Forrest Gump with Jamelle Bouie

[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David, Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Hello, my name's Forrest Gump

[00:00:25] You want a podcast? I could list in about a million and a half of these My mama always said life was like a feed full of podcasts You never know what you're going to get There you go, very nice I mean Very nice I mean

[00:00:41] What a nice gentle opening I even, I feel uncomfortable having done that Having done the voice for five seconds Poorly, but even I was like if I try to make it more accurate I'm only going to feel more uncomfortable

[00:00:56] Don't you think every movie should start with the main character sitting down on a bench and starting to tell the story of the movie to whoever's listening? Hello, my name's Spider-Man Right? That's how it should go Exactly, hello my name's Buzz, Buzz Lightyear

[00:01:14] Like just like always started that one I'm John Wick, I sure am if they killed my dog My mama always said dogs aren't for killing Hello, my name is Michael Corleone Here's an immediate point of contrast, okay? Sure

[00:01:35] I did an uncharacteristic amount of research for this episode and that I read both original Forrest Gump books You read Forrest Gump by Winston Gr... the recently deceased Winston Grume Very recently deceased, passed away about a week or two ago from when we were recording

[00:01:51] Right, and you read Gump and Co. is his sequel I will do a little comparison segment on it because I don't want to spend the entire episode relating everything back But the relationship between both of these books to this movie is fascinating

[00:02:05] Here's just an immediate point of comparison, okay? This is the opening line for Winston Grume's Forrest Gump novel Let me say this, being an idiot is no box of chocolates That is the line in the book, mama never says anything about it That other comparison is never made

[00:02:26] It's almost the exact opposite of the moral that the movie starts with And yet a box of chocolates is involved They kept the box That's everything you need to know You can extrapolate everything else about how this book was adapted into this movie from that

[00:02:42] Like everything that exists in the book exists in that type of form in relation to what we got in the final movie In the movie, mama who's like this soothsayer who has all these like sterling little pearls of wisdom That he carries with him in his back pocket

[00:02:57] It's this general philosophy for life You don't know what you're gonna get, you gotta just go with the flow In the book, it's him announcing I'm a fucking idiot and my life is difficult That's what he's saying Being an idiot is no box of chocolates

[00:03:13] And then he goes on to say like what's the exact phrasing here Now they say folks supposed to be kind to the afflicted But let me tell you it ain't always that way

[00:03:21] Even so I got no complaints because I reckon I done lived a pretty interesting life so to speak That's the entire attitude of the book This guy who self identifies as a moron is like it's been rough

[00:03:33] But now that I look back on it, sure lived through a lot of weird things Right And he speaks with, introduce our podcast, but he speaks with an accent Like the book transliterates his accent like grammatically into the text essentially The book is as if he wrote it

[00:03:51] It's not as if he's saying it to you if that makes sense So it's just like riddled with weird phrases and typos and improperly structured sentences It's like a clockwork orange Like the novel of a clockwork orange is written in this kind of like train spotting

[00:04:04] Yes, it is like clockwork orange Which is, that's the other bizarre thing Look, let's just unpack it, we gotta unpack it This fucking movie Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Blank Tech with Gryffin and David I'm Gryffin I'm David

[00:04:20] It's a podcast about filmography, director stood a massive success early on in their career And sometimes they're given a series of blank checks Make whatever careers of passion projects they want And sometimes those checks clear And sometimes they fucking wing best picture

[00:04:35] And become the highest grossing movie of all time And kids, you just confound us to this day They hyper clear They hyper clear Yeah, this was, this is about the biggest clear possible How much did this movie cost? Was that how blank a check?

[00:04:48] 55 million, it was a fairly blank check for considering The elevator pitch for this movie And there's a good story, I don't know if you caught it That happened recently that Hank shared about the main character of this movie But we'll get into that

[00:05:03] This is a mini series on the films of Robert Zemeckis The famous Bobby Z It's called podcast away And this is the key focal point Right, this is the point of no return For better or worse This is the big transitional moment in his career

[00:05:19] Where he becomes the Oscar winning top tier A-list Sterling Hollywood beloved prestigious filmmaker I guess so, it's weird though Because I mean it is right in the middle of his career You know, at least his career to date I guess he will just continue to make movies

[00:05:37] He's already an absolute A-list director When he's making this movie And it's not like he ever made As we've mentioned before He's not a picture nominee or got a best director nominee ever again No But yes, he gets to make movies for life Because of Forrest Gump

[00:05:58] Even more so than Back to the Future He directs two more very serious Best actor nominees And outside of that none of his movies Really connect at the Oscars ever again Despite him forever being seen as The most oscar-y kind of filmmaker

[00:06:16] To the degree that like Charlie Kaufman will dunk on him As being the like, what's the funniest name That can pop up in the end credits of a fake movie Right Although supposedly he ran that by Zemeckis or whatever But yes, yes, exactly Sure, but it connotes something

[00:06:31] There's a reason that Joke is funny It's funny that his name shows up Yes And Zemeckis wasn't insulted by it He approved of it But it still Zemeckis understands What his public perception is in that way At this point he's actually one of Hollywood's Most avant-garde storytellers

[00:06:48] But that's a story for a different day right now But this is also kind of the beginning of him Look, I mean my big argument that I was thinking Is that like this movie and Welcome to Marwyn Are like cousins

[00:06:59] And they're like first cousins who have hooked up Like they're very close They're closer than people might consider They're kissing cousins I think they're very much two sides of the same coin Especially in the filters they put on their source material One book, one real life story

[00:07:18] Telling stories about you know People who are quote unquote different Yes, the oddballs on the outskirts of society Who become inspirational figures to us And in both cases it's He's taken a power sander To those original pieces When he adapts them But our guests today

[00:07:38] I got so amped I feel like perhaps Did you volunteer as soon as it looked like Zemeckis Was winning or had one I think so, right? I believe so Yeah, I volunteered to do something And then David suggested Forrest Gump And I quickly agreed

[00:07:55] Because I have a funny story involving this movie That we can get to later I think you asked for it Did I ask for Forrest Gump? Yeah, I didn't suggest it I mean I really was just sort of like You know take your pick of Zemeckis

[00:08:09] I remember just being so amped When David said to me like Jamel wants to do Forrest Gump And it just felt like Not that you necessarily describe yourself this way But I feel like Jamel You are one of the best chroniclers of America in so many ways

[00:08:25] The way you write about current day America And what like you know sort of Ails us and How we're doomed to repeat these cycles Your perspective on history And the echoes of these things going on forever It just felt like

[00:08:41] That is the person we need to try to untangle this movie Because I don't know how to fucking do it Jamel Bowie from The New York Times is here Well thank you for the kind of words Also let me say

[00:08:52] I don't know how to fucking do it either This is a strange movie This is a weird freaking movie Agreed But I'll say this Jamel, someone of your qualifications And intelligence admitting that You don't know how to untangle this movie You feel less dumb I can untangle it

[00:09:09] I'll untangle it for you guys I feel pretty confident I feel good I'm feeling good What's your funny story about this movie Because I have a similar kind of weird story The film is Far as Gump Far as Gump It's funny This movie It's sort of reputation

[00:09:27] I think at this point Is it's like a boomer nostalgia play And that You know people born People Old enough to remember the 60s But not old enough to have experienced the 60s Love this movie But strangely because of when it came out in 95

[00:09:47] I also feel like older millennials Are very familiar with this movie I somehow remember Yes Maybe not seeing this in theaters But I remember seeing it a ton As a kid On cable all the time Yeah, 100% You're just very much part of my

[00:10:01] Of the movies I saw as a kid Forrest Gump was one of them A movie for the whole family Even though it's not You know what I mean But like almost everyone I know my age Saw this movie with their family a bunch Same

[00:10:12] They would ren it from blockbuster all the time Or to be on TV or whatever And like you consider watching this whole movie With your family This movie that begins with Sally Field Fucking a principal loudly To get her son into school And you're like Jesus But anyway

[00:10:29] Jimelle back to you I'm sorry This actually is a great lead in to my story here So when I was in college For two summers When I was in college I was a summer camp counselor Paid pretty well I stayed on campus at UVA And

[00:10:45] Was a camp counselor I think I had a lot of backlash for this, Jimelle My experience tells me anything Talking about summer camp on this show Is a dead note So go on Walk your own peril I was a counselor at a camp

[00:10:57] Not unlike the one you would have gone to Griffin For kids For smart kids or whatever And so I think it was my first summer as a counselor The first It was a two week cycle for each group of campers

[00:11:11] And the first Friday was like a movie night And me and my buddy Who was also a counselor I think we had decided to be fun To screen for Scump Thinking exactly Oh we saw this movie when we were kids This is like a family movie

[00:11:26] You know a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds Should be able to enjoy this We put this on in the auditorium On like a you know the big projection screen And we're watching We get to the Sally Field scene And I'm just sort of like

[00:11:39] You know we didn't clear any of this with these kids' parents But this should be fine This is not too bad We get to the scene where Jenny and Forrest are in her college dorm room And he like comes in her roommate's bath towel

[00:11:57] And I was just like We're gonna get fucking fired This is We're gonna get fucking fired We've made a terrible mistake We should not have shown this movie to these kids What were we thinking I had totally forgotten at the time All of this stuff throughout the movie

[00:12:15] That is not family friendly Whatsoever And you know We finished the movie the kids watched it And I did We didn't get fired But one parent did comment to me When they were picking up their kid That it was interesting That we showed their children Forrest Gump Interesting

[00:12:34] What's how they put it That is the last time I saw this movie And that would have been when I was 20 or so The last time I saw this movie Was when I was 9 years old I had not seen it since I saw it one time before tonight

[00:12:47] It was very much burned into my memory And I had the experience Watching it last night for this episode Of I cannot believe That I enjoyed this movie at the time There is no way I understood 50% of what was happening Like there's no way I understood

[00:13:06] What was happening in that premature Ejaculation scene Let alone all of the ways The comments on American history Like all of that was flying over my head And the idea that I watched that movie And was like 10 out of 10 masterpiece It's one of the greats

[00:13:21] Put it on my rough more Was that your reaction when you started the time You were like, just rules Here's my quick version My mother is French Humblebred When I was 9 My brother was 6 And my sister had just been born

[00:13:38] She wanted us to spend more time in France So we went to the south of France For like 3 weeks With her high school friend And his many children And his extended family His in-laws and their kids And all the cousins and whatever

[00:13:57] And there was like a house in the south of France Where we all were I was there with very limited interaction With other people who spoke English Essentially just my parents My brother and myself My sister was an infant And these French kids who were rambunctious

[00:14:14] And wanted to play in the field all day And jump at the pool Activities I hated And all I wanted to do was stay indoors and watch TV Which was in French and I didn't speak it There was, the closest town Had a video store

[00:14:28] And the video store had one tiny shell That was American movies With French subtitles And so those just became I guess we have to rent these for granted My parents were very overprotected about what I watched But it was like, he wouldn't do anything else

[00:14:42] We got to rent these movies for him There might have been four The three I remember distinctly were From Independence Day For Scum Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl Hey, this is like a decent collection That was like my whole fucking summer

[00:15:02] I mean the Monty Python one we rented multiple times I watched it 8000 times Independence Day I probably watched twice For Scum I watched once After that I started renting American movies In French and there were a lot of big movies

[00:15:14] I saw for the first time dubbed in French Which is a weird Cultural like tip I have Of like seeing Wayne's World in French Three times before I ever saw it in English So it was like a big deal That my parents were letting me watch Forrest Gump

[00:15:28] Which I usually, I think they would have Not let me watch Jamal For all the reasons you mentioned But it was like I assumed there had to have been R rated English language Subtitled VHS Is there that they would not let me see no matter what

[00:15:44] And Forrest Gump felt like the one That was right on the edge I think because they knew It is so sort of Childlike and it's Approach to everything That everything I didn't get I wouldn't understand what I wasn't getting I wouldn't ask questions about it

[00:16:02] You just kind of go like this is some weird Fantasical quality This man is going on And Watched it, was devastated by it Found it very upsetting Was perplexed When people told me they thought it was funny In the years ensuing I was just like

[00:16:22] That's the saddest movie I've ever seen It's a movie about misery But it always stuck With me Especially because I was watching it It's a couple of years after The Oscars My dad keeps on coming in and going That's the famous line That's the famous scene

[00:16:40] He kept on walking And underlining things For me to explain to me cultural importance I was such a mad magazine kid Like I was so much a kid Who was reading old issues of mad magazine And reading riffs On pop culture that I had never absorbed

[00:16:56] And then wanting to learn about the things That were being made fun of The way the movie goes through American history In that way, I think I was just like Really into like, oh this gives me jokes I can make about shit About different points in time

[00:17:10] But just had not seen it since then Ten years later in High School I started realizing People hate this movie Like cool people hate this movie They think it's for cops And then have just spent the time Assuming I probably don't like this movie

[00:17:24] I see you never rewatch it And we're like, oh this doesn't hold up for me You still had the cherished Childhood memory That was sort of assumed Yeah, when I played back in my head I'm gonna hate that But just almost never had the compulsion To rewatch it

[00:17:42] My experience of Far as Gump is I probably saw it once when I was young I didn't like it I was sort of confused by it I don't know It creeped me out I watched it again Like five years ago I watched it again tonight

[00:18:00] It always gets me It's hard not to The sequence beginning with him Getting to Jenny's apartment To the end is sort of a Hard not to Choke up I think, I mean we can talk about it later But I just think him asking

[00:18:18] The question if his son is like him Without even quite being able to say it But touching his chest Is just unbearably devastating And is so well acted So that always I always sort of walk out of Far as Gump Kind of being like

[00:18:36] I get what is so undeniable about this movie Like I sort of can understand what it's Well, you know How it became this sort of endlessly rewatchable Phenomenon that beat Pulp Fiction And The Shawshank Redemption To Best Picture Was Paramount's Highest Grossing Movie Ever Right Griffin until like

[00:18:56] Recently like right until One of the Transformers Unless one of the Transformers overtook it It might still be their number one Like I yeah You know that like the shit like that I When I rewatched it certainly was Like oh I think this is like

[00:19:14] You know this is like being there This is a quietly acidic movie And that's just the only way I can make sense of it And rewatching it today That's the only way I can understand This movie is that you know it is A deeply satirical movie

[00:19:30] But it is fascinating That it was taken at face value like At the time. I started Watching this last night My wife goes a bit early We have a little toddler so I usually A movie longer than an hour and a half Get split up between two nights

[00:19:46] This is a long boy We watched the first half last night And I tweeted that this was a little more Old than I had remembered and I don't think I honestly even as a college student I'm not sure I was sort of old enough

[00:19:58] And self aware enough to like Pick up on that stuff at the time But it's Totally there Griffin at the beginning you mentioned That the movie very much sands down The edges of the novel and this like These really not sands down is even

[00:20:14] Not even the right way to put it Sort of flattened so much Of the Satire of the novel but it really feels as if The satire, the concept Is so satirical that you cannot Completely take Like extricate the Acidness from it and so Just from the jump

[00:20:36] When you have like your good natured Hero Named after the Founder of the Ku Klux fucking clan And they don't shy away from that That's not hinted at Right it's just they Put it up front and that to me

[00:20:52] As soon as I saw it I was like oh this is This movie although it's going to Be saccharine and modeling and like All those things later on it is Doing something here that isn't Just nostalgia I don't disagree Reading the book is

[00:21:08] Bizarre and I'll unpack it in a moment But you tweeted that last night Jamel And your mentions went like Nuclear and it maybe realized Just how much of like A live wire this Movie still is for people Because it was just the arguments that were

[00:21:24] Unfolding and you would sort of Respond to some people and go like I'm not disagreeing with you and then They would get angry at that You know and then people would Come thinking they were defending What you were saying but they were actually

[00:21:38] Serving it the wrong way it's like this Very bizarre sort of Like it almost feels like the movie Is like a reflection pond Or something in terms of like What people want to see in it Because there is that thing of like

[00:21:52] It has gotten flattened out to some Degree I mean we're right there's The inherent DNA of what the book is trying to do Right there's what Zemeckis is trying to turn it into Which There are strains that he cannot Remove but man Is this movie about as

[00:22:08] Sort of transformative and Adaptation as you can possibly get Like to some degree reading the book I always thought oh the book is a more Intense more acidic version Of the movie when in fact The book is very much like It's like the kind of adaptation they

[00:22:26] Parody in something like the player You know where it's just like oh You've just taken out every single thing It's just the characters basically Retain the same names and the same Basic relationships And even I feel like The satirical points the book is trying to

[00:22:42] Make are totally different than the things That Zemeckis is trying to do But he has kept in it the satirical Strain It's just he's located a different Pipeline Well I haven't read the book so I don't know But I don't know I think this is

[00:22:58] I don't I think this is a deeply satirical The movie is a satire But then there's also shit like on a fundamental level I was trying to watch it through that Prism you tweet that Jamal I'm looking at all the replies you have People going like absolutely

[00:23:12] Not the movie is reprehensible It's the it's the Marvin Berry Scene for two and a half hours How dare you say that some scenes are Satirically edgy Your tweet was specifically saying Some of these scenes have a lot of edge and People were saying how dare you

[00:23:28] Excuse the entire movie which You weren't even beginning to say and Then there were people on the other hand who were Saying excuse me the entire thing has How dare you not get the movie that much Credit and then there were people saying

[00:23:40] No one should be taking the movie this seriously It's just a fun lark And then people saying like it's a Technical achievement of all else We shouldn't be engaging with a meat of it whatsoever It was just wild and I start

[00:23:52] Watching it and I'm like okay I'm really Going to try to see this movie through all Possible prisons especially now watching these Zemeckis movies in order seeing how Much there is a Satirical strain through all of this films up until This point even if it doesn't always

[00:24:06] Land and then I Start watching it and it's like from the moment The fucking score starts You're like well this Automatically is why People take this movie at face value As the inspirational story of You'll never see the world the same way again

[00:24:22] After you've seen it through the eyes of forest gum Like everything about the score Is like soaring magical Like what you're about to be Touched with the greatness Of the beauty of forest gum's way of life And the impact He is the golden thread

[00:24:38] That has unified the last four decades Of American culture Right I agree with you that there's Wild It's presented very sincerely At times and yet also It begins with Sally Field fucking the principal And when forest gum is introducing himself It flashes back to Tom Hanks

[00:24:56] Putting a clan hood on Like that's the first ten minutes of the movie Like yes It begins with a beautiful feather floating To this like lovely score by Alan Silvestri but also Tom Hanks puts a clan Hood on in this movie That's what Either people just forget

[00:25:14] Or just kind of like Some people Just kind of I guess skip on by This movie was presented as Like you know The Republican Revolution Crystallized in a film just as it arrived Right you know what I mean? Like 1994 Yes that's right America's Starting to like

[00:25:34] Think about its values and like What's so great about it like just at the right time And then I watched the movie and I'm like Isn't this movie about how the only way You can think America is great is if you're An idiot It's such a wild text

[00:25:50] I really enjoyed watching it this time In ways that I hadn't before I think because Griffin like you're saying Sort of thinking about it Thinking about the Robertsomekis who made Back to the future and welcome to Marwin Like but anyway it is a wild text

[00:26:04] I feel like it's I'm not sure it confuses the right word For it but there are so many Different tones Going throughout this movie It is At different points trying to do Very different things That I think it's genuinely hard to say For Skump is a reactionary movie

[00:26:26] Although I think there is a very clear And obvious reactionary reading of the movie Right I think you can make that argument Very easily It's hard to say that this is a purely satirical Movie because As we were just discussing there are moments That are genuinely heartfelt and

[00:26:42] Very emotional Very much Not the kinds of things you would find In a satire and oftentimes The two things are sort of Right next to each other within the film And so the Vietnam sequence I don't know how we're going to have this

[00:26:58] Structure but I'm just going to like We have to sit on a bench and Talk to a random person That's how we're going to structure it Is it okay if I run Into the podcast do you guys mind Of course Run Swim into the podcast

[00:27:16] However you want to go about it Sorry I let my boat drift into a dock Jamel Free Ben as our bench partner For the sake of this episode You're regaling Ben with the tale of your thoughts The Vietnam sequence When the all along the watch tower

[00:27:32] Music queue hits And over While Forrest is narrating Why he enjoys being in Vietnam so much That just like feels So satirical to me This complete moron Loves war because he's an idiot But he's in the follow directions And with sort of like The most stereotypical Vietnam war

[00:27:54] Queue you could imagine Just feels like Zemeckis screaming You know This is Look how Look what idiots we are But then this is But then ten minutes later Not even ten minutes later You have the genuinely touching scene Where Gump rescues his comrades And then the other one

[00:28:18] In this ambush That's a harrowing piece of filmmaking And because the two are So close together And because the harrowing Emotional Traditional stuff Hits so well That's the stuff that sticks in your head And the stuff that doesn't necessarily stick in your head Is the

[00:28:42] Tom Hanks in a Klansman uniform Is a Sally Field It's just so wild Is this Sally Field Sleeping with his teacher Is the Is one of my Actually favorite little scenes Where Bubba Gump's mother Has like the white housekeeper cooking your dinner Right? Sort of the tables

[00:29:08] Of terror and honky moment Right The weirdness of this movie is that Everything that is subversive In it is the stuff that we All forget is in it And everything that you could Sort of like pull anyone off the street And go describe to me the six major

[00:29:26] Scenes in Forrest Gump are the scenes That are very, very easy To track as A cry For conservatism In America, you know This is the other Incredibly weird thing about the book. Let me just take my little corner here for

[00:29:44] The book and I'm not going to get into the scene By scene comparison of everything In this movie, but I think The biggest fundamental difference with the book Jamel, you were saying like The idea that this guy is such a force For good or something like that

[00:29:58] The book he is fundamentally Not a great Guy He's very much Like this weird Six foot six, he's 250 Pounds and he's pretty abrasive There's nothing cute about him He's viewed as threatening By a lot of people. There isn't the Sort of miracle I was born

[00:30:20] With you know, bad legs I learned how to run I then become this all-american hero He's very much like this Giant kid who A coach pulls up on the side of the road And is like, you look like you could tackle People, you should be a football

[00:30:36] Player and they bring him into the football team Just as like a bruiser He doesn't save Jenny from A household of abuse. There isn't that Same sort of like deeply knitted relationship From the very beginning Jenny is very much The little red-headed girl from penis

[00:30:52] She's just the prettiest girl he's ever seen And he keeps on running into her again She remains the unattainable object For him, but they Aren't as intrinsically tied And that's the biggest Fucking difference. And Eric Roth I think is the one who said this

[00:31:08] I'm trying to find the quote here But Zemeckis was like, I want him To be just a force for good I want for us to just be a Complete innocent that it Is as you were saying This very naive childlike Perspective of all these big events in

[00:31:24] American history The only thing he believes in Is God, his mama and Jenny Is what Zemeckis said to him And so they Took everything Kind of, uh, here The writer Eric Roth departs substantially from the book We flipped the two elements of the book

[00:31:42] Making the love story primary and the fantastic Adventure secondary. Also the book was Cynical and colder than the movie And the movie Gump is a completely decent character Always true to his word He has no agenda and no opinion about Anything except Jenny, his mother

[00:31:56] And God. Now the thing that Eric Roth Said is the way he pulled that off And put all the unsavory elements And the unsympathetic things that Forrest Gump did into Jenny. Jenny becomes the receptacle For everything Kind of rough that Forrest goes through

[00:32:12] So you end up with one character Who's just like a simpleton Going through history Somehow winning, succeeding and making Everything around him better And one character who just feels like Fuckin' cursed by the gods To suffer over and over and over again And Forrest's accomplishments are much

[00:32:30] Smaller in the book He has adventures that are a lot Weirder, like him becoming a professional Wrestler Or a stuntman and like a Raquel Welsh Movie But he doesn't meet like seven presidents Uh, he isn't A war hero in the same kind of way

[00:32:48] Lieutenant Dan is a guy he just meets In the hospital In recovery. Not someone he served Under, not someone he saved Bubba is his friend going back to college On the football team But, you know, the Bubba Gump Shrip Company Is the end of the book

[00:33:04] That is the absolute peak of what Forrest Gump accomplishes and everything else is Much, much smaller than that You don't have the same kind of thing Of like at five different points In this guy's life he became a national talking Point until people forgot

[00:33:18] And then three years later he does another Thing and people treat him like a new guy It's the, the book ends with Uh, he Tharks the company It becomes huge He goes back and hires pretty much Everyone he's met along the way

[00:33:34] In the book. Like every side character Comes back and becomes an employee Of the Bubba Gump Shrip Company He makes a ton of money and then he decides I don't like it, I don't like this fancy life His mom's still alive, he sets his mom

[00:33:46] Up with money for the rest of her life Sets Bubba's family up for the rest of his life He can't find Dan, he doesn't know where Lieutenant Dan is He wants to hire him Doesn't know where he is, but every other Side character's comeback is working for it

[00:33:58] And he just sort of leaves it behind And is like I don't like this fancy life People are trying to talk him into running for senator The biggest running thread in the entire Book is him saying I need to pee At big moments

[00:34:10] He does it like eight times Anytime he's in front of the media He says I need to pee and that's the only thing He can think of. So he goes and makes his Announcement speech as senator and he says I need to pee

[00:34:20] And people love it and they try to turn it Into like a trancey gardener's slogan As if it has this deeper meaning And he goes I don't like this, this is ugly I know I'm too stupid to be senator He walks away from it all, gives away

[00:34:32] All of his earthly positions, his only friend Is an orangutan who he went To space with because also in the book He's a fucking astronaut So his best friend is an orangutan Named Sue Who is a male And he goes with the orangutan

[00:34:48] And just starts living a hobo life Because his only real love was The harmonica, the harmonica is kind of Treated with the same sort of savant Attitude as his ping-pong name This book sounds lame. So he wants to just be a harmonica player The book's kind of good

[00:35:04] But it's insane. Come on, a hobo segment, that would have been great. Well I mean the running is The movies version Yeah, he's a harmonica player with Sue going around Living on the rails and whatever Then he runs into the second fan They start a three person band

[00:35:22] Then when he's sitting on a bench He's like, I just see what Jenny's up to So he reaches out He finds Jenny And she's married happily With his kid who's the fourth junior And he's like, is the kid dumb? And she's like, no he's really smart

[00:35:38] But I was just worried because Your brain So I thought it was better that I get a normal husband So he's like, oh I'm glad to see the kids happy I always thought I ended up with you But you're right, I could never be with you

[00:35:50] Where I belong is Homeless with my harmonica and a rang a tang with Tenet Dan And the book ends with them just fucking bust it into New Orleans He never sees the kid again He never sees Jenny again Yeah, the book is just like

[00:36:04] I was a man who was stupid I know I'm a moron I went through some weird experiences I made a ton of money I was super famous but I had these weird little moments Where I like crossover with culture at large

[00:36:16] But I didn't invent the fucking smiley face I did become a folk hero You didn't stop Watergate Right, there isn't that same sort of I mean you did this I'm gonna make you talk about your tweets from earlier today Jermel But they don't do that thing

[00:36:32] The Marvin Berry thing of like He's always the person who somehow Either made history happen Or almost stopped history from happening And inspired Elvis Presley Like all that shit is a mech It's just sort of a story about a man Who's got some rough edges

[00:36:48] One of the earliest Like big incidents in the book Is he finally builds up the courage to ask Jenny on a date He takes her to go see a movie when they're in high school And she It's a horror film I think

[00:37:00] And she faints and he goes to pick her up off the ground Because she faints it And he's so strong that he accidentally rips her dress off And she starts screaming And then the cops come in because they think He's sexually assaulting Jenny And he goes to jail

[00:37:14] Yeah, well the book sounds Bizarre Yeah, it's just a different thing Born to make it different Because it's clear that they just saw The germ of an idea in this basically Yeah, right It's just the idea of Making it into far more of like

[00:37:32] It's just the folksy tale about this guy Who doesn't even realize the impact he had On everyone around him And also in the book isn't he kind of like an idiot Savant, like he can kind of like Do math Right, like or whatever, right, he has

[00:37:46] Like a brain for that He's really good at math but like nothing else I mean He ends up like fucking up the big game in football He ends up getting kicked out of school Like he fails at most things he tries to do

[00:37:58] He just gets to try a lot of things Right Math is the one thing he's like Got a natural kind of predilection for But the movie translates that Into all the weird things of like Oh, he's able to assemble the gun faster Than anyone else

[00:38:16] Like he's constantly breaking all these records Well because he's a machine He's a single minded simple minded man Who right If you give him directions he can do them He has no like On-weak, like he is not burdened By any sort of like Inner conflict

[00:38:34] So right, so he's a perfect machine of Sports A perfect machine of war He is the dream of Generals since time began Right exactly I mean honestly possibly the funniest scene in the movie Is the drill sergeant being like You're a genius Like the opposite of full

[00:38:54] Middle Jacket essentially But the Marvin Berry hit Is a fair one in a way A little goofy where it's like Okay Elvis, okay But then there is that weird sort of salty Sweet thing where like He meets these presidents But then also Zemeckis is

[00:39:12] Like constantly prodding the audience being like Remember that American History post war was just Our fucking presidents getting shot at Like for 40 years And often murdered Like isn't that weird You know what I mean Like they have this assassination They think about you know Reagan being shot

[00:39:32] Like but they you know like When you see it as this chain Where like it's funny that That's just all woven in And that's so much of what He's trying to do right It's sort of like When you see this as this big woven Thing It seems ludicrous

[00:39:52] Why can't Farrisgump just wander through it Right The movie seems to be saying that only someone like Forest Gump could experience all of that and come out of it, not irreparably scarred, right? Sort of not completely neurotic. And you, Jenny seems to be the counterpoint, right?

[00:40:13] Sort of Jenny and Norm. And Lieutenant Dan too. These are normal human beings who experience the things Forest does and react as normal human beings do. To be depressed or to be sad or to make bad decisions. Right, right, right, right.

[00:40:29] But also they push back against these things and are sort of punished for them in a way that he is not. You guys know what Eric Roth's big follow-up to this movie was. Eric Roth, the screenwriter of this movie, who won Oscar

[00:40:47] and is still a big Hollywood screenwriter. But do you know what his next movie was? I do not know. No. The Postman, which is another movie that is that weird mix where you're like, is this thing patriotic or is it unbelievably myopic about?

[00:41:04] Is it really depressed about America? It's such a, like that movie obviously is the super flop to this movie's super hit, right? Like both are big swings. One totally connects. One completely baffles people. But kind of the same sort of tone, right?

[00:41:22] So like waving American flag, but also apocalypse. I mean, I think there's this other element of it too. Not to relate everything back to the future, but watching these two movies close together. Oh, you've got to relate this movie to that. Yeah.

[00:41:36] You've got to relate this to Back to the Future. You've got to relate it to Marwen, right? If it's sort of a ghost of Christmas past, present, and future. Yeah, yeah. Not to relate it to Christmas, Carol.

[00:41:46] I feel like these three movies are on some sort of spectrum. And I think both this and Back to the Future are very interested in the way that history is sort of rewritten with distance. That we sort of commodify it into the pop culture

[00:42:03] version of what we live through, and everything has to be seen as a triumph. That there's nostalgia for even our worst moments. You know that everything is kind of cleaned up. And the way that Back to the Future is like you throw

[00:42:15] the guy into the middle of it, and he's realizing that everything his parents told him was not really true. That living in this time day to day is very different than how it's been related. And this movie is like force-gumped in real time

[00:42:30] is editing what he's living through into the hallmark card version of itself, which is where the movie gets into this weird or usurus thing of, oh, it became such a big hit with like boomers as this nostalgia trip of like them reliving all the things

[00:42:53] that they were a little too young to live through themselves, but watch with a child's comprehension soundtrack by the biggest hits of several different decades and perceiving things the way they remember them as a child. And the movie is sort of like having us

[00:43:13] taken eating a tube by doing the joke of, oh, what force is saying is different than what you're seeing. You an adult holding all the cards know what actually happened, and it's funny how he misinterpreted it. But it's also very easy to just coast

[00:43:27] on the level of what force is telling you if you don't really want to engage with it and just go like, man, CCR. Yeah, member Vietnam. He won. He got the trophy. And this is where I mean, this is where I think the totally valid argument

[00:43:44] that the movie is reactionary comes in because watching it on that level, it's not just presenting, oh, isn't it wasn't JFK so handsome? Wasn't Vietnam so hard? Weren't the Black Panthers so militant? Weren't the anti-war demonstrators so ridiculous? Right?

[00:44:05] It begins to when it hits that register for those moments, it does put forth this. Oh, all that was very silly. The Vietnam protest scene, I think is the scene where you can really crystallize what is, doesn't work about this movie, which is that he,

[00:44:25] you don't hear him say anything about Vietnam. Right. That's the joke of that scene. And in 2020 or even in 1995, if you were, you could look at Vietnam, you could look at the civil rights movement, they were right. The protesters were right.

[00:44:42] They're not to be skewered because they actually, they got it all correct. And so it's weird to skewer them. The only way you can skewer them is from this kind of rush limbo listening, Newt Gingrich voting perspective. And that's what makes it I think,

[00:45:00] like when people say this is a reactionary, not even conservative, but a reactionary movie, I can kind of see where they're going on that. It's certainly easy to take that away from it. I don't know, I mean, Griffin, what do you want to say?

[00:45:15] I have another Eric Roth thought. I keep thinking about Eric Roth's kind of an interesting career. Well, I want to, I guess back up a little bit, do a little bit of our standard sort of career context. Just place this movie in its time

[00:45:26] and talk about the versions that almost got made and then let's maybe sit down on the bench and go through these things in order. Jamal, your run of tweets that you did earlier today about all the different events that Forrest Gump was responsible for.

[00:45:40] I would love to request a reading of those tweets. Sure. So again, like I said earlier, we were watching the second half of this movie and we had started pretty much just like 10 minutes after we started the second half is when Forrest Gump meets President Nixon,

[00:45:59] which is actually the scene before that's pretty funny where he's like, I met the president again and I went to the White House again. It's funny. I enjoyed that. I think that's actually the proper way we should think of presidents.

[00:46:13] It's just sort of like guys who have this job and like whatever. But it's the scene where he meets Nixon and Nixon asks him where he's staying and he's staying at some hotel. Nixon's like, oh, I'll put you up in a nicer place.

[00:46:26] And then it cuts to him seeing the Watergate break in happen and then calling the police and say, hey, you may want to check that out. The implication being that Nixon, Forrest Gump is the reason Nixon got impeached. And so when I sit on Twitter, Yes. Go ahead.

[00:46:41] No, I was just gonna say Jamel, it's really subtle. It's hard to understand what's happening in the scene. He's like, I'm here in the Watergate. Because it cuts from him talking. Right. It's Nixon saying, what hotel are you staying at?

[00:46:56] No, I know a much better hotel for you to stay at. Then it cuts to him in the hotel, looking out the window, seeing men with flashlights, looking for something rummaging through files, calling up the cops. And then in case you don't get it,

[00:47:10] the camera pans over to the desk where you see the stationary that says the Watergate. I just love that he has no faith in the audience that the crap will happen. What's that scene about though? I don't understand. I thought it was just about Nixon knowing from hotels.

[00:47:27] No? Nixon knew the hotelier. Yeah, yeah, totally. He was just really smart about hotels. OK, OK, good. He was like the original Yelp or? Yeah. Exactly. I just wrote on Twitter, forgot that the film makes Gump respond to a stop in the Watergate break-in.

[00:47:40] And then that was followed by a tweet, looking forward to the remake of Gump in 20 years where it turns out Gump did 9-11. Gump makes his way on the apprentice and tells Donald Trump he should try being president sometime. You'd be a great president.

[00:47:57] Gump is working as a janitor at Harvard in 2003, bumps in the market. Zuckerberg says it'd be nice if I had a way to remember all these people I meet and faces I see. That was good. God, Gump drinks too much soda and he burps

[00:48:13] and it sounds like Google. And that just starts off that whole idea. God, that's the depressing thing. At a certain point, he would just invent various websites. He would just get really... All right. He would be like, oh, you know, I wish I could sure buy books

[00:48:33] on the internet. I don't know. It would just be that over and over again. And we'd be like, oh, fuck every single advancement in the last 20 years has just been a website. He unplugged something and it causes Y2K. We could just do this all day. Of course.

[00:48:46] Yeah. That's great. Oh, God. OK, so the book comes out in 1986. It is well-liked, but it's not a massive sales hit nor like a completely beloved thing. But I think it has its fans. It has its champions, including right here on the cover,

[00:49:06] Larry King himself saying, do yourself a favor and read Forth Gump. It may be the funniest novel I have ever read. That feels like Larry King. No offense to Larry King, who is still with us, I believe. Right? Look at what weird this cover is, though.

[00:49:23] Yeah, that's a weird cover. I've seen that one with the sideways face because the other one is that kind of like kind of painted one where he looks like he looks like a big dude. Have you seen this one? It's on the Wikipedia page. Yeah.

[00:49:37] I mean, he's supposed to be an absolute fucking unit. Right. He's like a he's a football player. Wait, Winston Groom said he wanted it to be John Goodman. Right. Right. Right. And it's because that's why he's a kick returner in the movie.

[00:49:49] Like Tom Hanks is more thin frame. But like you just have to like give Larry King like a bag of onions, right? To get a quote on your book or whatever. Right. Like how hard is it? The single greatest book I've ever read. A masterpiece.

[00:50:03] So the Western Canon trembles as far as Gump enters. Or what? You know, he's just like reading that over the phone. Anyway, the book comes out in 86, as you say. Winston Groom, who is sort of like he's written other books,

[00:50:17] but isn't he he's also like he does a lot of nonfiction, right? Did a lot of American historical. I think a fair amount. But but Gump did sort of a lot. Yes. Gump did like I think I was looking through reviews

[00:50:32] and people recognize at the time like, oh, this is like a pretty original creation. You read reviews and they're like Gump might form its own little cult. You could see a lot of these sayings ending up on T-shirts.

[00:50:44] Like Gump as a character kind of speaks in constant like yogi, bearer, isms, you know, right? Right. And so he I think even before the movie came out, published another book that's like called Gump isms or something like that. Gump isms, the wit and wisdom of Forest Gump.

[00:51:02] Like he did sort of just like a forest Gump advice book. OK, so right. So it's like and it's optioned, right? By Paramount or whatever, right? Yes. Yes. And and I believe the original choice is someone who is like always

[00:51:16] an original choice to direct a movie and never does it. This guy is, I feel like constantly mentioned Terry Gilliam in the eighties and nineties, Terry Gilliam. Like I feel like after Brazil, he was just attached to everything.

[00:51:27] That's the thing I want to talk about for a little bit here is just Terry Gilliam has this movie coming off of like Monty Python and everything, right? He has Brazil, which is notorious for like the studio doesn't want to release it. The critics champion it.

[00:51:41] They finally will it into being released. It's still a commercial failure. It doesn't get major Oscar nominations, but it has this very fervent cult following. Right. Yeah. It was seen as sort of an underdog triumph in its way just because it got released.

[00:51:54] Right. But but he does have a run of successful mainstream movies, which I feel like from from Kehote on the first time he tries to make a vote, he's cursed. He never recovers. He becomes like just this complete like I mean, it's the onion headline of

[00:52:13] Terry Gilliam barbecue six months, 400 billion dollars over budget about him trying to like build the barbecue out of like titanium or whatever. I mean, right. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, Time Bandits, which is pre Brazil, that was a hit and Munchausen,

[00:52:27] which is his blank check post Brazil is a flop. But then Fisher King and 12 monkeys are both well liked box office hits that get Oscar nominations. He's working with huge movie stars. He's adapting big works like he's adapting other people's scripts

[00:52:44] and he's keeping them his own, but still, you know, like I like those movies. I like that run. And I guess fear and loathing was not a hit exactly, but it was one of those movies that instantly had a long life on VHS and all that.

[00:52:59] But he's definitely one of those guys for how much he's seen as just like poison right now and like a pox upon studio filmmaking. They never let him near anything again. That whole run of like him being the first choice for Roger Rabbit,

[00:53:16] being the first choice for this, J.K. Rowling, her infinite wisdom famously really wanted him to do Harry Potter and like said to Warner Brothers, he's my choice. And Gilliam's the one who turned it down and was like, I don't know what I would do with that.

[00:53:30] But anytime there was something that seemed technically complicated, the material was tricky or both. He was viewed as a somewhat not safe pick, but it was like the Doug Lyman thing of like, look, sometimes it's going to blow up in your face

[00:53:44] and he's going to make a fucking train wreck. But every once in a while, this madman gets it right. Right. So he turns it down. He's just like, I don't know. Watchman was another one that everyone thought he was the one guy to adapt for so long.

[00:53:56] He really, and he had that one was one where he actually really took a crack at it. But then it didn't work out. Couldn't figure it. But yeah, so there's him. And then I believe the second person attached was Barry Sonnenfeld, right?

[00:54:07] Sonnenfeld was 100% attached and then dropped out to do Adam's family values when that sort of got faster. So then Zemeckis comes on. It's wild that Zemeckis is like third choice, especially considering what a run of hits he had

[00:54:22] because he's essentially, and he's done three back to the futures. Who frame Roger Rabbit romancing the stone and death becomes her all in a row. Obviously not in that order. He hasn't whiffed since used cards.

[00:54:36] But I do think as much as he was a sort of A-list Hollywood director, if he was in a little bit of that Spielberg thing, where Spielberg was so desperate to make like an adult movie

[00:54:47] and be respected by the Oscars and not just seen as this populist popcorn guy. And Spielberg, it took him a lot longer to get from Jaws to Schindler's List. Zemeckis did sort of the fast track version of it. But I think the version that

[00:55:05] Gilliam or Sonnenfeld would have made would have not been a major Oscar play. Yeah. And most of the actors do here that were wanted for this movie were comedy actors like it was like Bill Murray and Chevy Chase.

[00:55:21] Sean Penn was one of the serious actors who they wanted, which that movie sounds like a fucking disaster. You just imagine him combining his I am Sam performance with his All The Kings men performance. Right. Yes. I mean, because a Gilliam directed

[00:55:39] Forrest Gump feels like it'd be much closer to the spirit of the novel. Right. More more directly. Yeah. A cynic and satirical. And and Murray playing Gump feels like it would be closer to like Carl Speckler from Hattie Shack.

[00:55:55] Like that's how Gump reads as like that's somewhat menacing idiot. But I would argue I mean, when you watch this movie, you at least I was doing the thought experiment of like what if this movie, this exact movie had made 30 million dollars at the box office

[00:56:13] and was considered like a weird entry from Zemeckis. Right. Very easy to imagine. Right. It's the exact same movie, but it just like it was like, yeah, this didn't connect. It was a little too dark and strange at times and a little too goofy. You know, like so.

[00:56:30] And then I feel like you would just sort of be like, huh, well, this movie is very ambitious and interesting, much like a lot of Zemeckis's later flops. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You not only does that situation is unplausible,

[00:56:44] if this movie had come out in 1990, I think that's what would have happened. I mean, it's worth considering. And if it if it came out in 2020 and I've made this joke, everyone would go to jail. Right. Just straight to jail.

[00:56:59] It is worth considering that in 1995, I mean, this is what you know, it's not just your boomer nostalgia. 1995 is the entire US federal government is run by people who grew up in the 60s and 70s, right? Like Bill, yes.

[00:57:13] The whole thing about Bill Clinton, the whole thing that made him so interesting and exciting. He was the first boomer president that this is the 90s were kind of the the the ascent of the boomers into positions of power.

[00:57:27] And so this movie, I mean, I think the reason the movie got read the way it did, the reason it was received the way it did is that it hits at exactly the right point in.

[00:57:38] Yes, you know, American history to have the kind of cultural impact it did and to be read the way that it was. Because if you if you just put it, make it a movie that comes out in 2000 even 2005, I mean, certainly post 9 11, the movie hits.

[00:57:56] You know, people would might read it as totally a satire straight up. But right. Five years earlier, you can't force him. I think ends up as a weird curiosity. You're right. I mean, it's literally this is the one moment. It comes out July 94. It wins the Oscar early 2005.

[00:58:20] It runs at the box office for months and months and months. Early 95. 95, I'm sorry. But it like it has like nine months there where it is the key movie in America, you know, on people's minds. Absolutely. From from sort of July to March or April of the following.

[00:58:35] And then from then on, it's just pop culture history. You know what I mean? Like I say, it's on cable all the time. Everyone knows the lines. Bubble Grumps, shrimp company is a real restaurant. Like, you know, it's just sort of like everyone's like, yeah,

[00:58:45] Far as Gump, the movie, the famous movie that we've all seen. I mean, Jamel, are you talking about how weird it is that like you would think to play it for kids at a summer camp?

[00:58:56] It's only weird when you're rewatching the movie because I feel like the movie. Now I feel like the backlash against the movie has started to overtake the goodwill in some kind of way. I feel like in 95, it was very much the minority opinion of like, you know,

[00:59:12] oh, you're so cynical, you hate Gump. And now people like question it a lot more. But I feel like not only was the movie that quickly canonized, but it was canonized in a way that's closer to something like Wizard of Oz. Yeah. Then something like Casablanca.

[00:59:27] It was like every kid understands what this is. It is constantly parody. Every single element of it is iconic. You can dress like Boris Gump. You can have someone sit on a bench. You can have there be a feather.

[00:59:39] You can use the music, but the supporting cast, the lines, the shrimp, like just fucking everything about this movie was just like in the cloth of the culture for years and still is. That's the other weird thing about it is I feel like

[00:59:54] so often when we cover movies that are this iconic, when I actually put them on, there's that thing of like, oh, this is a movie. Like I have to unpack the years of Simpsons parodies and like bad improv references. Right. Right.

[01:00:11] And just engage with Silence of the Lambs as Silence of the Lambs and not the later sequels and all the other shit surrounding it. And then you watch Forrest Gump and for as weird as it is, you're like, this is Forrest Gump.

[01:00:24] But the parodies aren't really subverting what it is. Right. The reputation isn't really subverting what it is. It's a weird thing to wrap your head around, but it is very much like it. And so many. It is both weirder than what people remember it being and also

[01:00:44] exactly what people minimize it to, if that makes sense. It does. I'm just and I'm thinking more just about the politics of it, not in terms of the reading of the movie, but just in terms of its reception and how it's how it's evaluated.

[01:00:58] And I think you could make a pretty good case that it's declining reputation amongst movie watchers or at least, you know, amongst people like us directly reflects the extent to which we are living at the tail end of the political leadership of the sixties generation.

[01:01:17] And it's a total it's a total mess, right? You it's it's hard to watch that movie now given everything we've lived through and not conclude that people like someone like Forrest Gump cast a ballot for Donald Trump. Absolutely. Not the Forrest Gump has ever voted.

[01:01:36] Right. Of course, absolutely. Like that seems like just a little too aggressive for him. But I agree with everything everyone just said. But I also hearkening back to the talk of the you know, Gilliam and stuff. I do think the only reason this movie works is because Zemeckis

[01:01:54] read this script, read this book, whatever. And was like, no, it's got to be totally sincere. Like, you know, we can be ironic or whatever. Like the tone and the performance needs to be absolutely sincere or else this this just will baffle people also strip everything else away.

[01:02:13] Forrest Gump as a character is nothing less than the physical embodiment of sincerity. Right. He needs and he needs to be and the I you know, I feel it in the first moments of the movie, not the bench so much.

[01:02:27] But like when you see him getting on the bus and saying like, I'm not supposed to talk to street, you know, I'm Forrest and Forrest Forrest Gump that that whole exchange. You love him like you feel great affection for him instantly. You want to protect him, right?

[01:02:42] Like, you know, it's that sort of and like that that then you're on board. You're on board with all the bullshit that's about to happen, you know, like because you're like, well, this is a come on, like, you know, leave the kid alone.

[01:02:54] You know, like you just immediately have that kind of defensive reaction. And it works. Is Tom Hanks the to me, the biggest and most baffling question is, is he good in this movie or not? Because I think you have to argue that yes, he is like

[01:03:11] that it's a crucial performance. Like the movie only works because of it, but at the same time, you watch it and you're like, Jesus Christ, man, what is he doing? But looking vacant is an acting, I would argue. I don't know.

[01:03:25] I have very complicated thoughts on this issue. Have you guys seen that video of him doing the accent over and over again while they're getting ready? Have you seen that? There's the movie was going viral recently. It was circulating like a week or two ago.

[01:03:37] It's him doing takes just his close up on the bench for some part. And then he keeps on going like, let me reset, let me reset. And it's fascinating because of how technical it is that there is no sort of like method self seriousness.

[01:03:52] He's just sort of going like, Bob, where do I look? I line here, I line there. OK. Laugh is like, no, that was off. Let me try it again. Let me try it again. And he's just like, laugh is like right like that. Yes. Yes.

[01:04:04] Hanks did this interview recently about the fact that they filmed the first three days. Zemeckis came up to him and said, Tom, I just want you to know I'm not going to use any footage we've shot so far. I don't think you have it yet.

[01:04:19] You don't have the character. It's fine. I believe you're going to get it. You're going to get your handle on it. But I just want you to know, don't feel any pressure. Essentially, you're at a blank slate because none of that's being used.

[01:04:31] Right. And then like a week or two later, he went to Hanks and was like, they're making us cut these scenes. They don't want the running thing at the end at all because it's too many locations, outdoors and extras and whatever.

[01:04:43] And there was like one or two other things they didn't want to put in the movie because of budget and complication. And he said, here's what I'm asking of you. I will make you an equal creative collaborator on this movie. I'll bring you into edits.

[01:04:56] I'll take your notes. I'll shape the entire film to your specifications. We'll be 50 50 on this. I'll give you a lot of say, but you need to sacrifice like 25 percent of your salary to put back into the budget of this movie.

[01:05:12] I'm doing the same and in exchange we'll get points. And they did it and Zemeckis and Hanks each made like 60 million. It's 80. It's some insane amount of money. Yeah, it's just because they got net points, not gross. But right. Yeah. But wait, OK, but back to the question.

[01:05:32] Now, what do you think this performance for? Is this good? Is this good? I don't know. There are there are points. There are moments where Hanks is genuinely great. We already mentioned one where he asked about a son that is that is amazingly well performed in crowd.

[01:05:54] Like that does is a testament to what Hanks is bringing to this role. I think, you know, I think a Sean Penn would have fucked a scene like that up completely. I thought. Yeah. I mean, the last 20 minutes are all terrific and Hanks doing a great job.

[01:06:13] But he's a good. I don't know. I don't I'll say this. I don't find it off putting right? Like, unlike an I am Sam, unlike a sling blade, unlike a radio, a movie that I had to test. It's not an off putting performance.

[01:06:31] And I think it's I think it's because Gump isn't disabled, Gump is just slow. Right. They don't really delve into anything specific. He's got a low IQ. Right. That's about as much as they say. Right. He's magical in that kind of way,

[01:06:52] where it's like what he is and isn't good at what he does and does not understand is very selective based on what benefits the movie. Right. He he's childlike, but also America is childlike often. So he fits. This is my whole thing.

[01:07:09] It's like, do I like this performance? No, I also don't really like this movie. Right. That I agree with you. I just also kind of admit that it works, I guess. And this is the this is the fucked up thing.

[01:07:24] Everything that's effective about this movie is completely tied to how effective Hanks is in the role, even though I don't necessarily think it's a good performance. But in whatever ways the movie works, it does work because of what he's doing.

[01:07:38] And it gets into that sort of cannyness that Hanks is able to apply sometimes in terms of understanding audiences, understanding how he plays, how audiences react to him, what he's able to convey well and what is outside

[01:07:52] of his range of what people will accept from him in ways where I'm like, this accent sounds like how no person has ever, ever spoken. But if he were doing a more realistic accent, I think it would work against what Zemeckis is trying to do.

[01:08:11] Right. The weird magic like you're saying, if he were more realistically playing some sort of neurological developmental disability, it would play against the movie. He's in this weird like Clarabel the Angel space as just this odd,

[01:08:27] like sort of like one off creature who doesn't sound like anyone else, who doesn't think like anyone else, who doesn't behave like anyone else. The reason why he's a smart casting choice is because of big. It's what you're saying, David, from like the moment he arrives on the

[01:08:42] park bench, you're like, I mean, I'm going to feel like an asshole if I make fun of this guy. There's something so childlike about him without him being, you know, a sort of specifically developmentally disabled, regressed childlike man, if that makes sense.

[01:09:01] But I think it's crucial to think of the movies Jermell mentioned. Radio is a great example. I am Sam is obviously a great example. And how spectacularly bad they are, especially the performances. Yeah. And to to maybe like as broad a performance as Hanks is giving,

[01:09:21] like to I guess acknowledge like no, there is a high wire that he's on that other talented actors have, you know, tried to get. I mean, those movies are worse movies also, but like still, like they tried to navigate that and completely, you know, fucked it up.

[01:09:38] Like I mean, Ray, Ray D. I radio is one of those movies that I don't remember exist because it doesn't exist. But then the second you mentioned it, it like floods my memory. Oh boy. I mean, look, Griffin.

[01:09:54] Yeah. As you know, Tom Hanks, one best actor at the Academy Awards for this second here in a row. Like that's the thing to wrap your head around is that that's why I want to talk about it. This movie was so undeniable.

[01:10:07] They were like, look, our hands are tied. We're low to give it to the same guy we gave it to last year. But how do we not give him the Oscar? It must happen because if we're going to, you know, give this movie best

[01:10:18] picture over pulp fiction quiz show, you know, four winnings in funeral Shawshank Redemption, Hanks must win like because it. And here's who he beats all four performances, I would say are arguably better winners. OK, so I don't even so Travolta and Pulp Fiction where you have the

[01:10:40] combo of an excellent performance, a star reviving performance. What the Oscars love and against type before, you know, like you've got everything there. Yes. It's it's an antihero character. Right. Like, you know, that's turning some voters off maybe, but right.

[01:10:57] But like it just seems like such an obvious win. I don't love that performance. And also I don't think he's the lead of the movie, but I have controversial opinions on politics. Yeah, Jesus, I mean, David is making a face right now that I haven't seen

[01:11:10] since we to see the Lion King remake in theaters. I will I will girlfriend, I will give you I will give you a slight bump, which is just to say that when I. I saw Pulp Fiction, you know, in high school, then later learned

[01:11:26] that that performance for Travolta was so transformative for his career and then went back to watch Pulp Fiction and couldn't figure it out. Thank you. I don't think it's a bad performance, but I think I thank you, Jamal. And guess what?

[01:11:40] You just got booked on our eventual Pulp Fiction. But like I for a bunch of things. I think Travolta Willis and Jackson are all the leads of those movies. Like their co-leads, they have equal screen time. He's involved is absolutely the movie. The best performance. Who is first?

[01:12:00] And he's great in it. I mean, whatever. I mean, Pulp Fiction is good. John Travolta is good in it. Neither of those are controversial opinions, but those are my opinions. But beyond that, I'm just talking about Oscar. I'm not talking about David Spitz or Griffiths, but Oscar.

[01:12:14] Great Oscar narrative. Yeah, here Paul Newman for nobody's fool. Like that's the one you were like, OK, he's not going to win. Like even though Screen Legend, it's actually a really good performance, but whatever. Yeah, fine. Nigel Hawthorne for the Madness King, George, which is an astonishing

[01:12:29] performance, but sort of ladled with the kind of like, oh, well, he's the old Brit in the costume drama. Like the nom is his reward. Actually an incredible performance. But and then Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, which is, in my opinion, the whiff.

[01:12:45] Like I don't even love The Shawshank Redemption, but like that's such an obvious win like so for the career for the moment, like kind of its definitive role, you know what I mean? Like, but they couldn't do it.

[01:12:59] I always forget that Robbins didn't get nominated, that they didn't nominate both of them. No, yeah. Yeah, they didn't. And I'm sure they had to run both his lead. Right. No, and to the degree that also I feel like when Freeman finally wins

[01:13:12] the Oscar for Million Dollar Baby, everyone says like, well, this is The Shawshank Award. He's very good in that movie, but he's kind of given you Morgan Freeman in that movie. Like it's right. But I, you know, as opposed to driving Miss Daisy, no one was saying,

[01:13:24] oh, finally they're giving him his makeup award for driving Miss Daisy by the point, Million Dollar Baby comes out and Shawshank Redemption is the highest rated film on IMDB. Everyone's like, this is his belated Shawshank Award.

[01:13:35] Yes, The Hanks Win is bizarre in that kind of way, especially because he's he's he's doing things as an actor to benefit the movie that don't stand that well on their own if you're only paying attention to the performance, but it makes sense.

[01:13:53] That story about Zemeckis being like we have to be in this together we're making these decisions to get a swim. Right. Because he's so unified with what Zemeckis is doing. All the elements are so unified.

[01:14:05] I mean, if that's a mechas thing of just like he's so slick, it's so tight. You know, it's so sort of well crafted that you find yourself getting like lulled into it. And then you were like, is this insipid? Is this just total bullshit?

[01:14:18] Do I find this despicable? Is this performance offensive? And you kind of can't even answer any of those questions because then you get lulled into the next thing or caught up on a genuine moment or perplexed by something so strange happening.

[01:14:33] But as you say, it is also so slick, like in that way that it is annoying. I genuinely yeah, I like I watch it and I'm like. That's very skilled. Like it is very impressive what Tom Hanks is able to pull off here

[01:14:49] and what he's pulling off is big. It's the same magic trick of just making a character feel that much like a supernatural child that you can go off into insane territory and accept it, right? That he's like your key to the suspension of disbelief at this movie.

[01:15:05] Ask of you. But he can do better accents than this. He can play more realistic people than this. And it's not his funniest performance and it's not his most emotionally resonant performance and it's not his most physically demanding or transformative performance.

[01:15:22] Like he's done better work in every area. I think part of it's the combination of all those things and that he had just become like the president of Hollywood as you've joked the year before. He makes us Philadelphia's beat.

[01:15:35] I mean, he wins for Philadelphia while they're filming this. Is that correct? That would make sense. Certainly before right. So yeah, yeah, certainly. I think yeah, so no, no. Filming is done right before the Oscars. So but whatever he does, he finishes filming wins an Oscar for Philadelphia.

[01:15:55] Probably is then you know finished filming gum. Wins an Oscar for Philadelphia moves on to fucking Apollo 13 or whatever. You know next family friendly crowd pleasing blockbuster. He's going to make Toy Story. He probably is getting in the booth for Toy Story and that he's like, oh,

[01:16:12] oh, there's another Oscars. I guess I'll show up and win again. And then maybe I'll play sully. The fucking hero who landed flight 1549 on the Hudson. I have souls. 155. So there were so many souls.

[01:16:27] The moment Jamel of of the is he like me where he can't get the word out? And then the relief when Jenny says like, no, he's brilliant. It makes me sob. It's insane. As you said, it's like an incredible, incredible piece of acting.

[01:16:42] But also there's a straight line from that to the moment I find most impressed and sully, which is the moment where they tell him that there were 155 survivors. There's that thing that I think he's truly better at than any other actor in

[01:16:57] history, which is asking a question he is afraid to hear the answer to. And then receiving that news and trying to maintain composure. And he's done it at many points over his career because there is that like Hank Steady Hand America's dad trying to remain stoic and noble.

[01:17:15] But that moment where you just for a second, he almost loses it. He's almost overcome with emotion and then he pulls himself back together. It's the thing he's fucking best at. I mean, in at the end of Captain Phillips, when he lets himself go,

[01:17:29] right, that's what makes it so powerful because he's like he's kind of doing the the exact opposite of what you expect him to do. I can't also I cannot watch it in the Captain Phillips. I like bursting in the tears.

[01:17:40] So it's like watching the end of Captain Phillips is it's all. It's like you say that's all you're just thunders struck by it because it's the last thing you thought the movie would end with. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:17:51] Yeah. Oh, and in inferno when he's like, did the inferno get everybody? I don't know what happens in inferno. One thing I'm still thinking about because it's precisely because a force compasses movie with these two kind of discordant tones that can be read multiple

[01:18:16] multiple different ways, but that is the version that that kind of gets traction is the kind of American innocence, you know, American triumph reading. And it's interesting to bring Hanks's career into that as well, because the end of the 90s has him or is it

[01:18:39] yeah, 98 has him in Saving Private Ryan, which is very much a movie about America's sort of like an herring goodness. And there is this to the extent that Tom Hanks does is not just America's dad, but America's

[01:18:55] like friendly dad, yeah, be not just kind of a throwback to award was a cleaver. See, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, not just a throwback to that, but a throwback to that

[01:19:09] shorn of the distance and shorn of the of the sternness even sort of like much more warm to the extent that Hanks does represent that. It is also it is also intersecting with the moment in American culture

[01:19:30] where there is this this rekindling of this belief in our national innocence that you see, you see, you see throughout the culture in the 90s. Right. Right. For which for which Saving Private Ryan is like the capstone. That's the thing that kind of sums it all up.

[01:19:49] And so it kind of makes sense just thinking of the cultural current in America in the 90s. But again, they come up with land the way it did, the people would respond the way they did. And then they also want to reward Hanks for it too.

[01:20:01] All of it really lines up when you think of that movie as despite its source material, despite maybe its intentions, maybe not as being a visual plugging into the psyche of the 30 to 50 year olds who run the country

[01:20:22] and want to believe that they and the country are, you know, they won the Cold War, right? The Cold War just ended. Just ended. It's 95. Eighteen months ago. Right. Like they won the Cold War. You know, capitalism is victorious around the globe.

[01:20:42] We're going to bring peace and freedom everywhere. I mean, it's really triumphant. There's so many 90s movies. I mean, Griffin, we just watched Armageddon, which is, you know, sort of absolutely coked out like vision of American exceptionalism over

[01:21:01] everything else in which literally they try and refuel at a Russian space station and it explodes within minutes. OK, now we got to watch like a fucking punchline. But like the 90s are just right. It's like, I guess we're on top.

[01:21:16] And so it's either like, we're the best or like your American beauty is like, oh, God, I don't believe in anything like what happened. Like, you know, this sort of like in this rather than we're the best,

[01:21:29] this is sort of looking back at the tumult and saying we made it through. After all, didn't we? Yes, which is probably how a lot of audience members at the time and even now, but certainly at the time, you know, they just that resonated with them

[01:21:41] so much of like, wow, like when you look at it that way, like what a crazy thing. And it's very much a we're in the clear now movie. Yeah, it is in that it yeah, it finishes with a note of such tranquility.

[01:21:57] And like, you know, I think things are going to be OK. Which that's true. I mean, but at the same time I watch this movie and I'm like, this movie fucking hates America. Like I can't get I cannot decide.

[01:22:10] It's so slippery and I cannot decide whether that is to the movie's credit or the ultimate indictment of this movie's evil. But it is like I just I can't it's like a fucking waterworm and I'm in a pool

[01:22:24] and I got my legs around it and everything like slipping out. I think I get it. I don't even care if I like it or hate it. I just want to know and then just keep slipping out. I mean, there's so many things to unpack you.

[01:22:36] But I feel like I saw both of you write about this or at least tweet about this over the summer, but watching the reaction to Hamilton going up on Disney Plus was so fascinating because Hamilton is such a peak and of Obama era work of art.

[01:22:57] And so it is the definitive work of Obama era. Right, right. Like what this is to, you know, 1995, you know, that's what Hamilton is to like 2016, 2015, 14. When did it all get 13? It's 2015 because I distinctly remember the culture editor at Slate asking me

[01:23:24] if I wanted to go up to New York and check out this rap musical about Hamilton and me saying, come on, man, I got better shit to do. You were like, you Jesus. But it is.

[01:23:36] It is such a like a 2015 thing where you're like, that's the moment that show exists. Well, there's not it's not only that, but it's that like the first time Lin-Manuel Miranda like debuted in public anything from Hamilton was when he did, you know,

[01:23:55] the title song at a slam poetry event that Obama held at the White House. You're like, what they held slam poetry events in 2009? Right. About American history at the White. Like what do you mean?

[01:24:09] I thought the White House was just like where people got COVID at each other and like a chicken nuggets all day. Like, ah, like it's such a it's such a ridiculous sounding thing. Like that Obama was like, let's have some historical slam poetry, you know.

[01:24:24] But like people who who had not seen Hamilton on stage and had seemingly not listened to the soundtrack and were just watching it on Disney Plus as if it were a new movie engaging with it in 2020.

[01:24:38] A lot of them were like fucking flummoxed by it because I think they couldn't place it within the context of time, how much things have shifted in the last four years. Is it is one of those pendulum swings between America making the kind of art

[01:24:52] of like things feel steady now, let's look back and sort of whimsically chuckle at all the shit we've gone through versus the work that comes out at a time like now that is the work of just like we're fucking fighting this thing.

[01:25:04] It's the trial of the Chicago Seven. Everything's at stake, like every movie is about everything. You know, like everything is like some some means of like political revolt. And and this is yeah, this is a movie made in that sort of period of time.

[01:25:22] The movie such a fucking big hit and Groom writes the sequel book. And it was one of those things where like Groom was offered a percentage point of the movie, but then because the the Hanks and Zemeckis had gotten

[01:25:37] first dollar gross and they had to pay them out so much. They did Hollywood accounting and pretend that the movie lost money so that they never had to pay Winston Groom out and then he sued them.

[01:25:46] And the way they settled the suit was by paying a ton of money for the sequel. Well, and they by all accounts were going to make the sequel. I think it was not really going to be based off of what the book is, because the books fucking bananas.

[01:26:01] But right. But Eric Roth wrote a sequel treatment at least. And and and Haley Joel Osmond was now the fucking new hope of Hollywood. They were like make the movie that's Gump and Son make it. And apparently the thing that killed the sequel was 9 11 that it was literally

[01:26:18] like he hands the draft into Paramount on like September 9th. And on September 13th, they get on the phone. They're like, we shouldn't go through with this. Right. Like it was just an immediate. This shit ain't cute anymore. It's thrown in the garbage.

[01:26:32] It was just one of those moments where it's like, this is done. That window is done. This is the one time it could happen. Now you talk about like Hanks being America's 50 sitcom dad and everything.

[01:26:43] The other thing that Hanks is so known for really starting after this is being like the most hyper competent, steady man. You know, this thing we always talk about like Tom Hanks, movies about guys who are good at their job.

[01:26:59] And that's his run that starts right after this where he has like, I think, 10 consecutive hundred million dollar movies. If you discount that thing, you do because he's not the lead. It's like every movie from Forrest Gump straight to

[01:27:16] if you can, maybe there's one after that makes over a hundred million dollars. I can look it up. Yeah, it ends with the terminal. It starts with Forrest Gump, including the two toy stories. But saving Private Ryan Apollo 13 passed away. Catch me if you can. Road to Perdition.

[01:27:36] It starts while I guess Phil, right? It really starts with the League of their own. It's just the Philadelphia makes a little wonder. And that thing you do kind of break it up. But yes, you have, you know, Apollo 13 Toy Story. Same for Ryan.

[01:27:49] You've got male Toy Story 2. I mean, mile cast away. Road to Perdition. Catch me if you can. I mean, hey, man, head hits. I think it's interesting that like Forrest Gump is kind of the outlier in that

[01:28:01] all the other things are like, Hanks just knows what he's doing. You know, even straight to Bridget's prize and Captain Phillip and Sully, obviously, is like Hanks is in charge. And then this is the movie where it's like Hanks is oblivious.

[01:28:13] Hanks has no way to keep on stumbling ass backwards into victories, which is at such weird odds with everything you were saying, Jamel, about what Hanks represents. But I think that innate energy he has,

[01:28:29] which is not in line with the character and in theory works against what the character is supposed to be, is why the movie works for people. Because you don't get uncomfortable feeling like you're watching an idiot savant because there's that sense of like, Hanks knows what he's doing.

[01:28:45] Right? Like this guy's just a pro. Should we talk about the other cast? I mean, I really like Gary Sineast in this movie. Gary Sineast is the best performer in the movie. He's so good in it.

[01:28:58] He is and he's doing his thing like and that's not to dismiss his thing. But he has such a well of like sadness and rage like that he can just pull upon instantly. And it's like cleansed teeth disdain towards everything. Which is his thing, right?

[01:29:16] Like that's his thing. Yeah, I would say is Gary Sineast is kind of a clenched teeth guy. Right? You're going to bring him in. I know he on stage is like a step and wolf legend or what. But like in a movie, you're going to bring him in.

[01:29:28] He's going to clench his teeth and either turn out to be a fair guy or the bad guy. Right? Like in like the third act twist. Right. There's a lot of Gary Sineast Paycheck secret bad guy. He seems like the best friend for the first two acts.

[01:29:44] He ends up being a bad guy in thrillers for like four or five years after. And he's like, look, there's nothing I could do. Look, they had my wife in the car. Look, what could I do? I mean, it's God in country. He's in. In the coolest page.

[01:29:57] I swear I tried to be a good guy. He's in three movies with Hanks. I believe this Apollo 13 and the Green Mile. Right? He's sort of a frequent collaborator. Hanks is in that run. He's good in Apollo 13. Yeah, he's so yeah, Lieutenant Dan is great.

[01:30:17] Lieutenant Dan is also, you know, Jenny gets every horror visited on her. But Lieutenant Dan is a pretty crucial character if you're going to embrace the more acidic reading of this movie. Right? The the scene after he after Hanks leaves the talk show or whatever.

[01:30:35] And Lieutenant Dan is on the, you know, meets him in the wheelchair and he says to him, they gave you the Congressional Medal of Honor. You an idiot who goes on TV and plays a moron, got the Congressional Medal of Honor.

[01:30:53] And that just feels like Gary Sinise or the character channeling someone like us. Yeah, right. Critiquing the movie. Like what the hell is going on here? You know, he just met John Lennon in that scene. That's basically gave John Lennon to start thinking about no religion.

[01:31:13] That fucking thing. Right. Oh my God, that's so ridiculous. I was saying I should imagine no possession. Oh, God. But I mean, Ben, thank you so much for bringing that up because it's it gets us sort of the weirdness of this movie in that those two these two

[01:31:33] scenes are right next to each other. A hilariously stupid scene in which Gump inspires John Lennon to write Imagine followed by a critical character in the movie, kind of breaking the fourth wall and being like, this is fucking stupid.

[01:31:52] This is the big breakthrough I have watching the movie last night. And then, you know, sort of I was trying to reread sections of the book today having watched the movie freshly. There's there's some weird correlation between like

[01:32:11] the the book in which he is more of this like Chauncey Gardner character, but also more of this sort of like unpleasant, like is he the worst of America kind of guy versus the movie kind of turning him into Homer Simpson?

[01:32:30] I've been watching Simpsons way too much recently trying to watch all of it. And that thing where like the Frank Grimes episode, which I contend is brilliant. Of course. But where the show sort of like zooms out and says like, wait a second,

[01:32:44] what are all the things we're saying this one character lived through? Who is a quote unquote normal, you know, lower class middle class man. Space. He's been a space. He's won a Grammy. He's met like all these celebrities. He's like this one to presidents.

[01:33:00] Like what the fuck are you talking about? And Lieutenant Dan is kind of Frank Grimes or he's just like, this is fucking bullshit that the movie's about you. Why do you keep winning? This sucks. But then Forest Gump's reaction is just like, oh, yeah, I don't know.

[01:33:16] Like, you know, like he's so without ego that it's hard to be angry at him. It's the same as the Homer thing. And there's that like watching the first season of Simpsons where Homer is like angry and when they sort of like

[01:33:29] softening down to the balance of just like, oh, it's wild that no matter what Homer does, you kind of never lose support with him. You know, you have these episodes where he does something awful or he's misinterpreted as doing something awful and all his weird experiences.

[01:33:46] You're just kind of like, yeah, he's just an everyman. And that's sort of what they do to Gump in this. But Seneath works as the one person who's playing like a real human being, not Gump's idealized version of someone and also the one person who has like is

[01:34:03] embodying the anger of the actual experiences. Right. Because Robin Wright's performance is also this sort of whatever, you know, magical angelics performance. Like she's not playing a real person really. Like Michael T. Williamson is very transfixing as Bubba, like, but obviously he's playing a bizarre

[01:34:25] caricature. Sally Field is kind of playing a bizarre caricature. Like everyone else in this movie is a is cartoonish. And Seneath's much like and Seneath's in that opening scene when he's the drill, you know, he's there, Lieutenant and he's barking orders.

[01:34:40] You know, he could easily be cartoonish too. And he's instantly not. Yeah. Yeah. It's the other thing. I mean, I get why they did it, but the book, it's like there are 40 plus characters that make some sort of impact on him.

[01:34:55] Sure. It's like a big fish kind of thing. Right. Right. The movie sort of boils it down to just those sort of central for Bubba, Dan, Mama and Jenny representing everything. Yeah. And Mama is just like constant

[01:35:11] bounce of wisdom. Dan is like all the cynicism and anger until he sort of like comes to peace with it. And, you know, Jenny is the angel who's constantly being punished. And Bubba is just like is mirror.

[01:35:26] But but they put a lot more on each character in the movie. Dan is the only one who feels like a human. I agree. The Jenny, all the Jenny stuff we've touched on this some month, but all the Jenny stuff is very, very troubling.

[01:35:42] Yes, it is. It's I would argue indefensible. And that's the easiest way to just attack this movie. It's just like, yeah. How how else am I supposed to read this? Right. Well, I mean, I think it's fair to read it if I'm going, you know,

[01:35:57] again, if I'm going to play devil's advocate or whatever, you know, like she's she's punished, but I don't think the movie is punishing her because she quote unquote makes the wrong decisions. I think the movie is showing how America punish people who dare defy

[01:36:10] homogene look right like it's like any moment of independence she seeks for herself. She's just like cast aside, but this is the whole thread of the movie that we're trying to untangle. Right. I mean, because yeah, on that reading you can have you have a dump

[01:36:26] as the get along to go along, follows rules, doesn't question, accepts what he's told and is rewarded, value, yeah, rewarded beyond anyone's wildest imaginations. Ever. Lieutenant Dan believes in everything genuinely right once a day for his country.

[01:36:47] Yeah. Once wants to be a sacrifice and then his reward for his belief is like a decade of torment. Right. And being ignored by his country. And even Jenny, who is sort of, you know, the individual born into hell.

[01:37:06] Right. Born into hell maintains this indomitable individual spirit is and also punished for, you know, trying to live up to the individualism that we say we value. And so yeah. Yeah. On that reading, the movie is like very sour.

[01:37:24] Yeah. And as I said, all of that is created for the movie. Jenny in the book is just a pretty girl that he likes and sees occasionally. You know, she wants to be a musician or maybe an actress.

[01:37:37] But this thing of like, as you put out Jamelle, Jenny is almost always on the side that we now in the present know was empirically correct, fighting for the right thing. And she's punched in the face, you know, she's given some unnamed illness.

[01:37:54] You know, she comes close to the brink of suicide multiple times. She gets addicted to multiple different substances. She gets kicked out of everything she ever tries to be a part of, you know? It's it's this movie makes counterculture look so bad.

[01:38:08] Like I hate the way it portrays like. But that's the argument, Ben, is it right? Traying it as bad or is it portraying them as being like treated badly by our country? Right? Like yeah, that's the sort of thing we're grappling with.

[01:38:24] It does both. I mean, it does both at different points. I don't know. I just think like the the way that they portray people who are involved in this political movement, it makes everyone look like an idiot.

[01:38:34] Yeah, they all look like they make it look like everyone just like go back to college like kind of people. And you know what? I mean, to get back to my I guess my hobby horse of this episode,

[01:38:42] which is that like you can't take away, you can't take this out of the context of the 90s. That was how the 90s thought about politics. Right. Right. It was it was all a dumb game and right.

[01:38:53] Like and the 90s vision version of hippies is like the most cartoonish. That's interesting because yeah, protesting, right? Save the whales. Like that was like kind of the vibe in the 90s. Like that's what I remember of people who care about stuff. They're dummies. They're suckers.

[01:39:08] Yeah. And they're all they all talk like this man. Like, you know, Armageddon. Remember the open of Armageddon with him? The opening of Armageddon. Yes. Into Greenpeace boats. It's it's Michael Bay is taking his dick out, pissing on your face. And people are cheering.

[01:39:23] I mean, that's that's such a good point, Jamal, which is like the main counter cultural movement of the 90s is the Gen X, the lamest thing in the world is caring too much about anything, the thing, which means that you're disarming

[01:39:40] and sort of critiquing both the people on the culture and the counterculture for being too invested, you know? So in that way, it's easy to just slam Jenny in and like, well, I don't know why she get her hands dirty with all this shit.

[01:39:56] Well, what what's the use of all these ideals she has? Like, Forest is constantly coming. You know, he sees the George Wallace, you know, standing in the doorway at the University of Alabama, he sees that the you know, the Black Panthers and the protesters and all like.

[01:40:11] And he's never judgmental or, you know, he never he never expresses a prejudice thought or anything like that. But he also never supported, you know, he's just like cheerful and polite and nice to everybody and doesn't want to get in anyone's way and drinking Dr. Peppers.

[01:40:33] Well, yeah, there's that refrain that keeps on coming up any time they sort of like foreshadow him meeting someone who is then assassinated and then show the footage of their assassination. Yes, right. They will say like over and over again variations on the same line pretty much.

[01:40:47] Well, if someone shot him, I don't know why. I don't know why. Right. This thing where it's like, it feels like the comment they're trying to make is, well, if you saw the world like Forest Gump, you do understand it is silly that anyone ever murders anyone else.

[01:41:02] It is silly that assassins assassinations happen. That's bad. We shouldn't do that. Strangers shouldn't shoot other people, but also. Sure. Right. It's like, sure. But it's also sort of applied willy-nilly to like both John Wendell and and Wallace, you know? Right. Right.

[01:41:20] I mean, it also on rewatching it now, it made me think of how normalized it was that in history class, we were just like, well, you know, in politics, sometimes, you know, just politicians get shot like quite often and that's just like kind of happened.

[01:41:35] Yeah. And now I'm like, what? That's insane. That was just the consistent thing happening to like figures in our history. It's so fucked up. I mean, it is very striking to see in the movie because you for the ones everyone

[01:41:51] remembers are of course Kennedy, MLK, Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy. But then you remember that, no, it was it was, you know, Wallace was shot. They try to shoot Ford. Reagan was shot multiple times. Yeah. Right. It was sort of that was that was

[01:42:09] it was like John Lennon. It was great. It was common like Ford. It's like people just kept bringing guns to events that he was at, you know, and like whatever, pulling him out or pulling the trigger and it didn't work or and everyone was like, yeah,

[01:42:23] cost of doing business is being president, I guess. Like I guess that ends. It's it's like if you pick up on those things, if you if you focus your vision of this when you're watching a movie on those things, the movie does does not feel like a nostalgia

[01:42:38] plate feels like something darker. But I think again, it's because it lands at this moment when Americans are very much trying to look past those things and to think like things are better now. Like right? Like there's that 90s thing of like, yeah, no, sure.

[01:42:55] You know, racism, sure war, sure. But you know, come on, look around the Cold War is over. Bill Clinton like aren't things better now? Right? Like right? It was OK to have that kind of I know offense, but very naive like view of things.

[01:43:11] I also think I mean, I was watching the performance trying to make sense of it and going like, what does this remind me of? And then I realized, oh, it reminds me of Pee Wee Hermit. It's the same kind of thing.

[01:43:25] Just it's like, you know, when we did our Pee Wee's big adventure episode, we're like, why does this character work? Why is it funny? He is not riffing on any type of real human behavior.

[01:43:36] Like it's all these weird characteristics that are not in in sync with each other. It's not like he's that type of guy we all know. And Force Gump is the same thing where like you read the book and you're like,

[01:43:47] for better or for worse, you get a very clear picture of who this guy is. You can place him and then you watch this and it's like it's all these weird elements that somehow work because you can't really pin them down to anything real.

[01:44:02] It is like he has this mythical, sprite-like sort of trickster character who also doesn't know what he's doing. You know, much like Pee Wee Hermit where you're like, is he the only pure one? Is he an agent of chaos?

[01:44:16] I know I feel bad if I mock him because I can't figure out if he's smarter than me or dumber than me. I don't know if he's 13 or 87. You know, like everything about him is confusing. Like Ping Pong is a sport. Like, what is this movie?

[01:44:34] Yeah, the Tom Bombadil of America. He's the Tom Bombadil of America. Yes, Jim. Like he got sponsored. He had a cut out of him like who's following Ping Pong? What is that? That was a big Ping Pong diplomacy was a big deal at one point. Ben is ridiculous.

[01:44:52] That's insane. That's so weird. Griffin, I'm just curious. Has Zemeckis said anything about what he was trying to do with this movie? I is there a commentary like I didn't even think to listen.

[01:45:08] I got it on iTunes because there was like a Hank's four pack deal with three other movies that I actually liked, of course, the movies with Tom Hanks in them. Right. It was I catch me if you can wrote the prediction. Oh, in terminal.

[01:45:20] So it was two other movies I actually like. But there were special features that there wasn't a commentary. I was curious. I really kind of wanted to hear one. I have the Blu-ray. Yeah, I was digging into different things that Zemeckis has said and in particular,

[01:45:35] like let me see if I can find this, but there was some sort of like compilation of different quotes from people who worked on the movie as to the meaning of the feather, which the feather is something that

[01:45:50] solely exists in the movie, has no reference point in the book whatsoever. It's a visual flourish. Right. But I, you know, almost everything else in the movie at least has some vestige that comes from the book and the flower is so much a movie conceit.

[01:46:06] And it's such the book end and becomes so much the visual motif of it that let me see if I can find this. Well, there's there's quotes on about the feather. Are you talking about that? Yes. Like where they talk about the symbolism of the feather.

[01:46:23] You know, like the feather to me, Griff, I just think of it as like very symbolic of what the movie's about. Right. Like this thing just sort of blowing through randomly, but having so much meaning if you like think about it that way.

[01:46:38] Right. Like, you know, it feels like an appropriate motif to me. Yes. Yes. Sorry, I'm trying to find this now. I was finding it. I was reading it somewhere else. But but I do feel like he's always been kind of

[01:46:55] elusive in talking about what the movie means and what his intent was. I feel like no one's ever like sat him down and been like, so what the fuck, man? Like usually it's sort of like, so how did you get Gary Sinise's legs to

[01:47:09] disappear because there's so much to discuss about Forest Gump. Right. Just as a piece of filmmaking anyway, right? You know, oh, yeah, it does all this technical stuff that's so unusual for the moment, which makes sense because the wreck is, you know,

[01:47:22] is a technical filmmaker who's interested in that kind of innovation. So like any interview you find is so much of that, like versus someone being like, what is your perspective on essentially like boomer culture?

[01:47:39] And I found I went on some rabbit hole and found this thing where they were asking him blank about the feather because they were whoever was interviewing him was citing so many other people who had worked on the movie

[01:47:51] or other critics and their readings of what the feather is. And like my reading is the same as yours, David, which it's just like it's about the randomness of this whole thing. You just blow into anyone could end up affecting this much in the grand

[01:48:04] scheme of the if the winds blow that way. And he was just like, I don't know, it's just a feather. Like he very much had this like, I don't know, it's like a thing. It felt like a good way to start the movie.

[01:48:14] That feels like director shit, too. You know what I mean? Where you sometimes, oh, yeah. You know, I just thought of a feather and I felt like that would be good. Right. But like they're full of it.

[01:48:24] Like, you know, but in watching all these interviews with him and listening to commentaries and all the stuff I've been doing for all the other movies we've covered so far, he's usually more open in that way.

[01:48:35] And he's open in the sense of saying like he wants to now with distance call out what his intention was that people might not have read at the time. Like on the back of the future of supplemental material, he's like, yeah,

[01:48:48] I really intended the end of it with George being so successful and him living in this clean house to be a pretty saving indictment of that being seen as the ultimate form of happiness and like an 80s capitalist sort of yucky culture.

[01:49:03] But people took it at face value and then got upset that they thought it was an endorsement of that. So the fact that he's so open talking about something like that and with horse gum, he's like, I don't know. It's about a nice man. It's it's odd.

[01:49:17] America was kind of or Hollywood was kind of addicted to, you know, you think of being there, you think of Rain Man, like these movies about like, well, you know, even like a movie like Awakenings, like, well, what if someone had like this unusual perspective on life?

[01:49:32] Wouldn't that be refreshing? Even never see the world the same way again? Yes. Yes. It's like, you know, oh, they're special. Like, and they're going to they're going to help us. You the ordinary ordinary ticket buyer, like discover new lease on things with their unique perspective.

[01:49:51] And like far as Gump is kind of the apex of that. It's the apex of that. And then morphs into what I would say is a new sub genre that everyone tries and no one really pulls off

[01:50:03] to the same level of success as for example, the very few movies have ever been as successful as Gump. But the quote unquote ordinary man who lives an extraordinary life and this sort of whimsical mashup of tons, the Benjamin Button, the big fish.

[01:50:20] There was another one I was thinking of today. I think the Ben Stiller Secret Life of Walter Mitty is absolutely trying to do this as well, although it's a much weirder version of it.

[01:50:30] And there was one other big one I was thinking of that this idea of like you put a major movie star, whimsical director. You know, it's sort of like look at their journeys, look at everyone they meet along the way, look at how it sort of mounts up.

[01:50:42] Look at how they go through history. We relive all these eras and these different genres and these different periods and these different moods, this sort of like episodic sort of like Homer kind of Odyssey. I like pretty much the movies that I just listed more than this.

[01:50:59] All three of them by some good measure. I've recently come around to thinking I maybe really like Benjamin Button. I'm sort of reappraising it. Eric Roth's most personal movie, so he claims. Yeah. And that feels to me like the inverse of this.

[01:51:14] The thing I like about Benjamin Button is that it kind of ultimately makes the argument, despite the fact that circumstantially this man is so unusual, his life is pretty ordinary. He is not a great man and all of his adventures don't really impact the world

[01:51:33] around him that much. He meets a lot of people, he sees a lot of things, but he's not someone who's like creating a butterfly effect throughout the world in the way that Gump does. And I think that's one of the reasons people were kind of confused by that

[01:51:46] movie, because it's this big, expensive or neat epic in which it's like he's just kind of a boring guy who doesn't seem to have much of an interior. And the thing that makes him happy is to be with his son.

[01:51:57] Like, you know, like that, that everything pales in comparison to at the end. He's with his son who he loves and he seems at peace, right? You know, or whatever he seems very satisfied. Can I talk about Eric Roth for a second?

[01:52:13] He's like talking about Benjamin Button is the perfect segue. Yeah, exactly. So in the night before this movie, he's a Hollywood journey with screenwriter. And after this movie, he basically, you know, I think he remains like just one of Hollywood's powerhouse-y guys, right?

[01:52:29] Like Steven Zalion, like like Aaron Sorkin. Like these just sort of like they, you know, they'll come in and they'll deliver for a price like, you know, very premium screenwriter types. But his nineties, I feel like he mostly like his follow up projects to this

[01:52:44] as scripts are the Postman and the Horse Whisper, which are both sincere, oscarie movies that flop big blank check flops from beloved movie star slash big directors, Costner, right? Costner and Redford exactly. But then he starts making or starts writing much darker,

[01:53:03] much more melancholy, bittersweet type stuff about America. So the his two collaborations with Michael Mann, the insider and Ali, which are both great scripts. And then Munich, which he co-writes with Tony Kushner for Spielberg, the good shepherd, which he writes for Daniro, which is like a very,

[01:53:22] you know, it's not it's not a nice movie, but it's written in this kind of memorial, you know, elegant kind of way. But like, you know, that's about the CIA and then Benjamin Button, like he has, he's gotten much more.

[01:53:36] This this move, this script sort of sticks out weirdly when you think about his later darker output. Yeah. Yeah. And Button feels like a weird kind of counterpoint to this movie in a lot of ways. Yes. But but it's a movie that I think like

[01:53:54] pales under the shadow of people who like gump, say it's no forest gum. And people who don't like gum or like it's trying too hard to be for us. Go. Yeah. It is kind of a weird sister movie to forest gum. I've actually never seen it.

[01:54:08] It's not bad. And it's also a sister movie to forest gum in that it's this kind of quiet tale of one person's experience of life. But it's also this kind of technical marvel that's like doing things no one had ever really pulled off. Visual effects.

[01:54:24] Why do you know what I mean? It has that angle as well. Yes. And Fincher is like Gen X Zemeckis in a weird way. Like in that he's the sort of nasty. I love David Fincher to be clear, but he's the very cynical,

[01:54:38] you know, but also very technically minded. That's a thing. It doesn't have the emotional catharsis that I think everyone expected a movie like that would have from something like forest gum. Did I give you my read on that movie? You may have privately.

[01:54:55] I can't remember if you did on air that I think it's about trying to know your parents who they were before you were born. And Roth talked about like his parents died when he was making that. But when he was writing that script and like that's yes,

[01:55:11] that's why he calls it his most personal work. We got to do Fincher, man. Are there scenes in Forest Gump we want to discuss that we have not discussed? We have we have discussed the film broadly, but is there anything we're missing? I like the shrimp bit.

[01:55:26] I think it's good. Come on, that's good. No, well, didn't then screamy. I got us pretty good. Just all those little dootendants. Like that moment you tweeted at me yesterday, Griff, like him at the bar. The bar.

[01:55:39] While the confetti is dropping on him, him swimming in the ocean. You know, finally being a piece. Yeah, surprisingly jumps off the side of the boat. Right. The scene with the two of them in the apartment on Christmas, but particularly

[01:55:55] the moment when the women start calling Gump an idiot and he gets so angry and comes to the defense of Gump who he's been so I rate at for feeling like I'm cursed him with this life for so long.

[01:56:09] That weird sort of like misfit toys unifying moment between the two of them like we're both in this world that doesn't really know what to make of us. Even if you've somehow only experienced luck and I Frank Grimes and constantly

[01:56:22] getting shit on living underneath a bowling alley and above another. Mally, I like that whole run of the movie a lot. The scene I'd like to unpack very briefly because for me it's the whole movie in a nutshell, all this stuff we've been talking about, especially

[01:56:40] even talking about Jamel of just like these things sitting right next to each other that you can't reconcile. The Abbey Hoffman scene is like everything where you go. So this guy is like. As the movie presents it is like an all American football star, right?

[01:57:01] Meets the president then graduates from college and just gets a brochure and goes, oh, sure not. Why not? Let me enlist in Vienna. Right. The movie doesn't have this sort of looming specter of the trash, which the book does and certainly was the main fear of that era.

[01:57:18] He just looks at the enlistment brochure and shrugs, goes off, becomes a hero, meets his best friend, saves Lieutenant Dan, gets the medal and becomes a ping pong. Right. So he spends he's able to like after doing his one heroic act, spend years

[01:57:34] just going around essentially as a diplomat and a celebrity, ping pong in his way to freedom and away from danger. Then gets off the bus where there happens to be the rally happening. It sort of stumbles into it backwards is pulled up on stage by people think

[01:57:53] that he wants to speak out against the war, despite the fact that he's in full uniform, they push him on stage. And I remember so much of this movie vividly, despite not having seen it over 20 years, when.

[01:58:05] OK, so there's no way I understood what this was at the time. There was no way I understood this was Abby Hoffman. There's no way I understood the political complexity of the Vietnam War and what he represented to these people and what they would be expecting him

[01:58:16] to say at this moment, how does the movie thread this needle? What does it possibly do? And then he gets up on stage in interior mollock, he says there was only one thing I had to say about the Vietnam War.

[01:58:28] He says I only have one thing to say about the Vietnam War. And then the plugs get pulled. You don't hear anything he says. The audience is in stunned silence. And I assume the joke is what Gump would say would either be nonsensical

[01:58:44] or would be the kind of like marching orders that he had been following, which this crowd of hippies would hate. But this technical gaffe, his superior pulling the plug, spared him the crowd revolting against him. And then instead. Abby Hoffman is emotional.

[01:59:01] Abby Hoffman, heart, you know, on sleeve like Greg Gaffney. Like, oh my God, man, you couldn't have said it better. There's there's nothing to be said outside of what you just said. Got everyone cheer for us, Gump.

[01:59:14] And then the whole crowd blindly accepts the idea that Gump is the radical figure they want him to be on faith alone because they couldn't hear what he said and the movie can't answer what he possibly would have said now.

[01:59:26] I think it's obvious what he would say, which is he says, well, I went over there with a bunch of my friends and a lot of them died. And I sure didn't enjoy that. And like now I'm here in Washington, like, you know, he just said what happened

[01:59:41] to him and to him, he's just reciting it. And to Abby Hoffman, he's like, what a critical, crucial indictment of what we've done to these people and what? But like to Richard Nixon, it would be like, and you did your duty, sir.

[01:59:55] And like you'd shake it by the hand. And that's the weird fucking magic of far as Gump, like that everyone can see everything in it. And God knows what it's really about. But don't you think I agree with you that what he says is some variation on that?

[02:00:08] But don't you think that's like the ultimate trick this movie is pulling? Because yes, that's what I'm saying. It's a public speech. All he says is I got to pee. And so the movie says like we've set the character up well enough at this

[02:00:20] point that we're going to pull the plug and let you write in your head the version of the speech that you would like. Because if we wrote it, someone would find something objectionable. And we want to make the version that is completely cynicism proof.

[02:00:34] And we're not relying that by Abby Hoffman, the most radical man of them all loving it. So who are you? Are you going to say you know better than Abby Hoffman? Right. But also Tom Hanks wears a clan hood in this movie.

[02:00:46] Yeah. I know David, I think you're right. That scene that that scene is the movie. It's the movie. Yeah, absolutely. I actually had actually not thought about that. But that's yeah, that's exactly the whole fucking thing. And he lets you read whatever you want. Exactly. Exactly.

[02:01:04] Newt Gingrich can watch it and enjoy it as can. I'll let you do the work. Dennis Kucinich, who is who is to the who is the opposite of Newt Gingrich in 1994? I don't know, which I can't tell if that makes the movie is sort of

[02:01:17] the most breathtakingly cynical thing I've ever seen. Or right. Is it in some way? That's what's so frustrating about it. It's so cynical. Look, I ultimately don't like it. I think it's pretty insipid, but there's a lot. I also am pretty captivated by with it.

[02:01:38] And you also just kind of have to like be stunned by it as an object becoming so successful and resonant with people in spite of its overarching weirdness. No, I mean, I think that's the reason that's the reason the movie matters.

[02:01:54] It's not it's not its quality or anything. It's simply the fact that it it is a part of American culture in this sort of like bone deep way now that. It's it's it's it's reception, its success, the extent to which it's

[02:02:12] whenever I whenever I'm sitting on the couch and my wife comes by to sit next to her, I always say seats taken. Like it's just it's part of yeah, it's just part. Dick. It's part of like the movie is part of our language and part of our vernacular.

[02:02:30] And that's why it's it matters. This is it's not nearly the same level, but it's the reason why we study Uncle Tom's Cabin, a a pedestrian book. It's not a good novel, but it's a novel that arguably changed the course of the 19th century in the United States.

[02:02:51] And it had this massive impact. It's worth trying to figure out why. But this podcast is all about, baby. Exactly. I mean, I feel like every every 18 months we go like, wait, is this what the podcast is about?

[02:03:03] But you in some recent episodes said like that is ultimately what we're doing. Right? We're like examining these things as pop culture objects. And this is like the perfect movie to view through that prism where it is

[02:03:16] just like everything that's bad about it and everything that's good about it is sort of one in the same and inextricably tied to whatever weird magic it has over the culture for good and ill, the fact that we're never going to fucking

[02:03:30] drop this thing, that people are going to continue studying this thing. Even if it's with complete ire or if it has a second wind of like adoration, it's just such a fucking weird object.

[02:03:43] And it is so bizarre that it then became the third highest grossing movie of all time. And number one for Paramount, except for, I believe, Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen and Titanic, if you count Titanic, which you shouldn't because it's a Fox movie, but Paramount had anyway. But

[02:04:03] yes, and swept the Oscars in a transformational year like, you know, Pulp Fiction, one of the most whatever, you know, pivotal movies of the nineties and, you know, is 94 is a great year. Edward Hoop Dreams, The Lion King, like, you know, you got really good movies

[02:04:21] like the Hutzucker proxy and Crooklyn and like, but you also have like true lies and four weddings in a funeral Shawshank. Obviously you have reality bites. You have quesiton. You have clerks. You have interview with the vampire. You have all three Jim Carrey move.

[02:04:35] You know Jim Carrey emerges this year, Ace Ventura, the mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ben, you've got Clifford. Oh, those all in the same year. All in the same year, Jamal. Year. Wow. They're like January, July, December. It's insane. Yes.

[02:04:50] No one will ever have a year like that ever again. Yeah. It's a crazy year in one year. And it's like the first movie he gets paid like two hundred thousand dollars for the second movie he gets paid like two million dollars for.

[02:05:02] And the third movie he gets paid like ten million dollars. The third movie they just like sign over Hollywood to him. It's like it's yours now. Correct. Exactly. If you can make this work. Yeah, they started negotiating with him for Dumb and Dumber when Ace Ventura

[02:05:16] was the first one to come out, right? Ace Ventura, then the mask, then Dumb and Dumber. And then by the end of the year, he has signed the twenty million dollar deal for The Cable Guy, which will come out the next. All three of those movies spawn sequel,

[02:05:27] spawn Saturday morning animated series. That is wild in my head that's also that's like 90. It's like a four or five year period. It's twelve months. And it's like Ace Ventura surprise hit. New line is like, oh, we should get Jim Carrey to do Dumb and Dumber.

[02:05:43] They start negotiating with him and in the process of like developing the movie before signing the contract, then the mask comes out and they're like, we're fucked. We're fucked. He gets to name whatever number he wants now. And then Dumb and Dumber is the biggest of the three.

[02:05:57] And then of course the biggest movie, The Mall in 1994, a little film called Blank Check. Yeah. Am I correct as we do the box office game? Am I correct in remembering that Forrest Gump comes out, becomes the number three highest grossing movie of all time behind E.T.

[02:06:14] and Star Wars, and then Lion King surpasses Gump. A month later. I think Lion King. Are you correct? They come out within a month of each other and they were either. They were three and four at the all time box office. North American.

[02:06:30] I forget which one was three and which one was four. Well, Lion King made more money than Forrest Gump. But the thing is I don't know in terms of, you know, the record holders because that's not charted anywhere. It's so hard to sort of pick that together.

[02:06:45] So like I know like, you know, who was top ten? At what times, you know, all time. But yes, obviously Forrest Gump a huge sensation. It opens to on July 6th, 1994. It opens to twenty four million dollars. It makes three hundred and thirty domestic,

[02:07:03] which inflated would be about seven hundred million dollars today. But you know, like not only did it make so much money, but it had like colossal legs. It played all year. One of the highest selling soundtracks ever. Yes. Spons of the fucking still massive

[02:07:23] fast food chain, fast casual sit down restaurant chain. The yes. Absolutely. Yes, Bob Gump. But the other thing Griff is Lion King has already come out. It is number two at the box office and it makes exactly the same amount of money

[02:07:37] in its fourth weekend as far as Gump does in its first twenty four million dollars within a month of each other. And there was some crisscrossing where one made more and then the other ones are past it. But yes, why?

[02:07:50] Why these two movies were out at the same time? The other thing Griff is that next week true lies comes out. So we've done next week's box office. OK, so number three at the box office is the best action movie of the year.

[02:08:01] One of the greatest of the 90s. So we just to clarify Forest Gump 24 Lion King 24. That's right. OK. Number three is one of the best movies of the 90s. Best action movies of the 90s. Oh, can I play it? Yeah, it's speed. It's speed.

[02:08:16] The bus that couldn't slow down. What a great movie. Watch it again. Guess what? Still good seeing it like five billion times. We should be on the speed franchise. Yeah, you should do it. That's that's when they should do the legacy

[02:08:30] pull for they should bring back fucking Keanu. Why not speed? Three on a train. Yeah. It's easy. Easy concept. You're on a train on a bullet train. Yeah. Yeah. I'm there like sounds great. Like let's do it tomorrow. Get bullet involved. Do the Elon Musk.

[02:08:45] What's the magna rail to speed three on a magna rail? Yeah, sure. He's on a fucking Tesla. I don't care. Right. Speed three Tesla. All right. Number four at the box office. I would say something of a forgotten movie. Certainly,

[02:09:02] you know, not a hit at the time, but a pretty big movie. It's how to describe it. God, you know what? This movie is so forgotten that its SEO is fucked by a completely different movie. It's that's a hint. The movie shares the title with an unrelated film.

[02:09:26] No, with a TV show. It's a it's a thriller. It's got two actors. I like the house is being rocked in this movie. The TLJ TLJs in there. And he fought it involves bombs. Post-Oscar.

[02:09:40] It's got one of it's got a title where you're like, oh, that's like a title for a fake movie. Hmm. The director directed one movie that we've covered on this podcast. Directed one movie that we've covered on this podcast. Interesting. But but we wouldn't cover their other films.

[02:09:57] Is is that movie part of a franchise or was it a Ben's choice? It was a neither. It was a siblings choice. And he's worked in two franchises that we could eventually do on the Patreon, I suppose. It's even hopkins. Even Hopkins. That's right.

[02:10:16] What is this fucking movie called? I was looking at Hopkins Tomography the other day. It's got a father and son, famous father and son both in it. There are real life father and son both in it. The real life father and son.

[02:10:33] What's what's like the setting of the film? What's the world of the film? Well, the main actor is playing like an Irish terrorist. He is not Irish to be clear. This movie you can't really talk about it without giving it away.

[02:10:51] I'm sure that no one has seen it. Look, the movie is blown away with Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones and Lloyd Bridges. I was going to guess Douglas. Yeah, OK, sure. Right. I mean, that's another obvious. Has anyone seen blown away? No, I didn't think so.

[02:11:09] OK, but at the time people went right. I don't know. That was like a programmer in the 90s. Maybe I'll watch it. I've never I've never heard of it, but it seems like right up my alley in terms of a weeknight movie. Yeah, it's like a thriller.

[02:11:21] You know, Jeff Bridges is an Irish terrorist. Tommy Lee Jones is chasing him. Yeah, you got a problem with that? Come on, check it out. What a thing I missed that like you could be an ornery character actor in his fifties when supporting actor and they're like, yeah,

[02:11:34] you get to headline or at least like a co-star. Five years in a bunch of 60 million dollar summer release thrillers. You get to fight a volcano. Yeah, you'll do volcano. You'll do basic or the hunted, whichever one he was in. He's in the haunted, right?

[02:11:51] It's just like, you know, obviously, like you have like your man Blacks and whatever, but there was just so much Tommy Lee Jones either being the guy or the two hander like rules of engagement, the fucking hunted double jeopardy.

[02:12:03] Yeah, it's strange and retrospective thing that like I as like, you know, as like a eight year old or nine year old had Tommy Lee Jones as my favorite actor because of men in black. Absolutely. I also have loved him my entire life.

[02:12:16] It's also weird that like the equivalent Tommy Lee Jones, winning best support and actor in the year 2020, they'd be like great news. You get to be 19th build in Avengers overtime. You're playing a nihilist. Right. Hey. You know, like you wouldn't get that.

[02:12:35] You got your own vehicles now. Right, right, right. Yes, yes, for sure. For sure. I mean, he would know that his vehicle would be like Epic's original series or whatever. He'd be second into Berlin Station. Exactly. Number five at the box office is a comic.

[02:12:50] Well, it's not a comic book adaptation. It's a radio. The shadow. It's it's the shadow. I mean, how do you set up the shadow? A legendary bomb where they were just like Dick Tracy. How can we do more Dick? Dick Tracy type movies?

[02:13:06] And Sam Raimi wanted to make it so badly. And when they rejected him, he made Dark Man as his like bitter breakup album. A great, a great film. Great film. Dark Man rule. Another another guy we got to do. Yeah.

[02:13:21] And then and then like I feel like 10 years ago, Raimi announced he had gotten the rights for the shadow and he was going to reboot it. And at the time, it felt like too soon. You just did Spider-Man.

[02:13:32] But now I'd love to see Raimi show up and be like, hey, remember me? I make fucking superhero movies that feel like MGM musicals. Here's my Busby Berkeley shadow movie. I'd watch it. Some other movies. I love Trouble Wolf, which we've talked about many times. Baby's Day Out.

[02:13:51] We've also talked about many times. The Flintstones, the first movie Griffin thought was bad and Chugging Along at number 14. Last year's best picture winner, Schindler's List, sharing a box office with the next, you know, this year's winner. Wow. Zemeckis and Spielberg won best picture back to back.

[02:14:11] When you think about it that way, that's crazy too. Like Spielberg finally wins then his great protege wins the next year. And it's like, yes, we have finally fully conquered. Yes, this is it. It's ours. Spielberg presents the awards as a mech is and there's the moment

[02:14:27] where he's on stage and he looks at the envelope and he says like Bob and it's like with the pride of a father saying you won MVP. But it's bizarre when you consider like that Spielberg just gave Zemeckis

[02:14:39] like the fast track version, like he just did everything so much quicker than Spielberg did in so many ways, even though we had a couple of flops at the beginning. Right. Wow. That's it. Faris Kump, we did it guys. Alrighty, Faris Kump.

[02:14:52] We cracked the movie or did we probably not? Yeah, we did it. Everyone knows how they feel about this movie now. Definitely. Everyone feels very clear about it. Can I just say because I couldn't even begin to dig into it.

[02:15:06] It's just too fucking dense and so much its own thing. I didn't want to spend too much time talking about Gump and Co. The sequel, but I just think it's important that people know that Gump and Co is a book about quote unquote the real forest Gump,

[02:15:20] whose life has sort of been ruined by the fact that they made a movie about his life starring Tom Hanks that was a big hit and won a bunch of Oscars. And now everyone thinks that that's what really happened.

[02:15:30] It's like a donkey, Hote, ask the book is a sequel to both his original book and the way that culture has taken hold of forest Gump and turned it into something different. So it's forced Gump trying to outrun the shadow

[02:15:44] of force, Gump, the movie being like now everyone thinks I'm fucking Tom Hanks. I'm not on force Gump. I'm not that pleasant. It's a very, very, very weird book, but it's all about as they say, force is still running this time straight into the age of greed

[02:16:02] and instant gratification known as the 1980s. It's the fucking insane. What a weird thing. It's got a lot of Wall Street jokes, right? A lot of Wall Street. Yeah. Fucking Wall Street. The Coca-Cola corporation. Well, maybe. Right. Right. Maybe Zemeckis will do it one day.

[02:16:21] I just want Zemeckis to come back and make a sequel to every movie here. Contact to what lies further relief. I'm just doing them all again. Hey, you know, but stupid is as stupid does, guys. That's a good point. And that's the best description for this podcast anyway.

[02:16:39] Jamel, you're one of the smartest people I know or also one of the smartest people alive on the planet. And I can't believe you come and do this stupid show and talk to us. Every time. Very, very good. Every time you come on the show, I am

[02:16:54] complex every time you message us or tweet publicly about something you liked in an episode, it makes even less sense to me. I don't understand why you put your reputation on the line, but it means the world.

[02:17:06] Well, again, thank you for the kind of words you guys know that I love the show. Love to listen. Always grateful to be on. You're coming back. You're in the schedule for 2021. You're a blank text. You're in that territory of we give you like four

[02:17:24] many series ahead and just say pick anything you want. But but I'll also just say, you know, I signed up for your newsletter some months ago. I'm someone who gets very stressed out anytime I receive any email. But your newsletters are always like

[02:17:41] a nice little antidote to the world. I feel like you have an incredible skill both because of your knowledge and your understanding of history to put things in perspective, but also crystallize very complicated abstract thoughts.

[02:17:58] The things that like keep me up at night where I'm just like, what is this? And you find a way to just sort of like pluck it off the tree and put it very, very cleanly and unpretentiously in a way that whether what you're relaying

[02:18:10] is a sign of doom or a sign of hope for the future, at least makes me feel a little bit calmer that the thing has been put into work. So I thank you for the work you do. Thank you. I really appreciate that.

[02:18:24] A true antidote to everything and the world is bad. But Jamel is one of the good things in it. And for Scump, we have the jury still out. I don't know about it. It's perplexing. It's perplexing. People should I don't know. People should watch it.

[02:18:36] People should people should watch it with just sort of like an open mind to it because it is it is my wife, she watched with me and she was sort of just like I had not seen this movie in years and it is,

[02:18:51] you know, she's like I can't really get my head around what it is. And I think that's I think it's an experience worth having. I think that's accurate. Beautifully said. Thank you for being here, Jamel. And thank you all for listening. And please remember the rate, review, pride.

[02:19:09] Thanks to Andrew Guto for social media. I'm sure thanks to Laymon for a theme song Joe Bonaparte around for artwork. Go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit. Go to patreon.com. Blank check blank check special features where we're doing the alien

[02:19:27] franchise and other nerdy stuff. I don't remember the exact schedule. And go to our Shopify for merch, new merch coming soon at the end of the year. Tune in next week for Contact, a movie that was supposed to be directed by George Miller.

[02:19:47] How weird that we end up covering these two directors in the same year. And as always, I want to leave you all off with a little merchandise spotlight. It's from the last page of Gump and Co. A little ad here. I'm just going to read it.

[02:20:05] It's the music dot dot dot forest, Gump colon music, artists and times, a three CD, ROM music anthology. Best multimedia music title stands head and shoulders above other music offerings. Suburb, interview and performance footage, PC entertainment. This is a disc for everyone, Don Man, multimedia world. And

[02:20:35] the highest praise possible in the era of CD ROM. One of the most compelling titles dot, dot, dot, since missed Chris Shippley, Computer Life Magazine. Oh, I thought it was going to be Larry King again. I, Larry King, most most compelling titles since Miss and its sequel, Riven.

[02:20:59] I love this CD ROM. I, Larry King, can't stop playing this disc on my gateway. I'm still stuck in mist. Let me out. I can't leave. Not since Navus Beacon taught me typing. Have I been so entranced by a floppy disk? All right. All right. That's it.

[02:21:18] We're done. Goodbye.