Forrest Gump - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Forrest Gump or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Forrest Gump

[gabriel]

The virus that claims Jenny's life is not specified in the film. Director Robert Zemeckis never revealed what her affliction was, stating that it was irrelevant, and that he didn't even tell Robin Wright. Jenny says in the movie that the doctors do not know what the virus is, and that they can do nothing about it. This information, combined with the time period in which she got sick (early 80s), coincided with the HIV epidemic, so many people assumed Jenny died of AIDS. However, in the sequel book "Gump & Co" the author mentions that Jenny dies from Hepatitis C, contracted as a former drug addict in the 70s. Hepatitis C was not isolated and named until 1989. It was often fatal until effective treatments were developed during the 2000s. The disease, in fact, had been around for an extremely long time, but bundled in with diagnoses of the single illness of hepatitis.

[nora]

Robert Zemeckis asked actor Jeffrey Winner to toss his drink at Robin Wright's leg instead of her face while shooting the nightclub scene so they wouldn't have to redo her make-up between takes.

[melinda]

Forrest never uses the word 'were', saying 'was' instead, apart from one scene where Jenny, on her deathbed, says she wishes she were with him on his adventures and Forrest replies "you were".

[jamie]

While playing at the nightclub, Jenny goes under the name of Bobbie Dylan. The song she sings is "Blowin' In The Wind" by Bob Dylan.

[jessica]

Sally Field starred in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) as a salvager on a boat named Jenny.

[kristen]

The scene where Forrest spots Jenny at a peace rally at the Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., required visual effects to create the large crowd of people. Over two days of filming, approximately 1,500 extras were used. At each successive take, the extras were rearranged and moved into a different quadrant away from the camera. With the help of computers, the extras were multiplied to create a crowd of several hundred thousand people.

[liam]

Bill Murray, John Travolta, and Chevy Chase turned down the role of Forrest Gump. Travolta later admitted that passing on the role was a mistake.

[christina]

Chippewa Square, the setting for the famous bench scene, does not actually have any benches on the outside of the square that faces the street, only inside the square. The bench was placed there for that scene only by the production team.

[norma]

Robin Wright was sick with a cold while shooting the nightclub scene. In spite of this, she was still able to perform her own singing during a non-stop twenty-four hour shoot in which she was nearly nude, except for her guitar covering her.

[christina]

Jodie Foster, Nicole Kidman, and Demi Moore turned down the role of Jenny Curran.

[wallace]

On the day that Tom Hanks shot the football running scenes he had been suffering from influenza.

[jessica]

Filming lasted four months.

[caroline]

It is Robert Zemeckis' highest-grossing film to date.

[linda]

Tupac Shakur auditioned for the role of Bubba.

[cassandra]

In three unrelated movies: Forrest Gump (1994), Con Air (1997), and The Purge: Election Year (2016), Mykelti Williamson's character befriends the hero, gets shot in the stomach, and has one last conversation with the hero before dying or getting hauled away in an ambulance.

[wallace]

Hanna Hall later appeared in Halloween (2007). Robin Wright's ex-husband Sean Penn previously starred in Bad Boys (1983), directed by Rick Rosenthal, who also directed Halloween II (1981).

[darrell]

It is never known what happened to Forrest's father. Robert Zemeckis intended for audiences to infer that Forrest's father abandoned him and his mother, and has not been in contact with them since. However, Forrest's mother didn't want to hurt Forrest with that cold truth and simply said that he was "on vacation".

[javier]

Gary Sinise's lower legs were wrapped in a special blue fabric that allowed them to be digitally removed later.

[darrell]

If Forrest "ran three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours" and left his front porch early in the morning of Monday, July 5th, 1976 because he "felt like running", his entire transcontinental running marathon commenced on Monday, July 5th, 1976 at 7:00 AM EDT (approximately) in Greenbow, Alabama and terminated 1,171 days later (167 weeks and 2 days), on Wednesday, September 19th, 1979 at 8:00 PM MDT (approximately) in Monument Valley, Utah.