Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 1: bast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Jamie, but the Bechdel Cast is like a box of chocolates. Okay,
Speaker 2: explain that. Do you never know what you're gonna get?
Speaker 2: Are we gonna reference Shrek? Maybe?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Almost the last time we gave people
Speaker 3: something they didn't know they were gonna get.
Speaker 2: You know what, You're right, it's pretty predictable. We're probably
Speaker 2: gonna again reference Shrek or Titanic or Minions.
Speaker 3: I will say, when it comes to the Life of
Speaker 3: Forrest Gump, I did not know what I was gonna get.
Speaker 3: For example, I didn't expect the KKK to come up
Speaker 3: in the first five minutes of this movie. I'll be honest. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll be honest. And I also didn't expect him to
Speaker 3: give John Lennon the idea for this song imagine. So
Speaker 3: you know, if nothing else, this movie delivers on the
Speaker 3: promise I did not know what was gonna happen next,
Speaker 3: even if very often it had me screaming at my roku. H.
Speaker 2: So today's episode, I feel like it's a long time
Speaker 2: coming Forrest Gump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm surprised we haven't talked about it yet. I
Speaker 3: think I've been like kind of quietly refusing to talk
Speaker 3: about it for a long time because it's one of
Speaker 3: those movies that I'm like almost impressed. It's taken me
Speaker 3: this long to see. But it's over. Now we can
Speaker 3: finally go to Bubba Gump, Yes, and really explore how
Speaker 3: I was like, how do they present the characters in
Speaker 3: the restaurant? Like, are they like rip Bubba in the restaurant?
Speaker 2: I don't remember. I've only been once, and so I
Speaker 2: can't say for certain. We'll find out soon because we're going,
Speaker 2: Jamie and.
Speaker 3: I, we're going. We're going to the city walk Bubba Gump,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna it's a business expense. Isn't that thrilling?
Speaker 2: It's thrilling. By the way, let us enter duce ourselves. Hi,
Speaker 2: my name's Caitlin Caitlyn Derante.
Speaker 3: Oh, my name is Jamie Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: And this is our podcast where we examine movies through
Speaker 2: an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel Test simply as
Speaker 2: a jumping off point to initiate larger discussions about representation
Speaker 2: and things. What's the Bechtel test though.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you for asking, yeh. Media metric originally created
Speaker 3: by Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace Test because
Speaker 3: it was co created with Liz Wallace. Originally created as
Speaker 3: a queer media test, but has since been applied to
Speaker 3: a far larger swath of media. Lots of versions of
Speaker 3: the test. The one we use requires that two people
Speaker 3: of a marginalized gender with names talk to each other
Speaker 3: about something other and a man. Many movies pass it
Speaker 3: now still some don't, but this is just how we
Speaker 3: sort of start the discussion, and it's still to this
Speaker 3: day my favorite way to tell. When people are lying
Speaker 3: about talking about the show. They're like, yeah, for two hours,
Speaker 3: you just pour over the script and you're like, no,
Speaker 3: that's a man. Next time. Anyways, today we're covering Forrest
Speaker 3: Gump and we have the perfect guest, which is why
Speaker 3: it is time to cover this movie.
Speaker 2: We sure do. She is a YouTuber and video says
Speaker 2: she is host of rehash podcast. It's may aka Broi
Speaker 2: da Chanel.
Speaker 4: Welcome, Thanks, guys. How's it going.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just fine and dandy, splendid, guys.
Speaker 3: This movie is so long. I feel like now when
Speaker 3: I look at a certain run time and I know
Speaker 3: it's not gonna be a movie for me, I'm like,
Speaker 3: don't piss me off. This is wild. This is as
Speaker 3: long as wicked.
Speaker 4: I sat down to rewatch it with my two friends
Speaker 4: yesterday and I invited them over for seven pm. It's like,
Speaker 4: I gotta go to bed early. I'm so tired. They
Speaker 4: talked until nine pm, so like we didn't really get
Speaker 4: started till then. And then I was like, guys, I
Speaker 4: just remember the movies two and a half hour long.
Speaker 4: Like we got a start and they didn't leave till
Speaker 4: like twelve thirty.
Speaker 3: Good for them for sticking it out. That's really brave.
Speaker 4: I know they wanted to watch like a really artsy movie,
Speaker 4: and they wanted to go to like Anthology, which is
Speaker 4: like this theater in New York, and I was like,
Speaker 4: how about instead you come over and watch Forrest Gump
Speaker 4: with me.
Speaker 3: Very money trauma. Yeah, that theater rocks. Yeah, this what
Speaker 3: a journey. And obviously, I mean, we'll be linking your
Speaker 3: video in the description, but The reason we're bringing you
Speaker 3: on for this is because you've recently released an incredible
Speaker 3: video about the political legacy of this movie, as well
Speaker 3: as the adaptation from book to film, which I knew
Speaker 3: nothing about on your channel. So I'm curious to start.
Speaker 3: What is your history with this movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I watched Forrest Gump for the first time. I
Speaker 4: think it was like early high school. I was probably
Speaker 4: in grade nine, as week Canadians put it ninth grade.
Speaker 3: Very de grassy, coded of you.
Speaker 4: It's so grassy.
Speaker 3: I know how to talk to Canadian people. It's like
Speaker 3: they flip it.
Speaker 4: We flip it. Yeah, And I went to my aunt's
Speaker 4: house and I would like, I sometimes would go in
Speaker 4: her bedroom and she has like a TV, and I'd
Speaker 4: watched a movie in there while she and the adults talked.
Speaker 4: So I went into the room and watched Forrest Gump,
Speaker 4: and I loved it. Like back then especially, I just
Speaker 4: felt very swept up in the emotion of it. I
Speaker 4: think it's a really emotionally powerful movie and it does
Speaker 4: a really good job of that. I think it's a
Speaker 4: really competent movie. And so by the end, I was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, that was so beautiful. I was solving.
Speaker 4: I was like, I miss Jenny two. And then I
Speaker 4: hadn't watched it for years, and then a few months ago,
Speaker 4: I was like, wouldn't it be kind of cool? Like
Speaker 4: I started learning more about the film's place in popular
Speaker 4: culture and the way that it's kind of aged and
Speaker 4: spoiler alert, it hasn't aged well, and I thought it'd
Speaker 4: be interesting to kind of go back and do a
Speaker 4: retrospective on the film. And so in September I went
Speaker 4: back and I rewatched it, and then I started reading
Speaker 4: more about it, and the more I read about it,
Speaker 4: the more I started to kind of really dislike it,
Speaker 4: which is unfortunate, but because I don't want to come
Speaker 4: out of a video with that feeling. But that's just
Speaker 4: kind of how it went. But it was a really
Speaker 4: rich It was a hotbed for takes. And then I
Speaker 4: had seen it probably for that month because of the research.
Speaker 4: I'd watched it about five times, and I was like,
Speaker 4: I'm never gonna watch this movie again.
Speaker 3: Oh no.
Speaker 4: And then you guys reached it though, and I was like,
Speaker 4: they pulled me back in and so here I am, sorry, no, no,
Speaker 4: and I'm really pumped because where else would I want
Speaker 4: to talk about this more than on the Bechdel cast,
Speaker 4: no less.
Speaker 3: So thank you for watching it for the sixth time
Speaker 3: this calendar year. So sorry, that's like almost a full
Speaker 3: I can't do math. It's a lot of time. I
Speaker 3: was gonna say, that's three days.
Speaker 4: It's okay. I can call myself a Forrest Gump expert,
Speaker 4: like proudly, and so I think I think that's fine.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes you have to be an expert in something.
Speaker 3: It's true. I mean, we'll talk about this after the
Speaker 3: recap more. But I was very taken aback by how
Speaker 3: this movie has been a hotbed for takes since it
Speaker 3: came out, like it predates the subsequent internet discourses by
Speaker 3: a lot, and then is somehow continuing into this press
Speaker 3: cycle for here is that what it's called?
Speaker 2: Oh the way, the Robert Zemeckis movie of twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four that has the same cast because it's Tom Hanks
Speaker 2: and Robin Wright.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's been another sort of round of discourse
Speaker 3: about it in the last like two months because Robin
Speaker 3: Wright was asked about the character Jenny on a press tour.
Speaker 3: So it's like he's inescapable, He's everywhere. Caitlin what's your
Speaker 3: history with Forrest Gump?
Speaker 2: Okay, I have what might be a rather shocking history
Speaker 2: with this movie. I have seen the movie probably seventy
Speaker 2: or eighty times throughout my life. Although most of it, yeah.
Speaker 3: You don't like a movie halfway. I will say.
Speaker 2: It's when I really like something, I commit. But I
Speaker 2: would say like ninety five percent of those viewings were very,
Speaker 2: very concentrated between age like ten and twelve. So the
Speaker 2: movie came out when I was eight years old. I
Speaker 2: don't think I saw it until probably a year later
Speaker 2: we got it on VHS, and it probably took me
Speaker 2: a little while too, like because I was just sort
Speaker 2: of like, what's this movie? Because my mom would be like,
Speaker 2: leave me alone, go watch something.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Laurie. It was definitely listening.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: She did a great job raising me, but sometimes she
Speaker 2: was just like, go watch a movie. So eventually I
Speaker 2: discovered Forrest Gump. I think it was probably nine or ten,
Speaker 2: And I don't know why I took to it so much,
Speaker 2: because it was not like anything else I was watching
Speaker 2: at that age, but I became obsessed and I would
Speaker 2: probably watch it every few days.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I did that until Titanic came out, and those
Speaker 2: two VHS's really replaced Forrest Gump in my movie watching circulation.
Speaker 2: So from age twelve, I think I probably only saw
Speaker 2: it once or twice, maybe like a couple times as
Speaker 2: a teenager, maybe once in college, but for those few years,
Speaker 2: I was like enthralled by it. There are things about
Speaker 2: American history that I first learned about from this movie,
Speaker 2: not that it really dives deep into any of those things,
Speaker 2: but like I probably didn't know what the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: was until I watched this movie. I didn't know about
Speaker 2: like racial segregation until this movie. I didn't know about
Speaker 2: a bunch of things until I saw this movie. Also,
Speaker 2: the soundtrack introduced me to a lot of iconic songs
Speaker 2: from the sixties and seventies that I probably wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been exposed to really otherwise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the needle Drops, You can't argue with the needle drops,
Speaker 3: simply cannot.
Speaker 4: They're really running through like every top song of the sixties.
Speaker 4: They hit every single one of.
Speaker 3: Them, back to back to it. Like sometimes I think
Speaker 3: there was a run of like four in a row.
Speaker 3: You're like, damn budget, Like it felt like a Scorsese movie.
Speaker 2: You're just saying, so I have a very weird history
Speaker 2: with this movie, and then I kind of just forgot
Speaker 2: about it and didn't care about it, and probably upon retrospect,
Speaker 2: was like, I don't think that movie's very good, but
Speaker 2: I didn't really go back and check until prepping for
Speaker 2: this episode. I'm very excited to talk about it. There's
Speaker 2: much to discuss and my yea, your video essay is incredible.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Jamie.
Speaker 2: What is your history with the movie?
Speaker 3: Ah? Nothing. This is one of the movies that I Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly why it took me so long
Speaker 3: to watch this, but once I realized, I think like
Speaker 3: sometime in college, I was like, wow, I've never seen
Speaker 3: Forrest Gump, And instead of being like I should watch
Speaker 3: it and educate myself, I'm like, let me see how
Speaker 3: far into my life I can get without seeing it,
Speaker 3: which is all the way until this weekend. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: very interested to talk about how this because at first,
Speaker 3: like on my first view, I was like I don't
Speaker 3: get it. But the more I talked to people who
Speaker 3: had like a childhood appreciation of this movie, I was like,
Speaker 3: I think I was like a baby when this came out,
Speaker 3: so I wouldn't have seen it until later anyways. But
Speaker 3: my boyfriend also has like a strong attachment to this movie,
Speaker 3: and similar to you, Caitlin said that like he learned
Speaker 3: about like a few pieces of American history that he
Speaker 3: didn't know about before then either. And I still am like,
Speaker 3: it is wild to me that this movie, which is
Speaker 3: two and a half hours long and a prestige drama,
Speaker 3: was holding the attention of children.
Speaker 2: Makes no sense. Cannot explain, but it.
Speaker 3: Seems that there are many such cases. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I remember, like my dad didn't like this movie. I
Speaker 3: don't know why. I can't tell you why, but I
Speaker 3: think he was just like, no long boring, Let's watch
Speaker 3: Peewey's Pick Adventure, and so we would nice. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm coming in very fresh on this movie and I'm
Speaker 3: excited to talk about it because, like you were saying
Speaker 3: a little earlier, my yeah, I mean, I think it
Speaker 3: is clearly a beautifully made movie, and it just feels like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this early hardbinger of like maybe Robert Zemechis is not
Speaker 3: a historical film kind of guy. Maybe he has no
Speaker 3: interest in it, or at least meaningful interest in it.
Speaker 4: If Rowers Megas has one hater, it's me. I dislike
Speaker 4: him more than even the movie. I dislike him a lot.
Speaker 3: I was shocked at some of the clips that you
Speaker 3: found of him being like, no, I didn't read the book,
Speaker 3: Like reading sucks. It was like whoa.
Speaker 2: Well, to be fair, that's also us on the Bechdel cast,
Speaker 2: we would never read a book.
Speaker 3: But if you're gonna make the movie, you should probably
Speaker 3: finish the book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's just a part of this cohort of like
Speaker 4: directors that are very thing go boom, like that's their
Speaker 4: whole their whole approach to filmmaking, their like thing go boom,
Speaker 4: no talking single boom, And that's that's really him. And
Speaker 4: he's he's making things go boom in this movie.
Speaker 3: He real, really is. I was like, I like him
Speaker 3: at the I mean, I'm a Roger Rabbit head. I
Speaker 3: can't take that from him. Roger Rabbit and death becomes her.
Speaker 4: I do love me as well.
Speaker 2: I'm a big Back to the Future head. Famously, he's
Speaker 2: and this is the thing, he's a great filmmaker. Poor Express,
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: That was maybe the hottest take in your entire video,
Speaker 3: because you're like Polar Express actually good thought. Love that
Speaker 3: that is the least scary of his animated movies in retrospect.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we should say. Robert Zemeckis of Disney's Pinocchio
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two Fame Yes, which was, of course one
Speaker 2: of the brave soldiers of the Pinocchio Wars.
Speaker 3: I think that's our best Patreon series ever. The Pinocchio
Speaker 3: Wars was. You know, if there's anything to sell people
Speaker 3: on the Matreon, it's the Pinocchio Wars months Because why
Speaker 3: was Pinocchio so top of mind for so many in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two. We'll never know. We'll never know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Tom Hanks, that was I feel like that really sort
Speaker 3: of unfortunately was the bell toll of Tom at the
Speaker 3: beginning of Tom hanks flop era a bit was his
Speaker 3: weird drunken interpretation of Geppetto. Anyway, that's for the Pinocchio Wars,
Speaker 3: all right, So I guess let's uh, let's.
Speaker 2: Take a break and then come back for the recap
Speaker 2: and we're back, okay, So I'll do what ended up
Speaker 2: being such a long I tried to trim it down
Speaker 2: and I left a bunch of stuff out which we
Speaker 2: can get into more. During the discussion. But there's just
Speaker 2: so much that happens in this movie that I inevitably
Speaker 2: skip over some stuff. I will also place a content
Speaker 2: warning here for sexual abuse and assault, suicidal ideation, things
Speaker 2: of that nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trigger warning for everything that happens to Jenny. Basically, yeah, truly.
Speaker 2: Okay. So we follow a feather floating through the air
Speaker 2: and landing at the feet of Forrest Gump played by
Speaker 2: Tom Hanks.
Speaker 3: Could it be a metaphor?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Also some extremely sentimental music, yeah, continue throughout.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah. I found the score to be so grating.
Speaker 4: Very saccurate.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I played that in a high school orchestra. I
Speaker 3: didn't even realize that that was like what it was.
Speaker 3: I was like, where do I know that? I was like,
Speaker 3: I know the obol part.
Speaker 2: Oh classic? Yea, oh okay. So Forrest Gump is sitting
Speaker 2: on a bench at a bus stop. It is nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one. A woman comes down and sits next to him,
Speaker 2: and he introduces himself. He offers her a chocolate and
Speaker 2: then says the famous line my mom always said, life
Speaker 2: is like a box of chocolates. You never know what
Speaker 2: you're gonna get and then he starts relaying his entire
Speaker 2: life story to this woman who has no interest in
Speaker 2: talking to him, and we flash back to Forrest as
Speaker 2: a child in the nineteen fifties. He lives with his mom,
Speaker 2: played by Sally Field.
Speaker 3: And the wigs they're using on this poor woman, Oh,
Speaker 3: as they begin to age her, I'm just like, this
Speaker 3: isn't fair. The great Sally Field and we're putting these diegessts.
Speaker 2: Like Nicole Kidman level wigs.
Speaker 3: Brutal.
Speaker 4: She's rocking an incredible accent, though, one that I really
Speaker 4: am jealous of.
Speaker 2: She rocks. So she runs a boarding house just outside Greenbow, Alabama.
Speaker 2: Forrest has braces on his legs as well as an
Speaker 2: intellectual disability. His mom wants him to get the same
Speaker 2: education as other kids, so she sleeps with a school
Speaker 2: administrator so that he will let Forrest go to public
Speaker 2: school and not a like quote unquote special school as
Speaker 2: they call it in the movie.
Speaker 3: So Yes, in the first ten minutes, we first learned
Speaker 3: that he is named after the Grand Wizard of the KKK,
Speaker 3: and this thing with the mom happens, and I was like,
Speaker 3: why were six year olds watching it? What that's going on?
Speaker 4: The craziest part about the KKK thing is, and I
Speaker 4: didn't catch this till this viewing, was that his reasoning
Speaker 4: was that he was, like my mom said, it's because
Speaker 4: sometimes people do crazy things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now we're supposed to be like deeply invested
Speaker 3: in this woman's journey for three hours, like it's.
Speaker 2: Just And this is also the beginning of a trend
Speaker 2: throughout the movie where Forrest very wildly miss understands and
Speaker 2: like miss describes different historical events or cultural events, and
Speaker 2: he has a very like naive and childlike understanding of
Speaker 2: the world in this I think the first example we
Speaker 2: see of it.
Speaker 3: Which for adult viewers is very like wink and nod.
Speaker 3: But if you're six and watching this movie, I would
Speaker 3: imagine it would be a little confusing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can speak from experience.
Speaker 4: The movie is really full of like little nods to
Speaker 4: Americans being like remember that thing. But then sometimes the
Speaker 4: nod is like remember the KKK.
Speaker 3: You remember the the movie just started. Not to mention
Speaker 3: that the person that Forrest is talking to for the
Speaker 3: first I think like hour of the movie is a
Speaker 3: working class black woman, and the first he brings up
Speaker 3: is like, so I'm named after the Grand Wizards of KKK,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, Forrest.
Speaker 2: Can read the room.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: So then it's forces first day of school. The kids
Speaker 2: on the bus are very cruel to him, and no
Speaker 2: one will let him sit next to them, except for Jenny.
Speaker 2: She and Forrest become best friends, and one day some
Speaker 2: kids are bullying Forest and Jenny says the famous line, Run, Forest, Run.
Speaker 2: So he starts to run away, but the braces on
Speaker 2: his legs mean that he can't move very fast until
Speaker 2: the braces start to break off and he's magically cured
Speaker 2: of his disability.
Speaker 3: We'll get back to that, yeah.
Speaker 2: And he runs so fast away from the bullies, and
Speaker 2: from that day forward he was always running. Jenny and
Speaker 2: Forrest remain friends through high school. Jenny's now played by
Speaker 2: Robin Wright. There is another scene where Forrest runs away
Speaker 2: from bullies onto a college football practice and the coaches
Speaker 2: see how fast he is, so they recruit him to
Speaker 2: play football for I think the University of Alabama. So
Speaker 2: he goes to college, and while he's there, here's another
Speaker 2: example of like, he doesn't understand systemic racism because there's
Speaker 2: a movement to desegregate the university, and he doesn't understand
Speaker 2: what's going on, he accidentally kind of like interferes with it.
Speaker 2: One night, Forrest visits Jenny, who goes to a nearby
Speaker 2: women's college. She brings him to her dorm room, takes
Speaker 2: off her bra, puts his hand on her breast, and
Speaker 2: the consent or lack thereof is also something we can
Speaker 2: discuss later, but it's implied that this is his first
Speaker 2: ever sexual experience with another person. He also prematurely jacket
Speaker 2: ejaculated yeah, in front.
Speaker 3: Of her roommate, and when they cut to the roommate,
Speaker 3: I was like, I.
Speaker 4: Was like, that's the movie's one joke that's funny.
Speaker 2: So there's like this arguably a sexual assault scene that
Speaker 2: ends in like a jokey button and you're just like,
Speaker 2: what's going on? Anyway, we kind of skip ahead. He
Speaker 2: graduates from college after of course, meeting President John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy for being a college football star, the first of
Speaker 2: many presidents he will meet, and then he enlists in
Speaker 2: the army, where he meets and befriends Bubba played by
Speaker 2: Michelt Williamson, whose family is in the shrimping business and
Speaker 2: Bubba's whole personality is shrimp. That's really all we know
Speaker 2: about Bubba, and before Forrest is shipped off to Vietnam,
Speaker 2: he gets a chance to go and see Jenny perform.
Speaker 2: She is now a folk singer. She is doing a
Speaker 2: show in a strip club type place. Way what was
Speaker 2: her like stage name Bobby Dylan.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, she wants to be Joan Bias. She's being
Speaker 4: naked Joan Bias.
Speaker 3: Which is like, I mean I and again because it
Speaker 3: kind of the politics and tones of this movie, this
Speaker 3: is made out to be like the worst and most
Speaker 3: humiliating thing that could possibly happen to Jenny. But I
Speaker 3: was like, that seems like, you know, with the right crowd,
Speaker 3: that could be actually quite fun. Uh, naked folks singing
Speaker 3: I'm in.
Speaker 4: I was also kind of like, I'm quite fascinated by
Speaker 4: this club and the nature and the rules of the club,
Speaker 4: and and how like she's not dancing, she's just and
Speaker 4: she's covered fully with the guitar.
Speaker 3: I was like, hmm, yeah, the guys jeering at her,
Speaker 3: you know, I was like, are they folk fit?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What is in everyone singing folk? Is it just her?
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 4: I go the Empress and she had asked that this
Speaker 4: is my like the lore, I creative, but I was like,
Speaker 4: maybe should asked the manager, and she's like, I have
Speaker 4: this huge interest in Joe Bias. I'm gonna be famous
Speaker 4: one day, Like, can you let me one night do this?
Speaker 4: It just reminds me of the clubs in like Flash
Speaker 4: Dance too, where you're like that club, is that a
Speaker 4: strip club or is that like a fantasy club? Right?
Speaker 3: And they're like, due to like wanting to release this
Speaker 3: movie internationally, we refuse to get more specific about what's
Speaker 3: going on here. Right Anyways, all I say I would
Speaker 3: go to that club. It kind of looks like a
Speaker 3: Jumbo's clown room kind of thing, right. Yeah, She's like,
Speaker 3: do whatever you want, have some fun.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just put on fun little variety shows. You
Speaker 2: can do whatever act you want.
Speaker 4: Naked cabaret, I guess cabarets are also naked sometimes.
Speaker 3: So wait, Kitlyn, did you ever do that naked stand
Speaker 3: up show when we lived in Boston.
Speaker 2: I didn't do the version of it where you were
Speaker 2: fully naked. There was like a swimsuit edition and I
Speaker 2: did that. Okay, So I was a coward not willing
Speaker 2: to show my titties on stage. I mean, which I
Speaker 2: would absolutely do right now today, I would have no
Speaker 2: qualms about that.
Speaker 3: I did that show then. I don't think I would
Speaker 3: do it now. But I used to be a tech
Speaker 3: for that show too, and so like they had all
Speaker 3: those weird draconian Massachusetts rules for like what you can
Speaker 3: and can't do on stage, where they're like it's considered
Speaker 3: art as long as you don't touch anybody or anything.
Speaker 3: Like you couldn't have anything with you because they're like,
Speaker 3: if you touch another person, it's porn. So you couldn't
Speaker 3: even shake the hand of the host or it legally
Speaker 3: became like a second like it was so in the host.
Speaker 3: This guy Andy was so intense about it. He's like,
Speaker 3: I will go to jail if you shake my hand.
Speaker 4: What What was the crowd like at this type of event?
Speaker 3: All old men who didn't know how to access porn online,
Speaker 3: which is why I would not do it today. It
Speaker 3: was all old men that were like h Like I
Speaker 3: just wanted to give them a laptop and be like,
Speaker 3: get out of here.
Speaker 4: Once you've done naked stand up, you can do anything though,
Speaker 4: Like that's that's incredible.
Speaker 3: It's true. Once you've stood before someone's pea paw with
Speaker 3: your titius out, your pipe out. Just what a time. Anyways,
Speaker 3: I felt as a Jenny fan, I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: all right, we're all on the same page here. That
Speaker 3: looks like a fun show.
Speaker 4: I'm getting what she's putting down right right.
Speaker 2: So we're at this show and some of the audience members,
Speaker 2: you know, creepy men, are trying to grab her. So
Speaker 2: Forrest intervenes and like saves her. We've seen him do
Speaker 2: this before when they were in college. She's pissed that
Speaker 2: he's always trying to rescue her and Forrest says, I
Speaker 2: can't help it. I love you. And she says, you
Speaker 2: don't know what love is, Forrest, and this will come
Speaker 2: back later, but she goes to leave. Before she does,
Speaker 2: she tells him that if anything happens while he is
Speaker 2: in the war in Vietnam, he should just run. He
Speaker 2: shouldn't try to be brave, he should do what he
Speaker 2: does best and run away. And he says okay, and
Speaker 2: they part ways, and then Forest and Bubba are shipped
Speaker 2: to Vietnam. There they meet Lieutenant Dan played by Gary Sonise.
Speaker 2: Their platoon goes around the countryside on foot. They endure
Speaker 2: the rainy season.
Speaker 3: Every hit of this calendar year plays in rapid succession.
Speaker 3: It's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good soundtrack. Bubba asks Forrest if he
Speaker 2: wants to go into the shrimping business with him when
Speaker 2: they get out of the war, and Forrest agrees. But
Speaker 2: shortly thereafter, there's an ambush and Forrest runs away to safety,
Speaker 2: just like Jenny told him to, though he does go
Speaker 2: back and save several fellow soldiers, including Lieutenant Dan, whose
Speaker 2: legs have been injured.
Speaker 4: Who's begging him not to save him because Lieutenant Dan's
Speaker 4: ancestors all died in every American war and so he
Speaker 4: wants to also live out that legacy.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, but Forest ignores his orders and saves Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Dan anyway. He also does find Bubba, but he's badly wounded,
Speaker 2: and Bubba dies in Forrest's arms. Forrest is also wounded,
Speaker 2: he was shot in the buttocks, so he's released from
Speaker 2: active duty while he recovers, and during this time he
Speaker 2: learns how to play ping pong and he becomes this
Speaker 2: like ping pong champ. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Dan, whose legs have
Speaker 2: been amputated, is resentful that Forrest saved him because he
Speaker 2: felt he was destined to die in battle, and so
Speaker 2: now he has no idea what he's going to do
Speaker 2: with his life. Then Forrest is sent home and awarded
Speaker 2: the Congressional Medal of Honor. He goes to meet President
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson. He flashes his ass on TV to show
Speaker 2: the wound, and also while he's in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: He accidentally gets shuffled into a crowd of veterans who
Speaker 2: are anti war protesters, and he ends up on stage
Speaker 2: in front of a crowd of thousands at the Washington Monument.
Speaker 3: With Abby Hoffman, who I don't think that he's orally identified,
Speaker 3: but I like double checked and is definitely supposed to
Speaker 3: be him.
Speaker 4: He's definitely supposed to be Abbi Hoffman. And the way
Speaker 4: that they like, the way that they characterize Abbi Hoffman's
Speaker 4: legacy is just so insulting and they're like that man
Speaker 4: swollen a lot. Yes, I have to say, he's in
Speaker 4: the F word a lot. Yeah, so disrespectful.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm very excited to talk about the adaptation
Speaker 3: change made here after the recap, because like, we'll never
Speaker 3: know what Forrest really thought about the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: Not according to the movie. At least. Yeah, so Forest
Speaker 2: is about to like speak, but a soldier, a cop
Speaker 2: somebody pulls out all of the microphone plugs, so we
Speaker 2: don't hear what Forest has to say about the war,
Speaker 2: and lo and behold, Jenny is there at this demonstration,
Speaker 2: and she and Forrest reunite and the crowd cheers, and
Speaker 2: so Jenny and Forest hang out. She catches him up
Speaker 2: on her life. She is a hippie now she has
Speaker 2: traveled around a bunch. She takes him to a black
Speaker 2: panther meetup and we can talk more about this scene later.
Speaker 2: But Forrest gets in a fight with Jenny's abusive boyfriend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, any scene that's about systemic racism they managed to make.
Speaker 3: They're like, actually, wait, let's actually get back to Forrest,
Speaker 3: like within fifteen seconds of arriving, for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this altercation happens, and then Jenny leaves again
Speaker 2: out of Forrest's life. Some time passes. He plays on
Speaker 2: the All American Ping pong team and competes in China.
Speaker 2: Then he goes on a talk show hosted by someone
Speaker 2: who I'm probably supposed to know who that is, but
Speaker 2: I'm too young. I dkay oh, Dick Cavot I love
Speaker 2: Dick Caaviot.
Speaker 4: Oh it's Dick Kaviot. I'll come out right now and
Speaker 4: say I loved it, right, got it, got it.
Speaker 3: Wow, the John Lennon scene took me out. I love
Speaker 3: the John Lennon seed.
Speaker 4: Make John Lennon's head looks so big, but I feel
Speaker 4: like freamously, John Lennon had a tiny head, and so
Speaker 4: for some reason, it just I can't. I can't embrace
Speaker 4: the scene.
Speaker 3: You know, he does look like like a Sanrio character
Speaker 3: the way that they've like edited him, but I just
Speaker 3: oh my god, when he's like and no religion too dying.
Speaker 2: So the thing here is that John Lennon is also
Speaker 2: a guest on this talk show, and it's implied that
Speaker 2: a few of the things that Forrest says inspires lyrics
Speaker 2: to John Lennon's imagine it's only the whole movie.
Speaker 3: We're that goofy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2: So then Forrest reunites with Lieutenant Dan, who is bitter
Speaker 2: and he is dealing with alcoholism. Forrest tells him his
Speaker 2: plan to become a shrimp boat captain because he had
Speaker 2: made a promise to Bubba, and Lieutenant Dan is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, the day you become a shrimp boat captain.
Speaker 2: I'll come and be your first mate. So then they
Speaker 2: celebrate New Year's Eve together. They bond over being marginalized
Speaker 2: for their disabilities. Then Forrest meets President Nixon. I forget
Speaker 2: why this time. It's maybe a ping pong it's a.
Speaker 3: Ping pong related thing. Yeah, And then he starts Watergate. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He exposes the Watergate scandal or something. Yeah, Forrest does,
Speaker 2: and then he's discharged from the Army, so he returns
Speaker 2: home to Alabama to see his mom. He takes the
Speaker 2: twenty five thousand dollars that he was paid to endorse
Speaker 2: a ping pong paddle brand and he buys a shrimping
Speaker 2: boat with it, but he is not very good at
Speaker 2: shrimping at first. He names his boat Jenny, and he
Speaker 2: spends most of his time thinking about Jenny, who meanwhile
Speaker 2: is dealing with drug addiction with suicidal ideation. These are
Speaker 2: things that Forrest has no idea about, and according to
Speaker 2: the movie, probably wouldn't understand anyway because of his extreme naivete.
Speaker 2: And then one day, Lieutenant Dan shows up to honor
Speaker 2: his promise that he would be Forrest's first mate, so
Speaker 2: they start shrimping together, and all.
Speaker 3: Of a sudden, his hair is like really beautiful.
Speaker 4: I love luscious.
Speaker 2: He started conditioning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Lieutenant Dan's like shrimping. Look. I love he has
Speaker 3: a lot of.
Speaker 4: Looks in this movie, like a lot of like the
Speaker 4: evolution of getting more snatched as the movie goes upon
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 3: It's like, I like his Hawaiian shirt, like wavy conditioned
Speaker 3: hair moment, it's like, wow, that's I love how that
Speaker 3: they're like, Okay, he's not as much of an alcoholic
Speaker 3: now because look at his hair, and you're like, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: I got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he got his hands on a bottle of herbal
Speaker 2: Essence Swish and they turned his whole life around. So
Speaker 2: they're shrimping together now, but they're still having bad. Look
Speaker 2: until a storm brings in a bunch of shrimp, and
Speaker 2: there's like this whole like forest preyed very hard, and
Speaker 2: maybe that's what brought all this shrimp in, but anyway,
Speaker 2: they have all this shrimp now. This storm also shipwrecked
Speaker 2: all the other local shrimp boats, which the movie nor
Speaker 2: Forest has any empathy for that happening. They just breeze
Speaker 2: right past that.
Speaker 3: He becomes a shrimp millionaire.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, Also like highly likely the people who run
Speaker 4: those bods are like black.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah? That it is like it's like most likely
Speaker 3: of like majority black business was just decimated and they're like,
Speaker 3: and now here's this guy.
Speaker 4: This is great for Forrest.
Speaker 2: Yeah right exactly. That's how the movie feels about it.
Speaker 2: Then Forrest receives word that his mom has fallen ill,
Speaker 2: so he goes home to see her. She dies a
Speaker 2: short time.
Speaker 3: Later, and that wig in a wig.
Speaker 2: He decides not to return to shrimping, especially after Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Dan invests. They're already millions of dollars in apple, making
Speaker 2: him like mega rich. But he's so generous with his
Speaker 2: money and he donates some of it to the church
Speaker 2: and a hospital and Bubba's family.
Speaker 4: When I watched the Apple scene, I like turned to
Speaker 4: my friends and I was like, did you know Joan
Speaker 4: Bias dated Steve Jobs? Is that true?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: That isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3: WHOA?
Speaker 4: Maybe disappointing even Yeah, I mean that's a bummer.
Speaker 3: It's like, I guess this isn't as disappointing, But I
Speaker 3: think a lot about Steve Wozniak and Kathy Griffin that date.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whoa, I didn't know that either.
Speaker 3: I have such a strong memory. And like, she's to
Speaker 3: have a reality show that I think was on when
Speaker 3: I was in middle school and he was like on
Speaker 3: it and they were like on a date and they
Speaker 3: were on segways or something. And anyways, those guys, those guys, wow,
Speaker 3: Joan Bias what like Steve. Yeah, that is a little disappointing,
Speaker 3: but also it was like I wouldn't have expected jobs
Speaker 3: to have that kind of pull.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I still am confused by Grimes marrying Elon Musk like that.
Speaker 3: That's no sense to me. So many cases, so many cases.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So Forrest is now a bazillionaire and one day
Speaker 2: Jenny shows up at his house and stays with him
Speaker 2: for a while. He asks her to marry him, and
Speaker 2: he says, I'm not a smart man, but I know
Speaker 2: what love is, in reference to her telling him earlier
Speaker 2: that he doesn't know what love is. He insists that
Speaker 2: he does.
Speaker 4: The way Tom Hanks delivers that line, it does get
Speaker 4: me every time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good moment.
Speaker 4: He's really good in this movie.
Speaker 3: It sucks that he's good in this movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, I saw this as a child on repeat for
Speaker 2: a few years, And that was the only Tom Hanks
Speaker 2: movie that I saw during that period, and the first
Speaker 2: Tom Hanks movie I ever saw, So I just thought
Speaker 2: he was like that. I didn't really understand that he
Speaker 2: was like performing. And then when I saw like probably
Speaker 2: Apollo thirteen, when I was like twelve or so, I
Speaker 2: was like, wait a minute, that's the same guy, and
Speaker 2: he doesn't sound anything like that. What it was really
Speaker 2: confusing for my child brain.
Speaker 4: Like the nineties were a big time for actors with
Speaker 4: a lot of talent portraying yes, characters of the disabilities
Speaker 4: like Leonardo DiCaprio and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. I feel
Speaker 4: like that was his whole yeh coming into fame was
Speaker 4: how how many people believed that he was he actually
Speaker 4: did have a disability. Yeah, the ethics of which we
Speaker 4: can certainly debate.
Speaker 2: We can absolutely debate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the first movie that I
Speaker 3: saw that had that was I Am Sam, a really
Speaker 3: stinky Sean Penn movie. Yeah, where it is the same
Speaker 3: He's playing a character with an intellectual disability. Glad that
Speaker 3: that doesn't happen quite as much these days, not that
Speaker 3: it's completely gone away, but I'm glad it's not a
Speaker 3: prominent trend. I don't know. I mean anytime someone portrays
Speaker 3: someone with a disability or with like an quote unquote
Speaker 3: other body type just to get nominated for an oscar.
Speaker 3: I guess the last example we have of that is
Speaker 3: kind of is the whale, right.
Speaker 2: In any case, Forrest is like professing his love for
Speaker 2: Jenny and once to marry her, and later that night
Speaker 2: she comes into his room and they have sex. But
Speaker 2: then the next morning she abruptly leaves again, presumably without
Speaker 2: saying goodbye to Forrest, and this prompts him to set
Speaker 2: off running with no destination in mind. He just runs
Speaker 2: and runs and runs across the country all the way
Speaker 2: to the west coast, and then he turns around and
Speaker 2: he runs and runs and runs all the way to
Speaker 2: the east coast. And then he runs for like over
Speaker 2: three years, just non stop, only like stopping to sleep
Speaker 2: and just running running running.
Speaker 3: The beard effects was fun. The beard.
Speaker 4: I looked at him, I was like, he looks like
Speaker 4: every single guy I know, And then I said, it's
Speaker 4: kind of working on me. He looks good.
Speaker 3: He does have like a very Brooklyn coated beard. Uh yeah,
Speaker 3: he has literally my brother's beard.
Speaker 4: He's giving Bushwick for sure.
Speaker 3: This a moment that my boyfriend specifically asked me about
Speaker 3: when we had a post mortem on Forrest Gump. He's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I know you didn't like it, However, what did you
Speaker 3: think of the running? I was like, kind of funny,
Speaker 3: kind of weird, I don't know. And he said that
Speaker 3: that was something that he and his father specifically really
Speaker 3: bonded over when they would watch that movie. He's like,
Speaker 3: I think that there is some like bizarre masculine fantasy
Speaker 3: attached to that of like you were spurned and hurt
Speaker 3: by a woman and you just run away and you
Speaker 3: do this kind of like unhinged, hyper masculine thing where
Speaker 3: like and I only stopped to sleep and eat and
Speaker 3: poop and I just ran and you know, I was like, wow,
Speaker 3: that actually does kind of make sense to me. But
Speaker 3: I would never have been able to get there on
Speaker 3: my own.
Speaker 4: My friend, who I watched with who's a guy also yesterday,
Speaker 4: was like, WHOA, Forrest is kind of a giga Chad
Speaker 4: And we were like, oh, I go, and he was like,
Speaker 4: he really is just being an avoidant king. He's running
Speaker 4: around town being avoidant and also just yeah, he's really
Speaker 4: living out the male fantasy. And it also in every
Speaker 4: scene that he's running that the landscape is so beautiful
Speaker 4: but almost in a grotesque way where it's so oversaturated
Speaker 4: my friends, that it kind of looked like a self
Speaker 4: help book, like the cover of any book. Yes, And
Speaker 4: I feel like those two things together make this sequence like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know, kind of a bizarre sequence.
Speaker 3: Wow, men, men are so complicated. I was just like what,
Speaker 3: because I think that that is one of those like
Speaker 3: corny YouTube fifteen years ago things where if you change
Speaker 3: the music and that sequence slightly, it becomes a totally
Speaker 3: different energy. Like I don't know.
Speaker 4: It was very grind set for sure.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, he's a proto influencer. And at the end
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, sorry, I did that for no reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he starts having like followers just running behind him.
Speaker 2: He has all these like journalists and stuff being like
Speaker 2: are you doing this for animal rights, for women's rights,
Speaker 2: for protesting this and this and that? And he's like no,
Speaker 2: I just felt like running. Despite that, he inspires a
Speaker 2: bunch of people along the way, a bumper sticker guy,
Speaker 2: a T shirt designer, and then like a running cult
Speaker 2: question Mark, and then one day he just decides to
Speaker 2: stop running and he goes back home to Alabama. He
Speaker 2: then gets a letter from Jenny inviting him to Savannah, Georgia,
Speaker 2: which brings us to the present of him sitting at
Speaker 2: the bus stop waiting for a bus, and the woman
Speaker 2: who is now sitting next to him is like, you
Speaker 2: don't need a bus. Henry Straight is right over there.
Speaker 2: So then Forrest runs to Jenny's apartment and discovers that
Speaker 2: she is a mother to a baby Hailey Joel Osmond
Speaker 2: a friend at the show Baby Hailey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's so small, chicken nugget. He's so cute, it's insane.
Speaker 2: And this is Forrest Junior because Forrest Gump is his father.
Speaker 2: And then he like kind of interacts with Little Forest
Speaker 2: a little bit while he's watching Burton Ernie. And then
Speaker 2: Jenny tells Forrest that she is sick with some unknown virus.
Speaker 2: I think it's implied to be HIV.
Speaker 3: Is that that's like later confirmed, but they, I guess
Speaker 3: wrote it out of the script.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Forrest is like, well, come live with me.
Speaker 2: I'll take care of you in Little Forest. So Jenny
Speaker 2: moves back to Alabama with him, they get married. Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Dan comes to the wedding.
Speaker 4: Now sporting a crew cut and also a wife.
Speaker 2: A crew cut and prosthetic legs, and a eye's wife
Speaker 2: God or his fiance.
Speaker 3: That the final Lieutenant Dan thing, I was like, do
Speaker 3: not piss me off. That'sh I hate how the movie
Speaker 3: resolves Lieutenant Dan's story where.
Speaker 5: He's like, Okay, I've quote unquote fixed my disability and
Speaker 5: if it weren't for capitalism, I never would have made
Speaker 5: it through, and you're just like, ah, fuck you.
Speaker 4: I also found that the choice to cast his wife
Speaker 4: as an East Asian woman, maybe it was colorblindcasting doesn't
Speaker 4: feel like it for some reason. It feels like it's
Speaker 4: trying to say something. What it's saying, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Makes me feel kind of strange, though I don't know,
Speaker 4: I don't know how to explain it.
Speaker 3: I also had that thought, I mean, yeah, we don't
Speaker 3: know what the background of the character is. But I
Speaker 3: feel like because we met Lieutenant Dan in Vietnam, and
Speaker 3: that the movie seems to very intentionally never show us
Speaker 3: a Vietnamese persons, they're just like, we know who they're fighting,
Speaker 3: but it's an unseen and so that there's no opportunity
Speaker 3: to empathize with anyone who isn't in the American military. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that felt that felt pointed.
Speaker 4: I don't know, and she's she has an American accent.
Speaker 4: I think she's supposed to be American. Yeah, but like
Speaker 4: in the context of Vitnams, so many soldiers bringing back
Speaker 4: Vienname's wives and the discourse around that, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It just felt like a really pointed casting choice that
Speaker 4: was interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's hard to say because we don't know
Speaker 2: anything about her. She says exactly one line, which is
Speaker 2: high Forest, and then that's all we get from her,
Speaker 2: and then the movie's basically over because shortly after this
Speaker 2: Jenny passes away. Forest of course misses her so much, and.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately Tom Hanks is really good in the scene at
Speaker 3: the grave.
Speaker 4: I know, no, it'll get you good.
Speaker 2: It's good, it's tearful.
Speaker 4: And then baby Haley, did you cry, Jamie?
Speaker 3: I was, I was edging, but I didn't get that.
Speaker 2: Way to describe being on the verge of tears. And
Speaker 2: Forrest is raising little Forest and he seems to be
Speaker 2: a very good dad. And then when little Forest is
Speaker 2: like waiting for the bus to school. The feather from
Speaker 2: the beginning comes back, it falls out of the book
Speaker 2: and then it floats through the sky again blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: The end, it reminded me of the feather hitting and
Speaker 3: the it reminded me of of Jim Carrey Grinch, where
Speaker 3: it like starts and ends with the snowflake.
Speaker 4: Ah, and you follow the snowflake. I did like that.
Speaker 4: The feather it goes it like the feather flies right
Speaker 4: into the screen, then it goes bink.
Speaker 3: I did like it. I was like, Okay, that's a
Speaker 3: little bit as the guest magic.
Speaker 4: I liked that, very polar express. Well that's the movie.
Speaker 2: Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to
Speaker 2: discuss and we're back. Where shall we.
Speaker 3: Start, Well, I would like to start, if possible, with
Speaker 3: the adaptation context, because Maya, you talk about this so
Speaker 3: eloquently and in such detail in your video, and I
Speaker 3: honestly didn't even know until I watched your video a
Speaker 3: couple of months ago that this was even based on
Speaker 3: a book. If you would be so kind walk us
Speaker 3: through some of the major changes made between the book
Speaker 3: and the movie.
Speaker 4: Yes, I was telling Kaitlin before, but uh, after I finish.
Speaker 4: It's the kind of like writing an exam after I
Speaker 4: finished a video, all the information just flies out of
Speaker 4: my brain. I also rewatched my video, so I'm gonna
Speaker 4: try and recap this is the best I can. But yes,
Speaker 4: so essentially the movie is based on a novel by
Speaker 4: an authorn, Winston Groom, who hadn't had a ton of
Speaker 4: success in his life. I don't believe the book itself
Speaker 4: either was wildly successful. But essentially, Winston Grim is a
Speaker 4: Vietnam War veteran and he wrote this book that he
Speaker 4: designed to be kind of like a picuresque novel. And
Speaker 4: for context, the picuresque novel is this like literary tradition,
Speaker 4: where it's a story that follows a singular character through
Speaker 4: a very wide array of events in their life, often
Speaker 4: with a satirical tone. The example that I use in
Speaker 4: the video is Candide by Voltaire, which is basically about
Speaker 4: a character who witnesses an absurd, uncanny amount of terrible
Speaker 4: events in his life. But the book is written with
Speaker 4: a really matter of fact tone, kind of almost comedic,
Speaker 4: and it's supposed to be kind of pointing at the
Speaker 4: fact that the world is a difficult place and we
Speaker 4: need to nurture it instead of instead of ignoring it
Speaker 4: and believing the world is just like this positive, amazing place.
Speaker 4: And I'd say Forrestcump the book is pretty similar. Forrest
Speaker 4: Gump is very different in the book. He's he physically
Speaker 4: stands out a lot. He's supposed to be six book six,
Speaker 4: a very big guy. I think he's like supposed to
Speaker 4: be like two hundred to three hundred pounds. He's like big, yeah.
Speaker 4: And he's very different from Forrest in the movie, mainly
Speaker 4: in the sense that he's a very imperfect character. He
Speaker 4: has sex with multiple women, including Jenny. In the book,
Speaker 4: he's horny, he does drugs a few times throughout the book.
Speaker 4: He is like one aware of racism, you know, when
Speaker 4: he brings up the KKK at the beginning. He talks
Speaker 4: about how his grandma named him Forrest, but how she
Speaker 4: thinks that the KKK are a bunch of no goods.
Speaker 4: So he's aware of racism, but he also is capable
Speaker 4: of being racist, Like he is quite ignorant when he
Speaker 4: goes to Vietnam and he talks about Vietnamese people, which
Speaker 4: who are completely excluded from the movie. But in the
Speaker 4: context of the book, he refers to them as a slur.
Speaker 4: He goes to China and he ends up saving Mao
Speaker 4: Zedong from drowning, which I thought was a funny plot
Speaker 4: point which really pisses off his superiors, but is also
Speaker 4: a little bit racist about Chinese people. He meets people
Speaker 4: in New Guinea. He's a little he's he's ignorant, he's
Speaker 4: a small town boy, right.
Speaker 3: You mentioned this in your video, like where he's a
Speaker 3: more realistic product of his environment than movie forest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And he's most importantly, he's a lot less
Speaker 4: juvenile than the Forest in the movie. And I thought
Speaker 4: it was interesting when you had referred to the scene
Speaker 4: between Jenny and Forrest as like sexual assault, because I
Speaker 4: think in the books it feels a lot less like that,
Speaker 4: because Forest is less infantile. You know, he has like
Speaker 4: learning impairments and intellectual disabilities, but he's he's still very
Speaker 4: much an adult and doesn't have the mind of a child.
Speaker 4: And so I thought that was a really interesting take
Speaker 4: and accurate. And yeah, and I think overall the book
Speaker 4: just has a bit more of a satirical edge to
Speaker 4: it than the movie does. And is it Roberts Mechis yeah,
Speaker 4: Robert Yeah. Roberts and Mecchus and Eric Roth, who is
Speaker 4: a screenwriter, have been very explicit about the fact that
Speaker 4: they don't like the book, which I think is wildly disrespectful.
Speaker 4: Winston Groom has been like extremely gracious about he's passed away,
Speaker 4: but really gracious about the adaptation, was really excited about it.
Speaker 4: And it feels like they just kind of disrespected the
Speaker 4: source material a lot.
Speaker 3: And they screwed ai amount of money too, like there
Speaker 3: was like a hole.
Speaker 4: They screwed him out of money.
Speaker 3: It's wild and he was very nice.
Speaker 4: About that too. He sounds like he was actually a
Speaker 4: really nice guy. God and Roberts and Machis has just
Speaker 4: been very proud about the fact that he didn't finish
Speaker 4: the book, but essentially he felt like the book had
Speaker 4: no meaning and so he wanted to imbue it with meaning,
Speaker 4: which I think is really interesting because the book has
Speaker 4: a lot of meaning. I think it takes this approach
Speaker 4: that Winston Groom has basically said that he wanted the
Speaker 4: story to be about human dignity and preserving dignity in
Speaker 4: a world where many undignified things happened to you, and
Speaker 4: like happen around you. And I think that that's definitely
Speaker 4: the case. Forrest doesn't constantly succeed in the book. He
Speaker 4: undergoes a lot of hardship. One of the biggest changes
Speaker 4: they make is that Forest actually gets wrapped it into
Speaker 4: the army in the book, and I believe he enlists
Speaker 4: in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he voluntarily enlists. Yeah in the.
Speaker 4: Movie, Yeah, which is a huge thing. He flunks out
Speaker 4: of college, Like there's there's so many things that happened
Speaker 4: to him that are upsetting, and it feels like movie
Speaker 4: Forrest doesn't stuffer those same things. And Yeah, generally, just
Speaker 4: the movie essentially just sanitizes the book as Hollywood is
Speaker 4: so wants to do, and turns it from this kind
Speaker 4: of like satire about indignity into dignity to kind of
Speaker 4: being a celebration of America and American history and doing
Speaker 4: this like really bizarre quick survey of the America's twentieth century,
Speaker 4: hitting all these like major points in American culture, like
Speaker 4: huge touchdowns of American culture, like oh, adding in John
Speaker 4: Lennon or Elvis Presley. At one point, Forrest teaches him
Speaker 4: how to do that silly dance move he did and
Speaker 4: just adding in these unnecessary things jfka. All this stuff
Speaker 4: to kind of wink and nod at the audience is
Speaker 4: very Pestiche kind of just like a collage of different
Speaker 4: moments without any real meaning behind them. So I think
Speaker 4: it's interesting because I think they took a lot of
Speaker 4: the meaning out of the book, right.
Speaker 3: They like unsatirized it. It seems like they unsatirized it.
Speaker 4: And I think the number one difference between them is
Speaker 4: the opening line in the movie. He says life is
Speaker 4: like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're
Speaker 4: gonna get, which I've always thought was strange because you
Speaker 4: do know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get chocolate.
Speaker 2: It's on the box, yeah, and it's all yeah, but
Speaker 2: you don't know if it's gonna be full of a
Speaker 2: cherry or peanut, butter or caramel.
Speaker 4: Have you guys had pot of gold? When they have
Speaker 4: the little key which tells you exactly yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe this is Alabama chocolate that I'm not let me
Speaker 4: let us know.
Speaker 3: He's got a box of Russell Stover and labeled yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: But in the movie he says that, and in the
Speaker 4: book he says being an Idiot is no box of chocolates,
Speaker 4: which is the complete in verse of tone. Right. The
Speaker 4: movie takes a really positive, really optimistic kind of a
Speaker 4: political approach to life, whereas the book is actively engaging
Speaker 4: with the difficulties that Forest faces as someone with a disability, right,
Speaker 4: And so yeah, I think that's the general gist of
Speaker 4: the adaptation, but there's so much more to be said.
Speaker 3: There's I mean, yeah, I truly would recommend everyone listening
Speaker 3: go watch the video as well, because they're I mean,
Speaker 3: just the specifics that you were pulling about. How you
Speaker 3: know in the book, yeah, that he's specifically condemning the
Speaker 3: Vietnam War, and in the movie they literally rip the
Speaker 3: microphone away from him, so you can never really have
Speaker 3: a definitive statement on the movie's opinion of the Vietnam War.
Speaker 4: I think they're trying to talk about like military suppression
Speaker 4: and censorship, but it's like, how convenient you know.
Speaker 3: That this is the Yeah, the one it felt like
Speaker 3: this movie was I don't know, I mean, in that context,
Speaker 3: it felt like the movie was trying to, I guess,
Speaker 3: strip back any of the intended meaning of the book
Speaker 3: as you described it, and also really punish people within
Speaker 3: the world of the movie who were seeking meaning that
Speaker 3: was not conservative and conventional. I feel like the one
Speaker 3: thing that stuck out to me is that we really
Speaker 3: only meet like two men who are like explicitly progressive
Speaker 3: or leftist or whatever. One of them is Abby hoffin
Speaker 3: the other one is beating up Jenny. The only guy
Speaker 3: we really meet who's a fictional character is like this
Speaker 3: horrific abuser who's a black panther alive, right, and so
Speaker 3: it's just like making him out to see, which you
Speaker 3: know absolutely happens in those spaces, but it's like you
Speaker 3: get nothing with the exception of Jenny's father, you get
Speaker 3: nothing but really empathetic portraits of people who are living
Speaker 3: like not countercultural lives. And so and the fact that
Speaker 3: Jenny's whole character seems predicated on the movie has this
Speaker 3: agenda of like getting back at her for doing anything.
Speaker 3: It seems like, and I think you mentioned the video
Speaker 3: as well, her character is that is like not the
Speaker 3: ending for that character in the book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very importantly. In the book, Jenny does not die,
Speaker 4: She does not have a virus. She actually ends up
Speaker 4: with another man. Forrest has sex with another woman and
Speaker 4: they have a child together, and he essentially gives the
Speaker 4: child to Jenny because he the quote is that he
Speaker 4: doesn't want the child to have a pea brain for
Speaker 4: a daddy, which is heartbreaking. But in the movie, it's
Speaker 4: like Forest is supposed to have an IQ of seventy,
Speaker 4: have this extremely childlike worldview, but then is now a
Speaker 4: single father raising this child spectacularly on his own, which
Speaker 4: I'm not saying is not possible at all, but it
Speaker 4: just it feels like a really interesting shift between the
Speaker 4: two realities.
Speaker 2: And then also in your video, I say, you point
Speaker 2: out the various other ways in which the movie adaptation
Speaker 2: differs from the book in regards to Jenny's character where
Speaker 2: the movie it seems, gives and to be clear, I
Speaker 2: have not read the book, so I'm pulling a lot
Speaker 2: of this information from your video essay, but it seems
Speaker 2: as though the movie does give Jenny more presence in
Speaker 2: the story. But it also does this thing where it
Speaker 2: basically transfers all of the quote unquote vices that Forrest
Speaker 2: has in the book, or what like respectability politics and
Speaker 2: conservative values would deem to be vices, and it transfers
Speaker 2: those to Jenny in the movie where, for example, we
Speaker 2: see her doing a bunch of drugs.
Speaker 3: She's the only character we know who's done drugs except
Speaker 3: I guess maybe Lieutenant Dan for a while, right, But.
Speaker 2: We actively see her doing coke. It's implied that she
Speaker 2: does heroin, and we also see her doing what might
Speaker 2: be acid. Again, I'm such a square when it comes
Speaker 2: to drugs. I don't know which ones are which, but
Speaker 2: she's doing veriou drugs. It's implied that she it maybe
Speaker 2: has promiscuous sex or at the very least has multiple
Speaker 2: romantic partners.
Speaker 4: She may be also doing sex work by the end unclear.
Speaker 3: Oh right, because we see her she gets kicked out
Speaker 3: of college for being in a Playboy spread, and if
Speaker 3: I'm remembering correctly, they add in the fact that she
Speaker 3: was being sexually abused by her father for the movie,
Speaker 3: which again don't.
Speaker 4: Do that well. It's fascinating because Forrest in the books
Speaker 4: is sexually assaulted by a female boarder at his mom's
Speaker 4: house when he's a kid, or like I think he's
Speaker 4: a teenager.
Speaker 2: Which is left out of the movie, which.
Speaker 3: Is left out of the movie, and then they give
Speaker 3: that to Jenny. I do feel like I don't know,
Speaker 3: I guess I do feel confident in saying this because
Speaker 3: it's just men top to bottom at the height of
Speaker 3: this project. I do feel like that's done to quote
Speaker 3: unquote justify how her life goes. Is like a survivor
Speaker 3: of CSA is fucked like for their entire lives, and
Speaker 3: that all of these things. I mean, it just feels
Speaker 3: like the movie is just punishing her so thoroughly. And
Speaker 3: the only times in her life or in the plot
Speaker 3: where she catches a break is when she is basically
Speaker 3: playing the part of Forest's wife and like is living
Speaker 3: with him kind of in a live in girlfriend's situation.
Speaker 3: And I know you mentioned it in your video too,
Speaker 3: but when they have sex towards the end of the movie,
Speaker 3: she's wearing this like virginal white gown. She dies in
Speaker 3: a white gown. It just all feels so like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, like she's being redeemed, yeah yeah, and that
Speaker 3: it's like all of this is happening to her to
Speaker 3: remind us how good of a person movie Forest is
Speaker 3: while punishing Jenny for any countercultural instinct or abuse she
Speaker 3: sustained as a child, which is not how the movie
Speaker 3: treats Forest at all.
Speaker 4: I also think it's part of this kind of trend
Speaker 4: of the nineties and two thousands of this like tortured
Speaker 4: angel trope that happened I think a lot with women.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you guys remember so many like
Speaker 4: indie songs from the two thousands where they be like
Speaker 4: she's got blue bruises on her.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: It was like just very like very voyeuristic, like man,
Speaker 4: oh I can save you girl kind of songwriting.
Speaker 3: Kind of decembris vibes to be yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 4: This feels similarly of its time for this kind of
Speaker 4: like helpless, tortured, fragile bird woman that you need to
Speaker 4: go save and you have to save her all the time.
Speaker 4: But like she's so she's so do you guys swear
Speaker 4: on this podcast? Oh yes, she's so fucked up?
Speaker 2: Yes for sure.
Speaker 4: So I think it's really it's really of this era
Speaker 4: in that way as well.
Speaker 2: That and then it's like her, as you point out
Speaker 2: in your video, it's her you know, quote unquote impure
Speaker 2: behavior is largely there to emphasize how morally pure Forrest
Speaker 2: Gump is, by contrast, and it's only after she accepts
Speaker 2: the role of like wife and mother, like a very
Speaker 2: traditional kind of that she is like redeemed, and then
Speaker 2: she suddenly has the same haircut that Forrest Gump's mom
Speaker 2: has throughout the same movie.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, and she dies in the same bed. It's implied.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: And what I thought was interesting, and I was gonna
Speaker 4: say it earlier too, is there are no signs like
Speaker 4: when Forest's mom and Jenny die, and there's like these
Speaker 4: parallels in the scenes. There are no signs of illness
Speaker 4: on them. Forest's mom, true, Chris's mom dies of cancer
Speaker 4: and there's not a sign and like some people obviously
Speaker 4: do die of cancer and don't look ill, but Jenny
Speaker 4: as well dying of what is.
Speaker 3: Like complications do a yeah, like die beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is like horrific virus has an extreme physical
Speaker 4: toll on the body. And Jenny looks so porcelain when
Speaker 4: she dies, Like her hair is like voluminous and blonde,
Speaker 4: and it's just like, I don't know, I thought that
Speaker 4: was an interesting omission.
Speaker 2: Very peculiar.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also want to talk just a little bit more
Speaker 2: about like the power dynamic and the like imbalance of
Speaker 2: power in that relationship of like someone who has an
Speaker 2: intellectual disability being with someone who does not have an
Speaker 2: intellectual disability in a sexual or romantic context, which that
Speaker 2: power dynamic is certainly worth examining. And then even on
Speaker 2: top of that, there are different scenes in the movie
Speaker 2: where Jenny does things that, like whether or not she
Speaker 2: obtained consent from Forrest is very much up for debate.
Speaker 2: There's the scene in the dorm room, which we described,
Speaker 2: and then I would argue also when she comes into
Speaker 2: his room toward the end of the movie, when she's
Speaker 2: wearing that like white gown and she gets into bed
Speaker 2: with him and they have sex, I think consent there
Speaker 2: is also questionable. But the movie, of course is just
Speaker 2: like no, of course Forrest is consenting to this, and
Speaker 2: of course any man when next to a beautiful woman
Speaker 2: would of course consent to any sexual thing that might
Speaker 2: happen kind of thing. And I never really picked up
Speaker 2: on that as a child, of course, like you know.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, because this is being presented as a beautiful
Speaker 3: love story.
Speaker 2: Right, and I really noticed that on this viewing. And
Speaker 2: I want to be perfectly clear that I am not
Speaker 2: suggesting that people with intellectual disabilities or who are neurodivergent
Speaker 2: are not able to give consent or to have consenting
Speaker 2: sexual relationships. I'm talking more about the power dynamic, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, similar to when like, you know, a twenty
Speaker 2: year old dating a forty five year old, and even
Speaker 2: if they are giving consent, it's still a power imbalance,
Speaker 2: whether based on level of life experience or emotional mature
Speaker 2: or like wisdom versus naivete. And I know that like
Speaker 2: people's mileage on this varies. It's a very complicated topic
Speaker 2: and I don't want to trivialize it or anything like that,
Speaker 2: but there is inherently an imbalance of power in these
Speaker 2: different scenarios, and my criticism is that the movie doesn't
Speaker 2: really acknowledge that, and that the movie does show what
Speaker 2: I would especially in that dorm room scene. I think
Speaker 2: unequivocally in the dorm room scene is an instance of
Speaker 2: sexual assault that the movie does not treat that way
Speaker 2: at all, and instead ends that scene on like a
Speaker 2: jokey button about him prematurely ejaculating and ruining the roommate's
Speaker 2: bathrobe and twist. The roommate was awake the whole time
Speaker 2: during this entire interaction. So that's what I take issue with.
Speaker 2: I just want to make that perfectly clear.
Speaker 4: It's a romantic depiction of yeah, yeah dynamic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're totally right, Kitlin, that like the power dynamic
Speaker 3: is not even acknowledged, and that that feels like a
Speaker 3: very glaring and could be adjusted pretty easily. But because
Speaker 3: all these adaptation changes are made, I don't know if
Speaker 3: any consulting was done in terms of presenting neurodivergence on
Speaker 3: screen or anything like that. I would assume no, but
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I would also assume that I was
Speaker 3: looking to see if there had been more written about this,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't really able to find anything, which is
Speaker 3: very frustrating. I have found a few, I mean, they're
Speaker 3: mostly personal essays, many from autistic writers who are like
Speaker 3: I mean, there's just a wide array of takes on Forest,
Speaker 3: where there are certain nonprofits related to autism not autism
Speaker 3: speaks that have sort of like claimed Forest as their own.
Speaker 3: But of course it's like not necessary, that's not stated
Speaker 3: in the movie. So I don't know, I mean, this movie,
Speaker 3: it's absolutely baffling to me. I have like a quick
Speaker 3: quote from a writer that like really embraced Forest and
Speaker 3: specifically the movie interpretation of Forest. This is from a
Speaker 3: website Slash writer a is for Ifa not Autism dot
Speaker 3: Com from a post she wrote called autism on Screen
Speaker 3: Forest Gump. I just wanted to share this. Interestingly, the
Speaker 3: film depicts Forest in a more realistic light than in
Speaker 3: the book. Whilst he is described in both as having
Speaker 3: a low IQ in the seventies, Forrest is not portrayed
Speaker 3: a stereotyped mathematical savant in the film. Finally, a bit
Speaker 3: of realism. Forrest's tail truly shows us. How as I've
Speaker 3: often remarked on this blog, you should never allow autism
Speaker 3: to hold you back. And autism diagnosis can be a challenge, yes,
Speaker 3: but it does not mean you can't live a normal,
Speaker 3: happy and fulfilling life. And then there's physical disability, which
Speaker 3: I feel far more confident saying this movie completely mishandles
Speaker 3: actually crazy. That leg brace is falling off that whole
Speaker 3: I mean, that's like the first huge example, right of Like,
Speaker 3: as Forrest is running, it's his disability. His physical disability
Speaker 3: is made out to be basically metaphorical. Yeah, and that
Speaker 3: you know, as he gains confidence and he outruns his bullies,
Speaker 3: his leg braces fall away, and it's that's the last
Speaker 3: time his physical disability ever comes up, which is all
Speaker 3: of these classic, like ablest tropes of like a disability
Speaker 3: as something that's inherently holding you back and is making
Speaker 3: you suffer and needs to be overcome as opposed to
Speaker 3: just a facet of one's life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, movie really flubs it. I mean going back to
Speaker 2: Forrest Gump's intellectual disability and the way that, as you
Speaker 2: discuss in your video essay, Maya, is all about like
Speaker 2: the conservative right co opting this movie because of all
Speaker 2: of its like conservative values, because it's showing all of
Speaker 2: these historical events and like American iconography in a way
Speaker 2: that is making no commentary or criticism about various things
Speaker 2: such as the Vietnam War, segregation, systemic racism, things like that.
Speaker 4: And it's this is.
Speaker 2: Able to happen because of the point of view character
Speaker 2: of Forrest Gump, who sees everything with such a naive
Speaker 2: point of view. He's always saying something like, well, for
Speaker 2: no particular reason, XYZ happened. And the way that he
Speaker 2: just he'll allude to these things oppression or corruption or exploitation,
Speaker 2: things that have happened throughout American history. It'll be alluding
Speaker 2: to them without acknowledging them. Because it's just like Forrest
Speaker 2: being like, remember this, remember this thing that happened. I
Speaker 2: have nothing to say about it, which is also just
Speaker 2: the inherent ableism in that in suggesting that someone with
Speaker 2: an intellectual disability couldn't understand things like racial discrimination and
Speaker 2: war are bad. That he's just like, I don't know
Speaker 2: these things are happening, but I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 2: I think there's just like intense ableism inherent in that.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think, yeah, that I had a note
Speaker 3: that like for me that it felt both ableist and
Speaker 3: condescending to anyone watching the movie where there's a line
Speaker 3: shortly after he enlists I think he's at basic training
Speaker 3: that goes something like being in the army is easy.
Speaker 3: All you have to do is be completely pliant and
Speaker 3: do what anyone tells you to do, and you'll do great.
Speaker 3: And that is like implied that that is inherent to
Speaker 3: his like intellectual disability, that he is servile and does
Speaker 3: what he's told, which is certainly not true, and also
Speaker 3: that that is the I feel like the underlying message
Speaker 3: of the movie, and like part of the way the
Speaker 3: way he intellectual disability is used narratively is to like
Speaker 3: telegraph this message that like if you just like do
Speaker 3: what you're told and like stay on the path you've
Speaker 3: been told to stay on, you could randomly become a millionaire,
Speaker 3: you could be very successful, you'll cruise through life. But
Speaker 3: if you're like Jenny and you push against anything, you
Speaker 3: will die in a horrible way. And like, it just
Speaker 3: feels like the way that his intellectual disability is used
Speaker 3: in the narrative is insulting to the disabled and also
Speaker 3: insulting to the audience. And just like reinforces how nothing
Speaker 3: the movie's messages. I mean, it sticks out, especially how
Speaker 3: unwilling it is to take a stance on the Vietnam War,
Speaker 3: which is arguably the easiest American war to take a
Speaker 3: stance on against America. I was like, if you can't
Speaker 3: do that, you're fucking cooked, dude. Like Yeah.
Speaker 4: The producer Wendy Feinerman, who's the person who got this
Speaker 4: movie greenlit because she's the one who brought the book
Speaker 4: to the studio, she said that her greatest achievement from
Speaker 4: the movie was making this like a movie for the military.
Speaker 4: Basically I like kind of talk about this in the
Speaker 4: video as well. But also the young boy who plays Forrest.
Speaker 4: I'm forgetting the actor's name. I think it's Michael Connor.
Speaker 3: Jeffries, Oh, yes, yeah, the young Forest.
Speaker 4: Yeah. He basically he enlisted in the Iraq War because
Speaker 4: he was so inspired by the idea of Lieutenant Dan
Speaker 4: dying with honor on the battlefield.
Speaker 3: And it's like, I wish you'd read the book.
Speaker 4: Fascinating that a movie that's essentially propagating the military is
Speaker 4: taking from source material of a Vietnam War veteran. And
Speaker 4: in the book, like explicitly, Forest states multiple times that
Speaker 4: he thinks, I'm gonna slightly misquote it, but I'll paraphrase.
Speaker 4: He thinks that the war's a load of shit. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And that's clearly coming from Winston Groom. And so for
Speaker 4: the movie to be pro military is like, to me
Speaker 4: quite disgusting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially because I mean, like you were saying, Winston
Speaker 3: Groom was a veteran of that war, so to change
Speaker 3: his specific opinion on it is insulting to him and
Speaker 3: insulting to any veteran. I mean, the movie stands on veterans.
Speaker 3: I also found very vague. I guess this sort of
Speaker 3: gets into the conversation around Lieutenant Dan. Also, I just
Speaker 3: wanted to touch on I mean stating the obvious non disabled
Speaker 3: actors are playing disabled parts as is still so common.
Speaker 3: But with Lieutenant Dan, before we even get to the
Speaker 3: conversation around ability, I did think it was more than
Speaker 3: I guess I expected of the movie to at least
Speaker 3: portray a veteran who had been essentially discarded by society
Speaker 3: after they weren't considered quote unquote useful anymore. I think
Speaker 3: that's something that is very under discussed in movies, and
Speaker 3: we could get into Jimmy, how many veterans end up
Speaker 3: on hows how many like? It's stuff I did reporting
Speaker 3: on as well. So I was like, Okay, I do
Speaker 3: appreciate that there is some representation of a veteran who
Speaker 3: has been left behind because that's such a common occurrence.
Speaker 3: But again, it's like the way that the story resolves,
Speaker 3: that is, I think you mentioned this in your video.
Speaker 3: May yet like that a lot of the like Lieutenant
Speaker 3: Dan's I guess counseling of Forrest, they flip that. So
Speaker 3: Forrest is teaching Lieutenant Dan, and the way that he
Speaker 3: lifts himself up is via capitalism, via a business. He
Speaker 3: picks up his bootstraps right, right, and it's it's not.
Speaker 4: Like you got shoes and prosthetic legs, so.
Speaker 3: Right, And then again it's like using disability to make
Speaker 3: a statement about like, well, he's quote unquote less disabled
Speaker 3: than we've seen him in previous sequences, and he's happier
Speaker 3: than ever, and isn't that great? And it just feels
Speaker 3: I don't know, I was really frustrated. It felt like
Speaker 3: with Lieutenant Dan, I thought it was like a real
Speaker 3: opportunity to reintroduce his character. But then they don't, you know,
Speaker 3: take that opportunity to interrogate any system, but they do
Speaker 3: portray something very common, and then they're like, well, I
Speaker 3: guess disabled veterans should simply pick themselves up by their
Speaker 3: bootstraps and then they'll be bazillionaires.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just need to invest in Apple and they'll
Speaker 2: be fine in like nineteen eighty.
Speaker 4: It's fascinating because he they kind of attribute his hardship
Speaker 4: and his obstacles to kind of like, well, he does
Speaker 4: drink too much and fornicate too much right then, and
Speaker 4: his like moroseness after the war and his frustration mainly
Speaker 4: semming from the fact that he didn't die on the
Speaker 4: battlefield instead of like oh, this war was really horrible, pointless,
Speaker 4: disorganized and evil, you know. And I think the only
Speaker 4: kind of time they mentioned how idiotic the Americans were
Speaker 4: in doing this war was when they kind of briefly
Speaker 4: mentioned that the Americans attacking themselves, like when they get
Speaker 4: start getting balmed. I believe it's like an American contingent
Speaker 4: that's balming them. And that's kind of the only time
Speaker 4: is even hinted at. I don't know how ridiculous the
Speaker 4: war was in terms of like organization, let alone all
Speaker 4: the other things, but right, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's so like Lieutenantan is a tricky character because yeah,
Speaker 3: there were there were beats that worked and then beats
Speaker 3: that didn't. I also think that the movie going very
Speaker 3: very very out of its way that like, in spite
Speaker 3: of being disillusioned, ultimately, I think Lieutenant Dan does come
Speaker 3: all the way back around to being an American patriot again.
Speaker 3: Even when he's on the shrimp boat, you can see
Speaker 3: on his wheelchair he still has like pro America stickers
Speaker 3: and stuff. And I was like, really at this point,
Speaker 3: catch like I was, so, I was like, okay, so
Speaker 3: they they don't want to disabuse you from the idea
Speaker 3: that ultimately being a patriot will you know present the
Speaker 3: best result.
Speaker 2: The religious aspect of it too, where you know, it
Speaker 2: suggested that he if he had any like faith in
Speaker 2: Christian God prior to this, he lost it because of
Speaker 2: the events of the war and being robbed of his
Speaker 2: destiny to die on the battlefield as a great American
Speaker 2: soldier and patriot, and he's become disillusioned with the idea
Speaker 2: of you know, God and religion and things like that.
Speaker 2: And then there's this scene where he swims in the ocean.
Speaker 2: He's like swimming towards the heavens quote unquote, and Forest
Speaker 2: is like, I think he made his peace with God.
Speaker 2: And this is after he's become a successful shrimper and
Speaker 2: stuff a shrimper.
Speaker 3: And the only reason they had the successful shrimper business
Speaker 3: is because Forest prays on it. And also it reminded
Speaker 3: me of Gosh, the scene weirdly from Baslerman's Elvis, where
Speaker 3: it's just like one white guy at a majority Black
Speaker 3: Baptist church praying and then his wish comes true. Same
Speaker 3: deal with for us.
Speaker 4: Hey, I'm really impressed you remember a scene from first
Speaker 4: of all, how do you remember something that was nothing
Speaker 4: but visual and auditory cacophony number one.
Speaker 3: Also Tom Hanks. Wow, Tom is always oh yeah eah.
Speaker 3: That was probably the beginning that predates Pinocchio. I think,
Speaker 3: oh god, dude, it's bad. Really. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's like he's taking advice from Chad. I don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on with him, but all is not well
Speaker 3: in the Hank's household.
Speaker 4: Chad Hanks feels like an SNL's git. He can't be real.
Speaker 4: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: Whatever happened to Colin?
Speaker 3: You know, I know where's he at. I'm assuming he's
Speaker 3: on some TV show that millions of people watch and
Speaker 3: I've never heard of. That's where I feel like he's
Speaker 3: usually at.
Speaker 4: I feel like you're definitely right.
Speaker 3: My mom knows where Colin Hanks's I can tell you
Speaker 3: that much. Obsessed anyways, but fact to Lieutenant Dan, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think again. His disability is used very cynically by
Speaker 3: the plot. You know, played obviously by Gary sindeis a
Speaker 3: nable bodied actor. But again, it's a complicated issue. I
Speaker 3: found an essay from twenty nineteen on Forbes by friend
Speaker 3: of the cast Kristin Lopez, who is a fabulous writer
Speaker 3: who's written extensively on movies and ableism, which is why
Speaker 3: she wrote this essay about Forest Gump and ableism. So
Speaker 3: I just wanted to share a few passages from that
Speaker 3: will link the whole essay, but it's essentially about her
Speaker 3: complicated relationship with the character of Lieutenant Dan. So she says, quote,
Speaker 3: when I share that I'm a disabled writer, I often
Speaker 3: hear the same handful of questions, one of which is,
Speaker 3: what's the first movie you saw with a disabled character
Speaker 3: in it? The answer is easy, Forest Gump. But where
Speaker 3: I identified with Forrest Gump wasn't with its title character. Now,
Speaker 3: before I saw another actual person in a wheelchair other
Speaker 3: than myself, I saw Lueutenant Dan Taylor. Lieutenant Dan crosses
Speaker 3: off several of the boxes we see in disabled narratives today.
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Dan is a white male disabled late in life,
Speaker 3: in this case, during the Vietnam War. The audience is
Speaker 3: introduced to him as a dominating example of masculinity, and
Speaker 3: this heroism is all but eliminated after Dan loses his legs.
Speaker 3: Vietnam stories are their own subgenre in the world of
Speaker 3: disabled narratives, but the bulk of them coming several years
Speaker 3: after that event. In the eighties and nineties, in nearly
Speaker 3: all of them. Men disabled in the war are bitter
Speaker 3: and resentful. They aren't necessarily bitter about the society that
Speaker 3: leaves them without shelter or accessibility, but how the average
Speaker 3: American has responded to the war themselves. In these movies,
Speaker 3: the disability is meant to show how callous humanity has
Speaker 3: become to veterans, not the disabled, per se. And then
Speaker 3: she goes on to say that she still has a
Speaker 3: very strong connection to this character, specifically the moment where
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Dan was speaking to a priest and and you know,
Speaker 3: is told that God is listening. She says, quote Dan's
Speaker 3: irritation at the ablest rhetoric of religion or enable person's
Speaker 3: belief that everyone who is disabled will be cured upon
Speaker 3: death is understandable. I've had several conversations just like this.
Speaker 3: When you've never seen yourself represented, you latch onto the
Speaker 3: first thing you see, for good or bad. Twenty five
Speaker 3: years later, I still put down Lieutenant Dan as one
Speaker 3: of my favorite characters, but I understand his limitations and
Speaker 3: failings as far as disabled representation goes. He doesn't posit
Speaker 3: anything new. His depiction is common but in a landscape
Speaker 3: where representation remains so limited, the few good ideas Dan
Speaker 3: is given shaped who I was and reminded me of
Speaker 3: what I expected movies to push for in the future.
Speaker 4: I think it's like a start, you know. And I
Speaker 4: think many aspects of this movie are so complicated because
Speaker 4: they are a star in some direction, even if they're
Speaker 4: quite imperfect, I mean really important context as well as
Speaker 4: in the book, Dan isn't his lieutenant. He meets Dan
Speaker 4: just in the hospital and his whole face is mutilated,
Speaker 4: like he's he's been severely injured on his face, and
Speaker 4: so he doesn't have the opportunity to conceal his disability.
Speaker 4: At the end of Forrest Gump, Forrest runs away with
Speaker 4: Dan and an orangutang, which can't I can't even get
Speaker 4: into that, but they like run off together.
Speaker 3: Now, why would they cut that?
Speaker 4: I know, what the heck? But yeah, Dan's not like
Speaker 4: reabsorbed as a member of sobsidety. He can't, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of switch. He can't conceal himself, and so I
Speaker 4: think that that's also kind of an interesting change made.
Speaker 4: But I totally understand that the empathy with Dan and
Speaker 4: finding him complicated right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like we see so many cases of that.
Speaker 3: I know, we've talked about it a lot on the
Speaker 3: show before, of flawed representation. If it's the first representation
Speaker 3: you encounter, of course that you're going to feel a
Speaker 3: type of way about it. So I supposed to, yeah,
Speaker 3: acknowledge that because I think Dan is again there's a
Speaker 3: lot of missed opportunities with that character, not just in
Speaker 3: regards to disability, but in regards to veterans and in
Speaker 3: regards to like a clear opportunity to be like, the
Speaker 3: Vietnam War was bad. It's just like, it is so
Speaker 3: wild to me that a movie like that made this
Speaker 3: much fucking money didn't have the like balls to say
Speaker 3: that the Vietnam War was bad.
Speaker 2: Anyways, Well, that's why the movie made money.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 4: Well, it's also coming after a whole genre of movies
Speaker 4: that are Vietnam War Apocalypse now p Full Metal Jacket.
Speaker 4: I think it's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I forgot to bring this up during our conversation
Speaker 3: about Jenny. But because Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Robert
Speaker 3: Zebeciz were just on a tour together for this movie
Speaker 3: that I don't know, I don't I don't know anyone
Speaker 3: who saw it here here, that's such a It also
Speaker 3: just sounds like Robert Zebecca's phoning it in, like here,
Speaker 3: here's this He's.
Speaker 4: Been phoning it in here.
Speaker 3: Oh God. But because obviously this team was reuniting, Forrest
Speaker 3: Gump was coming up a lot on the press tour,
Speaker 3: and a Variety interviewer asked Robin Wright about sort of
Speaker 3: this backlash to the Jenny character over time. So the
Speaker 3: question was there are some different takes on Jenny, including
Speaker 3: that she was punished for her choices, which were reflective
Speaker 3: of the choices of many young women in a generation
Speaker 3: that had social and economic liberty for the first time.
Speaker 3: She chooses a free, willing life and she dies. There's
Speaker 3: a sense that this is kind of an anti feminist role.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Robin Wright, who the only thing
Speaker 3: I can really say for her here is like, this
Speaker 3: is a very unfortunate two men to be sitting next
Speaker 3: to while being put on the spot about this, But
Speaker 3: Robin Wright replies, no, it's not about that. People have
Speaker 3: said she's a voldemort to Forest. I wouldn't choose that
Speaker 3: as a reference, but she was kind of selfish. I
Speaker 3: don't think it's a punishment that she gets aids she
Speaker 3: was so he's remiscuous. That was the selfishness that she
Speaker 3: did to Forest. He was in love with her from
Speaker 3: day one, and she was just flighty and running and
Speaker 3: doing coke and hooking up with a black panther. And
Speaker 3: then she gets sick and says, this is your child,
Speaker 3: but I'm dying, and he still takes her I'll take
Speaker 3: care of you at mama's house. I mean, it's the
Speaker 3: sweetest love story. Baffling, Like, okay, baffling.
Speaker 2: Even if you're next to the people who you made
Speaker 2: the movie with. That's a dog shit take. Yeah, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: that is no excuse.
Speaker 3: She triples down. I rereading the quote, you're like, wait.
Speaker 4: No, she's committing all the Cardinal's sense of acting. As
Speaker 4: an actor, you're supposed to empathize with your character, like regardless,
Speaker 4: Like you're supposed to understand some humanity and your characters
Speaker 4: some of their actions, their motivations. For her to like
Speaker 4: so wildly misunderstand Jenny is kind of embarrassing, Like what, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Especially as a woman who is like not that far
Speaker 3: removed from that general She's like a decade removed from
Speaker 3: the actual age of Jenny's character, and so I was
Speaker 3: just like, I don't know Boomer women. I will never
Speaker 3: I will never understand they love to own themselves. Like
Speaker 3: it's just it's wild. Anyways, Yeah that I just wanted
Speaker 3: to share that absolute piece of dogshit quote. Not sure
Speaker 3: what's going on with Robin Wright.
Speaker 4: I think the idea of Jenny being anti feminist is
Speaker 4: also kind of like a little unfair as well. I
Speaker 4: think I don't know a lot of people in my
Speaker 4: comments on the video were like, most of the reason
Speaker 4: I love Forrest Gump is because I love Jenny and
Speaker 4: I saw myself and her, and so I think in
Speaker 4: a way there could be like a bit more of
Speaker 4: a repairative reading of Forrest Gump, and you know, seeing
Speaker 4: Jenny as this empathetic, like strong willed character, a survivor
Speaker 4: in all contexts, and you know who set out to,
Speaker 4: you know, pursue her dreams and like kind of did
Speaker 4: what she wanted, which I think is great. And I
Speaker 4: hate that I hate the narrative about her stringing Forest
Speaker 4: along like god so classic of that time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I I really like the
Speaker 3: character of Jenny, and I think it's just like the
Speaker 3: takeaway my takeaway is like, I mean, keeping our conversation
Speaker 3: about consent in mind, but I think that it's like
Speaker 3: you leave the movie just wishing that the world hadn't
Speaker 3: done her so fucking dirty. And again it's like, if
Speaker 3: that is the way that the movie needs Jenny's story
Speaker 3: to end, which obviously it doesn't because the source ma
Speaker 3: material doesn't do that, but like, again, imply that it's
Speaker 3: systemic in any way that she got fucked over in
Speaker 3: this way, as opposed to being like it's basically her
Speaker 3: fault and she brought on herself, and the actor agrees,
Speaker 3: and like, I don't know, I think in general her
Speaker 3: story should not have gone that way. But there's just again,
Speaker 3: there's no because this movie has no interest in interrogating
Speaker 3: any systemic anything. You're Yeah, you're presented with like a
Speaker 3: young feminist who is like trying to like live on
Speaker 3: her own, trying to overcome a very traumatic past, and
Speaker 3: they kill her.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I find the relationship between jenn and Forrest kind
Speaker 4: of fascinating, especially in the movie because outside of the
Speaker 4: romanticized context, like I think they have this like fascinating
Speaker 4: kind of codependence and like platonic love that gets really
Speaker 4: embroiled with romantic love and lust. And I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think when they're children, you see them kind of
Speaker 4: helping each other in these ways, you know, like she
Speaker 4: helps Forest, like she's a friend to him where no
Speaker 4: one else is, and you know he's there for her
Speaker 4: as like a support through what she's going through, and
Speaker 4: he's like as children and helping each other in that
Speaker 4: way and then getting kind of wires crossed when you
Speaker 4: get older and not knowing, you know, not knowing if
Speaker 4: you're in love or if you're your friends. I think
Speaker 4: could have a fascinating like it could be there could
Speaker 4: be some interesting angles to look at that from. But yeah, no,
Speaker 4: the movie, the movie's not interested in doing that.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the movie's convinced that it's a consensual love
Speaker 3: story and like, I don't know, it just it the
Speaker 3: scene that I appreciated the most between Forrest and Jenny,
Speaker 3: even though it's you know, extremely melodramatic, but late in
Speaker 3: the movie, when they passed her house where she had
Speaker 3: been abused and she you know, throws rocks at it.
Speaker 3: She has like a big emotional response to seeing this
Speaker 3: house again that is ostensibly empty at this point, but
Speaker 3: she's you know, flinging rocks at it, and Forrest like
Speaker 3: just lets her and like doesn't interfere, and like does
Speaker 3: I think what a true friend should do in that situation.
Speaker 3: Just is there for her, And you know, it's possible
Speaker 3: he doesn't totally. I mean, but it is actually implied
Speaker 3: that he understands why she's doing it, because he's not
Speaker 3: interfering in ways he would in other situations.
Speaker 4: I think he emotionally understands. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really liked that moment between them, and I
Speaker 3: guess I wish that that was more where their relationship lived,
Speaker 3: of like they understand each other because of this shared history,
Speaker 3: Like it didn't need to be tumbled into a romantic
Speaker 3: like and now we share a child together because it's
Speaker 3: just too it's too messy. The movie's not equipped to
Speaker 3: responsibly handle that.
Speaker 4: It's very Hollywood. Yeah yeah, big kiss at the end
Speaker 4: kind of thing, you know, foot pop kind of storyline.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure.
Speaker 3: Okay, sorry, that was my Jenny side conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shall we talk about Bubba we shed?
Speaker 2: We must? I guess just zooming out a little bit
Speaker 2: and examining the way the movie handles black characters in general,
Speaker 2: where they mostly exist to service or further characterize white characters,
Speaker 2: particularly Forrest Gump, of course, and it's characterizing the Force
Speaker 2: Gump character by showing how naive he is to things
Speaker 2: like systemic racism, because we see many examples of this.
Speaker 2: We've already discussed several of them. The him like referencing
Speaker 2: that he was named after a Grand Wizard of the KKK,
Speaker 2: him not understanding what that organization is at all. Like
Speaker 2: there's that scene where he's at the Black Panther meeting
Speaker 2: and there's a Black panther who is lecturing Forrest about
Speaker 2: like the Vietnam War and how the Black Panthers oppose
Speaker 2: any war where the US sends black soldiers to the
Speaker 2: front line to die for a country that hates them,
Speaker 2: and how racism is destroying black communities and things of
Speaker 2: that nature, and Forest is just like completely ignoring him
Speaker 2: in favor of paying attention to Jenny. There's like other
Speaker 2: just like references to the fact that like Forrest is
Speaker 2: clueless to systemic racism, and then you have him befriending
Speaker 2: and like becoming best friends with Bubba, who is I
Speaker 2: guess not a black character in the book.
Speaker 4: Is that it's just not really stated in the book.
Speaker 2: It's not specified, okay.
Speaker 3: See, and it's also mentioned in the book. I think
Speaker 3: you said that they met in college, not the battlefield,
Speaker 3: which felt like pointed to make it because they forego
Speaker 3: that in favor of, you know, they make a weird
Speaker 3: visual joke of like Forrest doesn't know what's going on
Speaker 3: in this scene where George Wallace is talking, and like
Speaker 3: that is done instead of just introducing him to Bubba
Speaker 3: in college, and I feel like it's almost implied that, like, well,
Speaker 3: of course you wouldn't make a black friend in college
Speaker 3: during this era. Like it just I don't know, that
Speaker 3: felt very pointed. I wrote down under Bubba, I was like,
Speaker 3: everyone should just watch The Five Bloods instead of this
Speaker 3: movie's take on the Vietnam War. Have you guys seen that?
Speaker 2: I haven't.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen The Five Bloods.
Speaker 3: It came out during the pandemic lockdown, so I think
Speaker 3: that's why a lot of people didn't see it. But
Speaker 3: it was a Spike Lee movie for Netflix. Amazing, but
Speaker 3: it's about black Vietnam War veterans, like talking about their
Speaker 3: time in the service, and it's a really great movie.
Speaker 3: Delroy Lindo is great in it anyways, a movie with
Speaker 3: fifty times more to say than this one.
Speaker 2: Right, because all it says about Bubba, for example, is
Speaker 2: that he likes shrimp, right, right, all we get to
Speaker 2: know about Bubba well.
Speaker 3: And also it feels implied that Bubba is neuro divergent
Speaker 3: in some way as well.
Speaker 2: Seems like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but again not something that the movie is going
Speaker 3: to explicitly attempt to talk about. And in the case
Speaker 3: of Forrest, we get a you know, deeply imperfect, but
Speaker 3: we get far more information about Forest like personality and
Speaker 3: interests than Bubba. I mean, it really is just that
Speaker 3: one note. I also wanted to mention that in the
Speaker 3: movie they add this detail that he has a protruding lip,
Speaker 3: and they made that actor, the actor playing Bubba, Mikeelty Williamson,
Speaker 3: like put in a prosthetic in order to hold his face.
Speaker 2: I was curious about that.
Speaker 3: I was as well. But yes, it says Williamson wore
Speaker 3: a lip attachment to create Bubba's protruding lip, which again
Speaker 3: just feels very caricaturesque and insulting and fucked.
Speaker 2: Like minstrel show kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the lip did have elements of menstrualsy.
Speaker 4: That made me feel a little strange. It's just a
Speaker 4: strange addition. I think that they're trying to kind of
Speaker 4: have him and Bubba feel like a kinship with each
Speaker 4: other because Bubba has this kind of like physical difference
Speaker 4: and then Forrest has this like intellectual cognitive difference, and
Speaker 4: maybe that's why they feel like closer to each other.
Speaker 4: But I think maybe it was a bit misguided.
Speaker 3: They could just be friends. That they can just be friends.
Speaker 3: Like I was again, it's like we're scriping the bottom
Speaker 3: of the barrel here in terms of like what this
Speaker 3: movie does. I was glad to see that there were
Speaker 3: black soldiers included in this platoon because I actually I
Speaker 3: haven't seen Apocalypse Now bravely it's one of my other
Speaker 3: long hauldouts for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola of Megalopolis.
Speaker 4: No. I love Francis. I I can movies.
Speaker 3: Look, I mean z Mecca is another example of you
Speaker 3: gotta flop at some point.
Speaker 2: All these guys are in their flop era no no,
Speaker 2: no no.
Speaker 4: I love a director who is capable of making the
Speaker 4: most monumental flops but also made like three of the
Speaker 4: most important amazing movies of all time. Like that is,
Speaker 4: like that is someone who I'm like cook, You're cooking
Speaker 4: pul Schraders, same garbage movies and amazing movies. I love that.
Speaker 3: Yes, you've got you've got one more in U can
Speaker 3: I can feel it, feel it, I can feel it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that there are black soldiers in Forest Platoon,
Speaker 3: I think is very important because there were I've got
Speaker 3: some data up here. And this is also just something
Speaker 3: that is explicitly addressed extensively in The Five Bloods, which
Speaker 3: is I think we should just cover that movie. And
Speaker 3: then it's because I feel like it was like underrated,
Speaker 3: but that there were three hundred thousand black soldiers who
Speaker 3: served in combat roles in the Vietnam War, which proportional
Speaker 3: to Black Americans. At the time, it was absurd, like
Speaker 3: it was. It really was just young men being sent
Speaker 3: to die and men who were disproportionately black, And so
Speaker 3: I was glad to see that we have not only
Speaker 3: the representation of black soldiers in Forest Platoon, but we
Speaker 3: get to know one of those soldiers. However, do we
Speaker 3: because all we learn is that this guy likes shrimp,
Speaker 3: and that is about the best Eric Roth could do
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 4: There's something about Tom Hanks being in movies with like
Speaker 4: a noble black character, like one of those like noble
Speaker 4: black archetypes, like I think The Green Mile is one
Speaker 4: of them. It's just such a fascinating nineties trope of
Speaker 4: this kind of like saintly black character. I mean, we
Speaker 4: don't know as much about Bubba as we do as
Speaker 4: we learn in The Green Mile, but like I feel like,
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's just like an interesting dynamic of
Speaker 4: Tom Hanks playing these kind of white characters who are
Speaker 4: adjacent to these I don't know, it's just fascinating.
Speaker 2: Me didn't make that connection, but no, I see it.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's other examples.
Speaker 4: Like witnessing the kind of the suffering or witnessing the
Speaker 4: death of one of these characters.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Yeah, I guess. I was also surprised
Speaker 3: that ultimately Bubba Gump becomes a bigger facet of the
Speaker 3: story than Bubba himself. Was you see Bubba for such
Speaker 3: a short amount of time in the movie, and then
Speaker 3: there's an entire restaurant about it. Again, I was glad
Speaker 3: that Forrest gave Bubba's family a cut of the business.
Speaker 3: I think it took him too long. I think you
Speaker 3: should have just done it from the jump. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: I think that like, yeah, Bubba's family was presented in
Speaker 3: this very broad way as well that seemed like both
Speaker 3: cretical of black families and poor families. It just it
Speaker 3: felt so vague.
Speaker 4: Movie version of Yeah, it takes on a very individualist,
Speaker 4: kind of like emotional approach to racism in that forest
Speaker 4: is you know, helping this one black family and you know,
Speaker 4: kind of saving them from poverty. And now the Bubba's
Speaker 4: mom doesn't have to serve shrimp anymore, a white lady
Speaker 4: serving her shrimp. But it's like, that's great, but we're
Speaker 4: not actually like fully understanding the implications of you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, we're not fully understanding the implications of
Speaker 4: why Bubba's family is disenfranchised, which I guess the movie
Speaker 4: kind of hints at when they show that all his
Speaker 4: ancestors have been feeding shrimp to white ladies their whole lives.
Speaker 3: But it just but they don't even like say it's
Speaker 3: so weird. But this movie avoids saying when they're fully comfortable,
Speaker 3: say like name checking the Grand Wizard of the KKK
Speaker 3: in the first five minutes of the movie, it's just
Speaker 3: like I don't know, like like, yeah, I've rewatched that
Speaker 3: part a couple times to be like, but they're not
Speaker 3: explicitly saying what Bubba's family history very likely is in
Speaker 3: the South.
Speaker 2: To me, it is alluding to the fact that Bubba's
Speaker 2: grandmother or maybe great grandmother was an enslaved person serving
Speaker 2: shrimp to an enslaver on a plantation, but that is
Speaker 2: presented in a like almost like a visual gag sort
Speaker 2: of way, without again like commenting on anything about systemic
Speaker 2: racism or anything like that.
Speaker 3: I do feel like with Bubba, it's again his family
Speaker 3: deserves that money, right, But yeah, I think it's again
Speaker 3: presented like Forrest did this out of the goodness of
Speaker 3: his heart, and like none of this would have been
Speaker 3: possible if it weren't for this amazing guy, Forest Gump.
Speaker 3: So again it's like he's kind of coming in with
Speaker 3: like the the white saviorism a little bit. They go
Speaker 3: out of their way to mention that Lieutenant Dan didn't
Speaker 3: want me to do this, but I did. And I
Speaker 3: don't know. Just so many of the marginalized characters that
Speaker 3: exist around Forest sometimes just seem to be there for
Speaker 3: the audience to be reminded what a good guy Forest
Speaker 3: is totally and how much we love him. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't Unfortunately, I don't have that much else to
Speaker 3: say about Bubba specifically because we just don't know very
Speaker 3: much about him. But I do think that this connects too.
Speaker 3: I think my last point I wanted to make, which
Speaker 3: is that there are I think over ten real historical
Speaker 3: figures that appear in this or whatever are zamechist into
Speaker 3: this movie. They came in on the Polar Express. Wow,
Speaker 3: they are all white men. There's no women, there's no
Speaker 3: people of color. You meet two black panthers, but they
Speaker 3: don't bother to ascribe who these black panthers may have been.
Speaker 3: They they're not named, I mean, and I checked to
Speaker 3: make sure, because Abbi Hoffman isn't named, but he's credited
Speaker 3: as Abbie Hoffman. But these actors are just credited as
Speaker 3: black panthers, which to me indicates that there wasn't enough
Speaker 3: interest on the part of the production to choose specific
Speaker 3: important black panthers to have these characters.
Speaker 4: Although I don't know if i'd want like Fred Hampton
Speaker 4: coming into that scene. He just he just like kind
Speaker 4: of walks up and then he's like, this is how
Speaker 4: I feel, and he kind of like like a yelling
Speaker 4: at he do they just make him seem so like
Speaker 4: they just make everyone involved in the counter culture seems
Speaker 4: so hedonistic and like miserable and like aggressive, their causes
Speaker 4: are kind of pointless, and and Forrest is like, I
Speaker 4: don't get this. These people are weird. And I feel
Speaker 4: like that scene is so emblematic of that. Let alone,
Speaker 4: having Jenny get just like fully slapped in the face,
Speaker 4: how this black panther meet.
Speaker 3: The fact that that scene is like played as this
Speaker 3: bizarre joke that yeah, that the black panthers in the
Speaker 3: unnamed black panthers in the scene are just screaming their
Speaker 3: ideology at Forrest Gump, which is like, I think, like
Speaker 3: played into how black panthers were portrayed in pop culture
Speaker 3: as well. I'm trying to think of another exac I
Speaker 3: feel like there is like well angry, yes, like angry
Speaker 3: and ineffective. I think like angry, violent, ineffective. I think
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of some old SNL sketches. I can't pull
Speaker 3: exactly what I'm thinking of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you listen to the rhetoric of
Speaker 2: what that guy is saying. He's correct, like he is
Speaker 2: saying he's right, but yeah, very true and correct things,
Speaker 2: but it's reduced to background noise.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. And the same way that in the integration
Speaker 3: scene at Forest College, you know, it's like you're hearing
Speaker 3: something that is very significant and then we just sort
Speaker 3: of pan over to like, what are these white characters doing?
Speaker 2: What's Forrest to doing well?
Speaker 4: Again, like to the end of visual goodness of it all,
Speaker 4: like him picking up a book. You know, it's like, aw,
Speaker 4: what a kind hearted soul and that's the individual is
Speaker 4: such a nice so nice, you know, and like we
Speaker 4: should just all be nice to each other. Yea, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Does anyone else have other thoughts on this movie?
Speaker 4: Really, I'm looking through my notes.
Speaker 2: Just something that you also call attention to in your
Speaker 2: video essay, Maya, but the the fact that like the
Speaker 2: tonal and the character and the narrative changes that were
Speaker 2: made from the book to the movie adaptation had so
Speaker 2: much to do with money and marketing and like catering
Speaker 2: to a very broad American movie going audience, Because if
Speaker 2: they had adapted the book more closely with its like,
Speaker 2: you know, satirical tones and critique of American culture. It
Speaker 2: certainly would have been a much bigger financial risk and
Speaker 2: probably would have bombed at the box office because this
Speaker 2: is coming out at a time and you know, this
Speaker 2: is still very much the case now where we're not
Speaker 2: as willing to be critical of American history and culture
Speaker 2: and capitalism and all of the things as we should be.
Speaker 2: And so they were just like, let's just whitewash everything
Speaker 2: and sanitize everything and make it this sort of like, wow,
Speaker 2: isn't this such a nice depiction of this nice, friendly guy,
Speaker 2: and let's make sure we say nothing about anything. And
Speaker 2: that made it one of the highest grossing movies of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. Was it first or second? Something like that?
Speaker 4: I think?
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Best Picture winner, if I'm.
Speaker 4: Not misswept, absolutely swept the Oscars. Yeah, over pulp fiction
Speaker 4: and Shawshanks, which are so good. I mean, I'm one
Speaker 4: of the remaining pulp fiction lovers, but.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of on the fence about it. But for
Speaker 2: my money, Shashaik Redemption should have won Best Picture by
Speaker 2: a long shot.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I just wanted to.
Speaker 2: Point out that Zamechis and you know, the producers and
Speaker 2: everything were just like, how can we make money from this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because this was made on a fifty five million
Speaker 2: dollar budget and grossed six hundred and seventy eight million
Speaker 2: at the box office.
Speaker 3: Wild.
Speaker 4: I think one of the reasons Alsell always feel slightly
Speaker 4: complicated about Forrest Gump is because the moviness of it
Speaker 4: and like the big cinema of it is like, in
Speaker 4: one way so awful, and like they sanitized the book
Speaker 4: and they made it so they made it conservative catnip
Speaker 4: like it got I hadn't mentioned yet, but it got
Speaker 4: kind of swept up by like far right people like
Speaker 4: Pat Buchanan and New Ginridge, and they kind of used
Speaker 4: it as part of their political campaign in a year
Speaker 4: where Republicans swept the White House for the first time
Speaker 4: in like four decades. I was considered like a conservative
Speaker 4: kind of like revolution. But then at the same time,
Speaker 4: it's like sometimes I almost appreciate a movie that man
Speaker 4: and just to like worm itself so deeply into popular
Speaker 4: culture and like manages to be so ubiquitous and like
Speaker 4: such a movie that in some ways when I watch
Speaker 4: it and like I can, I kind of appreciate the
Speaker 4: like brazen sentimentality of it because I'm like, wow, that
Speaker 4: is a movie.
Speaker 3: The movie feels like a movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I can appreciate kind of the competence of
Speaker 4: the like how powerful it is at like getting people
Speaker 4: to be emotional. But then in other ways that's dangerous
Speaker 4: because of the ways that it can be the ways
Speaker 4: that it's conservative messaging can be kind of like taken
Speaker 4: and adopted and ran with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, which I know you mentioned in your video
Speaker 3: and again listeners watched the whole video, but that it
Speaker 3: was this really like right of center attempt to say
Speaker 3: the fact that they've made a movie about forty years
Speaker 3: of American history. They're like, it's an a political movie.
Speaker 3: You're like, not possible, man, Like sorry, that's just not
Speaker 3: possible to do. But that they had the sort of
Speaker 3: right of center like crowd pleasing approach to it. And
Speaker 3: you say in your video like the right is better
Speaker 3: at turning shit into propaganda, and they very effectively did it,
Speaker 3: very quickly.
Speaker 4: It's one thing they got going for them.
Speaker 3: Then and now unfortunately that's true, except now, maybe the
Speaker 3: CEO shooter is going to bring us all together.
Speaker 4: We can a Lincoln build truly linking and building.
Speaker 3: Wait, does this movie pass the Bechtel's desk. I genuinely
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't even bother paying attention. I don't check.
Speaker 3: No, no, it does.
Speaker 2: I think there's scenes where like Forrest's mom will be
Speaker 2: talking to I think her name is Louise. She's the
Speaker 2: black woman who works for her, Yes, unclear exactly what capacity,
Speaker 2: but I.
Speaker 4: Think she helps with the boarding house kind of vibe.
Speaker 2: And she just was like Louise, Louise, that's Forest, so
Speaker 2: doesn't pass. I think that might be the only interaction
Speaker 2: between women.
Speaker 3: There's also, oh this, I forgot to bring this up
Speaker 3: earlier because there's just so much but going into this
Speaker 3: movie's pretty low opinion about sex work. There are two
Speaker 3: named sex workers who are with Lieutenant Dan and Forrest
Speaker 3: on New Year's Eve, Yes whose I have their names here,
Speaker 3: Carla and Lenore, And they do talk to each other,
Speaker 3: but it is about the men in the room, and
Speaker 3: they are end up like coming off as cruel ablest
Speaker 3: harpies and that is the end of their.
Speaker 4: And Forest is like, I want to sex with her
Speaker 4: because she smelled like cigarettes.
Speaker 3: She's gross, and You're like, all right, and I'm correctly
Speaker 3: assuming we will ever see or hear are these characters
Speaker 3: again and these evil witches are you know, provide this
Speaker 3: opportunity for the men to bond?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: So yeah, no, this movie. I'm on scholarly journal Bechdel
Speaker 3: test dot com who often ends up doing our podcast
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 2: Our podcast is not even we should have a different
Speaker 2: name at this point.
Speaker 3: Were it's just works.
Speaker 2: It's a jumping off point, as we always say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyways, it doesn't pass, although there is a
Speaker 3: very lively comment section on people like it might not.
Speaker 3: Curl says it might not pass the Bechdel test, but
Speaker 3: this movie is far from sexist. I disagree, Curl. I
Speaker 3: agree to disagree, Curl. Anyways, it doesn't pass, and it's
Speaker 3: four thousand hours long, So how do you like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, here's the thing. We got to rate this
Speaker 2: movie on our nipple scale. We sure do the one
Speaker 2: true metric, where on a scale of zero to five
Speaker 2: nipples we rate the movie examining it through an intersectional
Speaker 2: feminist lens. Oh like zero point five nipples. I think
Speaker 2: that Jenny and being able to kind of like reclaim
Speaker 2: her to some degree or like see yourself in her
Speaker 2: as someone who strikes out on her own and engages
Speaker 2: in counterculture and activism and ignores and defies the like
Speaker 2: genderle expectations of the time, the conservative ones at least,
Speaker 2: and you know, just like makes a life for herself.
Speaker 2: And I think there's like you can admire her for that,
Speaker 2: But everything else about the way she's characterized, and about
Speaker 2: the movie overall, and its refusal to say really anything
Speaker 2: of substance. I mean, I do think there are several
Speaker 2: parts that are very emotionally compelling, So I get the
Speaker 2: appeal of this movie on that level. Obviously, when I
Speaker 2: was a kid watching this movie on repeat, That's what
Speaker 2: I was drawn to. But there were so many opportunities
Speaker 2: to say, you know, pretty not controversial things about American history,
Speaker 2: such as the Vietnam War was a horrible mistake, racial
Speaker 2: segregation was a horrible mistake, But instead the movie opts
Speaker 2: to just be like, remember this from the good old days.
Speaker 2: And so I can't stand by the movie anymore because
Speaker 2: of that. Not that every movie has to make some
Speaker 2: grand socio political statement, but if you're going to walk
Speaker 2: us through several decades of highly politicized American history and
Speaker 2: say more or less nothing about it, then like, what's
Speaker 2: the point of the movie. So I'll give it zero
Speaker 2: point five nipples, and I'll give it to Jenny the
Speaker 2: character the end.
Speaker 3: I'll give it I guess one. I guess. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I agree that Jenny. I think, to differing degrees, Jenny
Speaker 3: and Lieutenant Dan are characters that are deeply flawed and
Speaker 3: are reclaimable. Probably not in a way that the filmmakers intended,
Speaker 3: but that's that's how movies work. I don't know. With all,
Speaker 3: with all due respect to Forrest gump Heads, like, we're
Speaker 3: right and you're wrong, and I guess that's just something
Speaker 3: that you're gonna have to make your peace with.
Speaker 4: Not the gump Heads.
Speaker 3: Gump Nation is in shambles after this. We're gonna have
Speaker 3: tomatoes thrown at us when we go to Bubba Gump
Speaker 3: at CityWalk. Gump Nation's gonna come for us.
Speaker 2: It's a risk I'm willing to take.
Speaker 3: There are Robert Zebeki's movies I like, but anytime he's
Speaker 3: trying to say something serious, it is so unseerious. Like
Speaker 3: he's a great example of a director who's like ability
Speaker 3: and talent and sense of whimsy I respect, but I
Speaker 3: don't care what he thinks about fucking anything like you know,
Speaker 3: he couldn't be bothered to read the source material. One
Speaker 3: nipple and I'm giving it to baby Hayley.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, so small, just not very bit.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna give it one and a half for all
Speaker 4: the reasons you guys said, and also because I appreciate
Speaker 4: my teenage instinct to cry at this movie, you know,
Speaker 4: and I think that I'll cherish that regardless of how
Speaker 4: I feel icky about it now It's true.
Speaker 2: Well, may thank you so much for joining us for
Speaker 2: this discussion. So enjoyed having you. Thanks for coming on this.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad we also link and build like this.
Speaker 4: I am so honored to be on here.
Speaker 3: This feelings very mutual.
Speaker 2: Come back any time.
Speaker 3: Bring up a vie, Yeah, bring up a view you
Speaker 3: love next time.
Speaker 4: I have so many Yes.
Speaker 2: Where can people follow your work? Follow you on social media,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 4: Yes, you can find me on YouTube. My name is
Speaker 4: bro dationel on there. You can find me on Instagram
Speaker 4: my name is Broe Underscore dationel on there, and then
Speaker 4: you can find my podcast on any podcasting platforms. I
Speaker 4: co host it with my friend Hannah and it's called rehash.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to listen to the to the Furrays episode.
Speaker 4: Oh I love that episode.
Speaker 3: You can follow us on Instagram mainly at Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 3: and you can if you want more content, you can
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Speaker 3: slash Bechdel Cast, where for five bucks a month you
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Speaker 3: entire Patreon back catalog, which is over one hundred and
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Speaker 2: Can grab our merch at teapublic dot com slash the
Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast. All of it is designed by a one
Speaker 2: Jamie loftis and yeah, thanks for listening. And with that
Speaker 2: we have to run forrest, run away, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Speaker 2: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
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