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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.

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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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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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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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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1:05:39

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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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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