Original subtitles

In 1994, a lovely and unexpected movie

captured the hearts of cinema-goers around the world.

I was sobbing uncontrollably.

And I couldn't stop falling in love with this man.

But the making of this heartwarming tale...

Boom!

...was anything but.

Hey!

What kind of movie do you think we're making?

And background action!

Instead, Forrest Gump...

A professional wrestler. ...is a story of secrecy and intrigue...

The script wasn't great. ...studio financing debacles...

We're shutting the movie down. Oh my God!

...and a director on the edge of his seat.

If you saw this happening...

he was about to blow.

And cut. From kneecapping the budget...

We're fucked. ...and kneecapping Gary Sinise...

It's like a magic trick. ...this story of perseverance...

Shake. ...was resisted...

Ice cream. He cannot talk like this!

...every step of the way.

Every day was just a train wreck waiting to happen.

And thanks to a tiny dedicated team...

Bob and Tom gave up a certain amount of their salary.

...Forrest Gump defied the odds...

Oh my God, I've come this far. ...the studio...

Fuck the studio! ...and the Academy...

I was a bit shocked. Thank you.

...to become one of the most successful movies of the '90s.

How'd they do that? Well, like Mama always said...

If you have enough brute force...

...you can make anything work.

These are The Movies That Made Us.

The same wisdom imparted by the protagonist

of the beloved 1994 classic, Forrest Gump...

Life was like a box of chocolates.

...can be applied to the movie itself.

You never know what you gonna get.

Instead of a box of chocolates, like almost every movie in Hollywood,

it all starts with a box of scripts.

The system was pretty simple.

You just go into the story department, and you had a box.

And for a script reader like Kevin Jones,

he really didn't know which one he was going to get, like the chocolate thing.

You just got what you got, and you just took the scripts back to your office,

read them, wrote them up, brought 'em, put 'em back in the box,

and you were done.

But long before Forrest Gump became a script that would then

sit in a box,

just like the movie itself, the origins of this heartwarming story

begin in the American Deep South

with local journalist-turned-author Winston Groom.

Winston Groom was a writer who'd grown up in Alabama.

Sorry, where was that? Alabama!

Yes, that's it. And he started thinking of a story

his dad had told him about this idiot savant, as he was termed then.

Hello.

He was teased by all the other kids. Dummy!

Then one day, his mother bought him a piano,

and he started playing this piano like a genius.

And this melodic inspiration of real-life events

led Winston Groom to wonder...

"I wonder if I can make him the hero of a novel."

But despite having no particular interest in music,

notes were still involved.

He took a few notes, and then the notes, within weeks,

had become a full-length novel.

A novel called Forrest Gump,

which of course, became a movie about a special young boy...

I'm Forrest. Forrest Gump.

...who was raised by his lovely and wise mother...

Your boy is different, Mrs. Gump.

...who does all she can to help him face the cruel world

from which he often runs.

Run, Forrest! Run!

He falls in love. He goes to war.

He learns more than anyone was expecting about shrimp.

Shrimp kebabs, shrimp burger, lemon shrimp. That's... that's about it.

He wins a ping-pong tournament and a Medal of Honor.

America owes you a debt of gratitude, son.

Starts a restaurant chain. Bubba Gump Shrimp.

Invests in an orchard. Yeah!

All whilst revolutionizing bumper stickers.

It happens.

But maybe Forrest's greatest achievement

is the mini Gump he creates with the love of his life, Jenny.

Who dies, not long after his mother imparts

her last piece of quotable wisdom from her deathbed.

Life is a box of chocolates, Forrest.

But with the movie... You never know what you're gonna get.

Thanks to Groom's novel, you knew exactly

what you were going to get, give or take.

The novel, in some ways, is very different from the film.

For example... He supposedly weighed, like, 350 pounds.

He becomes a professional wrestler. At one point, Forrest goes to the moon.

That'll never happen! Houston, we have a problem.

At another point, there's anorangutan who's with him.

So with all these bits that didn't end up in the movie,

for some, there was only one conclusion.

Forrest Gump was not a very good book.

But before this apparently "not very good book" was even published,

an early copy began circulating the studios,

where it was about to grab the attention of a producer.

There are different kinds of producers. Creative producers, financial producers.

Pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp...

This producer was neither of those.

I was head of Development for, um, Steve Tisch.

At this point, I'd worked with Steve Tisch on Hot to Trot.

I mean, I had not a lot of experience.

She did have one thing going for her.

I think that I had a good nose or intuition

for what people might be interested in.

And Wendy stuck that nose in books,

searching for the scent of a hit.

And one book in particular really stank.

So when I read Forrest Gump, I loved it so much.

I just had never read anything like that before,

and I couldn't stop reading and I couldn't stop falling in love with this man.

And that's when the love affair began with Forrest Gump.

Emphasis on "affair," because across town in Burbank,

Warner Brothers Studios were looking to bust a move on Wendy's man.

I had heard through the grapevine

that Warner Brothers had interest in the piece.

But this is Warner Brothers. We got more money than Davy Crockett.

Surely, they could outbid Wendy.

Or not.

Because as it turns out, Wendy had a nose for deals, too.

I called up Warner Brothers and said, "Unless we become part of the package,

I'm going to try to buy it as well."

Are you stupid or something?

No, because I would have literally been driving up the price.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Eager to avoid a bidding war, Wendy and Warner Brothers teamed up.

Exactly.

But there was one other member of the team

who had, arguably, the most important role of all.

Winston Groom, part of his deal was he got a crack at the script.

So he began writing the screenplay for Forrest Gump.

Filled with wrestling, space adventures... Houston, we have a problem.

...and orangutans. A little bit like people thought of the book...

Not a very good book.

...they also thought... The script was kind of a mess.

Because it was a mess, just like hundreds of other scripts

Warner Brothers had in development, Forrest Gump went in a box...

...where it stayed for a year or so.

But then on one fateful day...

Just go into the story department, and you had a box.

A Pandora's Box, in this case.

You just got what you got, you took took the scripts,

read them, wrote them up, put 'em back in the box.

Because after Kevin read the script,

Forrest Gump would never be in the box again.

I was kind of taken by it. I was instantly smitten by the script.

And it was smitten-ness that Kevin related to most.

Forrest, when he was a kid, had this huge crush on Jenny,

and I had that crush on that girl in that same period of time,

and I kind of felt at that time a lot like how Forrest would have felt.

So I felt like that was me. Then I went home that night

and I read the book, and it was even more stories. I said, "This is amazing!"

And just like Wendy, for Kevin, his love affair began, too.

I loved the story. Wendy loved hearing that.

I pick up the phone, and it's Wendy Finerman.

She says, "I hear you love my movie." Yeah.

However, love is relative. Jenny...

The truth was Winston's script and Kevin weren't a match made in heaven.

When I read the script and just thoroughly enjoyed it, I kinda felt it wasn't great.

But there was something about it that just was captivating.

So, with the general consensus being...

The script was kind of a mess. ...it was time for Wendy's inexperience

to, uh, shrink slightly.

If you don't get where you want to be, often, you'll try to go to a new writer

who you think might solve that problem.

And so, Wendy parted ways with Winston Groom, leaving him in...

Alabama! Yeah.

She tried other screenwriters until finally, the perfect script emerged

about a man with savant syndrome, capable of incredible feats,

a script about love, a script that's, well, it wasn't Forrest Gump.

And the winner is...

Rain Man, Mark Johnson, producer.

Rain Man came out and won Best Picture, Best Actor.

Good news for Dustin Hoffman, but very bad news for Forrest Gump.

They thought that that appetite for that kind of movie had been filled.

Then, Warner Brothers got rid of Forrest Gump because of it.

Cash in. Yeah, cash in.

For Wendy and Kevin... What am I gonna do now?

...it looked like the love affair was over.

What am I going to do now?

If it gets put in what's called "turnaround,"

which gives a producer 18 months to figure out another home for it.

And if they don't, it goes back in that box forever.

Producer or the project tends to die.

...and died on a Tuesday.

But before the march of time was able to claim another script,

it turns out, that something else had got it to turn around.

Kevin's career.

Kevin Jones had moved.

From this studio to this one.

Paramount was looking for a junior executive.

In his new position of power...

I got the call. Warner was no longer interested

and was willing to let her take it out and was I interested?

Moving as fast as his junior executive legs could carry him,

Kevin turned around the turnaround.

Everybody gets a second chance.

And Forrest Gump found a new home at Paramount Studios.

I was amazingly happy.

But there were some new things in store for the film as well because...

Also, during that process, I had been working on The Postman

with a writer named Eric Roth.

That's how I met Tom Hanks.

Who was meant to star in The Postman. Kevin had other plans.

Uh... No, not that Kevin.

Kevin fucking Costner.

Yes, that Kevin. I noticed you've added a middle name.

Kevin Costner came around and decided that he wanted to do The Postman.

And...

He removed us.

And that was fine.

That's all I have to say about that.

But with Forrest Gump back up and running at Paramount,

Wendy had an idea. She showed me this book.

And I said, "Here's another project that I think we can work on."

And Eric said, "Okay."

As for the would-be postman, Tom Hanks...

It was at a time where he was going from comedies...

What am I supposed to do? Tell me.

...into really pursuing more dramatic pieces.

We sent him this book and said, "If Eric was to write this,

would you lend your name and hopefully be involved?" He said, "Absolutely."

So we put our hat on Tom Hanks.

Let's go. And go they did,

to meet with Paramount chief, Brandon Tartikoff.

We pitched the movie. We go into the meeting with Tartikoff.

Also present, Paramount executive Michelle Manning.

I had just started at Paramount. I was a Senior Vice President.

There was one other guy there. Tom Hanks.

Yes, him.

And as Wendy and her collaborators pitched the idea of a Forrest Gump

written by Eric Roth and starring Tom Hanks...

We knew the essence, but we didn't know the beat by beat.

But without a script, Tom Hanks didn't know what to say.

Tom, please be funny. Just be funny.

Be funny, Tom. Yes, sir!

It made it very saleable. That's all I can tell you.

He was wonderful.

And Brandon Tartikoff says, "When can we start?"

And we're like, "Whoa! We need to... Eric needs to do the script first."

Springing into action... Great! Go write!

...Eric revved up the typewriter and stated...

I found a way, I think, to find the voice of the character.

My mother used to say, "Handsome is as handsome does."

I changed that to... Stupid is as stupid does, sir.

He had said in the book, "Being an idiot is no box of chocolates."

And I changed that to...

Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.

And ultimately, Eric Roth came up with the thread of his love of Jenny.

You're my girl.

That was the soul of the movie.

The months flew by as the first draft took shape.

And by the time Eric turned the script in...

Tartikoff...

Hello, viewers. ...had resigned.

And Sherry Lansing is now the head of the studio.

And while Hollywood powerhouse Sherry Lansing

taking control of your project may sound like a good thing,

it was potentially a very, very not good thing at all.

'Cause usually what happens is when a new regime comes in,

they basically clean house,

and everything that was developed before them is disposed of

or put in turnaround.

The fate of the, thus far, ill-fated Forrest Gump

all came down to Eric Roth's first and potentially final draft,

now sitting in the powerful clutches of one Sherry Lansing.

And she, you know...

I thought it was a very lovely story.

She was quite moved with it.

Which was quite good news. And so the next thing was...

Now we need to get a director. Right. That was easy.

The director. For that, a grueling search...

Bob Zemeckis.

Right, Bob Zemeckis. That'd be good, actually.

Dear friend of mine at the time, Bob was meant to direct this.

He was also meant to direct... Roger Rabbit.

Romancing the Stone.

He was Back to the Future.

So big blockbuster stuff. But Forrest Gump was more...

Historical love story.

Much like his soon-to-be leading man...

It was his time to go to a different place.

Um... Alabama!

Okay, but first this historical love story would need a love interest.

Jenny! Jenny! Oh, my God. Okay.

To play cupid for this unconventional pair

was casting director Ellen Lewis.

It's never easy to describe exactly what you're looking for,

other than that she's our shining light. She's his shining light.

Luckily, there were quite a few big stars

ready to shine their light on a screen test.

Direct from Hollywood, California...

One was the princess bride herself.

Robin Wright, who came in, who was pregnant and did a beautiful audition.

Please don't hate me. Quite the opposite!

And walked out with the role of Jenny.

Go on, go talk to him. Cut.

So after finding their Jenny, they began searching

for the other important woman in Forrest's life.

Bob Zemeckis and Tom Hanks knew that they wanted Sally Field.

I know.

Despite the awkwardness of their previous roles together.

Tom had just starred in a movie with Sally as his love interest.

If we get married, you'll have to get over that.

So now the next movie, she's playing his mother.

Funny how things work out. Which provided humor.

And to provide some tortured anguish...

Now that's Lieutenant Dan.

Bob offered that role to Kevin Bacon.

He turned it down. I got a phone call from Bob with Tom.

And Tom brought up the Steppenwolf Theater Company.

Which was a highly regarded, Chicago-based band of thespians

co-founded by Gary Sinise,

who after finding his seat in the world of theater...

Okay.

...started making his mark in Hollywood.

I'd just done a film, Of Mice and Men.

I remember that now!

I directed it and produced it and I acted in it.

Gary's movie was a... yes, a hit.

All of a sudden, I was getting some pretty good interviews.

But there was one role in particular...

Fall back!

...that jumped up and bit him.

That's disgusting!

Having Vietnam veterans in my family,

I just very much wanted to play Lt. Dan Taylor.

So I was eager to go audition for it.

I'm Lieutenant Dan Taylor.

And once Gary came in and read, it was obvious.

This is Lieutenant Dan. And then I got a phone call.

That changed a lot of things.

So with Gary Sinise on board... Take a left!

Ellen got busy with the easy work of casting the smaller roles.

That's where we're gonna find those shrimp, my boy!

No, not those shrimp. This little shrimp.

Hello, Mr. Gump.

Hello.

Bizarrely, I was watching TV in my hotel room in Los Angeles,

and a pizza commercial came on.

This one second and twelve frames...

"Big" would be an understatement. ...sold Ellen on this tiny future star.

And action. And that was Haley Joel Osment.

I just wanted to tell you I love you. I love you too, Daddy.

So years before he started seeing...

Dead people. Still creepy.

...Wendy was working out how we could.

He meets Johnson. He meets Kennedy. Congratulations.

He meets Elvis. I think that's enough for, "Let's just start on some things."

Yes, maybe the budget.

This film had a lot of scope.

There's lots of extras, we crossed over a number of decades,

so it had aspects of visual effects.

How do you budget a visual effects film? Well, you don't do it very well.

Equally challenging to budget for were the...

Locations. ...of which Forrest Gump had plenty.

He goes to Vietnam. It's this whole other country.

It was a scavenger hunt for locations.

Not just for the exotic ones.

Because at the heart of Forrest Gump is its distinct...

Alabama! ...setting.

So I went all over the South looking for Forrest Gump's place.

And I couldn't find it until I hit Beaufort, South Carolina.

That's where I found that old oak alley

and then there was this wonderful river, a lot right in front of it

where there had been a house, but it was no longer there.

Not for long. We built this house.

And a few other things, too.

We can do Jenny's farm over here and Vietnam across the street.

Yep, just pop Vietnam across the street.

We were able to take the area around Beaufort

and utilize it for a whole variety of locations.

A financial reality pleasantly reflected in the budget

handed to Sherry Lansing, totaling...

Slightly over 50 million dollars.

Which, compared to other movies of the day,

actually wasn't that bad,

all things considered. Great!

And with that, Forrest Gump was about to truly begin.

Umm... Oh, what is it now?

The search for young Forrest and young Jenny was very, very challenging.

Run, Forrest! Hurry!

The clock was ticking. I mean, it was very tense.

Thank God. Michael came through.

My name is Michael Conner Humphreys, and I played Young Forrest.

Mama always says that God watches out for little children.

My parents saw the advertisement for it on the news.

My mom says, "Just for fun, you wanna go do this for the experience?"

What an experience it must have been!

Hey!

Michael Humphreys had never acted before. He'd never been on a plane before!

Which made the impact this young actor would have on the film,

as you'll soon see, all the more...

...remarkable.

I never understood the gravity of it, where this all goes.

With shooting about to begin, it, and everything else, goes to...

Beaufort, South Carolina.

Finally, after nearly a decade, the cameras would roll on Forrest Gump.

Umm... Oh, come off it!

Zemeckis is in South Carolina, and he gets a call from his agent telling him...

Sherry's getting nervous. Very nervous, in fact.

The studio's slashing the budget. Not just by a bit.

Ten million more than they wanted to spend.

Which would mean taking that relatively modest budget of...

Slightly over 50 million dollars.

...and putting Forrest Gump firmly in low-budget movie territory.

Zemeckis took it very personally.

He said, "What do I have to do for Hollywood to believe in me?"

After all, both Zemeckis and Hanks were no slouches

in the box office department.

And so as one would expect...

It got ugly. I mean, it got nasty.

It's time for a showdown!

Things really weren't looking good.

Sherry's like, "It's so expensive to shoot on water. Get rid of the shrimp thing."

You'll never sink this boat!

"Just get rid of Vietnam." Leave me here. Get out!

Bob and Tom are like, "We're not gonna make a movie

where you arbitrarily start stripping away scenes."

But Sherry Lansing wasn't about to make a movie

that cost 50 million dollars.

Sherry's like, "We're shutting the movie down."

She sounds like she's really gonna do it.

Well, she was.

And so, Bob Zemeckis and Tom Hanks themselves found the courage

deep within their deep pockets and did something truly unprecedented.

Both Bob and Tom gave up a certain amount of their salary

in exchange for more participation points in the movie.

Bob and Tom couldn't quite make up the $10 million shortfall

all by themselves.

If I had any money, I would. So instead...

We do this, we do it together. They made a pact with each other

to make sure that they made the whole movie.

We be watching out for one another.

We're not just gonna make a movie. We're gonna make our movie.

And making it with a healthy disregard of Paramount Pictures.

Bob's like, "I put money up for this movie. Fuck the studio!"

That's the spirit! And now shooting could start.

Let's roll sound.

Which it did, in August of 1993.

We all lived in Beaufort, South Carolina in houses.

But Tom Hanks wasn't feeling at home.

Not when it came to finding Forrest's voice.

We just didn't want Tom Hanks doing a "Southern" accent.

I'm no fabulous linguist,

so I was trying to soft-pedal it as much as possible and was really lost...

I mean, he... He has a daddy whose name is Forrest, too?

...until Michael was cast as young Forrest.

You remember Michael? Hi.

Hey!

We never had the real template for the way Forrest needed to sound

for good or for bad.

And when Michael came in, we said, well, "I think there it is!"

My mama says, "Stupid is as stupid does."

Because he wasn't an actor, that was just who this kid was.

Those were his rhythms, those were his inflections.

So I think Tom started to really study me, the way I spoke and the way I acted.

And it was like, if you transpose this onto an adult man,

you get this kind of goofy, not-so-smart, affable character.

All thanks to young Michael Humphreys...

Forrest Gump. ...had his voice.

And that, well, that had everyone talking.

I was amused by it.

You know, we all started giggling around the room. It was pretty goofy.

It was one of those questions where, "Is Tom too far over the top?"

I'm sure when they saw the first dailies with Tom talking like Gomer Pyle...

And, well, the truth had to come out.

They probably wondered, "What is this going to be?"

No, not "probably." They absolutely did.

When Sherry saw the first day of dailies, she's like, "No. He can't talk like this!"

It's a bit late for that. Okay.

I went back to my office and I called Bob, and I said, "She really is kind of nervous

that Tom's gonna talk like that through the entire movie."

Okay.

So merely days into shooting,

and a sentiment still reverberating in his mind...

Fuck the studio!

...Bob had a choice to make.

You boil it down to maybe a few decisions along the way that make or break a movie.

Bob's decision... They called Sherry, lost their shit.

Okay. And it never came up again.

Okay.

However, there were plenty of other things

that Sherry Lansing wasn't okay with.

About three weeks in, I get a call from Stanley Jaffe.

The other guy at Paramount with a big checkbook.

He's looking at this cost report and said, "This is trending in the wrong direction."

"Stop!" Which, back then,

#Wasn'tAGoodThing.

Directors and studios have tension.

There was definitely tension from the money side of it.

And they had a bunch of so-called producers actually come down

to the set in South Carolina.

And one such so-called producer was the iron-fisted Michelle Manning.

So I got shipped off to Beaufort and was told I could not come back

until I had fixed everything.

So they came down to dog him, to make sure he didn't do something crazy.

Maybe to help him figure out some cheaper ways of doing stuff.

Man, what the hell's going on?

Well, one area that could use trimming was the special effects budget,

especially because one problem was proving particularly tricky.

You ain't got no legs, Lt. Dan. Maybe it was two problems.

I had no idea how we were gonna hide my legs.

They were looking for budget cuts.

Saw his legs off?

That would have been easier. It certainly would.

But the process would be less painful and more painstaking.

And I got a call from Bob Zemeckis,

and he said, "Gary, I know

how we're gonna do the legs." Get on with it.

"We'll take 'em off in the computer!" Computer hacking.

The first time you see him, that great reveal in the hospital.

Time for your bath, Lieutenant.

Of course, you assume his legs are in some holes.

Of course, you would. Two little legs in two tiny holes.

A very simple and effective... Whoa!

Harper! They cut his legs off?

But then Bob has the nurse lift me up to the camera

so you can see, it's like a magic trick!

Technically, it was an Industrial Light and Magic trick.

They'd go in and just remove the blue-screen material out of the frame.

But it wouldn't be as easy as that.

Bob's goal was to not make it easy on the shot, he wanted to shoot it

in a way that if this person really didn't have legs, how would I shoot it?

Like when he's on the side of the boat and he's going to swing across

and then he jumps into the water.

Now, if Gary had actually lifted his legs up over that side,

he would have lifted his cutoff legs too high.

It wouldn't make sense or look right, so I had 'em cut a hole out of the boat.

He swings without having to change anything

so it looks very natural, and it's so subtle,

but it really makes it look like this guy really doesn't have legs.

The more you could be convinced that this was really his situation,

the more you'd relate to the character.

Perfect! And that's the bottom line.

A bottom line that Michelle was constantly pressured by Paramount

to make more bottomer.

And she was an unwelcome presence

that Zemeckis definitely didn't show any Southern hospitality to.

Oh, I got there, and Bob was like, "Get off my set now."

It got really ugly really, really fast.

We were so tight a unit,

the nerve of anyone coming down, saying anything, wasn't gonna fly.

Michelle, on the other hand...

The whole crew's in there eating at the one restaurant in Beaufort.

And I hear Bob, "Michelle!"

Grabs me, yanks me outside.

"What the fuck are you doing here? Who sent you?"

"You can't do this to my movie!"

Did you hear what I said?

I look over. All heads have turned and are staring.

The crew could see through the windows as they were eating dinner.

I was so embarrassed.

So by this point, it's fairly evident

that the big-time Hollywood director, Bob Zemeckis,

liked to have things his way.

As a kid, I could see he was a very, uh, demanding director for everybody.

Bob. What?

I could tell that by the crew, just the vibe of the crew.

Not like pins and needles, but they just wanted to get it right.

He's kind of a perfectionist.

There'd be times where Bob would say, "Listen, this is what I wanna do."

"This is the shot, you know, and can we do it?"

We'd all go, "Sure, Bob, we can do that."

We'd all look at each other and say, "How will we do that?"

I get a pit in my stomach just thinking about it right now.

Guys, relax. It'll be fine.

This guy would sort it out. Bob, please.

He was the one when Bob would say, "I don't know. We'll figure it out,"

he would look at Ken.

Can you get his hand in his hand? And Ken would go, "We'll figure it out."

But for some of us who worked with him for a long time on different movies,

if you saw this happening...

...he was about to blow. You backed off.

Now speaking of blowing up, there was napalm to drop on Vietnam,

which is, if you remember, a field across the street.

It was an area they had in South Carolina.

They gave us permission to blow up this forest.

Because it was going to be turned into a golf course.

With it all on the line,

this expensive shot would have to be a hole-in-one.

That was gonna be a one-time deal.

There was no room, or money, for error.

So I was very focused on my little part of it.

Here we go. That's it. We got the ADs screaming, "Let's go."

I had a lot of cameras. I had to make sure where everybody was,

and how all the cameras were gonna turn on.

We rehearsed it and rehearsed it and rehearsed it.

With the studio lurking like a sniper

in the pretend sub-tropical jungle of South Carolina...

I even pressed the button... the massive napalm explosion in the movie.

They couldn't afford one single mistake.

All right, and... Action!

Boom! Boom, boom, boom!

And the shot was in the can.

Blew the hell out of the jungle. What'd you think, Bob?

Bob Zemeckis comes around the corner. He was on the can.

Bob was...

...a little miffed.

So it wasn't just South Carolina that blew up that day.

The take was the one we used, and it worked great.

Except there was no director there to watch it.

But don't worry. He saw everything else.

And after creating Alabama and Vietnam in South Carolina,

the crew made a quick stop in Savannah, Georgia

to shoot these iconic bench scenes.

Chippewa Square, which is the place where the bench is.

Sorry, "was." Of course, we took it away.

People there are always searching. "Where is that Gump bench?"

Perhaps we'll never know.

And after a few expensive sequences in Washington, DC,

for production, it became a race to the finish line.

Quite literally, of course.

We were going to be going over if we did the run.

Run, Forrest! Run!

Hang on, just to be clear, which run?

This run? No.

Or this run? No.

What about this run? I don't think so.

Then it must be where Gump runs from coast to coast to coast to coast.

Was it that run?

Yeah, that's right. Thought it was that run.

Bob wanted this postcard of America.

An idea Zemeckis really wanted to sell.

At the time, there was a Chevy commercial where they were all about America

and they had all these beautiful shots over the country.

But no one was buying it. Well, shit.

Bob says, "We're bleeding here. What can we do about it?"

Hemorrhaging from the budget. Why'd this happen?

Probably from the back of his head as well.

Bob Zemeckis surrendered to the pain.

He said, "We gotta figure out how to cut out the run,"

and he was really upset about it. It's just a man running.

On paper and reading it, you know, did it have that impact? No.

They just couldn't believe somebody'd do all that running

for no particular reason.

With Michelle and the studio hot on Bob's heels,

he didn't have a chance.

Do you really need all of that explosion stuff?

Get rid of the shrimp. For a studio person

like Michelle, it's probably just about the money.

The reason the script works is we have all these different scenes.

Exactly.

And nobody wanted to cut any of the beautiful script that we had.

Hang on. "Beautiful script"? I... I've been moved by scripts.

I have never been uncontrollably moved by a script like I was with this script.

Well, it turns out, just like Wendy and Kevin...

I love this story.

...so did Michelle.

I was... I was in it. All the way.

When they decided to shoot the running scenes in secret...

I kind of became a co-conspirator.

And this covert operation...

It was called the Fantasy Unit.

...was kept secret from Michelle's boss.

But I was never gonna tell the studio about the Fantasy Unit.

But time was running out, so the Fantasy Unit moved fast.

Sometimes we would fly to two locations in the same day in two different states.

Not a minute or a Hank was wasted.

We hired Tom Hanks' brother as his running double.

Under this cloak of secrecy, they almost completed their mission,

and then, Paramount found out.

"What Fantasy Unit?"

But with only one shot left in the sequence,

Paramount generously joined the party.

Which is the scene at Monument Valley.

Sorry. Not Monument Valley. We're not gonna pay for that.

They said, "Why don't you just shoot it at Franklin Canyon Reservoir?"

On absolutely no one's bucket list.

I'll put it this way, doesn't look anything like Monument Valley.

Considering the offer, and no doubt madly scratching his head...

In the end, Zemeckis says... Fuck the studio!

"If I have to, I'll pay this." And so, true to their pact...

We're not just gonna make a movie. We're gonna make our movie.

...Bob and Tom forked out another one-and-a-half million dollars,

more than enough to give anyone the runs.

Bob just has a sense of what's really important.

Can you imagine the film without the running sequence?

And with that, just like Gump himself,

production's journey came to an end.

Think I'll go home now.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, the movie moved into post-production,

and for a historical love story, there were a lot of effects to deal with.

Forrest had to meet Kennedy, LBJ, John Lennon, Nixon.

And don't forget this is before digital, and this had never been done before.

So no one knew how to do it. How am I supposed to do that?

I don't know how you do that.

Some computer weenies somewhere up in Northern California figure d this out.

More specifically... It'll be fine.

...Ken and the other computer weenies at Industrial Light and Magic.

The archival shots were pretty demanding, time-wise.

Each one took on average a couple of months to complete.

You take the blue-screen shot, and Tom's matching Bob talking him through it.

It's got to be that rhythm that they're doing it, Tom. Shake, shake.

So it matches up to, say, JFK's hand when he shakes his hand.

In this case, we actually pulled JFK out of his original shot,

put him into a movie set White House.

How about you? How do you feel? I have to pee.

Leaving the computer weenies to their weenie work,

Bob set his mind to ear-based tasks.

Bob was always thinking about how he was gonna get as much American music

of each of the eras as he could.

Because this great American movie,

now filled with great American landmarks, needed great American music.

And a great American editor to work out which ones to use.

Bob came into the cutting room with a basket full of CDs,

and he said, "See if you can make these songs work behind the scenes."

Which for Arthur... Was great fun.

Until he was reminded about the budget.

I never thought about the budget.

Well, Paramount did, big surprise.

These are enormously expensive purchases. And very predictably...

The studio's reaction was basically, "You can't have any of that music."

Forming another Fantasy Unit of sorts.

What Bob had done, brilliantly, is temp the movie.

A temporary score until the real one is written.

The temp track had all these great hits that made everything sound great.

All-American classics. Elvis, Creedence Clearwater Revival,

Aretha Franklin.

The soundtrack was a shockingly expensive trip

through the greatest hits of American music.

There were, I think, 30, 35 songs like that in the movie.

After seeing the movie, this time Paramount really were happy

to sing along. We got all of 'em.

Everybody who saw that first cut where all those songs were in,

you can't imagine the movie without it, unless you're just a money person.

Soon, even money people would sing the soundtrack's praises.

The soundtrack was the biggest soundtrack ever in the history of the film business.

And finally, after nearly ten years,

in June 1994,

Forrest Gump began what would become a very long theatrical run.

From frame one, from the feather, it was like, you just get sucked in.

All across the nation, theaters were selling out.

I don't think anybody in the crew expected the movie to do what it did. Nobody.

Oh, I'm dizzy.

When it was all said and done, Paramount was pleasantly surprised, too.

The picture, by the time it ended its run, had made

more than 650 million dollars at the box office.

Just a bit more than the budget they were so worried about.

The movie went on to be the third-biggest movie of all time.

And speaking of being right, for the director and staff,

who went into their own pockets to make the movie they wanted to make,

betting on themselves paid off.

That movie was so gigantically profitable, that even with weird Hollywood accounting,

each man still made more than 40 million dollars and by now, a lot more than that.

You gotta love that back end. Not that one.

And aside from the millions of dollars Bob and Tom took home,

they each picked up a little gold statue...

Robert Zemeckis for Forrest Gump.

...which for Bob, was his first. Thank you very much.

A few other Gumpers won, too. Arthur Schmidt for Forrest Gump.

Eric Roth, Forrest Gump.

Ken Ralston, George Murphy, Stephen Rosenbaum, and Allen Hall

for Forrest Gump.

And for Best Picture, of course...

Forrest Gump! Wendy Finerman, Steve Tisch, Steve Starkey.

That night, with all of us there and celebrating,

it actually wasn't any different

than when it began.

Nine years ago, I met a very special man

who has since taken me on an amazing journey.

There were many people who gave him gifts along the way.

Eric Roth, you gave Forrest a soul.

Tom Hanks, you gave Forrest a heart.

And, Bob Zemeckis, you gave Forrest a vision.

And the giving didn't stop there.

Michael Humphreys gave Forrest a voice,

and Kevin Jones, well, he gave Forrest a read.

Michelle Manning gave Forrest some cover,

but it was Wendy who gave Forrest the greatest gift of all, a chance.

Wendy is a dynamo. She moves a hundred miles an hour.

The kind of dynamo that had to move mountains to get the film made.

She was like a dog with a bone with the script. There's no question.

You gotta give Wendy tremendous amount of credit for all that work,

pushing that ball up the hill, this crazy idea of Forrest Gump for years.

She knew somewhere in this collected, broken mess

was a huge life-affirming idea for a movie.

My parents always said dreams can come true.

And to my own children, if you doubt it,

please remember tonight, because I always will. Thank you.

Although he may not have picked up an Oscar himself,

Gary Sinise, well, he won an award, too.

An award that, in some ways, was even more meaningful.

In August of 1994, I got a call from

the Disabled American Veterans organization.

They wanted to give me an award for playing a disabled veteran.

And I showed up at the national convention,

walked out on stage,

and I looked out in the ballroom there, and it was wounded veterans.

And it was such a powerful moment, and it manifested itself into a new focus

on doing what I can to help the men and women who serve our country.

After Forrest Gump, Gary began working closely with wounded veterans,

eventually creating the Gary Sinise Foundation.

The Gary Sinise Foundation serves and honors the needs

of the men and women who serve our country.

Gary's sensitive portrayal of Lt. Dan

shed light on the lifelong struggles that many veterans face.

Veterans like Josue Barron.

In October 2010, I was deployed to Afghanistan

where I stepped on a landmine and lost my left leg and my left eye.

After I got injured, I wanted to be strong and never complain about something,

but it was just eating me inside.

And this is who Lieutenant Dan is.

This tough guy who didn't really wanna show a lot of feelings,

but you can tell that he was going through something.

Happy New Year, Gump.

But I think it's more effective if you just let it out,

communicate with people, and let somebody know what you're going through.

That's exactly what Josue did. He reached out for help.

I had applied for the program, and here I am.

Getting a house built by the Gary Sinise Foundation.

Josue, he's a wonderful guy.

He sacrificed for his country.

We're grateful to him for that,

and we want to do something to give back to him.

If Gary Sinise would've never took that role in Forrest Gump

as a war veteran and amputee,

I don't think I'd be here today getting a house built

by somebody who understands the need of a person like me.

My bus is here.

On its surface, Forrest Gump is the story of one man

who touches the lives of many.

But Forrest Gump's journey across time and plenty of distance

reflects something a little deeper.

There's so much in the movie that resonates

with such a variety of individuals.

That was my destiny!

The disabled American veteran, the mother-son relationship.

Don't ever let anybody tell you they're better than you, Forrest.

The struggle that Jenny goes through in her whole life.

In fact, in this story about one man...

Jenny!

...well, there's something for everyone.

Forrest's journey brings a humanity, a warmth.

I will miss you, Forrest.

It's the story of a generation of people.

It's funny. I gotta pee.

It's heartbreaking. It is America.

I think it's really about the great parts of America.

This is about the conflicts that we have, but there's a heart that follows through,

and that's why Forrest says,

"I may not be a smart man..."

But I know what love is.

For a movie that began deep in a box of scripts

and ended a box office hit and a cultural icon,

there's really only one thing left to say.

That's all I have to say about that.

Or maybe there's two things.

Thank you, Forrest. 'Cause that's all I have to say about that.