Here are 25 Interesting Facts About Forrest Gump.
1-5 Interesting Facts About Forrest Gump
1. When Forrest gets up to talk at the Vietnam rally in Washington, the microphone plug is pulled and you cannot hear him. According to Tom Hanks, he says, “Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don’t go home at all. That’s a bad thing. That’s all I have to say about that.”
2. Tom Hanks wasn’t paid for the film. Instead he took percentage points which ultimately netted him in the region of $40 million.
3. With every transition of Forrest’s age, one thing remains the same. In the first scene of each transition he wears a blue plaid shirt.
4. Tom Hanks’ younger brother Jim Hanks doubled for him in many of his numerous running sequences.
5. Tom Hanks signed onto the film after an hour and a half of reading the script but agreed to take the role only on the condition that the film was historically accurate. He initially wanted to ease Forrest’s pronounced Southern accent, but was eventually persuaded by director Robert Zemeckis to portray the heavy accent stressed in the novel and patterned his accent after Michael Conner Humphreys (young Forrest) who actually talked that way.
6-10 Interesting Facts About Forrest Gump
6. Forrest and Dan’s Shrimp Emporium “Bubba Gump”, is now a themed restaurant in 33 locations around the world in the U.S., Japan, China, Mexico, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and the UK. There is one in Orlando, Florida, at the entrance to the Universal theme parks.
7. When Forrest first learns to play ping-pong in the infirmary, he is told the trick is to “keep his eye on the ball” by another soldier. After that moment, whenever he is shown playing ping-pong, he never blinks.
8. During the ping-pong matches, there was no ball; it was entirely CGI, animated to meet the actors’ paddles.
9. Many of the extras in the hippie scene were actors from the Maryland Renaissance Festival, since the casting director Ellen Lewis realized that would be a good source of performers with long hair.
10. The running scene was inspired by an actual event. In 1982, Louis Michael Figueroa, aged 16, ran from New Jersey to San Francisco for the American Cancer Society, unknowingly inspiring a line for Forrest Gump’s famous run on the silver screen. “I just put one foot in front of the other,” it goes. “When I get tired I sleep. When I get hungry I eat. When I have to go to the bathroom, I go.”
11-15 Interesting Facts About Forrest Gump
11. Gump’s Medal of Honor ceremony uses the footage of the actual ceremony for Sammy L. Davis, who was awarded the Medal of Honor on 19 November 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson for his actions in Vietnam a year earlier. Tom Hanks’ head was superimposed on Davis’ body.
12. The shrimp boat used in the film now resides in the moat surrounding the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Downtown Disney, at the Disneyworld Resort in Florida. Also, one of the ping-pong paddles used in the film is signed by Tom Hanks and hung up on one of the walls inside the restaurant.
13. The park bench that Tom Hanks sat on for much of the movie was located in historic Savannah, Georgia, at Chippewa Square. The fiberglass bench he sat on, since then, has been removed and placed into a museum to avoid being destroyed by bad weather, or possibly stolen. The church where the feather first falls was about 100 yards just down the street from the bench. To this day, the bench is held in the Savannah History Museum, Savannah, Georgia.
14. Every still picture of Forrest during this film shows Tom Hanks with his eyes closed.
15. Robin Wright was sick with a cold while shooting the nightclub scene. In spite of this, she was still able to perform her own singing during a non-stop twenty-four hour shoot in which she was nearly nude except for her guitar.
16-20 Interesting Facts About Forrest Gump
16. Contrary to popular belief, the feather was not entirely CGI. The effects team digitized film of a real feather blowing and twisting in front of a blue-screen. This was then edited into segments, which the computer could link and morph together, allowing the “virtual” feather to move however the filmmakers needed. Thus, there was a real feather, but its performance in the movie was computer-based.
17. When Lt. Dan Taylor first meets Forrest and Bubba in Vietnam, he says, “You must be my FNGs.” Generally speaking, this stands for “f**kin’ New Guys.”
18. Robert Zemeckis decided to leave out several planned effects shots. One shot in particular involved Forrest running into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters. Forrest distracts several dogs trying to attack King and his supporters by playing fetch with them and rendering them harmless to King and himself as well as his supporters.
19. All of the boat scenes, including the hurricane scene, were shot on location in the waters off the coast of South Carolina. A jet engine was used to generate the hurricane winds. The still/news reel shots of the trawlers on land are news shots of the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina 1989.
20. Forrest’s awards and decorations, as worn in his Class A uniform are: the Medal of Honor, Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, Infantry Shoulder Cord, Combat Infantryman Badge, Expert Badge (probably for rifle), and Meritorious Unit Commendation.
21-25 Interesting Facts About Forrest Gump
21. It’s not specified in the film, but in the sequel book “Gump & Co” the author mentions that Jenny dies from Hepatitis C as a former drug addict in the early 70s. Hepatitis C was an unknown disease until 1989. She says in the movie that the doctors do not know what the virus is and that they can do nothing about it.
22. In October of 1994 Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption and Jurassic Park were all in theatres at the same time.
23. There is a book sequel to Forrest Gump in which Forrest helps develop New Coke, crashes the Exxon Valdez, helps destroy the Berlin Wall, meets Tom Hanks, and fights in Operation Desert Storm with an orangutan named Sue.
24. Winston Groom, the author of the original Forrest Gump book, didn’t receive a single cent in royalties for the money the film made ($677 million), because of Hollywood Accounting.
25. When Forrest begins his three-year run, as he passes the barbershop in town, the TV announcer says President Jimmy Carter suffered from heat exhaustion. That happened on September 15, 1979. However, Forrest begins his trip presumably on July 5, 1976, when Carter isn’t President yet.
Bonus fact: The roads around the parks in Savannah all travel in a counter clockwise (one way) orientation. In order to have the bus line up properly, the city authorized that square’s road to be reversed during the entire filming.