Tomorrow, one of my favourite movies will be getting a theatrical re-release to celebrate its 20-year anniversary. I'm speaking, of course, about that beloved Tom Hanks vehicle, Forrest Gump, which beat out such classics as The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction to win the 67th Academy Award for Best Picture. Love it or hate it, there's no denying the movie's near-universal appeal among audiences and critics alike.
But this blog post isn't just about the movie.
Instead, I want to talk briefly about the film's source material. This isn't a review, just a quick paragraph or two to make sure that everyone knows a little about the book behind one of the most enduring characters of 90's cinema. The novel Forrest Gump was written by Winston Groom, published in 1986. I've read it twice, and the sequel (Gump & Co., also written by Groom, and published in 1995) once, and it's interesting for me to realize that the most famous image of Forrest Gump, the one that you are probably picturing right now, is so different from the one that I'm picturing. In the books, Forrest is a very large man (according to a 1994 article in the New York Times, Groom pictured John Goodman in the role) with a surprisingly cynical outlook and a very foul mouth, and although he is on about the same intellectual level as his cinematic counterpart, he does have an impressive aptitude for advanced mathematics. I don't know why Forrest's savant syndrome was cut from the movie--in my opinion, it was of the most interesting aspects of his character.
I am definitely going to see the movie again during its big-screen revival, and I'm sure I won't be alone. But I'm going to ask everyone reading this to at least consider picking up a copy of the book as well. Forrest Gump is a good comic novel, and deserves to be remembered for more than inspiring an award-winning dramatic movie.
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