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January 16, 2025 114 mins

Life may be like a box of chocolates, but on this episode, you know exactly what you're gonna get, which is Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Maia Wyman aka Broey Deschanel talking about Forrest Gump (1994)!

Follow Maia on Instagram at @broey_deschanel, on YouTube at youtube.com/BroeyDeschanel, and check out her podcast, Rehash!

Here's our guest's video essay, "The Strange Conservatism of Forrest Gump" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeGeT3ZeKO0 

Here is the piece entitled "Autism on Screen: Forrest Gump" - https://aisforaoifenotautism.com/2017/05/19/autism-on-screen-forrest-gump/ 

and here is the piece entitled "'Forrest Gump' at 25: Disability Representation (For Better and Worse) - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristenlopez/2019/07/05/forrest-gump-at-25-disability-representation-for-better-and-worse/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have
women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
bast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Jamie, but the Bechdel Cast is like a box of chocolates. Okay,
explain that. Do you never know what you're gonna get?
Are we gonna reference Shrek? Maybe?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I don't know. Almost the last time we gave people
something they didn't know they were gonna get.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
You know what, You're right, it's pretty predictable. We're probably
gonna again reference Shrek or Titanic or Minions.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
I will say, when it comes to the Life of
Forrest Gump, I did not know what I was gonna get.
For example, I didn't expect the KKK to come up
in the first five minutes of this movie. I'll be honest. Yeah,
I'll be honest. And I also didn't expect him to
give John Lennon the idea for this song imagine. So

(01:01):
you know, if nothing else, this movie delivers on the
promise I did not know what was gonna happen next,
even if very often it had me screaming at my roku. H.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
So today's episode, I feel like it's a long time
coming Forrest Gump.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, I'm surprised we haven't talked about it yet. I
think I've been like kind of quietly refusing to talk
about it for a long time because it's one of
those movies that I'm like almost impressed. It's taken me
this long to see. But it's over. Now we can
finally go to Bubba Gump, Yes, and really explore how
I was like, how do they present the characters in

(01:39):
the restaurant? Like, are they like rip Bubba in the restaurant?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I don't remember. I've only been once, and so I
can't say for certain. We'll find out soon because we're going,
Jamie and.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
I, we're going. We're going to the city walk Bubba Gump,
and we're gonna it's a business expense. Isn't that thrilling?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's thrilling. By the way, let us enter duce ourselves. Hi,
my name's Caitlin Caitlyn Derante.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Oh, my name is Jamie Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
And this is our podcast where we examine movies through
an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel Test simply as
a jumping off point to initiate larger discussions about representation
and things. What's the Bechtel test though.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Oh thank you for asking, yeh. Media metric originally created
by Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace Test because
it was co created with Liz Wallace. Originally created as
a queer media test, but has since been applied to
a far larger swath of media. Lots of versions of
the test. The one we use requires that two people

(02:42):
of a marginalized gender with names talk to each other
about something other and a man. Many movies pass it
now still some don't, but this is just how we
sort of start the discussion, and it's still to this
day my favorite way to tell. When people are lying
about talking about the show. They're like, yeah, for two hours,
you just pour over the script and you're like, no,

(03:03):
that's a man. Next time. Anyways, today we're covering Forrest
Gump and we have the perfect guest, which is why
it is time to cover this movie.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
We sure do. She is a YouTuber and video says
she is host of rehash podcast. It's may aka Broi
da Chanel.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Welcome, Thanks, guys. How's it going.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Oh, it's just fine and dandy, splendid, guys.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
This movie is so long. I feel like now when
I look at a certain run time and I know
it's not gonna be a movie for me, I'm like,
don't piss me off. This is wild. This is as
long as wicked.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
I sat down to rewatch it with my two friends
yesterday and I invited them over for seven pm. It's like,
I gotta go to bed early. I'm so tired. They
talked until nine pm, so like we didn't really get
started till then. And then I was like, guys, I
just remember the movies two and a half hour long.
Like we got a start and they didn't leave till
like twelve thirty.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Good for them for sticking it out. That's really brave.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
I know they wanted to watch like a really artsy movie,
and they wanted to go to like Anthology, which is
like this theater in New York, and I was like,
how about instead you come over and watch Forrest Gump
with me.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Very money trauma. Yeah, that theater rocks. Yeah, this what
a journey. And obviously, I mean, we'll be linking your
video in the description, but The reason we're bringing you
on for this is because you've recently released an incredible
video about the political legacy of this movie, as well
as the adaptation from book to film, which I knew

(04:39):
nothing about on your channel. So I'm curious to start.
What is your history with this movie.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
Yeah, I watched Forrest Gump for the first time. I
think it was like early high school. I was probably
in grade nine, as week Canadians put it ninth grade.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Very de grassy, coded of you.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
It's so grassy.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
I know how to talk to Canadian people. It's like
they flip it.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
We flip it. Yeah, And I went to my aunt's
house and I would like, I sometimes would go in
her bedroom and she has like a TV, and I'd
watched a movie in there while she and the adults talked.
So I went into the room and watched Forrest Gump,
and I loved it. Like back then especially, I just
felt very swept up in the emotion of it. I
think it's a really emotionally powerful movie and it does

(05:24):
a really good job of that. I think it's a
really competent movie. And so by the end, I was like,
oh my god, that was so beautiful. I was solving.
I was like, I miss Jenny two. And then I
hadn't watched it for years, and then a few months ago,
I was like, wouldn't it be kind of cool? Like
I started learning more about the film's place in popular
culture and the way that it's kind of aged and

(05:45):
spoiler alert, it hasn't aged well, and I thought it'd
be interesting to kind of go back and do a
retrospective on the film. And so in September I went
back and I rewatched it, and then I started reading
more about it, and the more I read about it,
the more I started to kind of really dislike it,
which is unfortunate, but because I don't want to come
out of a video with that feeling. But that's just

(06:06):
kind of how it went. But it was a really
rich It was a hotbed for takes. And then I
had seen it probably for that month because of the research.
I'd watched it about five times, and I was like,
I'm never gonna watch this movie again.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Oh no.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
And then you guys reached it though, and I was like,
they pulled me back in and so here I am, sorry, no, no,
and I'm really pumped because where else would I want
to talk about this more than on the Bechdel cast,
no less.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
So thank you for watching it for the sixth time
this calendar year. So sorry, that's like almost a full
I can't do math. It's a lot of time. I
was gonna say, that's three days.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
It's okay. I can call myself a Forrest Gump expert,
like proudly, and so I think I think that's fine.
You know, sometimes you have to be an expert in something.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
It's true. I mean, we'll talk about this after the
recap more. But I was very taken aback by how
this movie has been a hotbed for takes since it
came out, like it predates the subsequent internet discourses by
a lot, and then is somehow continuing into this press
cycle for here is that what it's called?

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Oh the way, the Robert Zemeckis movie of twenty twenty
four that has the same cast because it's Tom Hanks
and Robin Wright.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, so there's been another sort of round of discourse
about it in the last like two months because Robin
Wright was asked about the character Jenny on a press tour.
So it's like he's inescapable, He's everywhere. Caitlin what's your
history with Forrest Gump?

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Okay, I have what might be a rather shocking history
with this movie. I have seen the movie probably seventy
or eighty times throughout my life. Although most of it, yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
You don't like a movie halfway. I will say.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
It's when I really like something, I commit. But I
would say like ninety five percent of those viewings were very,
very concentrated between age like ten and twelve. So the
movie came out when I was eight years old. I
don't think I saw it until probably a year later

(08:21):
we got it on VHS, and it probably took me
a little while too, like because I was just sort
of like, what's this movie? Because my mom would be like,
leave me alone, go watch something.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Shout out to Laurie. It was definitely listening.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
She did a great job raising me, but sometimes she
was just like, go watch a movie. So eventually I
discovered Forrest Gump. I think it was probably nine or ten,
And I don't know why I took to it so much,
because it was not like anything else I was watching
at that age, but I became obsessed and I would
probably watch it every few days.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
And I did that until Titanic came out, and those
two VHS's really replaced Forrest Gump in my movie watching circulation.
So from age twelve, I think I probably only saw
it once or twice, maybe like a couple times as
a teenager, maybe once in college, but for those few years,

(09:22):
I was like enthralled by it. There are things about
American history that I first learned about from this movie,
not that it really dives deep into any of those things,
but like I probably didn't know what the Vietnam War
was until I watched this movie. I didn't know about
like racial segregation until this movie. I didn't know about

(09:43):
a bunch of things until I saw this movie. Also,
the soundtrack introduced me to a lot of iconic songs
from the sixties and seventies that I probably wouldn't have
been exposed to really otherwise.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, the needle Drops, You can't argue with the needle drops,
simply cannot.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
They're really running through like every top song of the sixties.
They hit every single one of.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Them, back to back to it. Like sometimes I think
there was a run of like four in a row.
You're like, damn budget, Like it felt like a Scorsese movie.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
You're just saying, so I have a very weird history
with this movie, and then I kind of just forgot
about it and didn't care about it, and probably upon retrospect,
was like, I don't think that movie's very good, but
I didn't really go back and check until prepping for
this episode. I'm very excited to talk about it. There's

(10:35):
much to discuss and my yea, your video essay is incredible.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
Thank you, Jamie.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
What is your history with the movie?

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Ah? Nothing. This is one of the movies that I Yeah,
I don't know exactly why it took me so long
to watch this, but once I realized, I think like
sometime in college, I was like, wow, I've never seen
Forrest Gump, And instead of being like I should watch
it and educate myself, I'm like, let me see how
far into my life I can get without seeing it,

(11:06):
which is all the way until this weekend. Yeah, I'm
very interested to talk about how this because at first,
like on my first view, I was like I don't
get it. But the more I talked to people who
had like a childhood appreciation of this movie, I was like,
I think I was like a baby when this came out,
so I wouldn't have seen it until later anyways. But

(11:28):
my boyfriend also has like a strong attachment to this movie,
and similar to you, Caitlin said that like he learned
about like a few pieces of American history that he
didn't know about before then either. And I still am like,
it is wild to me that this movie, which is
two and a half hours long and a prestige drama,
was holding the attention of children.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Makes no sense. Cannot explain, but it.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Seems that there are many such cases. Yeah, I don't know.
I remember, like my dad didn't like this movie. I
don't know why. I can't tell you why, but I
think he was just like, no long boring, Let's watch
Peewey's Pick Adventure, and so we would nice. So yeah,
I'm coming in very fresh on this movie and I'm

(12:14):
excited to talk about it because, like you were saying
a little earlier, my yeah, I mean, I think it
is clearly a beautifully made movie, and it just feels like, yeah,
this early hardbinger of like maybe Robert Zemechis is not
a historical film kind of guy. Maybe he has no
interest in it, or at least meaningful interest in it.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
If Rowers Megas has one hater, it's me. I dislike
him more than even the movie. I dislike him a lot.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
I was shocked at some of the clips that you
found of him being like, no, I didn't read the book,
Like reading sucks. It was like whoa.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, to be fair, that's also us on the Bechdel cast,
we would never read a book.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
But if you're gonna make the movie, you should probably
finish the book.

Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah, he's just a part of this cohort of like
directors that are very thing go boom, like that's their
whole their whole approach to filmmaking, their like thing go boom,
no talking single boom, And that's that's really him. And
he's he's making things go boom in this movie.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
He real, really is. I was like, I like him
at the I mean, I'm a Roger Rabbit head. I
can't take that from him. Roger Rabbit and death becomes her.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
I do love me as well.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
I'm a big Back to the Future head. Famously, he's
and this is the thing, he's a great filmmaker. Poor Express,
I love it.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
That was maybe the hottest take in your entire video,
because you're like Polar Express actually good thought. Love that
that is the least scary of his animated movies in retrospect.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Oh yeah, we should say. Robert Zemeckis of Disney's Pinocchio
twenty twenty two Fame Yes, which was, of course one
of the brave soldiers of the Pinocchio Wars.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
I think that's our best Patreon series ever. The Pinocchio
Wars was. You know, if there's anything to sell people
on the Matreon, it's the Pinocchio Wars months Because why
was Pinocchio so top of mind for so many in
twenty twenty two. We'll never know. We'll never know. Yeah,
Tom Hanks, that was I feel like that really sort

(14:23):
of unfortunately was the bell toll of Tom at the
beginning of Tom hanks flop era a bit was his
weird drunken interpretation of Geppetto. Anyway, that's for the Pinocchio Wars,
all right, So I guess let's uh, let's.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Take a break and then come back for the recap
and we're back, okay, So I'll do what ended up
being such a long I tried to trim it down
and I left a bunch of stuff out which we

(15:00):
can get into more. During the discussion. But there's just
so much that happens in this movie that I inevitably
skip over some stuff. I will also place a content
warning here for sexual abuse and assault, suicidal ideation, things
of that nature.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, trigger warning for everything that happens to Jenny. Basically, yeah, truly.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Okay. So we follow a feather floating through the air
and landing at the feet of Forrest Gump played by
Tom Hanks.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Could it be a metaphor?

Speaker 2 (15:35):
I don't know, Maybe, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
Also some extremely sentimental music, yeah, continue throughout.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Yes, Yeah. I found the score to be so grating.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
Very saccurate.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah. I played that in a high school orchestra. I
didn't even realize that that was like what it was.
I was like, where do I know that? I was like,
I know the obol part.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Oh classic? Yea, oh okay. So Forrest Gump is sitting
on a bench at a bus stop. It is nineteen
eighty one. A woman comes down and sits next to him,
and he introduces himself. He offers her a chocolate and
then says the famous line my mom always said, life
is like a box of chocolates. You never know what

(16:22):
you're gonna get and then he starts relaying his entire
life story to this woman who has no interest in
talking to him, and we flash back to Forrest as
a child in the nineteen fifties. He lives with his mom,
played by Sally Field.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
And the wigs they're using on this poor woman, Oh,
as they begin to age her, I'm just like, this
isn't fair. The great Sally Field and we're putting these diegessts.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Like Nicole Kidman level wigs.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Brutal.

Speaker 4 (16:53):
She's rocking an incredible accent, though, one that I really
am jealous of.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
She rocks. So she runs a boarding house just outside Greenbow, Alabama.
Forrest has braces on his legs as well as an
intellectual disability. His mom wants him to get the same
education as other kids, so she sleeps with a school

(17:18):
administrator so that he will let Forrest go to public
school and not a like quote unquote special school as
they call it in the movie.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
So Yes, in the first ten minutes, we first learned
that he is named after the Grand Wizard of the KKK,
and this thing with the mom happens, and I was like,
why were six year olds watching it? What that's going on?

Speaker 4 (17:41):
The craziest part about the KKK thing is, and I
didn't catch this till this viewing, was that his reasoning
was that he was, like my mom said, it's because
sometimes people do crazy things.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah, and now we're supposed to be like deeply invested
in this woman's journey for three hours, like it's.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Just And this is also the beginning of a trend
throughout the movie where Forrest very wildly miss understands and
like miss describes different historical events or cultural events, and
he has a very like naive and childlike understanding of

(18:23):
the world in this I think the first example we
see of it.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Which for adult viewers is very like wink and nod.
But if you're six and watching this movie, I would
imagine it would be a little confusing.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, I can speak from experience.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
The movie is really full of like little nods to
Americans being like remember that thing. But then sometimes the
nod is like remember the KKK.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
You remember the the movie just started. Not to mention
that the person that Forrest is talking to for the
first I think like hour of the movie is a
working class black woman, and the first he brings up
is like, so I'm named after the Grand Wizards of KKK,
and I'm like, Forrest.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Can read the room.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
So then it's forces first day of school. The kids
on the bus are very cruel to him, and no
one will let him sit next to them, except for Jenny.
She and Forrest become best friends, and one day some
kids are bullying Forest and Jenny says the famous line, Run, Forest, Run.

(19:32):
So he starts to run away, but the braces on
his legs mean that he can't move very fast until
the braces start to break off and he's magically cured
of his disability.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
We'll get back to that, yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
And he runs so fast away from the bullies, and
from that day forward he was always running. Jenny and
Forrest remain friends through high school. Jenny's now played by
Robin Wright. There is another scene where Forrest runs away
from bullies onto a college football practice and the coaches

(20:11):
see how fast he is, so they recruit him to
play football for I think the University of Alabama. So
he goes to college, and while he's there, here's another
example of like, he doesn't understand systemic racism because there's
a movement to desegregate the university, and he doesn't understand

(20:33):
what's going on, he accidentally kind of like interferes with it.
One night, Forrest visits Jenny, who goes to a nearby
women's college. She brings him to her dorm room, takes
off her bra, puts his hand on her breast, and
the consent or lack thereof is also something we can

(20:55):
discuss later, but it's implied that this is his first
ever sexual experience with another person. He also prematurely jacket
ejaculated yeah, in front.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Of her roommate, and when they cut to the roommate,
I was like, I.

Speaker 4 (21:09):
Was like, that's the movie's one joke that's funny.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
So there's like this arguably a sexual assault scene that
ends in like a jokey button and you're just like,
what's going on? Anyway, we kind of skip ahead. He
graduates from college after of course, meeting President John F.
Kennedy for being a college football star, the first of

(21:34):
many presidents he will meet, and then he enlists in
the army, where he meets and befriends Bubba played by
Michelt Williamson, whose family is in the shrimping business and
Bubba's whole personality is shrimp. That's really all we know

(21:54):
about Bubba, and before Forrest is shipped off to Vietnam,
he gets a chance to go and see Jenny perform.
She is now a folk singer. She is doing a
show in a strip club type place. Way what was
her like stage name Bobby Dylan.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
Okay, yeah, she wants to be Joan Bias. She's being
naked Joan Bias.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Which is like, I mean I and again because it
kind of the politics and tones of this movie, this
is made out to be like the worst and most
humiliating thing that could possibly happen to Jenny. But I
was like, that seems like, you know, with the right crowd,
that could be actually quite fun. Uh, naked folks singing
I'm in.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
I was also kind of like, I'm quite fascinated by
this club and the nature and the rules of the club,
and and how like she's not dancing, she's just and
she's covered fully with the guitar.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
I was like, hmm, yeah, the guys jeering at her,
you know, I was like, are they folk fit?

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Like?

Speaker 3 (22:55):
What is in everyone singing folk? Is it just her?
We don't know.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
I go the Empress and she had asked that this
is my like the lore, I creative, but I was like,
maybe should asked the manager, and she's like, I have
this huge interest in Joe Bias. I'm gonna be famous
one day, Like, can you let me one night do this?
It just reminds me of the clubs in like Flash
Dance too, where you're like that club, is that a
strip club or is that like a fantasy club? Right?

Speaker 3 (23:20):
And they're like, due to like wanting to release this
movie internationally, we refuse to get more specific about what's
going on here. Right Anyways, all I say I would
go to that club. It kind of looks like a
Jumbo's clown room kind of thing, right. Yeah, She's like,
do whatever you want, have some fun.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
It does.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, they just put on fun little variety shows. You
can do whatever act you want.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
Naked cabaret, I guess cabarets are also naked sometimes.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
So wait, Kitlyn, did you ever do that naked stand
up show when we lived in Boston.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
I didn't do the version of it where you were
fully naked. There was like a swimsuit edition and I
did that. Okay, So I was a coward not willing
to show my titties on stage. I mean, which I
would absolutely do right now today, I would have no
qualms about that.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
I did that show then. I don't think I would
do it now. But I used to be a tech
for that show too, and so like they had all
those weird draconian Massachusetts rules for like what you can
and can't do on stage, where they're like it's considered
art as long as you don't touch anybody or anything.
Like you couldn't have anything with you because they're like,

(24:29):
if you touch another person, it's porn. So you couldn't
even shake the hand of the host or it legally
became like a second like it was so in the host.
This guy Andy was so intense about it. He's like,
I will go to jail if you shake my hand.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
What What was the crowd like at this type of event?

Speaker 3 (24:49):
All old men who didn't know how to access porn online,
which is why I would not do it today. It
was all old men that were like h Like I
just wanted to give them a laptop and be like,
get out of here.

Speaker 4 (25:05):
Once you've done naked stand up, you can do anything though,
Like that's that's incredible.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's true. Once you've stood before someone's pea paw with
your titius out, your pipe out. Just what a time. Anyways,
I felt as a Jenny fan, I was like, all right,
all right, we're all on the same page here. That
looks like a fun show.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
I'm getting what she's putting down right right.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
So we're at this show and some of the audience members,
you know, creepy men, are trying to grab her. So
Forrest intervenes and like saves her. We've seen him do
this before when they were in college. She's pissed that
he's always trying to rescue her and Forrest says, I
can't help it. I love you. And she says, you

(25:56):
don't know what love is, Forrest, and this will come
back later, but she goes to leave. Before she does,
she tells him that if anything happens while he is
in the war in Vietnam, he should just run. He
shouldn't try to be brave, he should do what he
does best and run away. And he says okay, and

(26:17):
they part ways, and then Forest and Bubba are shipped
to Vietnam. There they meet Lieutenant Dan played by Gary Sonise.
Their platoon goes around the countryside on foot. They endure
the rainy season.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Every hit of this calendar year plays in rapid succession.
It's kind of fun.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, it's a good soundtrack. Bubba asks Forrest if he
wants to go into the shrimping business with him when
they get out of the war, and Forrest agrees. But
shortly thereafter, there's an ambush and Forrest runs away to safety,
just like Jenny told him to, though he does go

(27:02):
back and save several fellow soldiers, including Lieutenant Dan, whose
legs have been injured.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
Who's begging him not to save him because Lieutenant Dan's
ancestors all died in every American war and so he
wants to also live out that legacy.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yes, indeed, but Forest ignores his orders and saves Lieutenant
Dan anyway. He also does find Bubba, but he's badly wounded,
and Bubba dies in Forrest's arms. Forrest is also wounded,
he was shot in the buttocks, so he's released from

(27:39):
active duty while he recovers, and during this time he
learns how to play ping pong and he becomes this
like ping pong champ. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Dan, whose legs have
been amputated, is resentful that Forrest saved him because he
felt he was destined to die in battle, and so
now he has no idea what he's going to do

(27:59):
with his life. Then Forrest is sent home and awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor. He goes to meet President
Lyndon Johnson. He flashes his ass on TV to show
the wound, and also while he's in Washington, d C.
He accidentally gets shuffled into a crowd of veterans who

(28:20):
are anti war protesters, and he ends up on stage
in front of a crowd of thousands at the Washington Monument.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
With Abby Hoffman, who I don't think that he's orally identified,
but I like double checked and is definitely supposed to
be him.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
He's definitely supposed to be Abbi Hoffman. And the way
that they like, the way that they characterize Abbi Hoffman's
legacy is just so insulting and they're like that man
swollen a lot. Yes, I have to say, he's in
the F word a lot. Yeah, so disrespectful.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
I mean, I'm very excited to talk about the adaptation
change made here after the recap, because like, we'll never
know what Forrest really thought about the Vietnam War.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Not according to the movie. At least. Yeah, so Forest
is about to like speak, but a soldier, a cop
somebody pulls out all of the microphone plugs, so we
don't hear what Forest has to say about the war,
and lo and behold, Jenny is there at this demonstration,
and she and Forrest reunite and the crowd cheers, and

(29:25):
so Jenny and Forest hang out. She catches him up
on her life. She is a hippie now she has
traveled around a bunch. She takes him to a black
panther meetup and we can talk more about this scene later.
But Forrest gets in a fight with Jenny's abusive boyfriend.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, any scene that's about systemic racism they managed to make.
They're like, actually, wait, let's actually get back to Forrest,
like within fifteen seconds of arriving, for sure.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, So this altercation happens, and then Jenny leaves again
out of Forrest's life. Some time passes. He plays on
the All American Ping pong team and competes in China.
Then he goes on a talk show hosted by someone
who I'm probably supposed to know who that is, but

(30:17):
I'm too young. I dkay oh, Dick Cavot I love
Dick Caaviot.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
Oh it's Dick Kaviot. I'll come out right now and
say I loved it, right, got it, got it.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Wow, the John Lennon scene took me out. I love
the John Lennon seed.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
Make John Lennon's head looks so big, but I feel
like freamously, John Lennon had a tiny head, and so
for some reason, it just I can't. I can't embrace
the scene.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
You know, he does look like like a Sanrio character
the way that they've like edited him, but I just
oh my god, when he's like and no religion too dying.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So the thing here is that John Lennon is also
a guest on this talk show, and it's implied that
a few of the things that Forrest says inspires lyrics
to John Lennon's imagine it's only the whole movie.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
We're that goofy.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
So then Forrest reunites with Lieutenant Dan, who is bitter
and he is dealing with alcoholism. Forrest tells him his
plan to become a shrimp boat captain because he had
made a promise to Bubba, and Lieutenant Dan is like, yeah,
all right, the day you become a shrimp boat captain.
I'll come and be your first mate. So then they

(31:36):
celebrate New Year's Eve together. They bond over being marginalized
for their disabilities. Then Forrest meets President Nixon. I forget
why this time. It's maybe a ping pong it's a.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Ping pong related thing. Yeah, And then he starts Watergate. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
He exposes the Watergate scandal or something. Yeah, Forrest does,
and then he's discharged from the Army, so he returns
home to Alabama to see his mom. He takes the
twenty five thousand dollars that he was paid to endorse
a ping pong paddle brand and he buys a shrimping

(32:19):
boat with it, but he is not very good at
shrimping at first. He names his boat Jenny, and he
spends most of his time thinking about Jenny, who meanwhile
is dealing with drug addiction with suicidal ideation. These are
things that Forrest has no idea about, and according to

(32:40):
the movie, probably wouldn't understand anyway because of his extreme naivete.
And then one day, Lieutenant Dan shows up to honor
his promise that he would be Forrest's first mate, so
they start shrimping together, and all.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
Of a sudden, his hair is like really beautiful.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
I love luscious.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
He started conditioning.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Yeah, Lieutenant Dan's like shrimping. Look. I love he has
a lot of.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Looks in this movie, like a lot of like the
evolution of getting more snatched as the movie goes upon
or something.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
It's like, I like his Hawaiian shirt, like wavy conditioned
hair moment, it's like, wow, that's I love how that
they're like, Okay, he's not as much of an alcoholic
now because look at his hair, and you're like, okay, okay,
I got it.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, he got his hands on a bottle of herbal
Essence Swish and they turned his whole life around. So
they're shrimping together now, but they're still having bad. Look
until a storm brings in a bunch of shrimp, and
there's like this whole like forest preyed very hard, and

(33:48):
maybe that's what brought all this shrimp in, but anyway,
they have all this shrimp now. This storm also shipwrecked
all the other local shrimp boats, which the movie nor
Forest has any empathy for that happening. They just breeze
right past that.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
He becomes a shrimp millionaire.

Speaker 4 (34:05):
Yeah right, Also like highly likely the people who run
those bods are like black.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
Right, Yeah? That it is like it's like most likely
of like majority black business was just decimated and they're like,
and now here's this guy.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
This is great for Forrest.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah right exactly. That's how the movie feels about it.
Then Forrest receives word that his mom has fallen ill,
so he goes home to see her. She dies a
short time.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Later, and that wig in a wig.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
He decides not to return to shrimping, especially after Lieutenant
Dan invests. They're already millions of dollars in apple, making
him like mega rich. But he's so generous with his
money and he donates some of it to the church
and a hospital and Bubba's family.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
When I watched the Apple scene, I like turned to
my friends and I was like, did you know Joan
Bias dated Steve Jobs? Is that true?

Speaker 3 (35:00):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
That isn't that crazy?

Speaker 3 (35:03):
WHOA?

Speaker 4 (35:04):
Maybe disappointing even Yeah, I mean that's a bummer.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
It's like, I guess this isn't as disappointing, But I
think a lot about Steve Wozniak and Kathy Griffin that date.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
Yeah, whoa, I didn't know that either.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
I have such a strong memory. And like, she's to
have a reality show that I think was on when
I was in middle school and he was like on
it and they were like on a date and they
were on segways or something. And anyways, those guys, those guys, wow,
Joan Bias what like Steve. Yeah, that is a little disappointing,
but also it was like I wouldn't have expected jobs

(35:39):
to have that kind of pull.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Well.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
I still am confused by Grimes marrying Elon Musk like that.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
That's no sense to me. So many cases, so many cases.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
Anyway, So Forrest is now a bazillionaire and one day
Jenny shows up at his house and stays with him
for a while. He asks her to marry him, and
he says, I'm not a smart man, but I know
what love is, in reference to her telling him earlier
that he doesn't know what love is. He insists that

(36:12):
he does.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
The way Tom Hanks delivers that line, it does get
me every time.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
Yeah, it's a good moment.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
He's really good in this movie.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
It sucks that he's good in this movie.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Again, I saw this as a child on repeat for
a few years, And that was the only Tom Hanks
movie that I saw during that period, and the first
Tom Hanks movie I ever saw, So I just thought
he was like that. I didn't really understand that he
was like performing. And then when I saw like probably

(36:45):
Apollo thirteen, when I was like twelve or so, I
was like, wait a minute, that's the same guy, and
he doesn't sound anything like that. What it was really
confusing for my child brain.

Speaker 4 (36:57):
Like the nineties were a big time for actors with
a lot of talent portraying yes, characters of the disabilities
like Leonardo DiCaprio and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. I feel
like that was his whole yeh coming into fame was
how how many people believed that he was he actually
did have a disability. Yeah, the ethics of which we
can certainly debate.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
We can absolutely debate that.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Yeah, I mean, I think the first movie that I
saw that had that was I Am Sam, a really
stinky Sean Penn movie. Yeah, where it is the same
He's playing a character with an intellectual disability. Glad that
that doesn't happen quite as much these days, not that
it's completely gone away, but I'm glad it's not a

(37:40):
prominent trend. I don't know. I mean anytime someone portrays
someone with a disability or with like an quote unquote
other body type just to get nominated for an oscar.
I guess the last example we have of that is
kind of is the whale, right.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
In any case, Forrest is like professing his love for
Jenny and once to marry her, and later that night
she comes into his room and they have sex. But
then the next morning she abruptly leaves again, presumably without
saying goodbye to Forrest, and this prompts him to set

(38:16):
off running with no destination in mind. He just runs
and runs and runs across the country all the way
to the west coast, and then he turns around and
he runs and runs and runs all the way to
the east coast. And then he runs for like over
three years, just non stop, only like stopping to sleep

(38:37):
and just running running running.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
The beard effects was fun. The beard.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
I looked at him, I was like, he looks like
every single guy I know, And then I said, it's
kind of working on me. He looks good.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
He does have like a very Brooklyn coated beard. Uh yeah,
he has literally my brother's beard.

Speaker 4 (38:56):
He's giving Bushwick for sure.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
This a moment that my boyfriend specifically asked me about
when we had a post mortem on Forrest Gump. He's like, Okay,
I know you didn't like it, However, what did you
think of the running? I was like, kind of funny,
kind of weird, I don't know. And he said that
that was something that he and his father specifically really
bonded over when they would watch that movie. He's like,

(39:20):
I think that there is some like bizarre masculine fantasy
attached to that of like you were spurned and hurt
by a woman and you just run away and you
do this kind of like unhinged, hyper masculine thing where
like and I only stopped to sleep and eat and
poop and I just ran and you know, I was like, wow,
that actually does kind of make sense to me. But

(39:42):
I would never have been able to get there on
my own.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
My friend, who I watched with who's a guy also yesterday,
was like, WHOA, Forrest is kind of a giga Chad
And we were like, oh, I go, and he was like,
he really is just being an avoidant king. He's running
around town being avoidant and also just yeah, he's really
living out the male fantasy. And it also in every
scene that he's running that the landscape is so beautiful
but almost in a grotesque way where it's so oversaturated

(40:08):
my friends, that it kind of looked like a self
help book, like the cover of any book. Yes, And
I feel like those two things together make this sequence like, yeah,
I don't know, kind of a bizarre sequence.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Wow, men, men are so complicated. I was just like what,
because I think that that is one of those like
corny YouTube fifteen years ago things where if you change
the music and that sequence slightly, it becomes a totally
different energy. Like I don't know.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
It was very grind set for sure.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yes, yeah, he's a proto influencer. And at the end
he's like, oh, sorry, I did that for no reason.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, because he starts having like followers just running behind him.
He has all these like journalists and stuff being like
are you doing this for animal rights, for women's rights,
for protesting this and this and that? And he's like no,
I just felt like running. Despite that, he inspires a
bunch of people along the way, a bumper sticker guy,

(41:07):
a T shirt designer, and then like a running cult
question Mark, and then one day he just decides to
stop running and he goes back home to Alabama. He
then gets a letter from Jenny inviting him to Savannah, Georgia,
which brings us to the present of him sitting at

(41:28):
the bus stop waiting for a bus, and the woman
who is now sitting next to him is like, you
don't need a bus. Henry Straight is right over there.
So then Forrest runs to Jenny's apartment and discovers that
she is a mother to a baby Hailey Joel Osmond

(41:49):
a friend at the show Baby Hailey.

Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yeah, he's so small, chicken nugget. He's so cute, it's insane.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
And this is Forrest Junior because Forrest Gump is his father.
And then he like kind of interacts with Little Forest
a little bit while he's watching Burton Ernie. And then
Jenny tells Forrest that she is sick with some unknown virus.
I think it's implied to be HIV.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Is that that's like later confirmed, but they, I guess
wrote it out of the script.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah, So Forrest is like, well, come live with me.
I'll take care of you in Little Forest. So Jenny
moves back to Alabama with him, they get married. Lieutenant
Dan comes to the wedding.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Now sporting a crew cut and also a wife.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
A crew cut and prosthetic legs, and a eye's wife
God or his fiance.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
That the final Lieutenant Dan thing, I was like, do
not piss me off. That'sh I hate how the movie
resolves Lieutenant Dan's story where.

Speaker 5 (43:07):
He's like, Okay, I've quote unquote fixed my disability and
if it weren't for capitalism, I never would have made
it through, and you're just like, ah, fuck you.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
I also found that the choice to cast his wife
as an East Asian woman, maybe it was colorblindcasting doesn't
feel like it for some reason. It feels like it's
trying to say something. What it's saying, I don't know.
Makes me feel kind of strange, though I don't know,
I don't know how to explain it.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
I also had that thought, I mean, yeah, we don't
know what the background of the character is. But I
feel like because we met Lieutenant Dan in Vietnam, and
that the movie seems to very intentionally never show us
a Vietnamese persons, they're just like, we know who they're fighting,
but it's an unseen and so that there's no opportunity

(44:02):
to empathize with anyone who isn't in the American military. Yeah,
that felt that felt pointed.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
I don't know, and she's she has an American accent.
I think she's supposed to be American. Yeah, but like
in the context of Vitnams, so many soldiers bringing back
Vienname's wives and the discourse around that, I don't know.
It just felt like a really pointed casting choice that
was interesting to me.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Yeah, And it's hard to say because we don't know
anything about her. She says exactly one line, which is
high Forest, and then that's all we get from her,
and then the movie's basically over because shortly after this
Jenny passes away. Forest of course misses her so much, and.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
Unfortunately Tom Hanks is really good in the scene at
the grave.

Speaker 4 (44:48):
I know, no, it'll get you good.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
It's good, it's tearful.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
And then baby Haley, did you cry, Jamie?

Speaker 3 (44:55):
I was, I was edging, but I didn't get that.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Way to describe being on the verge of tears. And
Forrest is raising little Forest and he seems to be
a very good dad. And then when little Forest is
like waiting for the bus to school. The feather from
the beginning comes back, it falls out of the book

(45:25):
and then it floats through the sky again blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
The end, it reminded me of the feather hitting and
the it reminded me of of Jim Carrey Grinch, where
it like starts and ends with the snowflake.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
Ah, and you follow the snowflake. I did like that.
The feather it goes it like the feather flies right
into the screen, then it goes bink.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
I did like it. I was like, Okay, that's a
little bit as the guest magic.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
I liked that, very polar express. Well that's the movie.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to
discuss and we're back. Where shall we.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Start, Well, I would like to start, if possible, with
the adaptation context, because Maya, you talk about this so
eloquently and in such detail in your video, and I
honestly didn't even know until I watched your video a
couple of months ago that this was even based on
a book. If you would be so kind walk us

(46:35):
through some of the major changes made between the book
and the movie.

Speaker 4 (46:41):
Yes, I was telling Kaitlin before, but uh, after I finish.
It's the kind of like writing an exam after I
finished a video, all the information just flies out of
my brain. I also rewatched my video, so I'm gonna
try and recap this is the best I can. But yes,
so essentially the movie is based on a novel by
an authorn, Winston Groom, who hadn't had a ton of

(47:02):
success in his life. I don't believe the book itself
either was wildly successful. But essentially, Winston Grim is a
Vietnam War veteran and he wrote this book that he
designed to be kind of like a picuresque novel. And
for context, the picuresque novel is this like literary tradition,
where it's a story that follows a singular character through

(47:24):
a very wide array of events in their life, often
with a satirical tone. The example that I use in
the video is Candide by Voltaire, which is basically about
a character who witnesses an absurd, uncanny amount of terrible
events in his life. But the book is written with
a really matter of fact tone, kind of almost comedic,

(47:46):
and it's supposed to be kind of pointing at the
fact that the world is a difficult place and we
need to nurture it instead of instead of ignoring it
and believing the world is just like this positive, amazing place.
And I'd say Forrestcump the book is pretty similar. Forrest
Gump is very different in the book. He's he physically
stands out a lot. He's supposed to be six book six,

(48:08):
a very big guy. I think he's like supposed to
be like two hundred to three hundred pounds. He's like big, yeah.
And he's very different from Forrest in the movie, mainly
in the sense that he's a very imperfect character. He
has sex with multiple women, including Jenny. In the book,
he's horny, he does drugs a few times throughout the book.

(48:31):
He is like one aware of racism, you know, when
he brings up the KKK at the beginning. He talks
about how his grandma named him Forrest, but how she
thinks that the KKK are a bunch of no goods.
So he's aware of racism, but he also is capable
of being racist, Like he is quite ignorant when he
goes to Vietnam and he talks about Vietnamese people, which

(48:51):
who are completely excluded from the movie. But in the
context of the book, he refers to them as a slur.
He goes to China and he ends up saving Mao
Zedong from drowning, which I thought was a funny plot
point which really pisses off his superiors, but is also
a little bit racist about Chinese people. He meets people
in New Guinea. He's a little he's he's ignorant, he's
a small town boy, right.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
You mentioned this in your video, like where he's a
more realistic product of his environment than movie forest.

Speaker 4 (49:18):
Yeah, exactly. And he's most importantly, he's a lot less
juvenile than the Forest in the movie. And I thought
it was interesting when you had referred to the scene
between Jenny and Forrest as like sexual assault, because I
think in the books it feels a lot less like that,
because Forest is less infantile. You know, he has like
learning impairments and intellectual disabilities, but he's he's still very

(49:39):
much an adult and doesn't have the mind of a child.
And so I thought that was a really interesting take
and accurate. And yeah, and I think overall the book
just has a bit more of a satirical edge to
it than the movie does. And is it Roberts Mechis yeah,
Robert Yeah. Roberts and Mecchus and Eric Roth, who is
a screenwriter, have been very explicit about the fact that

(50:00):
they don't like the book, which I think is wildly disrespectful.
Winston Groom has been like extremely gracious about he's passed away,
but really gracious about the adaptation, was really excited about it.
And it feels like they just kind of disrespected the
source material a lot.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
And they screwed ai amount of money too, like there
was like a hole.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
They screwed him out of money.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
It's wild and he was very nice.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
About that too. He sounds like he was actually a
really nice guy. God and Roberts and Machis has just
been very proud about the fact that he didn't finish
the book, but essentially he felt like the book had
no meaning and so he wanted to imbue it with meaning,
which I think is really interesting because the book has
a lot of meaning. I think it takes this approach
that Winston Groom has basically said that he wanted the

(50:43):
story to be about human dignity and preserving dignity in
a world where many undignified things happened to you, and
like happen around you. And I think that that's definitely
the case. Forrest doesn't constantly succeed in the book. He
undergoes a lot of hardship. One of the biggest changes
they make is that Forest actually gets wrapped it into
the army in the book, and I believe he enlists
in the movie.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah, he voluntarily enlists. Yeah in the.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
Movie, Yeah, which is a huge thing. He flunks out
of college, Like there's there's so many things that happened
to him that are upsetting, and it feels like movie
Forrest doesn't stuffer those same things. And Yeah, generally, just
the movie essentially just sanitizes the book as Hollywood is
so wants to do, and turns it from this kind
of like satire about indignity into dignity to kind of

(51:30):
being a celebration of America and American history and doing
this like really bizarre quick survey of the America's twentieth century,
hitting all these like major points in American culture, like
huge touchdowns of American culture, like oh, adding in John
Lennon or Elvis Presley. At one point, Forrest teaches him
how to do that silly dance move he did and

(51:52):
just adding in these unnecessary things jfka. All this stuff
to kind of wink and nod at the audience is
very Pestiche kind of just like a collage of different
moments without any real meaning behind them. So I think
it's interesting because I think they took a lot of
the meaning out of the book, right.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
They like unsatirized it. It seems like they unsatirized it.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
And I think the number one difference between them is
the opening line in the movie. He says life is
like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're
gonna get, which I've always thought was strange because you
do know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get chocolate.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
It's on the box, yeah, and it's all yeah, but
you don't know if it's gonna be full of a
cherry or peanut, butter or caramel.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Have you guys had pot of gold? When they have
the little key which tells you exactly yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
maybe this is Alabama chocolate that I'm not let me
let us know.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
He's got a box of Russell Stover and labeled yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
But in the movie he says that, and in the
book he says being an Idiot is no box of chocolates,
which is the complete in verse of tone. Right. The
movie takes a really positive, really optimistic kind of a
political approach to life, whereas the book is actively engaging
with the difficulties that Forest faces as someone with a disability, right,

(53:06):
And so yeah, I think that's the general gist of
the adaptation, but there's so much more to be said.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
There's I mean, yeah, I truly would recommend everyone listening
go watch the video as well, because they're I mean,
just the specifics that you were pulling about. How you
know in the book, yeah, that he's specifically condemning the
Vietnam War, and in the movie they literally rip the
microphone away from him, so you can never really have
a definitive statement on the movie's opinion of the Vietnam War.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
I think they're trying to talk about like military suppression
and censorship, but it's like, how convenient you know.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
That this is the Yeah, the one it felt like
this movie was I don't know, I mean, in that context,
it felt like the movie was trying to, I guess,
strip back any of the intended meaning of the book
as you described it, and also really punish people within

(53:59):
the world of the movie who were seeking meaning that
was not conservative and conventional. I feel like the one
thing that stuck out to me is that we really
only meet like two men who are like explicitly progressive
or leftist or whatever. One of them is Abby hoffin
the other one is beating up Jenny. The only guy

(54:22):
we really meet who's a fictional character is like this
horrific abuser who's a black panther alive, right, and so
it's just like making him out to see, which you
know absolutely happens in those spaces, but it's like you
get nothing with the exception of Jenny's father, you get
nothing but really empathetic portraits of people who are living

(54:44):
like not countercultural lives. And so and the fact that
Jenny's whole character seems predicated on the movie has this
agenda of like getting back at her for doing anything.
It seems like, and I think you mentioned the video
as well, her character is that is like not the
ending for that character in the book.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
Yeah, very importantly. In the book, Jenny does not die,
She does not have a virus. She actually ends up
with another man. Forrest has sex with another woman and
they have a child together, and he essentially gives the
child to Jenny because he the quote is that he
doesn't want the child to have a pea brain for
a daddy, which is heartbreaking. But in the movie, it's

(55:26):
like Forest is supposed to have an IQ of seventy,
have this extremely childlike worldview, but then is now a
single father raising this child spectacularly on his own, which
I'm not saying is not possible at all, but it
just it feels like a really interesting shift between the
two realities.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
And then also in your video, I say, you point
out the various other ways in which the movie adaptation
differs from the book in regards to Jenny's character where
the movie it seems, gives and to be clear, I
have not read the book, so I'm pulling a lot
of this information from your video essay, but it seems

(56:04):
as though the movie does give Jenny more presence in
the story. But it also does this thing where it
basically transfers all of the quote unquote vices that Forrest
has in the book, or what like respectability politics and
conservative values would deem to be vices, and it transfers

(56:25):
those to Jenny in the movie where, for example, we
see her doing a bunch of drugs.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
She's the only character we know who's done drugs except
I guess maybe Lieutenant Dan for a while, right, But.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
We actively see her doing coke. It's implied that she
does heroin, and we also see her doing what might
be acid. Again, I'm such a square when it comes
to drugs. I don't know which ones are which, but
she's doing veriou drugs. It's implied that she it maybe
has promiscuous sex or at the very least has multiple
romantic partners.

Speaker 4 (56:57):
She may be also doing sex work by the end unclear.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
Oh right, because we see her she gets kicked out
of college for being in a Playboy spread, and if
I'm remembering correctly, they add in the fact that she
was being sexually abused by her father for the movie,
which again don't.

Speaker 4 (57:16):
Do that well. It's fascinating because Forrest in the books
is sexually assaulted by a female boarder at his mom's
house when he's a kid, or like I think he's
a teenager.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Which is left out of the movie, which.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Is left out of the movie, and then they give
that to Jenny. I do feel like I don't know,
I guess I do feel confident in saying this because
it's just men top to bottom at the height of
this project. I do feel like that's done to quote
unquote justify how her life goes. Is like a survivor
of CSA is fucked like for their entire lives, and

(57:53):
that all of these things. I mean, it just feels
like the movie is just punishing her so thoroughly. And
the only times in her life or in the plot
where she catches a break is when she is basically
playing the part of Forest's wife and like is living
with him kind of in a live in girlfriend's situation.

(58:15):
And I know you mentioned it in your video too,
but when they have sex towards the end of the movie,
she's wearing this like virginal white gown. She dies in
a white gown. It just all feels so like, I
don't know, like she's being redeemed, yeah yeah, and that
it's like all of this is happening to her to
remind us how good of a person movie Forest is

(58:38):
while punishing Jenny for any countercultural instinct or abuse she
sustained as a child, which is not how the movie
treats Forest at all.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
I also think it's part of this kind of trend
of the nineties and two thousands of this like tortured
angel trope that happened I think a lot with women.
I don't know if you guys remember so many like
indie songs from the two thousands where they be like
she's got blue bruises on her.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (59:04):
It was like just very like very voyeuristic, like man,
oh I can save you girl kind of songwriting.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
Kind of decembris vibes to be yeah, yeah, yeah, And.

Speaker 4 (59:14):
This feels similarly of its time for this kind of
like helpless, tortured, fragile bird woman that you need to
go save and you have to save her all the time.
But like she's so she's so do you guys swear
on this podcast? Oh yes, she's so fucked up?

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Yes for sure.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
So I think it's really it's really of this era
in that way as well.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
That and then it's like her, as you point out
in your video, it's her you know, quote unquote impure
behavior is largely there to emphasize how morally pure Forrest
Gump is, by contrast, and it's only after she accepts
the role of like wife and mother, like a very

(59:57):
traditional kind of that she is like redeemed, and then
she suddenly has the same haircut that Forrest Gump's mom
has throughout the same movie.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Like, oh, and she dies in the same bed. It's implied.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
And what I thought was interesting, and I was gonna
say it earlier too, is there are no signs like
when Forest's mom and Jenny die, and there's like these
parallels in the scenes. There are no signs of illness
on them. Forest's mom, true, Chris's mom dies of cancer
and there's not a sign and like some people obviously
do die of cancer and don't look ill, but Jenny
as well dying of what is.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Like complications do a yeah, like die beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:00:40):
Yeah, which is like horrific virus has an extreme physical
toll on the body. And Jenny looks so porcelain when
she dies, Like her hair is like voluminous and blonde,
and it's just like, I don't know, I thought that
was an interesting omission.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Very peculiar.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
I also want to talk just a little bit more
about like the power dynamic and the like imbalance of
power in that relationship of like someone who has an
intellectual disability being with someone who does not have an
intellectual disability in a sexual or romantic context, which that

(01:01:20):
power dynamic is certainly worth examining. And then even on
top of that, there are different scenes in the movie
where Jenny does things that, like whether or not she
obtained consent from Forrest is very much up for debate.
There's the scene in the dorm room, which we described,
and then I would argue also when she comes into

(01:01:41):
his room toward the end of the movie, when she's
wearing that like white gown and she gets into bed
with him and they have sex, I think consent there
is also questionable. But the movie, of course is just
like no, of course Forrest is consenting to this, and
of course any man when next to a beautiful woman

(01:02:04):
would of course consent to any sexual thing that might
happen kind of thing. And I never really picked up
on that as a child, of course, like you know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Well, sure, because this is being presented as a beautiful
love story.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Right, and I really noticed that on this viewing. And
I want to be perfectly clear that I am not
suggesting that people with intellectual disabilities or who are neurodivergent
are not able to give consent or to have consenting
sexual relationships. I'm talking more about the power dynamic, which is,

(01:02:41):
you know, similar to when like, you know, a twenty
year old dating a forty five year old, and even
if they are giving consent, it's still a power imbalance,
whether based on level of life experience or emotional mature
or like wisdom versus naivete. And I know that like

(01:03:05):
people's mileage on this varies. It's a very complicated topic
and I don't want to trivialize it or anything like that,
but there is inherently an imbalance of power in these
different scenarios, and my criticism is that the movie doesn't
really acknowledge that, and that the movie does show what

(01:03:28):
I would especially in that dorm room scene. I think
unequivocally in the dorm room scene is an instance of
sexual assault that the movie does not treat that way
at all, and instead ends that scene on like a
jokey button about him prematurely ejaculating and ruining the roommate's
bathrobe and twist. The roommate was awake the whole time

(01:03:49):
during this entire interaction. So that's what I take issue with.
I just want to make that perfectly clear.

Speaker 4 (01:03:56):
It's a romantic depiction of yeah, yeah dynamic.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Yeah, you're totally right, Kitlin, that like the power dynamic
is not even acknowledged, and that that feels like a
very glaring and could be adjusted pretty easily. But because
all these adaptation changes are made, I don't know if
any consulting was done in terms of presenting neurodivergence on

(01:04:21):
screen or anything like that. I would assume no, but
I'm not sure. I would also assume that I was
looking to see if there had been more written about this,
and I wasn't really able to find anything, which is
very frustrating. I have found a few, I mean, they're
mostly personal essays, many from autistic writers who are like

(01:04:43):
I mean, there's just a wide array of takes on Forest,
where there are certain nonprofits related to autism not autism
speaks that have sort of like claimed Forest as their own.
But of course it's like not necessary, that's not stated
in the movie. So I don't know, I mean, this movie,
it's absolutely baffling to me. I have like a quick

(01:05:07):
quote from a writer that like really embraced Forest and
specifically the movie interpretation of Forest. This is from a
website Slash writer a is for Ifa not Autism dot
Com from a post she wrote called autism on Screen
Forest Gump. I just wanted to share this. Interestingly, the

(01:05:28):
film depicts Forest in a more realistic light than in
the book. Whilst he is described in both as having
a low IQ in the seventies, Forrest is not portrayed
a stereotyped mathematical savant in the film. Finally, a bit
of realism. Forrest's tail truly shows us. How as I've
often remarked on this blog, you should never allow autism
to hold you back. And autism diagnosis can be a challenge, yes,
but it does not mean you can't live a normal,

(01:05:49):
happy and fulfilling life. And then there's physical disability, which
I feel far more confident saying this movie completely mishandles
actually crazy. That leg brace is falling off that whole
I mean, that's like the first huge example, right of Like,
as Forrest is running, it's his disability. His physical disability

(01:06:11):
is made out to be basically metaphorical. Yeah, and that
you know, as he gains confidence and he outruns his bullies,
his leg braces fall away, and it's that's the last
time his physical disability ever comes up, which is all
of these classic, like ablest tropes of like a disability
as something that's inherently holding you back and is making

(01:06:34):
you suffer and needs to be overcome as opposed to
just a facet of one's life.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Yeah, movie really flubs it. I mean going back to
Forrest Gump's intellectual disability and the way that, as you
discuss in your video essay, Maya, is all about like
the conservative right co opting this movie because of all

(01:07:02):
of its like conservative values, because it's showing all of
these historical events and like American iconography in a way
that is making no commentary or criticism about various things
such as the Vietnam War, segregation, systemic racism, things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
And it's this is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Able to happen because of the point of view character
of Forrest Gump, who sees everything with such a naive
point of view. He's always saying something like, well, for
no particular reason, XYZ happened. And the way that he
just he'll allude to these things oppression or corruption or exploitation,

(01:07:46):
things that have happened throughout American history. It'll be alluding
to them without acknowledging them. Because it's just like Forrest
being like, remember this, remember this thing that happened. I
have nothing to say about it, which is also just
the inherent ableism in that in suggesting that someone with
an intellectual disability couldn't understand things like racial discrimination and

(01:08:11):
war are bad. That he's just like, I don't know
these things are happening, but I don't know anything about it.
I think there's just like intense ableism inherent in that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
I agree. I think, yeah, that I had a note
that like for me that it felt both ableist and
condescending to anyone watching the movie where there's a line
shortly after he enlists I think he's at basic training
that goes something like being in the army is easy.
All you have to do is be completely pliant and
do what anyone tells you to do, and you'll do great.

(01:08:43):
And that is like implied that that is inherent to
his like intellectual disability, that he is servile and does
what he's told, which is certainly not true, and also
that that is the I feel like the underlying message
of the movie, and like part of the way the
way he intellectual disability is used narratively is to like
telegraph this message that like if you just like do

(01:09:06):
what you're told and like stay on the path you've
been told to stay on, you could randomly become a millionaire,
you could be very successful, you'll cruise through life. But
if you're like Jenny and you push against anything, you
will die in a horrible way. And like, it just
feels like the way that his intellectual disability is used

(01:09:29):
in the narrative is insulting to the disabled and also
insulting to the audience. And just like reinforces how nothing
the movie's messages. I mean, it sticks out, especially how
unwilling it is to take a stance on the Vietnam War,
which is arguably the easiest American war to take a

(01:09:49):
stance on against America. I was like, if you can't
do that, you're fucking cooked, dude. Like Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:09:55):
The producer Wendy Feinerman, who's the person who got this
movie greenlit because she's the one who brought the book
to the studio, she said that her greatest achievement from
the movie was making this like a movie for the military.
Basically I like kind of talk about this in the
video as well. But also the young boy who plays Forrest.
I'm forgetting the actor's name. I think it's Michael Connor.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Jeffries, Oh, yes, yeah, the young Forest.

Speaker 4 (01:10:21):
Yeah. He basically he enlisted in the Iraq War because
he was so inspired by the idea of Lieutenant Dan
dying with honor on the battlefield.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
And it's like, I wish you'd read the book.

Speaker 4 (01:10:33):
Fascinating that a movie that's essentially propagating the military is
taking from source material of a Vietnam War veteran. And
in the book, like explicitly, Forest states multiple times that
he thinks, I'm gonna slightly misquote it, but I'll paraphrase.
He thinks that the war's a load of shit. Yeah,
And that's clearly coming from Winston Groom. And so for

(01:10:54):
the movie to be pro military is like, to me
quite disgusting.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Yeah, especially because I mean, like you were saying, Winston
Groom was a veteran of that war, so to change
his specific opinion on it is insulting to him and
insulting to any veteran. I mean, the movie stands on veterans.
I also found very vague. I guess this sort of
gets into the conversation around Lieutenant Dan. Also, I just

(01:11:21):
wanted to touch on I mean stating the obvious non disabled
actors are playing disabled parts as is still so common.
But with Lieutenant Dan, before we even get to the
conversation around ability, I did think it was more than
I guess I expected of the movie to at least

(01:11:42):
portray a veteran who had been essentially discarded by society
after they weren't considered quote unquote useful anymore. I think
that's something that is very under discussed in movies, and
we could get into Jimmy, how many veterans end up
on hows how many like? It's stuff I did reporting

(01:12:04):
on as well. So I was like, Okay, I do
appreciate that there is some representation of a veteran who
has been left behind because that's such a common occurrence.
But again, it's like the way that the story resolves,
that is, I think you mentioned this in your video.
May yet like that a lot of the like Lieutenant

(01:12:26):
Dan's I guess counseling of Forrest, they flip that. So
Forrest is teaching Lieutenant Dan, and the way that he
lifts himself up is via capitalism, via a business. He
picks up his bootstraps right, right, and it's it's not.

Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
Like you got shoes and prosthetic legs, so.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
Right, And then again it's like using disability to make
a statement about like, well, he's quote unquote less disabled
than we've seen him in previous sequences, and he's happier
than ever, and isn't that great? And it just feels
I don't know, I was really frustrated. It felt like
with Lieutenant Dan, I thought it was like a real
opportunity to reintroduce his character. But then they don't, you know,

(01:13:07):
take that opportunity to interrogate any system, but they do
portray something very common, and then they're like, well, I
guess disabled veterans should simply pick themselves up by their
bootstraps and then they'll be bazillionaires.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
Yeah, they just need to invest in Apple and they'll
be fine in like nineteen eighty.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
It's fascinating because he they kind of attribute his hardship
and his obstacles to kind of like, well, he does
drink too much and fornicate too much right then, and
his like moroseness after the war and his frustration mainly
semming from the fact that he didn't die on the
battlefield instead of like oh, this war was really horrible, pointless,
disorganized and evil, you know. And I think the only

(01:13:51):
kind of time they mentioned how idiotic the Americans were
in doing this war was when they kind of briefly
mentioned that the Americans attacking themselves, like when they get
start getting balmed. I believe it's like an American contingent
that's balming them. And that's kind of the only time
is even hinted at. I don't know how ridiculous the
war was in terms of like organization, let alone all

(01:14:11):
the other things, but right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:14):
It's so like Lieutenantan is a tricky character because yeah,
there were there were beats that worked and then beats
that didn't. I also think that the movie going very
very very out of its way that like, in spite
of being disillusioned, ultimately, I think Lieutenant Dan does come
all the way back around to being an American patriot again.
Even when he's on the shrimp boat, you can see

(01:14:34):
on his wheelchair he still has like pro America stickers
and stuff. And I was like, really at this point,
catch like I was, so, I was like, okay, so
they they don't want to disabuse you from the idea
that ultimately being a patriot will you know present the
best result.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
The religious aspect of it too, where you know, it
suggested that he if he had any like faith in
Christian God prior to this, he lost it because of
the events of the war and being robbed of his
destiny to die on the battlefield as a great American
soldier and patriot, and he's become disillusioned with the idea

(01:15:17):
of you know, God and religion and things like that.
And then there's this scene where he swims in the ocean.
He's like swimming towards the heavens quote unquote, and Forest
is like, I think he made his peace with God.
And this is after he's become a successful shrimper and
stuff a shrimper.

Speaker 3 (01:15:40):
And the only reason they had the successful shrimper business
is because Forest prays on it. And also it reminded
me of Gosh, the scene weirdly from Baslerman's Elvis, where
it's just like one white guy at a majority Black
Baptist church praying and then his wish comes true. Same

(01:16:02):
deal with for us.

Speaker 4 (01:16:04):
Hey, I'm really impressed you remember a scene from first
of all, how do you remember something that was nothing
but visual and auditory cacophony number one.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
Also Tom Hanks. Wow, Tom is always oh yeah eah.
That was probably the beginning that predates Pinocchio. I think,
oh god, dude, it's bad. Really. I don't know if
it's like he's taking advice from Chad. I don't know
what's going on with him, but all is not well

(01:16:36):
in the Hank's household.

Speaker 4 (01:16:38):
Chad Hanks feels like an SNL's git. He can't be real.
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
Whatever happened to Colin?

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
You know, I know where's he at. I'm assuming he's
on some TV show that millions of people watch and
I've never heard of. That's where I feel like he's
usually at.

Speaker 4 (01:16:54):
I feel like you're definitely right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:56):
My mom knows where Colin Hanks's I can tell you
that much. Obsessed anyways, but fact to Lieutenant Dan, yeah,
I think again. His disability is used very cynically by
the plot. You know, played obviously by Gary sindeis a
nable bodied actor. But again, it's a complicated issue. I
found an essay from twenty nineteen on Forbes by friend

(01:17:18):
of the cast Kristin Lopez, who is a fabulous writer
who's written extensively on movies and ableism, which is why
she wrote this essay about Forest Gump and ableism. So
I just wanted to share a few passages from that
will link the whole essay, but it's essentially about her
complicated relationship with the character of Lieutenant Dan. So she says, quote,

(01:17:42):
when I share that I'm a disabled writer, I often
hear the same handful of questions, one of which is,
what's the first movie you saw with a disabled character
in it? The answer is easy, Forest Gump. But where
I identified with Forrest Gump wasn't with its title character. Now,
before I saw another actual person in a wheelchair other
than myself, I saw Lueutenant Dan Taylor. Lieutenant Dan crosses

(01:18:03):
off several of the boxes we see in disabled narratives today.
Lieutenant Dan is a white male disabled late in life,
in this case, during the Vietnam War. The audience is
introduced to him as a dominating example of masculinity, and
this heroism is all but eliminated after Dan loses his legs.
Vietnam stories are their own subgenre in the world of

(01:18:23):
disabled narratives, but the bulk of them coming several years
after that event. In the eighties and nineties, in nearly
all of them. Men disabled in the war are bitter
and resentful. They aren't necessarily bitter about the society that
leaves them without shelter or accessibility, but how the average
American has responded to the war themselves. In these movies,
the disability is meant to show how callous humanity has

(01:18:44):
become to veterans, not the disabled, per se. And then
she goes on to say that she still has a
very strong connection to this character, specifically the moment where
Lieutenant Dan was speaking to a priest and and you know,
is told that God is listening. She says, quote Dan's
irritation at the ablest rhetoric of religion or enable person's

(01:19:07):
belief that everyone who is disabled will be cured upon
death is understandable. I've had several conversations just like this.
When you've never seen yourself represented, you latch onto the
first thing you see, for good or bad. Twenty five
years later, I still put down Lieutenant Dan as one
of my favorite characters, but I understand his limitations and
failings as far as disabled representation goes. He doesn't posit

(01:19:27):
anything new. His depiction is common but in a landscape
where representation remains so limited, the few good ideas Dan
is given shaped who I was and reminded me of
what I expected movies to push for in the future.

Speaker 4 (01:19:40):
I think it's like a start, you know. And I
think many aspects of this movie are so complicated because
they are a star in some direction, even if they're
quite imperfect, I mean really important context as well as
in the book, Dan isn't his lieutenant. He meets Dan
just in the hospital and his whole face is mutilated,
like he's he's been severely injured on his face, and

(01:20:02):
so he doesn't have the opportunity to conceal his disability.
At the end of Forrest Gump, Forrest runs away with
Dan and an orangutang, which can't I can't even get
into that, but they like run off together.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
Now, why would they cut that?

Speaker 4 (01:20:19):
I know, what the heck? But yeah, Dan's not like
reabsorbed as a member of sobsidety. He can't, you know,
kind of switch. He can't conceal himself, and so I
think that that's also kind of an interesting change made.
But I totally understand that the empathy with Dan and
finding him complicated right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Yeah, it's like we see so many cases of that.
I know, we've talked about it a lot on the
show before, of flawed representation. If it's the first representation
you encounter, of course that you're going to feel a
type of way about it. So I supposed to, yeah,
acknowledge that because I think Dan is again there's a
lot of missed opportunities with that character, not just in

(01:21:00):
regards to disability, but in regards to veterans and in
regards to like a clear opportunity to be like, the
Vietnam War was bad. It's just like, it is so
wild to me that a movie like that made this
much fucking money didn't have the like balls to say
that the Vietnam War was bad.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Anyways, Well, that's why the movie made money.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
That's true.

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
Well, it's also coming after a whole genre of movies
that are Vietnam War Apocalypse now p Full Metal Jacket.
I think it's right.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
Yeah, I forgot to bring this up during our conversation
about Jenny. But because Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Robert
Zebeciz were just on a tour together for this movie
that I don't know, I don't I don't know anyone
who saw it here here, that's such a It also
just sounds like Robert Zebecca's phoning it in, like here,

(01:21:55):
here's this He's.

Speaker 4 (01:21:56):
Been phoning it in here.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
Oh God. But because obviously this team was reuniting, Forrest
Gump was coming up a lot on the press tour,
and a Variety interviewer asked Robin Wright about sort of
this backlash to the Jenny character over time. So the
question was there are some different takes on Jenny, including

(01:22:19):
that she was punished for her choices, which were reflective
of the choices of many young women in a generation
that had social and economic liberty for the first time.
She chooses a free, willing life and she dies. There's
a sense that this is kind of an anti feminist role.
What do you think, Robin Wright, who the only thing
I can really say for her here is like, this

(01:22:40):
is a very unfortunate two men to be sitting next
to while being put on the spot about this, But
Robin Wright replies, no, it's not about that. People have
said she's a voldemort to Forest. I wouldn't choose that
as a reference, but she was kind of selfish. I
don't think it's a punishment that she gets aids she
was so he's remiscuous. That was the selfishness that she

(01:23:02):
did to Forest. He was in love with her from
day one, and she was just flighty and running and
doing coke and hooking up with a black panther. And
then she gets sick and says, this is your child,
but I'm dying, and he still takes her I'll take
care of you at mama's house. I mean, it's the
sweetest love story. Baffling, Like, okay, baffling.

Speaker 2 (01:23:23):
Even if you're next to the people who you made
the movie with. That's a dog shit take. Yeah, I'm sorry,
that is no excuse.

Speaker 3 (01:23:30):
She triples down. I rereading the quote, you're like, wait.

Speaker 4 (01:23:34):
No, she's committing all the Cardinal's sense of acting. As
an actor, you're supposed to empathize with your character, like regardless,
Like you're supposed to understand some humanity and your characters
some of their actions, their motivations. For her to like
so wildly misunderstand Jenny is kind of embarrassing, Like what, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:54):
Especially as a woman who is like not that far
removed from that general She's like a decade removed from
the actual age of Jenny's character, and so I was
just like, I don't know Boomer women. I will never
I will never understand they love to own themselves. Like
it's just it's wild. Anyways, Yeah that I just wanted

(01:24:15):
to share that absolute piece of dogshit quote. Not sure
what's going on with Robin Wright.

Speaker 4 (01:24:21):
I think the idea of Jenny being anti feminist is
also kind of like a little unfair as well. I
think I don't know a lot of people in my
comments on the video were like, most of the reason
I love Forrest Gump is because I love Jenny and
I saw myself and her, and so I think in
a way there could be like a bit more of
a repairative reading of Forrest Gump, and you know, seeing
Jenny as this empathetic, like strong willed character, a survivor

(01:24:44):
in all contexts, and you know who set out to,
you know, pursue her dreams and like kind of did
what she wanted, which I think is great. And I
hate that I hate the narrative about her stringing Forest
along like god so classic of that time.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I I really like the
character of Jenny, and I think it's just like the
takeaway my takeaway is like, I mean, keeping our conversation
about consent in mind, but I think that it's like
you leave the movie just wishing that the world hadn't
done her so fucking dirty. And again it's like, if
that is the way that the movie needs Jenny's story

(01:25:20):
to end, which obviously it doesn't because the source ma
material doesn't do that, but like, again, imply that it's
systemic in any way that she got fucked over in
this way, as opposed to being like it's basically her
fault and she brought on herself, and the actor agrees,
and like, I don't know, I think in general her
story should not have gone that way. But there's just again,

(01:25:41):
there's no because this movie has no interest in interrogating
any systemic anything. You're Yeah, you're presented with like a
young feminist who is like trying to like live on
her own, trying to overcome a very traumatic past, and
they kill her.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:25:57):
So I find the relationship between jenn and Forrest kind
of fascinating, especially in the movie because outside of the
romanticized context, like I think they have this like fascinating
kind of codependence and like platonic love that gets really
embroiled with romantic love and lust. And I don't know.
I think when they're children, you see them kind of
helping each other in these ways, you know, like she

(01:26:18):
helps Forest, like she's a friend to him where no
one else is, and you know he's there for her
as like a support through what she's going through, and
he's like as children and helping each other in that
way and then getting kind of wires crossed when you
get older and not knowing, you know, not knowing if
you're in love or if you're your friends. I think
could have a fascinating like it could be there could
be some interesting angles to look at that from. But yeah, no,

(01:26:41):
the movie, the movie's not interested in doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:26:45):
Yeah, because the movie's convinced that it's a consensual love
story and like, I don't know, it just it the
scene that I appreciated the most between Forrest and Jenny,
even though it's you know, extremely melodramatic, but late in
the movie, when they passed her house where she had

(01:27:05):
been abused and she you know, throws rocks at it.
She has like a big emotional response to seeing this
house again that is ostensibly empty at this point, but
she's you know, flinging rocks at it, and Forrest like
just lets her and like doesn't interfere, and like does
I think what a true friend should do in that situation.
Just is there for her, And you know, it's possible

(01:27:27):
he doesn't totally. I mean, but it is actually implied
that he understands why she's doing it, because he's not
interfering in ways he would in other situations.

Speaker 4 (01:27:35):
I think he emotionally understands. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:38):
Yeah, I really liked that moment between them, and I
guess I wish that that was more where their relationship lived,
of like they understand each other because of this shared history,
Like it didn't need to be tumbled into a romantic
like and now we share a child together because it's

(01:27:59):
just too it's too messy. The movie's not equipped to
responsibly handle that.

Speaker 4 (01:28:04):
It's very Hollywood. Yeah yeah, big kiss at the end
kind of thing, you know, foot pop kind of storyline.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
Yes, for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:28:15):
Okay, sorry, that was my Jenny side conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:28:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shall we talk about Bubba we shed?
We must? I guess just zooming out a little bit
and examining the way the movie handles black characters in general,
where they mostly exist to service or further characterize white characters,
particularly Forrest Gump, of course, and it's characterizing the Force

(01:28:44):
Gump character by showing how naive he is to things
like systemic racism, because we see many examples of this.
We've already discussed several of them. The him like referencing
that he was named after a Grand Wizard of the KKK,
him not understanding what that organization is at all. Like

(01:29:09):
there's that scene where he's at the Black Panther meeting
and there's a Black panther who is lecturing Forrest about
like the Vietnam War and how the Black Panthers oppose
any war where the US sends black soldiers to the
front line to die for a country that hates them,
and how racism is destroying black communities and things of

(01:29:31):
that nature, and Forest is just like completely ignoring him
in favor of paying attention to Jenny. There's like other
just like references to the fact that like Forrest is
clueless to systemic racism, and then you have him befriending
and like becoming best friends with Bubba, who is I

(01:29:55):
guess not a black character in the book.

Speaker 4 (01:29:58):
Is that it's just not really stated in the book.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
It's not specified, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
See, and it's also mentioned in the book. I think
you said that they met in college, not the battlefield,
which felt like pointed to make it because they forego
that in favor of, you know, they make a weird
visual joke of like Forrest doesn't know what's going on
in this scene where George Wallace is talking, and like
that is done instead of just introducing him to Bubba

(01:30:23):
in college, and I feel like it's almost implied that, like, well,
of course you wouldn't make a black friend in college
during this era. Like it just I don't know, that
felt very pointed. I wrote down under Bubba, I was like,
everyone should just watch The Five Bloods instead of this

(01:30:44):
movie's take on the Vietnam War. Have you guys seen that?

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
I haven't.

Speaker 4 (01:30:47):
I haven't seen The Five Bloods.

Speaker 3 (01:30:49):
It came out during the pandemic lockdown, so I think
that's why a lot of people didn't see it. But
it was a Spike Lee movie for Netflix. Amazing, but
it's about black Vietnam War veterans, like talking about their
time in the service, and it's a really great movie.
Delroy Lindo is great in it anyways, a movie with

(01:31:10):
fifty times more to say than this one.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
Right, because all it says about Bubba, for example, is
that he likes shrimp, right, right, all we get to
know about Bubba well.

Speaker 3 (01:31:23):
And also it feels implied that Bubba is neuro divergent
in some way as well.

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
Seems like it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
Yeah, but again not something that the movie is going
to explicitly attempt to talk about. And in the case
of Forrest, we get a you know, deeply imperfect, but
we get far more information about Forest like personality and
interests than Bubba. I mean, it really is just that

(01:31:53):
one note. I also wanted to mention that in the
movie they add this detail that he has a protruding lip,
and they made that actor, the actor playing Bubba, Mikeelty Williamson,
like put in a prosthetic in order to hold his face.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
I was curious about that.

Speaker 3 (01:32:15):
I was as well. But yes, it says Williamson wore
a lip attachment to create Bubba's protruding lip, which again
just feels very caricaturesque and insulting and fucked.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
Like minstrel show kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (01:32:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the lip did have elements of menstrualsy.
That made me feel a little strange. It's just a
strange addition. I think that they're trying to kind of
have him and Bubba feel like a kinship with each
other because Bubba has this kind of like physical difference
and then Forrest has this like intellectual cognitive difference, and

(01:32:52):
maybe that's why they feel like closer to each other.
But I think maybe it was a bit misguided.

Speaker 3 (01:32:58):
They could just be friends. That they can just be friends.
Like I was again, it's like we're scriping the bottom
of the barrel here in terms of like what this
movie does. I was glad to see that there were
black soldiers included in this platoon because I actually I
haven't seen Apocalypse Now bravely it's one of my other

(01:33:19):
long hauldouts for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola of Megalopolis.

Speaker 4 (01:33:26):
No. I love Francis. I I can movies.

Speaker 3 (01:33:34):
Look, I mean z Mecca is another example of you
gotta flop at some point.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
All these guys are in their flop era no no,
no no.

Speaker 4 (01:33:41):
I love a director who is capable of making the
most monumental flops but also made like three of the
most important amazing movies of all time. Like that is,
like that is someone who I'm like cook, You're cooking
pul Schraders, same garbage movies and amazing movies. I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:33:57):
Yes, you've got you've got one more in U can
I can feel it, feel it, I can feel it.
But yeah, that there are black soldiers in Forest Platoon,
I think is very important because there were I've got
some data up here. And this is also just something
that is explicitly addressed extensively in The Five Bloods, which
is I think we should just cover that movie. And

(01:34:19):
then it's because I feel like it was like underrated,
but that there were three hundred thousand black soldiers who
served in combat roles in the Vietnam War, which proportional
to Black Americans. At the time, it was absurd, like
it was. It really was just young men being sent
to die and men who were disproportionately black, And so

(01:34:41):
I was glad to see that we have not only
the representation of black soldiers in Forest Platoon, but we
get to know one of those soldiers. However, do we
because all we learn is that this guy likes shrimp,
and that is about the best Eric Roth could do

(01:35:02):
for us.

Speaker 4 (01:35:03):
There's something about Tom Hanks being in movies with like
a noble black character, like one of those like noble
black archetypes, like I think The Green Mile is one
of them. It's just such a fascinating nineties trope of
this kind of like saintly black character. I mean, we
don't know as much about Bubba as we do as
we learn in The Green Mile, but like I feel like,

(01:35:25):
you know, it's it's just like an interesting dynamic of
Tom Hanks playing these kind of white characters who are
adjacent to these I don't know, it's just fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
Me didn't make that connection, but no, I see it.
I wonder if there's other examples.

Speaker 4 (01:35:38):
Like witnessing the kind of the suffering or witnessing the
death of one of these characters.

Speaker 3 (01:35:42):
I don't know, Yeah, I guess. I was also surprised
that ultimately Bubba Gump becomes a bigger facet of the
story than Bubba himself. Was you see Bubba for such
a short amount of time in the movie, and then
there's an entire restaurant about it. Again, I was glad
that Forrest gave Bubba's family a cut of the business.

(01:36:07):
I think it took him too long. I think you
should have just done it from the jump. Yeah, And
I think that like, yeah, Bubba's family was presented in
this very broad way as well that seemed like both
cretical of black families and poor families. It just it
felt so vague.

Speaker 4 (01:36:24):
Movie version of Yeah, it takes on a very individualist,
kind of like emotional approach to racism in that forest
is you know, helping this one black family and you know,
kind of saving them from poverty. And now the Bubba's
mom doesn't have to serve shrimp anymore, a white lady
serving her shrimp. But it's like, that's great, but we're

(01:36:45):
not actually like fully understanding the implications of you know
what I mean, we're not fully understanding the implications of
why Bubba's family is disenfranchised, which I guess the movie
kind of hints at when they show that all his
ancestors have been feeding shrimp to white ladies their whole lives.

Speaker 3 (01:36:59):
But it just but they don't even like say it's
so weird. But this movie avoids saying when they're fully comfortable,
say like name checking the Grand Wizard of the KKK
in the first five minutes of the movie, it's just
like I don't know, like like, yeah, I've rewatched that
part a couple times to be like, but they're not
explicitly saying what Bubba's family history very likely is in

(01:37:22):
the South.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):
To me, it is alluding to the fact that Bubba's
grandmother or maybe great grandmother was an enslaved person serving
shrimp to an enslaver on a plantation, but that is
presented in a like almost like a visual gag sort
of way, without again like commenting on anything about systemic

(01:37:44):
racism or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:37:45):
I do feel like with Bubba, it's again his family
deserves that money, right, But yeah, I think it's again
presented like Forrest did this out of the goodness of
his heart, and like none of this would have been
possible if it weren't for this amazing guy, Forest Gump.
So again it's like he's kind of coming in with
like the the white saviorism a little bit. They go

(01:38:07):
out of their way to mention that Lieutenant Dan didn't
want me to do this, but I did. And I
don't know. Just so many of the marginalized characters that
exist around Forest sometimes just seem to be there for
the audience to be reminded what a good guy Forest
is totally and how much we love him. So, I mean,

(01:38:27):
I don't Unfortunately, I don't have that much else to
say about Bubba specifically because we just don't know very
much about him. But I do think that this connects too.
I think my last point I wanted to make, which
is that there are I think over ten real historical
figures that appear in this or whatever are zamechist into

(01:38:49):
this movie. They came in on the Polar Express. Wow,
they are all white men. There's no women, there's no
people of color. You meet two black panthers, but they
don't bother to ascribe who these black panthers may have been.
They they're not named, I mean, and I checked to
make sure, because Abbi Hoffman isn't named, but he's credited

(01:39:11):
as Abbie Hoffman. But these actors are just credited as
black panthers, which to me indicates that there wasn't enough
interest on the part of the production to choose specific
important black panthers to have these characters.

Speaker 4 (01:39:25):
Although I don't know if i'd want like Fred Hampton
coming into that scene. He just he just like kind
of walks up and then he's like, this is how
I feel, and he kind of like like a yelling
at he do they just make him seem so like
they just make everyone involved in the counter culture seems
so hedonistic and like miserable and like aggressive, their causes

(01:39:47):
are kind of pointless, and and Forrest is like, I
don't get this. These people are weird. And I feel
like that scene is so emblematic of that. Let alone,
having Jenny get just like fully slapped in the face,
how this black panther meet.

Speaker 3 (01:39:59):
The fact that that scene is like played as this
bizarre joke that yeah, that the black panthers in the
unnamed black panthers in the scene are just screaming their
ideology at Forrest Gump, which is like, I think, like
played into how black panthers were portrayed in pop culture
as well. I'm trying to think of another exac I

(01:40:20):
feel like there is like well angry, yes, like angry
and ineffective. I think like angry, violent, ineffective. I think
I'm thinking of some old SNL sketches. I can't pull
exactly what I'm thinking of here.

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Yeah, I mean, if you listen to the rhetoric of
what that guy is saying. He's correct, like he is
saying he's right, but yeah, very true and correct things,
but it's reduced to background noise.

Speaker 3 (01:40:44):
Yeah yeah. And the same way that in the integration
scene at Forest College, you know, it's like you're hearing
something that is very significant and then we just sort
of pan over to like, what are these white characters doing?

Speaker 2 (01:40:57):
What's Forrest to doing well?

Speaker 4 (01:40:58):
Again, like to the end of visual goodness of it all,
like him picking up a book. You know, it's like, aw,
what a kind hearted soul and that's the individual is
such a nice so nice, you know, and like we
should just all be nice to each other. Yea, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:41:12):
Does anyone else have other thoughts on this movie?

Speaker 4 (01:41:17):
Really, I'm looking through my notes.

Speaker 2 (01:41:19):
Just something that you also call attention to in your
video essay, Maya, but the the fact that like the
tonal and the character and the narrative changes that were
made from the book to the movie adaptation had so
much to do with money and marketing and like catering

(01:41:40):
to a very broad American movie going audience, Because if
they had adapted the book more closely with its like,
you know, satirical tones and critique of American culture. It
certainly would have been a much bigger financial risk and
probably would have bombed at the box office because this

(01:42:03):
is coming out at a time and you know, this
is still very much the case now where we're not
as willing to be critical of American history and culture
and capitalism and all of the things as we should be.
And so they were just like, let's just whitewash everything

(01:42:25):
and sanitize everything and make it this sort of like, wow,
isn't this such a nice depiction of this nice, friendly guy,
and let's make sure we say nothing about anything. And
that made it one of the highest grossing movies of
nineteen ninety four. Was it first or second? Something like that?

Speaker 4 (01:42:47):
I think?

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Yeah. And Best Picture winner, if I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:42:51):
Not misswept, absolutely swept the Oscars. Yeah, over pulp fiction
and Shawshanks, which are so good. I mean, I'm one
of the remaining pulp fiction lovers, but.

Speaker 2 (01:43:03):
I'm kind of on the fence about it. But for
my money, Shashaik Redemption should have won Best Picture by
a long shot.

Speaker 4 (01:43:11):
Yeah. So I just wanted to.

Speaker 2 (01:43:15):
Point out that Zamechis and you know, the producers and
everything were just like, how can we make money from this?

Speaker 3 (01:43:24):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
Yeah, because this was made on a fifty five million
dollar budget and grossed six hundred and seventy eight million
at the box office.

Speaker 3 (01:43:33):
Wild.

Speaker 4 (01:43:33):
I think one of the reasons Alsell always feel slightly
complicated about Forrest Gump is because the moviness of it
and like the big cinema of it is like, in
one way so awful, and like they sanitized the book
and they made it so they made it conservative catnip
like it got I hadn't mentioned yet, but it got
kind of swept up by like far right people like
Pat Buchanan and New Ginridge, and they kind of used

(01:43:55):
it as part of their political campaign in a year
where Republicans swept the White House for the first time
in like four decades. I was considered like a conservative
kind of like revolution. But then at the same time,
it's like sometimes I almost appreciate a movie that man
and just to like worm itself so deeply into popular
culture and like manages to be so ubiquitous and like

(01:44:16):
such a movie that in some ways when I watch
it and like I can, I kind of appreciate the
like brazen sentimentality of it because I'm like, wow, that
is a movie.

Speaker 3 (01:44:27):
The movie feels like a movie.

Speaker 4 (01:44:29):
Yeah, And I can appreciate kind of the competence of
the like how powerful it is at like getting people
to be emotional. But then in other ways that's dangerous
because of the ways that it can be the ways
that it's conservative messaging can be kind of like taken
and adopted and ran with.

Speaker 3 (01:44:45):
Yeah, yeah, which I know you mentioned in your video
and again listeners watched the whole video, but that it
was this really like right of center attempt to say
the fact that they've made a movie about forty years
of American history. They're like, it's an a political movie.
You're like, not possible, man, Like sorry, that's just not

(01:45:06):
possible to do. But that they had the sort of
right of center like crowd pleasing approach to it. And
you say in your video like the right is better
at turning shit into propaganda, and they very effectively did it,
very quickly.

Speaker 4 (01:45:21):
It's one thing they got going for them.

Speaker 3 (01:45:23):
Then and now unfortunately that's true, except now, maybe the
CEO shooter is going to bring us all together.

Speaker 4 (01:45:34):
We can a Lincoln build truly linking and building.

Speaker 3 (01:45:39):
Wait, does this movie pass the Bechtel's desk. I genuinely
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:45:43):
I didn't even bother paying attention. I don't check.

Speaker 3 (01:45:46):
No, no, it does.

Speaker 2 (01:45:48):
I think there's scenes where like Forrest's mom will be
talking to I think her name is Louise. She's the
black woman who works for her, Yes, unclear exactly what capacity,
but I.

Speaker 4 (01:46:01):
Think she helps with the boarding house kind of vibe.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
And she just was like Louise, Louise, that's Forest, so
doesn't pass. I think that might be the only interaction
between women.

Speaker 3 (01:46:15):
There's also, oh this, I forgot to bring this up
earlier because there's just so much but going into this
movie's pretty low opinion about sex work. There are two
named sex workers who are with Lieutenant Dan and Forrest
on New Year's Eve, Yes whose I have their names here,
Carla and Lenore, And they do talk to each other,

(01:46:39):
but it is about the men in the room, and
they are end up like coming off as cruel ablest
harpies and that is the end of their.

Speaker 4 (01:46:50):
And Forest is like, I want to sex with her
because she smelled like cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (01:46:55):
She's gross, and You're like, all right, and I'm correctly
assuming we will ever see or hear are these characters
again and these evil witches are you know, provide this
opportunity for the men to bond?

Speaker 1 (01:47:08):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:47:08):
So yeah, no, this movie. I'm on scholarly journal Bechdel
test dot com who often ends up doing our podcast
for us.

Speaker 2 (01:47:17):
Our podcast is not even we should have a different
name at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:47:28):
Were it's just works.

Speaker 2 (01:47:30):
It's a jumping off point, as we always say.

Speaker 3 (01:47:32):
Yeah, but anyways, it doesn't pass, although there is a
very lively comment section on people like it might not.
Curl says it might not pass the Bechdel test, but
this movie is far from sexist. I disagree, Curl. I
agree to disagree, Curl. Anyways, it doesn't pass, and it's
four thousand hours long, So how do you like that?

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):
Yeah, well, here's the thing. We got to rate this
movie on our nipple scale. We sure do the one
true metric, where on a scale of zero to five
nipples we rate the movie examining it through an intersectional
feminist lens. Oh like zero point five nipples. I think

(01:48:14):
that Jenny and being able to kind of like reclaim
her to some degree or like see yourself in her
as someone who strikes out on her own and engages
in counterculture and activism and ignores and defies the like

(01:48:35):
genderle expectations of the time, the conservative ones at least,
and you know, just like makes a life for herself.
And I think there's like you can admire her for that,
But everything else about the way she's characterized, and about
the movie overall, and its refusal to say really anything

(01:48:57):
of substance. I mean, I do think there are several
parts that are very emotionally compelling, So I get the
appeal of this movie on that level. Obviously, when I
was a kid watching this movie on repeat, That's what
I was drawn to. But there were so many opportunities
to say, you know, pretty not controversial things about American history,

(01:49:18):
such as the Vietnam War was a horrible mistake, racial
segregation was a horrible mistake, But instead the movie opts
to just be like, remember this from the good old days.
And so I can't stand by the movie anymore because

(01:49:38):
of that. Not that every movie has to make some
grand socio political statement, but if you're going to walk
us through several decades of highly politicized American history and
say more or less nothing about it, then like, what's
the point of the movie. So I'll give it zero

(01:50:00):
point five nipples, and I'll give it to Jenny the
character the end.

Speaker 3 (01:50:08):
I'll give it I guess one. I guess. I don't know. Yeah,
I agree that Jenny. I think, to differing degrees, Jenny
and Lieutenant Dan are characters that are deeply flawed and
are reclaimable. Probably not in a way that the filmmakers intended,

(01:50:29):
but that's that's how movies work. I don't know. With all,
with all due respect to Forrest gump Heads, like, we're
right and you're wrong, and I guess that's just something
that you're gonna have to make your peace with.

Speaker 4 (01:50:44):
Not the gump Heads.

Speaker 3 (01:50:47):
Gump Nation is in shambles after this. We're gonna have
tomatoes thrown at us when we go to Bubba Gump
at CityWalk. Gump Nation's gonna come for us.

Speaker 2 (01:50:58):
It's a risk I'm willing to take.

Speaker 3 (01:51:00):
There are Robert Zebeki's movies I like, but anytime he's
trying to say something serious, it is so unseerious. Like
he's a great example of a director who's like ability
and talent and sense of whimsy I respect, but I
don't care what he thinks about fucking anything like you know,
he couldn't be bothered to read the source material. One

(01:51:22):
nipple and I'm giving it to baby Hayley.

Speaker 2 (01:51:25):
Oh yes, so small, just not very bit.

Speaker 4 (01:51:31):
I'm gonna give it one and a half for all
the reasons you guys said, and also because I appreciate
my teenage instinct to cry at this movie, you know,
and I think that I'll cherish that regardless of how
I feel icky about it now It's true.

Speaker 2 (01:51:50):
Well, may thank you so much for joining us for
this discussion. So enjoyed having you. Thanks for coming on this.

Speaker 3 (01:51:57):
Thank you so much, thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (01:51:59):
I'm so glad we also link and build like this.
I am so honored to be on here.

Speaker 3 (01:52:04):
This feelings very mutual.

Speaker 2 (01:52:05):
Come back any time.

Speaker 3 (01:52:06):
Bring up a vie, Yeah, bring up a view you
love next time.

Speaker 4 (01:52:09):
I have so many Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:52:12):
Where can people follow your work? Follow you on social media,
et cetera.

Speaker 4 (01:52:17):
Yes, you can find me on YouTube. My name is
bro dationel on there. You can find me on Instagram
my name is Broe Underscore dationel on there, and then
you can find my podcast on any podcasting platforms. I
co host it with my friend Hannah and it's called rehash.

Speaker 3 (01:52:32):
I'm excited to listen to the to the Furrays episode.

Speaker 4 (01:52:36):
Oh I love that episode.

Speaker 3 (01:52:39):
You can follow us on Instagram mainly at Bechdel Cast,
and you can if you want more content, you can
follow us on our Patreon aka Patreon, Patreon dot com
slash Bechdel Cast, where for five bucks a month you
get two bonus episodes every month and access to our
entire Patreon back catalog, which is over one hundred and

(01:53:01):
fifty episodes. So if you're looking for a movie we
haven't covered on the main feed, We've covered over five
hundred movies on this show, it's very possible. It is
on our Matreon and you.

Speaker 2 (01:53:11):
Can grab our merch at teapublic dot com slash the
Bechdel Cast. All of it is designed by a one
Jamie loftis and yeah, thanks for listening. And with that
we have to run forrest, run away, Bye bye bye.

(01:53:36):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski. Our logo in merch
is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit

(01:53:59):
link tree slash Victel Caste

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