The Pitch: Charly meets Rain Man meets Zelig meets Slaughterhouse FiveInfluence: The Other Sister, creepy Orville Deadenbacker listening to an iPod in a commercial
Price of Admission: $3.50
When: August 1, 1994 at 1 pm
My Age: 13
Quote: I believe he said he had to go pee. Heh heh. - John F. Kennedy
Trite baby boomer propaganda serving as nostalgia aside. I've always had a theory that this movie/book (I haven't read it) is based on Bob Dylan's comeback song "Tangled Up In Blue." There are many parallels and I say this forum is good as any to proselytize my theory of Tangled Up In Gump.
First off, the synopsis: Halfwit encounters every major baby boomer historical event from Elvis to AIDS.
Now the Tangled Up In Gump theory. Dylan said this about the song in 1978:
What's different about it is that there's a code in the lyrics, and there's also no sense of time. There's no respect for it. You've got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there's very little you can't imagine not happening.
Forrest Gump is also built on the scheme of the "yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room." As Forrest has been present at pretty much every singular event in the latter half of the 20th century, I wonder what adventures he would've been part of in the late 90's and the aughts? Would he have been trading college football stories with Al Cowlings when a flustered friend named Orenthal came running up asking for a ride? Or perhaps dole out fashion advice to a then frontwards-wearing red ball cap Freddy Durst. Maybe while nightswimming with the dolphins in Miami he helped guide a lost raft to shore carrying a young Elian Gonzales. Forrest most definitely would have his passe Hanks hair updated by the Fab 5 of Queer Eye.
But back to my Dylan/Gump theory. Here are a couple of examples straight from the lyrics and how they relate to the movie. [Note: Dylan lyrics are in italics.]
*Workin' for a while on a fishin' boat
-Forrest was a shrimp boat captain for Bubba Gump.
*She was workin' in a topless place
-Gump's childhood friend, Jenny, had a gig playing guitar topless. In this scene she even plays Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind.
The whole mood of the song deals with this girl who comes in and out of this guy's life as he drifts from the Great North Woods to New Orleans to Montague Street. Forrest is a drifter and encounters Jenny periodically throughout his life. Dylan was the voice of the baby boomer generation. Which makes Forrest the catalyst of the baby boomer generation.
(By the way, can you think of a more tragic death scene than this almost was? Being coked up enough to actually believe you were a free bird, ugh.)
Up next: Meryl, forget the dingo. Watch out for the Bacon.
