Forrest Gump

[Gulftastic]

Did Hooch die of dog Aids?

[Hand Solo]

Amaidszing to think that Tom Haidsnks won two Acaidsemy Awaids in consecutive years for the famous AIDS movies Philaidsdelphia and What's Eating Forrest Gump? AIDS. In fact those are the only two Oscaids he has ever won, with even his other famous and great AIDS movies such as Aidspollo 13, Saving Private Ryan from AIDS and Cast Awaids not getting him the gong. I wonder if he thinks of those as his AIDS years.

The original title for Splash was MermAIDS, then there was Turner & HIV, That AIDS Thing You Do!, You've Got Male AIDS, The AIDSykillers, AIDS & Demons.

The ones that didn't need changing were Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal.

[Gulftastic]

When the older lady rapes him in 'Big' does he get AIDS, which then he takes back to his child self and, boy does he have some explainin' to do!

[touchingcloth]

The original title for Splash was MermAIDS, then there was Turner & HIV, That AIDS Thing You Do!, You've Got Male AIDS, The AIDSykillers, AIDS & Demons.

The ones that didn't need changing were Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal.

You missed out the great adaptation of a Stephen King AIDS novel, The Green Mile: John COFFEE AIDS.

[Hand Solo]

Or The Man With One Red Blood Cell.

[EOLAN]

It's bollocks because you can't just double a letter in an existing word and suddenly it's a name. Trree Gump, Occean Gump, Mounntain Gump, doesn't work does it? Crrap.

Wasn't his character named after Confederate hero and first Grand Wizard of the KKK; Nathan Bedford Forrest.

[idunnosomename]

Life is like a bawks of chawkletes. You always know your gonnar get a chawklet

[El Unicornio, mang]

The box of chocolates line makes no sense anyway, you do know what you're gonna get because the inlay card provides information about each of the different chocolates in the box. "Life is like a bag of revels" would make more sense. *Seinfeld voice*

[ProvanFan]

Life is like Gladiators

[Hand Solo]

The box of chocolates line makes no sense anyway, you do know what you're gonna get because the inlay card provides information about each of the different chocolates in the box. "Life is like a bag of revels" would make more sense. *Seinfeld voice*

Or just killer cancer and Hep-C in his mother and Jenny's case.

[touchingcloth]

Life is like a box of AIDS: you never know what you're going to...sorry, I mean you know you're going to get AIDS.

[MojoJojo]

Did she not die from aids? Is that like a Mandela effect that we all "remember"?

I've now spent too long researching this.

Basically yes, she did die from AIDS.

In the Forrest Gump book, Jenny doesn't die. In the film, she says she has some new disease and it isn't mentioned explicitly what it is - but it's 1982, the year AIDS was named, and the film gives the impression that it's AIDS as punishment for doing drugs, being a hippie and being a female who intentionally has sex.

Then, after the film was released another Forrest Gump book was written which remembered to kill off the high hippy whore. To be a contrarian fucker, they kill her with hepatitus-C. To be fair, Jenny getting AIDs was pretty unlikely - she would have been one of the first women to get it. The AIDS name replaced the previous name GRID, Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease in 1982, as that's when they realised it didn't just effect gay men.

One problem with either disease is that they kill her too quick. So we can be sure Forrest Gump Jr doesn't have Hep-C, Jenny is only supposed to catch it when she has a relapse after having sex with Forrest, in that gap where he goes running and everyone is waiting for the film to end. That means it develops life ending symptoms in around 4 years at most, while people typically live with Hep-C for decades.

[Gregory Torso]

I haven't read the book, so I don't know whether it either clarifies or obfuscates things, but isn't the whole film based around Forrest Gump being an unreliable narrator, and nothing he says actually happened? Everything he says is bollocks. He is just a big weird dude who hangs around bus stops going "I invented the iPod and I taught Michael Jackson how to agadoo and momma was a box of white chocolate dawg shit and if you have sex in the belly button you caint get purgnent"

[MojoJojo]

No, I don't believe so. That might have actually been better.

The second book does the Don Quixote thing with Gump being aware of the movie. I sort of want to read the books now although by most accounts they're not very good.

[Hand Solo]

I think the book says he becomes a chess champion also. He goes into space with a woman and a monkey and then crashes on an island of cannibals for 4 years. If they included all that stuff I would call bullshit, which I think is implied to be the position of the people sitting with him at the bus stop - humouring him while waiting for the bus - but in the movie doesn't someone near the end pick up a magazine with his face on the front to confirm his stories?

[Gulftastic]

I think the book says he becomes a chess champion also. He goes into space with a woman and a monkey and then crashes on an island of cannibals for 4 years. If they included all that stuff I would call bullshit, which I think is implied to be the position of the people sitting with him at the bus stop - humouring him while waiting for the bus - but in the movie doesn't someone near the end pick up a magazine with his face on the front to confirm his stories?

No, he shows them the magazine. It has a pic of him and Lt. Dan.

[Hand Solo]

No, he shows them the magazine. It has a pic of him and Lt. Dan.

So do people think he craftily had the cover knocked up to trick people? That doesn't really work.

Or Lt. Dan had it knocked up to humour Gump? Don't think that works really, either.

I thought the premise was very much the same as Zelig, just this dumb backwards hick bloke who'd you completely underestimate as going anywhere or achieving anything so  just happens to be there during these turning points in history - he's kind of unremarkable but then achieves all these remarkable things by happenstance, without really trying and is empty enough vessel of a man to possess any kind of character or trait you care to imbue him with, like Chauncey Gardner in Being There, which is where the humour of the story is coming from.

It doesn't really work as an 'unreliable narrator' story. Then again, nor does Barry Lyndon I think. The book The Luck Of Barry Lyndon is meant to be a memoir so braggadocios you assume the narrator is unreliable and so work out what probably really happened in contrast to his ego and this is where the humour derives. But Kubrick couldn't really do this as he had to show a set story unfold rather than having Barry give his unrealistic narrative, which loses the entire aspect of the satire. That film is usually only praised for its visuals anyway, it doesn't really work at all in my estimation.

[touchingcloth]

In the Forrest Gump book, Jenny doesn't die. In the film, she says she has some new disease and it isn't mentioned explicitly what it is - but it's 1982, the year AIDS was named, and the film gives the impression that it's AIDS as punishment for doing drugs, being a hippie and being a female who intentionally has sex.

The last time I saw the film I was have been in my early teens if not younger, and that bit completely went over my head. First that AIDS was the illness she had at all, and second that fact that it was a misogynistic cosmic punishment. I remember the film ending with her being ill and Forrest having to look after little Forrest by himself, but that is way, way darker than I have any recollection off.

Over to the Moral Bankruptcy thread for me.

[MojoJojo]

To be fair, I'm not really sure the punishment aspect is really in the film. Killing Jenny gave an ending to the film, and they made it AIDS as they were trying to tie in as many historical events in as possible*. You don't really see it in the film, more when thinking about it afterwards.

(*in the second book he invents New Coke)

[Hand Solo]

I can't really judge Jenny from the book, she has mad sex with Forrest in the book apparently but like other stuff it's cut from the film, but I don't think she's seen as a terrible person because she has a load of sex in the film. The movie is set in the 60s and the whole Summer Of Love era so it's kind of part and parcel, then the nihilism and coke hangover of the 70s and the ultimate 80s AIDS grim punchline to the whole Free Love concept, Jenny's just a waif caught up in all of it, the latest political trends and bus to get on. It's because Forrest clearly loves her from childhood and she keeps fucking him off every which turn, before turning up when he's rich to have a kid with him then immediately fucking off again, then a few years later presents with the kid and promptly dies, talk about abrupt.

[famethrowa]

Ohhh yet another million dollar movie where the book's author has a right old whine and they're like "ohhh I didn't like this and I didn't like that". Oh BOO HOO Mr Royalties, let's see your cardboard and handycam recreation of your masterwork.

[itsfredtitmus]

It's my least favourite film of all-time but I enjoy watching it

[Sin Agog]

Last time I watched this was in my teens with a bandmember.  Neither of us knew how to roll spliffs, so we chewed clumps of weed like cud for half an hour as the movie played before I ladled onion bhajis into his mouth.  Shit film.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

So we can be sure Forrest Gump Jr doesn't have Hep-C, Jenny is only supposed to catch it when she has a relapse after having sex with Forrest, in that gap where he goes running and everyone is waiting for the film to end. That means it develops life ending symptoms in around 4 years at most, while people typically live with Hep-C for decades.

Not necessarily. There's only a 5% chance that Jenny would pass it to Forrest Junior. She could've had it since the sixties and then fucked her liver further with all the partyin' and drugs.

Anyway here's someone else's opinion in video form about the values and viewpoint of the film. TL;DW the movie is in favour of conformity and obedience, rewarding Forrest for both these things and punishing Jenny for her radical views.

[greenman]

It doesn't really work as an 'unreliable narrator' story. Then again, nor does Barry Lyndon I think. The book The Luck Of Barry Lyndon is meant to be a memoir so braggadocios you assume the narrator is unreliable and so work out what probably really happened in contrast to his ego and this is where the humour derives. But Kubrick couldn't really do this as he had to show a set story unfold rather than having Barry give his unrealistic narrative, which loses the entire aspect of the satire. That film is usually only praised for its visuals anyway, it doesn't really work at all in my estimation.

Kubricks film I would say almost feels like it reverses the unreliable narrator aspect to me, instead of Barry himself as author it has Michael Hordern as a separate narrator who seems to represent Thackeray or gentile society of the era instead and the unreliable aspect isnt the events but rather the way in which the narrator treats Barry's motivations and character. So it basically shifts the satire from Thackeray's original target of a bragging upstart to one of Thackeray or the higher social order's view of such a character and his motivations.

[BlodwynPig]

'airport timewaster' was an aids movie too, wasn't it?  bloke so riddled with aids he can't find his way out

out of what?  not literally an airport, no.  it's a metaphor, like that one where richard e grant sports a giant wart of himself


he can't find his way out of aids

Not watched Gump but the airport one is a good premise, executed badly. I rate Burb of course and Big is decent for children. The rest of Hanks is just Hanks playing a Hankified version of the character with diminishing returns over the years.

[MojoJojo]

Not necessarily. There's only a 5% chance that Jenny would pass it to Forrest Junior. She could've had it since the sixties and then fucked her liver further with all the partyin' and drugs.

I'm not reading the book to check, but from what people have written about it it says she got Hep-C after giving birth to Forrest Junior. You are of course right that it would be perfectly plausible that Jenny had it (or HIV) before having Forrest Junior, but the author didn't go that route.

(And to be fair, the rate of mother to child transmission might well not have been established when he wrote it.

Stupid thing I've just realised: Winston Groom died in September, which probably explains why this turned up on Netflix and why it seems to be cropping up everywhere.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The box of chocolates line makes no sense anyway, you do know what you're gonna get because the inlay card provides information about each of the different chocolates in the box. "Life is like a bag of revels" would make more sense. *Seinfeld voice*

You sir are clearly no Revels connoisseur, as the really big ones are maltesers, the small ones are caramel, the oval flat ones are pure chocolate, and only the orange and coffee sized creams tend to be the same shaped. *Newman voice*

[dissolute ocelot]

You sir are clearly no Revels connoisseur, as the really big ones are maltesers, the small ones are caramel, the oval flat ones are pure chocolate, and only the orange and coffee sized creams tend to be the same shaped. *Newman voice*

Life is like a tube of Smarties, you have no idea what you're going to get, but they're all fundamentally the same anyway.