues this is his most commercial movie, won his second Oscar and cemented him as the alpha dog in Hollywood, the most bankable actor, who could make any movie he wanted, and it is probably his most iconic performance. A League of Their Own is preferred as funnier but conceded not to be an apex since he had not won an Oscar yet.
  • Gary Sinise did ten seasons of CSI New York, and whether this can be topped is left as an open question. One host was never a giant Sinise fan, though he is really good here and creepy in Ransom in a way that made him dislike the man; he is also in The Green Mile, without many great performances, and the verdict is that this is definitely his Apex Mountain.
  • Zemeckis is not a yes: Back to the Future, a hundred out of a hundred times. One host had forgotten Zemeckis made Back to the Future and calls himself a dumbass; Who Framed Roger Rabbit is loved and What Lies Beneath is underrated, though not in one household.
  • Robin Wright is called her most complete performance with the most to do, unlike The Princess Bride where she is beautiful but barely on screen, and her career apex; the rejoinder is that she did not win the Oscar.
  • Michael T. Williamson (as transcribed) is an absolute yes; he had a good hoop show on Showtime, and Chris Ryan only wanted to be on this episode to talk about his performance in Heat.
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45:38

Is This Movie Better With…?

Yes, in the military scenes, as Lieutenant Dan or the boot camp drill sergeant

Yes, in the military scenes, as Lieutenant Dan or the boot camp drill sergeant

In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 00:45:38Read transcript
  • Obviously yes: a younger, Heat-era Danny Trejo in his late thirties could have been Lieutenant Dan, which one host is fine with and the other disputes, or the drill sergeant in boot camp. Trejo as Sally Field's character would not work and the principal is rejected too; he belongs in the military scenes.
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46:51

The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award

Wesley, Jenny's abusive boyfriend

Wesley, Jenny's abusive boyfriend

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:46:51Read transcript
  • Sinise dials it up a couple of times, especially on the boat in the hurricane, literally screaming lines like 'y'all never sink this boat' and 'you call this a storm', possibly inventing the 'they knew' moment; the hosts enjoyed it but call it Ruffalo-y. The joke is that Ruffalo is a bad actor when it is really one scene, and he is great in Spotlight.
  • The other nominee is Wesley, Jenny's abusive boyfriend, whom Forrest beats up at the Black Panther party: he goes super evil like Billy Zane in Titanic and looks like a combination of John Lennon and Vladimir Lennon (as transcribed), literally like a communist. The award goes to him, since Sinise is good in the movie.
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48:13

Picking Nits

How long Forrest waited at a bus stop six blocks from his destination; what he did from 1970 to 1974 beyond ping pong...

How long Forrest waited at a bus stop six blocks from his destination; what he did from 1970 to 1974 beyond ping pong; the running scene; why Jenny never found a decent man; why Jenny leaves the morning after sleeping with Forrest

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:48:13Read transcript
  • How long was Forrest at that bus stop? It is plausible he sat there nine hours missing every bus or waiting for one that did not exist, and he cannot read a map because his destination was six blocks away; he had a 70 IQ, so it is not offensive to call him a dummy.
  • What did Forrest do from 1970 to 1974? After the rally and Jenny leaving there is ping pong for the service and travel, then Watergate and Nixon's resignation in late 1974, so the hosts conclude he played ping pong for the United States for years; one would have added another job, but the film is already two hours twenty-five minutes. Forrest throws away the seventies on five years of ping pong and three and a half years of running.
  • Asked to defend the running scene, one host reads it as a moment when you do not know what to do after a breakup and need to physically vent, a micro-metaphor inside the film's bigger metaphor; the jokey parts, the Have a Nice Day shirt and the 'shit happens' bumper sticker, feel like an SNL sketch. The other still calls it terrible with ridiculously on-the-nose music.
  • Why did Jenny never find the right guy at all those protests, say a Georgetown law student who became enamored with her? The armchair-psychologist answer is that her past means she does not know how to make good choices and what she values in a man is not good for her.
  • The biggest nit in the movie: why Jenny leaves the next morning after finally sleeping with Forrest, which is never discussed. It was listed under unanswerable questions but moved here; in a silly, absurd movie it was the one part that did not make sense.
  • Possibilities offered: the night was a disappointment, as she might have expected from their college encounter; or it was a great night and her tendency when happy is to sabotage it; or it is simply poorly written, which is probably the real reason. Forrest's sex life is weird in the film, with the New Year's Eve prostitute and little else, something a sequel might have addressed.
  • Leaving the Medal of Honor on the table right after 'I'm not a smart man but I know what love is' is the meanest thing you could do to the guy, compared to floating a terrified dog, Olivia, the least favorite of three, out into the middle of a pool on a raft, which the other calls the craziest metaphor ever for this movie. It was calculated: she packed, left the medal on the nightstand and called a cab that would take forty minutes in the middle of nowhere in Alabama.
  • Two more theories: she knows Forrest is a dumb loser and tough hang she cannot be around any more, having known him all her life, though Robin Wright is too sympathetic for that to read; or she knows she is pregnant and cannot have a family with him, though then you would leave a month later. There was no protection, probably not Jenny's first time, and Forrest would not have been in control; an extra scene of her being sick two months later before leaving would have made more sense.
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55:32

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"life is like a box of chocolates you never know what you're going to get"

"life is like a box of chocolates you never know what you're going to get"

In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 00:55:32Read transcript
  • The nominated lines are the box of chocolates line, 'you don't know what love is', which is a really mean thing to say to somebody, 'sorry i had a fight at your black panther rally', 'stupid is as stupid does' and 'I'm not a smart man but I know what love is'. Both hosts agree the box of chocolates line is the signature quote of the movie, though pop culture instantly made it a cliche. Nearly an hour in, the hosts are proud that neither has done a Forrest Gump accent.
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56:41

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Why didn't Forrest go pro? Why didn't Forrest catch Jenny's illness? Did Jenny die of AIDS or hepatitis? How many sex...

Why didn't Forrest go pro? Why didn't Forrest catch Jenny's illness? Did Jenny die of AIDS or hepatitis? How many sexual partners did Jenny and Forrest have? Where did the followers go when Forrest stopped running? What does the feather mean?

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:56:41Read transcript
  • Why didn't Forrest Gump go pro? Out of college around 1964 as an all-American kick returner with both the NFL and AFL in business, he got no offer, and he sounds like the perfect Jet a year after they signed Joe Namath. Maybe he was not a good teammate, selfish without knowing better; a scene of teammates taping him to the goalpost is wished for; the leg braces give him a checkered injury history like Michael Porter Jr.; and he joined the military because it sounded like a good idea, so going pro may never have occurred to him.
  • Why didn't Forrest catch whatever Jenny had? Maybe they had no sex life when they got back together; the hosts assume she contracted HIV.
  • Did Jenny die of AIDS or hepatitis B or C? One host had answered this years ago as a mailbag question: she died in March 1982, nine months after the first recorded AIDS case in the United States, so she would have caught it around 1980 or 1981 while raising her son as a cocktail waitress and presumably off drugs; the film never approaches how.
  • A controversial take: she did not have AIDS, she was just sick, probably hepatitis leading to liver cancer; the other buys it, noting she only says 'I'm sick, Forrest' and uses the word virus. Or the filmmakers botched the timeline and should have had her die in 1984. The implied message that drug use and promiscuity lead to AIDS is a weirdly moralizing note in a film that is not otherwise moralizing; the hosts assume an AIDS death is what we are meant to believe and joke about calling Winston Groom.
  • How many sexual partners did Jenny Gump have? One host will not put a number on it. Forrest had one, since Jenny was his girl, even as an all-American at Alabama.
  • Where did everyone go after Forrest stopped running in Montana or Utah with 150 people behind him, far from a Greyhound station? One thing to respect is that when interviewed he does not invent a reason, he just felt like running, and people follow anyway; LeBron would have played up the narrative.
  • Feather interpretations found online: the unbearable lightness of being, which is overreading; Forrest's impaired intellect; the randomness of experience, which one host subscribes to; Hanks interpreted it as destiny defined by how we deal with the chance elements of life, the thing that can land anywhere landing at your feet, with theological implications and the question of planned versus chance. Both hosts settle on that reading.
  • Earlier, while listing the American touchstones Forrest brushes against, AIDS is included with the caveat that it cannot be confirmed and is an unanswerable question.
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1:02:40

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

Split: a ten-episode Jenny Gump series versus the film being better as a movie

Split: a ten-episode Jenny Gump series versus the film being better as a movie

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:02:40Read transcript
  • The question is introduced as a new category because it has come up on every podcast. The series pitched is Jenny Gump, perhaps more Amazon than Netflix, running from 1968 through 1980 and probably raunchy, basically Vinyl; Forrest is barely in it, and it is imagined in a world where the movie does not exist.
  • The other view is that this movie is better as a movie and would not have worked as a Netflix series.
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1:03:34

Who Won the Movie?

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:03:34Read transcript
  • Tom Hanks, with no other answer. From a piece one host wrote about Hanks seven years ago: he is in almost every scene and has to play a dimwit in a blatantly manipulative movie without crossing into the Robin Williams zone; Robin Williams as Gump in a Terry Gilliam movie would probably be too funny, and it is interesting he was not considered.
  • Hanks has to pull off a crazy accent that should not have worked and is so annoying neither host attempted it; one take is that he does not pull it off and it does not matter. According to the internet research he did not want to go too southern and was pushed to go further, and normal Tom Hanks voice slips out when he finishes assembling his rifle in boot camp and shouts for the drill sergeant.
  • He has to pull off the terrible cross-country sequence without making you turn on the movie, make you believe Jenny would want to sleep with him, and believably be a football player, soldier, Vietnam vet, shrimp boat owner and jogger with a heart and soul who is slightly smarter than he lets on, all while you buy the 70 IQ.
Podcast choices
Speaker not identified
Tom Hanks
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1:05:39

Recasting Couch

Matt Damon, too smart; Brad Pitt, who has played the part in seven movies but may be too handsome; Ryan Reynolds, too...

Matt Damon, too smart; Brad Pitt, who has played the part in seven movies but may be too handsome; Ryan Reynolds, too handsome; a non-jacked Chris Pratt

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:05:39Read transcript
  • Matt Damon would go for it but is too smart and it would not work. Brad Pitt has basically done this part in seven movies and is Forrest Gump, which one host kind of likes, though he might be too handsome and would need a bad haircut; crew-cut Brad Pitt is not as handsome as blonde-haired Brad Pitt.
  • Who is the ordinary-guy movie star of the 2000s, since Hanks is the embodiment of the everyman and easier to relate to? Ryan Reynolds is too handsome; Hanks is a regular guy rather than ugly and knows his regular-guy appeal; Chris Pratt has it but is jacked, so a non-jacked Chris Pratt would work. Hanks got skinny for Philadelphia, a good career move.
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More from the conversation

Nobody else would do the podcast because it is no longer cool to like Forrest Gump, even though it won every Oscar, made a fortune and is among the thirty biggest movies ever adjusted for inflation; one host admits being part of the backlash and writing about being upset at the time.
Approx. transcript time · 00:01:12Read transcript
The backlash started around the nominations; beating Pulp Fiction and Shawshank at the 1994 Oscars held in March 1995 was the worst thing that happened to the movie, and it got caught up in the nineties trend of actors taking disability roles for Oscar chances, from My Left Foot and Rain Man to Jodie Foster in Nell, called one of the 38 worst movies of all time and a candidate for a podcast called The Unwatchables.
Approx. transcript time · 00:01:40Read transcript
Forrest Gump made $330 million domestic and almost $700 million worldwide and stayed in theaters 42 weeks, tapping something emotional with Hanks at the apex of his Hanksness; the backlash reasons are that it is corny, manipulative, saccharine and uncool in a culture of cool, although one host got choked up in the last thirty minutes. Pre-internet, it was picked apart more slowly than a film like Hereditary would be now.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:41Read transcript
Hanks is in nearly every scene, apart from glimpses of Jenny from afar, in the middle of a gauntlet of A League of Their Own, Philadelphia, Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 that took him from an A-lister competing with Michael Keaton to another level; the performance is gimmicky and was instantly parodied on Mad TV, yet the fable of a character who could not be real should not have worked. In the Michael Keaton game, a version with Keaton would have been rough; Denzel is floated too without a verdict.
Approx. transcript time · 00:04:15Read transcript
Evan is producing and is young; Liz Kelly has not seen basically any movie before 2003. The one-sentence summary is a village idiot who brushes with greatness, becomes rich, keeps the one girl he loves and finds out he has a son. The film is three movies combined, Zelig, Being There and a fated love story, telling the story of America across fifty years, with online debate about whether it is a conservative movie; it adapts the first eleven chapters of the book. The feather is read as the randomness of life, against crazier readings.
Approx. transcript time · 00:06:15Read transcript
The film hits one host's weaknesses: Tom Hanks and watching a person age over decades, as in The World According to Garp, though the film ages Sally Field rather than Hanks and a 38-year-old playing sixteen is a flaw. Robin Wright is called the most beautiful actress America has produced, a known take, echoing William Goldman on The Princess Bride; her career has three phases, the ingenue, the award-winning actress here and the ice queen of House of Carbs (as transcribed).
Approx. transcript time · 00:08:21Read transcript
Part of the backlash is that the film swept Best Director and Screenplay as well as Picture. Roger Ebert called it a magical movie and most critics liked it, with the backlash arriving later; the soundtrack sold 12 million copies in the same year as the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
Approx. transcript time · 00:09:55Read transcript
The 1994 Oscars, held in March 1995, were hosted by David Letterman, the Oprah-Uma show, which one host calls the greatest Oscars to rewatch; Letterman was better than remembered, and per Jason Zinneman's (as transcribed) book Letterman's own jokes made people think it was a disaster, which is one of Jimmy Kimmel's passionate bar arguments. The Best Picture field of Gump, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show and Four Weddings and a Funeral is a staggering, old-school lineup like the 1993 NBA MVP race.
Approx. transcript time · 00:10:31Read transcript
Robert Zemeckis might be one of a host's favorite directors without anyone ever calling themselves a Zemeckis guy, except maybe Chris Ryan; he won Best Director over Tarantino, Woody Allen, Redford and Krzysztof Kieslowski for Three Colors Red, which one host has no opinion on, and Tarantino should have won, prompting a dispute about emails agreeing with a take on Bruce Willis's girlfriend in Pulp Fiction.
Approx. transcript time · 00:12:21Read transcript
Hanks won Best Actor over Morgan Freeman and John Travolta, which is fine, though Paul Newman in Nobody's Fool deserved a late-career win; Martin Landau beating Sam Jackson is called racist and offensive, Spike Lee's omission for Do the Right Thing is raised, and Lieutenant Dan would have been taken over Landau. Diane Wiest beat Uma Thurman and Robin Wright was not even nominated; Jessica Lange's Blue Sky field with Nell, Tom and Viv, Little Women and The Client is called the worst Best Actress batch ever, though The Client with Brad Renfro is loved; with today's internet culture the Oscars would be completely different.
Approx. transcript time · 00:13:55Read transcript
Zemeckis made a well-crafted movie with smart scenes: the Vietnam rally is masterful, and the running sequence, though appalling, is well shot with great music, the best version of one of the worst sequences in any Oscar movie.
Approx. transcript time · 00:13:55Read transcript
A list of the American things Forrest interacts with: the KKK, Elvis Presley, child abuse, Bear Bryant, Alabama integration, George Wallace, JFK, Vietnam, Playboy, LBJ, Abbie Hoffman, the Black Panthers, the moon landing, Dick Cavett, John Lennon, Chairman Mao, Watergate, Gerald Ford, Apple, Nike, the shit-happens bumper sticker, the Have a Nice Day shirt, Reagan being shot, Bert and Ernie, and AIDS.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:04Read transcript
Listeners voted on Twitter among four Tom Hanks movies, Big, Saving Private Ryan, Castaway and Forrest Gump, and Gump won; one host is mad nobody voted for Castaway, Apollo 13 was left off the ballot deliberately, and Gump will draw a crowd.
Approx. transcript time · 00:30:18Read transcript
Closing words: the film now has a bad rap it does not deserve, Ringer staffers dismiss it as sappy having seen it once, but it is genuinely rewatchable and one of the few monster movies you could watch with any family member, though you would have to explain premature ejaculation, the AIDS crisis, Watergate and the Ku Klux Klan; AIDS goes over kids' heads.
Approx. transcript time · 01:06:37Read transcript
Sign-off: Sean can be heard on The Big Picture on Channel 33; Jaws, the podcast they were born to do, is two weeks away on July 4, and the show will run weekly through September.
Approx. transcript time · 01:07:49Read transcript

Mentions across The Rewatchables

Recorded movie reference

Apollo 13

The Rewatchables · aired August 25, 2026

Forrest Gump is listed in the sourced research for this episode. The precise discussion has not been linked yet.

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