Tom Hanks is now regarded as one of the most legendary actors in Hollywood, thanks to his exceptional big-screen performances. He owes a lot of his success to his portrayal in his $678 million movie, which is also one of the biggest hits of all time, Forrest Gump, which captured all the emotions in the most appropriate way possible. His role remains one of the best roles he has taken up to date, even winning him an Oscar for his remarkable performance.
But while Tom Hanks’ Gump leads a pleasing life, stumbling into success at several stages, discovering historical incidents, and meeting numerous presidents along the way, the movie wouldn’t have been as big of a blockbuster had the directors stuck to the original script.
Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump Had A Completely Different Script Than The On-Screen Portrayal
As shared by Tom Hanks along with director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Eric Roth at a USC panel on Forrest Gump back in 2009, the original script of the movie was a lot crazier than the one portrayed on the big screen.
“Forrest always had Curious George as a talking monkey talking to him,” Zemeckis said. “I don’t know if this is true or not, but I always had a feeling that because I did Roger Rabbit, that’s how come they sent me the script because they said, ‘Get the guy who can do the cartoons and the humans together.’ The first thing I said was, ‘I’ll do this but all this cartoon stuff has to go.’”
But even with the idea of a ‘faithful monkey talk’ now nixed from the script thanks to the filmmaker, there were still several other things to improvise. Though the movie was more of a historical fiction, the screenwriter had steered it on a different path originally, more inclined toward fantasy.
“Lt. Dan [Gary Sinise] had over his head in the first draft a black cloud,” Roth said. “Jenny [Robin Wright] had angel wings. They may have been the worst ideas ever but Bob felt this is a bit much.”
What’s coming is even more surprising than what has already been discussed. In the film, Gump, i.e. Tom Hanks‘s character was originally supposed to be in love with a murderer!
“We had a scene where Jenny actually it’s implied that she kills her father as a little girl,” Zemeckis said. “The way I shot it, he was in the field. There was this weed harvester. He was in the field pulling this rock out of the ground. She was staring at the gearshift lever and the next thing you knew the thing was moving. So you never actually saw her pushing the lever forward.”
However, the scene was later removed from the movie, considering how badly it would’ve impacted the audience’s perspective of Gump’s love interest Jenny.
“Bob always said, I think he was probably right in the long run if she kills that man, as bad as that guy is, the audience will never recover from it,” Roth said. “They won’t ever let her off the hook.”
Why The Screenwriters Ended Up Changing Forrest Gump’s Script
After going through the entire original script once again, film’s producer Steve Starkey, too, was of the idea to change the script if it were to be made worth watching.
“It’s always fascinating to discover what works on the page of a screenplay and what works on screen in cinema,” Steve Starkey said. “Sometimes less is more. Sometimes audiences don’t need to see everything you thought they needed to see in a script. That kind of a graphic scene wasn’t really necessary in a movie like Forrest Gump.”
Thus, everything from the movie was reassessed, and the Tom Hanks starrer was finally shot and released, ending up making a sparkling $678 million on its budget of a mere $55 million along with winning six Oscars and getting nominated for several others among other accolades.
You can watch Forrest Gump on Hulu.
Source: USC Panel on Forrest Gump (2009)
