00:00Do you remember how outraged some of the film writers were?
00:04They said, how dare you take John F. Kennedy
00:07and put Forrest Gump in there?
00:10You mean, how can we lie in movies?
00:13That's all movies are!
00:21I have some kind of virus,
00:23and the doctors don't know what it is,
00:26and there isn't anything they can do about it.
00:30I'll take care of you if you're sick.
00:33Would you marry me, Forrest?
00:35That clip cuts to all of the deep complexity of Jenny.
00:41It just wraps the whole thing up.
00:43I did not remember that Jenny asked Forrest to marry her.
00:46That's what I'm talking about. I don't remember that.
00:48That's what I'm talking about.
00:49But it came full circle because she was so flighty
00:52and would never settle, and you always wanted her,
00:54and then she's like, you're it for me.
00:56Run, Forrest, run.
00:58Telling you to do that as an adult,
01:00and that's exactly what Jenny did.
01:02She just kept running, and you stayed.
01:05Forrest stayed.
01:07Okay.
01:08Do you remember Bob apologizing to us
01:10before we started shooting that scene?
01:12No, I don't remember.
01:13That's what your apology was.
01:15Okay.
01:16I'm gonna have to, uh, I'm gonna have to, uh, like, you know,
01:21get coverage.
01:23And you always say, yeah, okay.
01:25Yeah.
01:26That's your favorite thing.
01:27Watching him do me.
01:28It's my favorite thing of all time.
01:30Do the hands, though.
01:32Give me the hands.
01:33One of these days, one of these days you're gonna,
01:35you're gonna, hey, can you knock that off?
01:37No, go ahead, Tom.
01:40Just keep doing it.
01:41That's all I have to say about that.
01:44This is how I remember it.
01:45Correct me if I'm wrong.
01:46There was no lunch period for you or Tom ever.
01:49They were always out with a camera getting Forrest running.
01:53The classic line was, that's too bad, Tom,
01:55because you've got a load of running you have to do today
01:58when we shot the football stuff.
01:59He comes to me in the morning with a tea and lemon going,
02:02Bob, I'm really sick.
02:04I'm really sick.
02:05I'm really sick.
02:06I caught the flu shooting the New Year's Eve scene
02:09with Gary in the bar.
02:14I sat there with him on a late Friday night.
02:16That was a nasty set.
02:17I said, there is something in the back of my throat
02:19and I'm going to have the flu by Monday.
02:21Oh, no.
02:22And I sure as hell did.
02:23Well, that's too bad,
02:24because you've got a load of running you've got to do today.
02:26And that's what I did.
02:28Here he is, Forrest Gump, right here.
02:34Forrest Gump, John Lennon.
02:36That's you playing with time and reality.
02:38Playing with time and historic reality.
02:40It's irony.
02:41Of course it is.
02:42I mean, these critics who don't like Forrest Gump,
02:45they don't understand irony.
02:46No.
02:47Dick Cavett is the real Dick Cavett.
02:48Yeah.
02:49We put you where Yoko was sitting.
02:51Wow.
02:52And then we rebuilt the set.
02:54Yeah.
02:55It was the exact Dick Cavett set.
02:56The exact same set, right.
02:57And then we pasted it all together.
02:59And you had a guy, you always had an actor there.
03:01There was a stand in there doing the John Lennon lines,
03:04which we split out and then put the real John in there.
03:07Part of it, you know, all of these movies with Bob,
03:09part of it is like, really?
03:10We're going to recreate the Dick Cavett set down to the perfect
03:14integrate and get Dick Cavett?
03:16Hard to imagine.
03:17Blows me away.
03:18The thought that goes into that.
03:19Well, the process of that was,
03:21was that I had two magnificent PAs working for me.
03:25I just sent them out to find and collect every bit of archival news footage.
03:31And then Eric and I wrote those moments into the script.
03:36We sure got you straightened out, didn't we, boy?
03:39I remember that first draft that Eric Roth wrote on,
03:42it was like 179 pages.
03:44Eric had all sorts of like angels flying up and dreamscapes.
03:48Including Curious George jumping around.
03:51Curious George was a cartoon monkey on Forrest's shoulder,
03:55talking to him.
03:56Oh.
03:57So they said, get that guy who did Roger Rabbit.
03:59And I read the script and I said, I love this,
04:01but that monkey's got to go.
04:03I thought it was a rights thing that you weren't allowed to use.
04:06Oh, no, because we have the book in the, it's in the movie.
04:09We were in South Carolina.
04:12We had a month or so before we actually started shooting.
04:16And you did this kind of thing that we've done on every movie now
04:19that had, was brand new to me.
04:21We just sat around and talked philosophically about what the movie was.
04:24Sally was there.
04:25Michael T was there.
04:26You were there.
04:27Gary was there.
04:28Eric was there.
04:29And we just talked about scenes we weren't even in.
04:31Well, you know, when you do that and all that,
04:33and Sally's there talking about it.
04:34That was where the origination of the red dot,
04:37that was the first conversation of that.
04:40Explain what that red dot means.
04:42The red dot is the point of the scene.
04:44And all the scenes have to have a red dot
04:46that ultimately become the red dot of the movie.
04:49And if we can't find the red dot in the scene,
04:51then that scene generally gets cut out.
04:54Because you don't need it for anything.
04:56Life is a box of chocolates for us.
04:58You never know what you're going to get.
05:01I start acting out the movie and then someone,
05:04someone will say, why am I saying that line?
05:06That'll happen.
05:07Right.
05:08And then we talk about that.
05:09And if I don't have an answer,
05:10I have to look at the writer and say,
05:12well, why is that line in here, right?
05:14I should have an answer for every question as a director.
05:17Stop putting all that pressure on yourself.
05:19No, I think I should.
05:20I don't agree with that,
05:21that he has to always have the answer.
05:22Yeah.
05:23Because you're not an actor.
05:25No.
05:26So we're going to come up with different things.
05:28Well, if someone on the crew comes to me and says,
05:30what color should that door be?
05:32You have to know the answer.
05:33Absolutely.
05:34And if I don't know,
05:35then I have to figure out why I don't know.
05:37Gump!
05:38What's your sole purpose in this army?
05:41To do whatever you tell my drill sergeant?
05:44God damn it, Gump!
05:46You're a goddamn genius!
05:47In these meetings, you would say this thing.
05:49When Forrest is running across the country,
05:51I think a guy should pull up
05:52and then he's got like a motorcycle with a sidecar on it.
05:56And I said something like,
05:57what's the point of a guy on a motorcycle with a sidecar?
05:59And you said,
06:00I just think sidecars are funny.
06:04Yeah, we have conversations like that.
06:05Yeah.
06:06It didn't end up in the movie.
06:07No, it didn't.
06:08We couldn't figure out where to put it, right?
06:09The big thing I think was when Gary Sinise said,
06:12you cannot have Vietnam in this movie
06:14and treat it like buck privates with Abbott and Costello.
06:17And that became this huge shift from what Eric wrote.
06:20Oh, yeah.
06:21What we were imagining and the way it paid off,
06:23because Vietnam ended up, I think,
06:25being a lot of times the heart and soul
06:27of the movie's examination of American history.
06:30Then, Bubba said something I won't ever forget.
06:35I wanna go home.
06:37You've made four movies with Bob.
06:39I've made five movies with Bob.
06:40I view them as different moments of the same long conversation.
06:43All the movies are finite, that's true,
06:45but we brought all the countenance
06:47of the first time we worked together
06:49into the next time that we worked together.
06:51And there's some version of Jenny in The Queen and Beowulf
06:54and there's some version of Forrest in Chuck
06:56on that island all by himself.
06:58Somebody wrestling with the common sense of the moment.
07:01We get all the way to here,
07:03and like the moment where a young man is saying,
07:06we are kids and we are going to have a baby.
07:09There is no greater divide, I think, in anybody's life
07:13than not being a parent and then being a parent.
07:16It is a Rubicon that is crossed.
07:18And in all of these movies, our characters
07:21and the theme that you want to examine
07:22are about that same kind of Rubicon.
07:25Time sure does fly, doesn't it?
07:28It sure does.
07:30This is the bomb of it all.
07:31This other type of cinematic storytelling DNA,
07:35despite the studio saying,
07:37this ain't gonna work, this ain't gonna work.
07:39That you've always done is,
07:41I believe it, I'm going for it,
07:43don't know if anybody else will go for it,
07:45but I'm gonna do it.
07:46I'm like, yes, just go with your heart.
07:48That's all you can do.
07:49And you always do.
07:50Huh?
07:51I'll miss you for it.
07:52I'll miss you, Halloween.
07:53Yeah, I'll miss you.
07:54I'll miss you, Faw celi.
07:55Amen.
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