Forrest Gump is one of the most enjoyed, watched, and appreciated Tom Hank movies. While we certainly enjoy it as the audience, Hanks had a hard time filming the Oscar-winning movie. The tiring process of filming the entire movie made it difficult for Hanks to even show up on sets.
When he tried to convince the director, Robert Zemeckis, of how exhaustive the entire shooting was for him, the director came up with a brilliant idea to ease up the entire filming process. While he did regret shooting the movie the way it was shot, his qualms ended when the movie won multiple Academy Awards.
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Tom Hanks Hated Shooting Forrest Gump Like I Love Lucy
If you have seen Forrest Gump, then you must know that multiple scenes show Hanks’s character running. As splendid as they look on the big screen, they were exceptionally tiring for Tom Hanks as he had to run continuously for hours between shoots. He explained his ordeal as,
“I was so exhausted because we had shot twenty-seven days straight. Remember how Forrest ran across the country? Well, there’s only one way to get those scenes, in those days. You had to fly to the goddamn place, put on the costume, run for an hour and a half, then go back, get on the plane, and then fly to, say, New Hampshire, and do it all over again. So I’m exhausted. I don’t know what’s going on. The scenes on the park bench have oceans of dialogue, and we shot them in a day and a half.”
“‘Oh, don’t worry, Tom. We’ll shoot it like ‘I Love Lucy.’ We’ll have four cameras. We’ll put the words up on cards if you need it. You can just read ’em,’ I said, ‘Oh, great, thank you. Let’s make this an even more artificial atmosphere!’”
Tom Hanks Was Doubtful Of Forrest Gump’s Success
The way it was shot and the storyline, not to mention the peculiarity of the main character had Tom Hanks doubting his Oscar-winning movie. He wasn’t sure if anyone would even care to watch a guy in a cuckoo suit wearing some goofy shoes or if it would it even make sense to those who surprisingly would decide to watch it. When he expressed his concerns to Robert Zemeckis he was told that the movie is a minefield, sowing the seeds of their own destruction. But both had to take their words back as the movie got 13 Academy Awards with 6 wins.
“And so Bob Zemeckis, God bless him — I’ve worked with him more than once — landed on the absolute truth of anybody who has gone forward and said, ‘We are going to commit something to film today. You do not know if it is going to work out. You can only have faith.”
Despite not knowing that the movie would turn out to be so big, Hanks went on to deliver a spectacular performance, which remains one of his most iconic roles ever.
You can stream Forrest Gump on Netflix.
Source: The New Yorker
