Moviemaking is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re gonna get. That was certainly the case for the team behind Forrest Gump.
“We didn’t know if we were just drunk. [We didn’t know] if this was gonna be something ridiculous,” admits the film’s screenwriter, Eric Roth, who ultimately took home an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. “And somehow, there was some alchemy and some great creative talents that made it into something special … It somehow captured something in all of our souls.”
“Sadly, it’s getting more and more difficult to get these kinds of movies made,” echoes Academy Award-nominated cinematographer, Don Burgess. “Movies that aren’t a superhero movie or a horror film … The great movies of the ‘70s, which inspired all of us to get into the movie business in the first place, try getting those movies made today. Not a chance, because there’s so much risk involved in it.”
The Tom Hanks-fronted odyssey through mid-20th century America is the rare embodiment of our love affair with cinema. Not only is Forrest Gump a poignant reflection on the significant cultural shifts the United States went through in the years following World War II, but it also captures the profound heartache and optimism of the human experience.
“It’s like a photo album of traditional Americana, says Michael Conner Humphreys, who played the role of young Forrest. “All the major points in history: post-war era, Civil Rights, Vietnam, all that stuff … It’s optimistic like Forrest is always optimistic. He always sees the best in everything. It makes people feel good when they watch it. It’s the definition of a feel-good movie.”
As the multi-Oscar-winning film rings in its 30th anniversary this weekend, I sat down on the proverbial bus stop bench with eight individuals closely connected to the project to hear the incredible story of how Greenbow’s prodigal son came to be…
Interviewees:
- Wendy Finerman (producer)
- Eric Roth (screenwriter)
- Charles Newirth (co-producer/unit production manager)
- Don Burgess (director of photography)
- Michael Conner Humphreys (young Forrest)
- Joel Sill (executive music producer)
- Carolina Groom (Winston Groom’s daughter)
- Anne Clinton (Winston Groom’s second wife and mother to Carolina)
The saga of Forrest Gump began in March 1986 with the publication of Winston Groom’s novel of the same name. Like the film it ultimately became, the book is told from the perspective of an Alabama man with a low IQ, but incredibly big heart, who has led an extraordinary life marked by watershed moments and figures. A native of Mobile and a graduate of The University of Alabama, Groom sadly passed away in 2020 at the age of 77.
CAROLINA GROOM: It was always a big deal growing up, especially where we lived. He had his big, signed poster above his desk with all the signatures and thank you’s from everyone in the movie … I went to The University of Alabama and my first job [was in a] bookstore. They would always host book signings for him, so I got to help them out with that. People always thought about Forrest Gump and just didn’t realize how many other books he wrote, too, especially a lot of his nonfiction books. He incorporated his same sense of humor into all of those. If you’re interested in that, just read all the other ones … He was such a good storyteller and funny.
ANNE CLINTON: He studied the Civil War and history and was always interested in that (he ultimately did nonfiction books based on different war periods, as well as the Civil War). Sincerely, he would say [the name “Forrest Gump” came from] Nathan Bedford Forrest. And then … he was trying to figure out a last name. He literally looked down from his desk and back then, we all got catalogs like crazy. There was a Gump’s catalog out of San Francisco sitting by his desk …
WENDY FINERMAN: Winston was larger than life … He was a Southern man, he was an insightful man. He was way more opinionated than Forrest was, but he had a wonderful sense of tongue in cheek humor.
Not particularly well-received by critics (Kirkus called it “gawky and ham-handed,” while Publishers Weekly wrote “Groom … has written better books than this”), the book did strike a chord with producer Wendy Finerman, who immediately scooped up the film rights.
WENDY FINERMAN: I just loved the story. It was an everyman story and it just talked to me. I am a nice person, but I am not pure and perfect. I thought, “Oh, my God, everyone could benefit from somebody like him.” And I think everyone has.
ERIC ROTH: I thought the book was goofy and farcical. Even though the movie is goofy and farcical to an extent, I tried to give it a little more meaning … I just figured, “What the hell?” It was just such a crazy story (Candide is the way I look at it). I thought I had the license to go anywhere I wanted to with it. That was a lovely freedom.
ANNE CLINTON: The movie was optioned before the book was actually published, and it was optioned by Warner Brothers at that point … [Winston] wrote the first couple of drafts of the screenplay. His scripts were a little more akin to the book. And then, of course, the shooting script ended up with added scenes. The running scene wasn’t in the book. Forrest went to space in the book, and he didn’t in the movie. He played ping pong and went to China [in the book]. In the book, Jenny didn’t necessarily have what was insinuated as a drug problem in the movie. …
There were so many things that were intertwined [with his actual life]. If you think about it, they don’t call it The University of Alabama [in the movie], but Alabama was in there. Vietnam was in there. The shrimping and boating all took place in and around his hometown of Mobile. If you think about Lieutenant Dan and Bubba, those were representative of…not a particular person, but a compilation of people that he loved and was friends with.
CAROLINA: The other difference he always talked about was the quote, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.’ He would always joke about how in the book it said, “Bein a idiot is no box of chocolates,” and people would always send him chocolates after the movie came out.
Getting the book to the screen was no box of chocolates, however, with Forrest Gump spending nearly a decade in various states of development at two different studios. Where most producers might have abandoned the project in the dustbin of development hell, Finerman stuck with it to the very end.
WENDY FINERMAN: I fought diligently to get it made … . . There were many hurdles [on Forrest Gump], but we had something special. We just went ahead and made a movie we loved.
ERIC ROTH: Warner Bros. let Wendy have the project in turnaround. That was before I’d written a word. When it went into turnaround, whatever [development] came before was no longer efficacious. So, it ended up at Paramount. It was very special, but we didn’t know anything. We thought it was a pretty crazy project and then we went through a number of different directors who wanted to be involved until it landed with Bob.
CHARLES NEWIRTH: I think Penny Marshall was involved, Barry Sonnenfeld was involved at one point.
Several other directors and lead actors were considered throughout Forrest Gump’s lengthy gestational period before Robert “Bob” Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and a rising Tom Hanks came on board. This film, of course, spawned multi-movie relationship between the two that endures to this day. Hanks, who would go on to win the Oscar for Best Actor, based his performance on Michael Conner Humpheys, the eight-year-old cast to play Forrest as a young boy.
ANNE CLINTON: I think Winston … thought of Forrest Gump from the book as a really big character like a John Lithgow-type character. And, of course, Tom Hanks was coming along at that point [but] he didn’t think about Hanks for that part … [After reading the shooting script Winston] was like, “This is not gonna work!” And, of course, it worked. And he said it worked, too.
WENDY FINERMAN: We went through so many people before we got to Tom … It was one of those Hollywood games of, “Who can you put into this to get it made?” It wasn’t necessarily the right person until we got Tom, and Tom was the right person. He had the boyhood innocence and the brains. I think life has gone on before and afterwards to prove that he is one of America’s greatest actors.
ERIC ROTH: I had worked with Tom Hanks on something else that never got made. We were very close and still are. Wendy Finerman, who had the book, sent it to me and I said, “What’s this all about?” Sometimes, it’s good for things that haven’t really clicked to try to make an attempt at [adapting it]. I thought, “Well, this is interesting.” I had Tom read it and he said, “Let’s try it.” So, with the confidence of having Tom, even though he was newly popular, away I went.
MICHAEL CONNER HUMPHREYS: They didn’t go into the film initially planning for him to study me. At some point, they realized that was going to work for the character. Because Forrest is basically a child trapped in a man’s body, if you think about it … I’m permanently encapsulated in Tom Hanks’s his performance. I was mainly being me. The cadence, the way I spoke, was completely natural. I was from backwoods Mississippi, extremely Southern. Of course, I didn’t realize how Southern I was when I was a kid, but now I look back on it and it’s insane the way I was talking.
DON
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Humphreys landed the role of young Forrest by chance after his parents took him to an open casting call. Following several weeks of callbacks, he landed the role and found himself opposite Hannah Hall’s young Jenny. And yes, they were just like “peas and carrots,” to borrow a phrase from the man himself.
MICHAEL CONNER HUMPHREYS: We became best friends during the film, [we were the] same age and everything. I have actually hung out with her on a couple occasions since then as adults. She and I get along just as well as we ever did. I only recently had a candid conversation with her 25 years later about how we both felt about being in the film and what our lives had been like. My mind was blown by how similar our experiences have been and how we have a similar look on it all.
He had a lot of fun on the set, playing The Legend of Zelda on the NES with Sally Field (apparently Mama Gump was a fan of Hyrule) and pretending “to be a robot” in his leg braces. Speaking of which, the scene where they break off as he’s running was a completely practical effect.
They actually took a set of braces, removed the screws and joints, and put in these [explosives] that were remote-detonated. I remember they had a test set, so that they could demonstrate to me what this was going to look like. I remember it scared the hell out of me. Because they’re blowing these things up and I’m like, “I don’t want to put those on my legs!” They had to really talk me into it. As far as young Forrest goes, I don’t know that there was anything I did that wasn’t practical effects. Tom’s scenes are where they got into all the blue screen/green screen. stuff, which was revolutionary at the time. Forrest Gump and Jurassic Park were like the two movies that were starting to use CGI for the first time ever.
And that scene where Mama Gump convinces the principal (Sam Anderson) to keep Forrest in school? Humphreys was shielded from the steamy truth for a long time.
MICHAEL CONNER HUMPHREYS: I didn’t have enough patience to go through all 300 pages [of the script] when I was eight-years-old, so I never saw what it said specific to scenes. And in the script, it does describe exactly what the circumstances of that scene are. They weren’t gonna tell me that Mama Gump’s having sex with the principal, so they told me that he was upstairs doing push-ups. So I’m like, “Okay, I’m imitating his push ups.” And they just told me to make the noise. I remember I kept laughing, I couldn’t keep a straight face to do that scene But they finally got it and two or three years later, when I learned the birds of the bees, I realized what was actually going on in that scene.
Indeed, Zemeckis was attracted to the project because of all the technological challenges it posed. Similar to Jurassic Park, the film pioneered brand-new CGI techniques (under the leadership of ILM’s Ken Ralston) that allowed Hanks to interact with dead American presidents, John Lennon, and other influential figures.
ERIC ROTH: Bob loved the craziness of it. The humor, the emotion. He’s very brave, and it’s right up his alley, the kind of crazy stuff that he loves to do. Cartoonish in some senses, dramatic in others. Bob [ultimately] went nuts with it. He’s the genius at it. I called them Zelig moments, named after the Woody Allen movie, where he put people in historical things. So, I’d write, “…and we see Forrest getting his award from Lyndon Johnson.” That kind of stuff. I think that’s one of the reasons Bob was attracted to it, because he loves [experimenting with new technology]. When I gave him the script to see if he was interested in doing it, he said, “You know me, Eric. If this is all dialogue, why would I want to do this?” I said, “God bless you.”
CHARLES NEWIRTH: He’s like a screen magician … Bob is such a remarkably gifted director who doesn’t film things conventionally with a one-shot, two-shot, and a master. He is so conceptual and makes everyone rise to the top of their game and surpass it. That’s what you want.
WENDY FINERMAN: We knew Bob was the guy to break the cinema rules. The irony was I didn’t even understand it at the time, from a technology point-of-view … When we were in Savannah shooting the feather floating, I was like, “Bob, what are you gonna do?” He goes, “I’ll figure it out, Wendy! I’ll figure it out! I got this!” I looked at Ken and Don, and they nodded. There’s no one else you could do that with other than Bob Zemeckis.
DON BURGESS: With Bob, you are generally inventing new technology along the way to execute these ideas that he has, what he sees, and what he wants to see. That’s always a great challenge to be out there, reinventing the wheel of making movies and how we would execute these ideas. We had one of the great all-time visual effects supervisors, Ken Ralston. He loves breaking the rules himself, taking the technology that exists and trying to push that envelope and get these believable images up on the screen.
MICHAEL CONNER HUMPHREYS: I’m sure I made [Zemeckis] boil a couple of times, because I was a very precocious kid and I used to tell him I wanted to direct Back to the Future 4. We would be shooting scenes and because I didn’t know any better, and was eight years old, I would try to talk him into moving the whole set to make it easier for me. Something that an adult actor would never dare do to a director. But yeah, [he was] a brilliant director. Really cool guy and he knows how to get stuff done. He knows how to direct his actors and get everything out of them as quickly as possible.
In addition to the more overt illusion of Hanks brushing shoulders with deceased icons, Zemeckis & Co. also had to contend with more subtle effects such as the crowd extension for the anti-war rally sequence in front of the Lincoln Memorial and the removal of Lieutenant Dan’s (Gary Sinise) legs. The latter required a combination of digital wizardry and traditional sleight of hand.
CHARLES NEWIRTH: People thought we hired an actor who didn’t have any legs. The first time you see him without legs [in the Vietnam hospital]. He’s in the bed and you think, “Oh, there’s holes and they’re gonna cut around it.” They lift him up and it’s like, “Oh my God…he has no legs!” That, in and of itself, was pretty remarkable. Ken came up with a variety of different digital techniques to make that work in terms of wrapping his legs in blue and doing different rotoscoping and augmentation. But we could only afford a number of those shots. Having been an amateur magician, I knew this gentleman, Ricky Jay, an incredibly prominent magician who is no longer with us. But Ricky knew the history of magic like nobody else. He had a partner, so I went to them and I said, “Can you design a wheelchair where we can hide Lieutenant Dan’s legs?” It’s sort of like an an old stage illusion, the seat is designed a certain way where it looks thinner than it actually is. So, we brought Ricky in and he designed a wheelchair. Many of those shots are practical, which we needed to do. All of those pieces together helps sell it …
The crowd multiplication was very, very new at the time. We couldn’t afford to hire 50,000 extras and put out there and dress them in period clothing. So, we had to come up with a methodology for that, which Ken did. Creating movement in the mouth [for historical figures] might not look as good as what you could do with 2024 technology, but it certainly worked well for the time. A lot of it was very much groundbreaking. I learned a lot on that movie. It was like a masterclass in visual effects. That’s the fun thing about working with great filmmakers — every movie is like another another step in your education.
Once he became attached to the movie, Zemeckis did request a number of small tweaks to the script, whittling it down to focus on the overarching love story between Forrest and Jenny (Robin Wright).
ERIC ROTH: It was overwritten, I guess is the best way to put it. I had so many different kinds of visuals that he just took out. Whenever Forrest saw Jenny, she had angel’s wings. Lieutenant Dan had a black cloud over his head. [There] was a line from the mother, “Don’t let anybody tell you you’re like watermelon head” or something, and he imagines a whole roomful of [people with] watermelon heads. I think the big moment is when we really got geared into the love story. That’s the spine of the movie and one of the things that keeps it intact. Everything else starts swirling around that … There weren’t that many drafts. Usually, there’s at least 15 or 17 drafts as it changes for budgets and everything else. But Bob’s incredibly organized and doesn’t suffer fools or waste of money. It was less than most, I can tell you that. On Killers of the Flower Moon, I think I did 32 drafts. “Drafts” is a misnomer of kind because if they change five words, it’s [considered] a new draft. I will say this: I only think there was one, maybe two, scenes that Bob did not shoot [on Forrest Gump]. That’s very rare. But Bob’s incredibly organized. I think we started filming in August, let’s say, and he said, “By August 19, you’ll be done writing,” and I was. I don’t think I wrote another thing once they started shooting.
CHARLES NEWIRTH: I read the script and loved it. I was sitting there crying at the end. It had all this stuff going on. And, of course, as a producer, the first time I read a script, I just go along for the ride. Just let it take me over emotionally and read it as a moviegoer. Then I read it again and started thinking about, “Okay, how are you going to do this? How are you going to do that?” It was such a sweeping, epic story, which we know from seeing the film, that I knew it was going to be quite a challenge. And I was up for it.
JOEL SILL: I remember when I finished the screenplay, I was just so emotionally moved with Forrest and his son getting on the bus and the feather. The whole film had so much humanity to it. I believe when I met Bob and talked about it, I called it a “docu-fable.”
DON BURGESS: It was certainly like nothing I’d ever read before. It was something that was a page-turner to read. You didn’t know where it was gonna go. I hadn’t read the book. I didn’t really know that much about it, but you loved the character and thought it was so crazy and so much fun. It was just a movie you wanted to go see. You read [the script] and go, “I think a lot of people are gonna want to see this movie!” Eric Roth is one of the great writers of our time. It’s great to be involved in a creative process where you have that genius of creativity at the top, who is willing to take everything you know about filmmaking, throw some of it away, and just go with the instincts they have of great storytelling, and then try to make that work in a film.
MICHAEL CONNER HUMPHREYS: It touches on every genre. It’s comedy, and it’s drama and it’s a horror. It encapsulates every genre and people love watching it because it hits on every emotion.
One visual flourish that did make it the final cut was the famous floating feather Forrest collects at the start of the movie. The motif is up to interpretation, but here’s what everyone had to say about it…
ETIC ROTH: It sort of echoes his speech about “I don’t know if we’re destined to do this or if we’re all just floating around randomly.” You can choose anything you want, and that’s the idea of the feather. I had that pretty early. Once I came up with that, it gave me permission to kind of go anywhere I wanted with it.
WENDY FINERMAN: Destiny was really important to it. Destiny, I think, was ultimately what we achieved. Eric is sacred.
JOEL SILL: I’m jaded because Bob kind of told me what it was — that the feather could have landed on anybody and you would have heard their story. Somehow, the feather is a conduit to memories.
CHARLES NEWIRTH: I think that the feather represents many things to many people, but to me, it’s the magic of life, and you don’t know quite what’s going to bring you good and what’s going to bring you bad; what’s going to be joy or sadness. We can do our best to be good people, but you don’t know where the feather’s going to land. Try to be the best person you can be. And some of it is going to be fate that’s cast to the wind that we have no control over.
DON BURGESS: I think opening and finishing the film with that idea was just amazing. Everybody has their take on that, the way they see life. Is it all laid out for us? Is this is going to happen no matter what I do or is it in the wind? It’s a little bit of both. Life is what happens to you while you’re planning other things. I believe it was John Lennon who gave us that one.
ANNE CLINTON: It’s kind of like a soft journey through life, is what I think about Forrest. It kind of goes a little bit this way and a little bit that way.
MICHAEL CONNER HUMPHREYS: Mama Gump’s version of life is that you make your own way, you make your own destiny. Lieutenant Dan’s version is it’s all planned. He was going to die with honor on the field. That was his destiny and then Forrest cheats him out of it. There’s that dichotomy going on between those two versions and I feel like the feather is alluding to those, but it doesn’t really tell you which one’s right. Because on the one hand, the feather is just floating through the wind, making its own way, but it also ends up wherever it was supposed to end up. So I think it’s just a reference to that theme of what your destiny is going to be and are you making it yourself or does everything have a plan?
In a way, I actually relate that Lieutenant Dan’s idea of dying with honor on the field. [It was] part of the reason I joined the Army when I was 19 was. Having been in Forrest Gump was really cool, but at that age, as a teenager, I was sitting there thinking, “Man, is this all I’m ever gonna do? Is this what people are gonna know me for the rest of my life? Just this one film I did as a kid?” Signing up to go to Iraq was kind of my version of like, “I’m gonna do something that matters.” On one hand, I’m making my own way, i’m deciding to go. But on the other hand, whatever happens happens — it’s preordained. I had to ask myself that same question as far as which of them is right.
From the get-go, Zemeckis knew he wanted to capture the mood of each decade the movie depicted with a soundtrack chock full of period-specific needle drops. That responsibility fell to executive music producer Joel Sill, and there was only one stipulation: the collection of licensed tracks could not feature any songs from non-American artists or bands.
JOEL SILL: Initially discussing it with Bob, I started to recognize the best way to approach it would be to create a library of music choices. I broke it down into regional categories … Then I broke it down by solo artists, duos, and groups. I put those packages together and would forward cassettes to Bob as he was working on pre-production. He’d listen to the music at night and then call me and make some choices … If you look at the soundtrack, you won’t see any British pieces in there and you won’t see any Canadian pieces, as much as loved Neil Young or Joni Mitchell. The feeling was Forrest would only buy American.
DON BURGESS: People would be suggesting their favorite songs from the era [during the shoot] … They had this rule, because I would always always throw these Neil Young songs in. [Rob] goes, “No, they have to be American bands. You can’t, can’t bring in the British rockers. You can’t bring in the Canadians.”
Co-producer and unit production manager Charles Newirth — who became attached to the film after making a serendipitous call to Zemeckis’s producing partner, Steve Starkey to offer his condolences about their Houdini biopic falling apart — prepared for the shoot by relying on Zemeckis’s “A-plus crew” and taking things as they came.
CHARLES NEWIRTH: It was quite a tricky logistical show to put together. How do you prepare something like that? You just do it one step at a time. It’s like how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You don’t just look at it [as a whole] because it can be overwhelming. So, you hire the right people who are really committed to the project and know what they’re doing.
DON BURGESS: When we were making it, you weren’t sure if the whole thing was going to fit together to actually make a movie.
Burgess, who had shot second unit on both Back to the Future sequels and Death Becomes Her, prepared for the immense undertaking by breaking the script down into decades.
DON BURGESS: I had that in my mind of, “Well, what should the ‘60s look like?” I tapped upon my own experience of what it was like to witness the 60s, let’s say. I have two older sisters, so it was really through watching them [as they] were more engaged in it than I was … I’d break it down to the film stocks of where I started with the look of the film and where I wanted the film to end up and how the sharpness of the movie would shift. The color and film stocks would shift. I’d use different filters for different decades. When it came to [getting] Forrest [into] real documentary footage, there were elements we shot in 16mm black and white that would have been similar to what they shot the actual documentary or news footage footage. I would try to copy that. I would try go back to whatever that was to make that feel more organic [for when] they composited the images together …
I remember lighting a scene where Jenny is in Los Angeles and she’s hanging out with drug dealers and things are pretty bad. The color scheme that I chose for that was from a Joni Mitchell album that my sister had, that was called Blue. The cover and the look of Joni on the cover, and the look of the ‘60s and the way Robin was and the way that they dressed her and the way that she looked, it just took me back that era. I felt, ‘Okay, that’s where I’m going with this scene.’ This is where she leaves the guy that’s passed out on the bed. It’s kind of that emotional connection that you put to the material, of what you yourself perhaps experienced at the time or it’s movies that you’ve seen or newspaper headlines. It all kind of filters in.
CHARLES NEWIRTH: A lot of research went into it, even in terms of finding footage that you could then could then insert Tom into. There was a team, two young men whom Bob had working for him, who were just going through all this archival footage, trying to find material.
At last, principal photography began in late summer of 1993, with the shoot mainly taking place between Beaufort, South Carolina (standing in for Alabama) and Savannah, Georgia (where Forrest recounts his story to strangers on the bench). Tripp Island became a substitute for Vietnam. There were also days spent in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and several other states (some only briefly glimpsed in the running sequence).
MICHAEL CONNER HUMPHREYS: Anytime that they were doing scenes of his that they thought I would enjoy watching, they would bring me on for that. I was — and still am — really into military affairs. Helicopters and airplanes and all that. So, when they shot the Vietnam scenes in particular, they invited me to come watch his parts. There’s the one scene in the Vietnam part of the movie where there’s this giant napalm explosion when he’s rescued on Bubba [Mykelti Williamsom] and they actually let me push the little red button that set it off. They were finding all kinds of ways to entertain us.
CHARLES NEWIRTH: We got very lucky. They were getting ready to raze all these trees on this one particular property because they were putting up condominiums. So, we got permission to go and actually blow [it all] up [for real]. It wasn’t CG fire, that was all real explosions our special effects supervisor, Allen Hall, created. They had the fire department come out, it was an exercise for the Fripp Island Fire Department. We got these great permissions to be able to do things, which we might have not been able to do somewhere else. Again, it’s like the feather floating around, serendipitously.
DON BURGESS: There were long, hard days, because the movie doesn’t really sit down for very long anywhere. So, we had to move a lot, even in the course of a day. We’d start at one location and have to move to another. If you watch that movie, it just keeps going and going and going.
One of the craziest things we did was at the Watergate Hotel, where he’s eating ice cream and watching the break-in, which we did at the Watergate Hotel. I smoked up the room where these guys were breaking in with the giant flashlights into what was Democratic headquarters at the time. We were there in the actual spot, shooting that. You get all the pieces together, then you’re actually shooting i