Tom Hanks defends Forrest Gump against those who dismiss it as mere 'boomer nostalgia' and think it didn't deserve to beat Pulp Fiction for the Best Picture Oscar.
Tom Hanks defends Forrest Gump from charges it didn’t deserve to win Best Picture over Pulp Fiction. Robert Zemeckis’ heartfelt film starring Hanks as a man on a whimsical adventure through decades of American history went on to be an unlikely blockbuster, grossing $678 million in 1994. It also went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, infamously beating out Quentin Tarantino’s groundbreaking crime film Pulp Fiction.
Tarantino’s film had of course already received plenty of critical acclaim even before the Oscars, winning the Palme d’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. But when Oscar night rolled around it was the stirring and sentimental Hanks-led film that won the big prize, not Tarantino’s hip and post-modern hit-man movie.
The problem with “Forrest Gump” is it made a billion dollars. If we’d just made a successful movie, Bob and I would have been geniuses. But because we made a wildly successful movie, we were diabolical geniuses. Is it a bad problem to have? No, but there’s books of the greatest movies of all time, and “Forrest Gump” doesn’t appear because, oh, it’s this sappy nostalgia fest. Every year there’s an article that goes, “The Movie That Should Have Won Best Picture” and it’s always “Pulp Fiction.
Here Hanks of course refers to the movie’s famous “magic legs” moment where Forrest, who himself once wore"magic legs" due to a crooked spine, sees his amputee fellow soldier and friend Lieutenant Dan with prosthetic limbs and can’t contain his happiness. According to Hanks, Forrest’s utterance of “magic legs” and “Lieutenant Dan” makes the audience “understand all they had been through and feel gratitude for every ounce of pain and tragedy that they survived.
Hanks’ point is well-taken about Forrest Gump’s ability to move an audience in deeper ways than the term “boomer nostalgia” implies. It’s unlikely however that his argument will sway Pulp Fiction fans who believe that movie is far more innovative and cool, and ultimately had a much greater influence on the art of filmmaking.
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