FORREST GUMP: Rework Version Summary

The story begins with a feather floating through the air in the city of Savannah. The feather floats down toward the city. The feather drops down toward the street below, as people walk past and cars drive by, and nearly lands on a man's shoulder. He walks across the street, causing the feather to be whisked back on its journey. The feather floats above a stopped car. The car drives off right as the feather floats down toward the street. The feather floats under a passing car, then is sent flying back up in the air. A MAN sits on a bus bench. The feather floats above the ground and finally lands on the man's mudsoaked shoe.

The man reached down and picks up the feather. His name is FORREST GUMP. He looks at the feather oddly, moves aside a box of chocolates from an old suitcase, then opens the case. Inside the old suitcase are an assortment of clothes, a pingpong paddle, toothpaste and other personal items. Forrest pulls out a book titled "Curious George," then places the feather inside the book. Forrest closes the Suitcase.

A bus pulls up. Forrest remains on the bus bench as the bus continues on. A BLACK WOMAN in a nurse's outfit steps up and sits down at the bus bench next to Forrest. The nurse begins to read a magazine as Forrest looks at her. He approached the woman and introduced himself then offered her chocolates. He further said what he remembers her mom always told him-“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." The woman doesn’t seem to be interested so she continues what she is doing as Forrest began to tell the story of his life.

Forrest was named after the great civil war hero General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was born in Greenbow, Alabama. He had to wear leg braces to correct his crooked spine. This causes other children to bully him. He met his bestfriend and only friend, Jenny, the first time he went to school by riding the school bus. He out of the blue said, “my Momma always told me that miracles happen every day. Some people don't think so, but they do” and he continued the story.

One day, he was bullied by other boys in school. Jenny defended him and told Forrest to run. Forrest runs. As he runs, he is becoming older and his leg braces were shattered and thrown up in the air. He looks down at his leg with surprise. He tries to run even faster to get away and suddenly he begins to pick up speed.

Years later, Forrest became a major football player. He was discovered by the coach of the Alabama team, Paul Bryant, while he was running. His scholarship in that team made him have his college degree. He became famous and was even able to meet prominent personalities such as President Kennedy. On his graduation day, he was recruited in the army. There he met another friend, Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue, who knows everything about what they call the “shrimpin” business”.  Bubba and Forrest agree to go into the "shrimpin' business" upon being discharged from the Army. While Forrest is white and Bubba is black, the pair discovered they have very similar backgrounds and philosophies on life. While serving in the US Army in the Vietnam War under Lt. Daniel “Dan” Taylor, he carries wounded members of his platoon to safety during an ambush, earning him a “Medal of Honor”. The war causes Lt. Dan to lose his leg and was the reason Bubba died. Forrest, on the other hand, got injured in his buttocks. While he recovers from, he became an expert ping-pong player and travels to the People’s Republic of China during the Ping-Pong Diplomacy period. He became a national ping-pong hero and is offered $25,000 to endorse a certain brand of ping-pong paddles.

One day, he accidentally saw a Playboy magazine and shocked to saw Jenny on the cover. Jenny was expelled from college because of that. Jenny’s life became miserable.

Gumps returned home with his $25,000 from the Ping-Pong paddle endorsement. He was able to buy a bought and named it Jenny, after his bestfriend’s name. He also started the “shrimpin’ business” he promised to Bubba. Lt. Dan joins him in his business venture and they name it the “Bubba-Gump Shrimp Corporation”. It became successful when miraculously, during a hurricane, all fishing ports were washout except theirs giving them an instant monopoly in the shrimp market making them both a very wealthy man.

Gump returns to his childhood home when he receives word that his mama is ill. His mother dies shortly after his return home. Jenny reunites with Forrest after having been through the worst of pits and troughs in life, including drug addiction and prostitution. She lives with him for a while, then leaves following a night of passion that originated in Forrest's proposal of marriage. After her departure, Forrest begins to run across the country incessantly.

His dedication inspires a running movement, including a flock that runs behind Forrest. Along the way, Forrest inspires a famous catchphrase derived from his comment after being alerted he has stepped in dog feces: "Shit happens." Also during his running phase, a mud-splattered Forrest is given a yellow T-shirt by a T-shirt salesman who "couldn't draw all that well and didn't have a camera" but wanted to immortalize Forrest on a shirt. Gump leaves the man with a giant smiley face made of mud imprinted on the shirt and tells him to "have a nice day," thereby inspiring a pop culture phenomenon.

Until one day, he stopped running and returned home. He later receives a letter from Jenny asking him to visit her.

Going back to the present setting, the black woman on the bus bench has gone, but another has come along. Forrest shows Jenny's letter to her, and she tells him that the address of Jenny's house is only "five or six blocks" down Henry Street, in Savannah, Georgia.

He is reunited with Jenny and her young son. Jenny tells him that the boy is named Forrest, after his father. Jenny also tells Forrest she is suffering from an unknown virus and that she is dying.

Jenny and Forrest Jr. move in with Forrest in Greenbow, and Jenny and Forrest are finally married. Lieutenant Dan, who has a fiancée and now has an artificial leg to replace those lost in the war, attends the wedding.

Jenny died making Forrest the only parent to Forrest Jr., a bright child who attends school. Jenny's death causes Forrest to question the nature of life. He asks the question, " I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around on a breeze accidental-like, but maybe it's a little of both.

One day, Forrest walks with Forrest Jr. heading at the bus stop (first setting of the story). The bus drives toward them. Forrest pulls "Curious George" out of Forrest Jr.'s backpack. Forrest looks at the book. The feather Forrest picked up in the beginning of the film drops out of the book, unnoticed. Forrest puts the book back into Forrest Jr.'s backpack and hands it to him. The bus came to a stop and Forrest Jr. walks toward the bus. Forrest Jr. looks into the bus and at the bus driver. It is the same bus driver, only older now, who drove Forrest to school when he was a young boy. Forrest Jr. gets on the bus and the bus pulls away.

As the bus pulls aways, a gust of wind picks the feather up. The feather floats up into the air. Forrest sits at the bench like the first setting of the film. The feather floats higher into the air. The feather soars up into the sky and travels up and down, then covers the camera lens.

FREEDOM SONG: A Reviewer’s Reaction

Freedom Song is a story about the struggle to fight the individual’s civil rights against the society’s discrimination of “color”. “If not me, who? If not now, when?” a famous line from the story asked by the major character in the film—Owen Walker, a black teen growing up in Mississippi during the 1960s—a time when Jim Crow segregation laws were not legal, they were looked on by many Whites as being the way God wanted it. Owen’s involvement in the civil rights movement started when, in his younger days, his father slapped him due to his disobedience in entering the waiting room “Whites Only”. Inspired by his uncle Jonah and by the Freedom Riders he saw on TV, Owen acquired this feeling of getting revenge and dreams of the day that he can go back to the waiting room.

The story told in Freedom Song predates the jadedness I sometimes feel about the lip service that is being done about the movement nowadays. Weber said that culture, being autonomous, is shaped by individual orientation of rational self-interest. As the individuals form collectivity or societal level, they are becoming the essential elements in the realm of politics. In this film, the Blacks are the subject or point of analysis of how culture changed people’s beliefs of acquiring civil rights. In forming the movement, they became the essential elements in the realm of politics. The film’s story is so rich and historically important. Unlike others we have read in history books, the story was told from the standpoint of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The people in the movement could be considered as the unsung heroes who put their lives in risk for what they thought was just. Another aspect I totally reacted to was the portrayal of just what it meant to show non-violence in the violently environment of racist rage. It was mentioned in the film that being non-violent and practicing non-violence is a political strategy that really works. The civil rights movement seems to be simply narrowed to the Blacks being not allowed to vote, not to borrow books from the library or to sit in cafeterias and be served. By concentrating in these raised issues, the story almost underestimates the fullness of the struggle for civil rights. Still, even with these, Freedom Song remains an influential movie about a period where some people want to forget and other people never can.

The film is written for those people who need a swift slapped in the face to make us remember our responsibility to signed up to vote and to take the chance we have to vote. It is because it is difficult to deal with corrupt officials—with their lies and fake smiles, and attitude of caring only for the people they supposed to serve when the time for election comes. All of us owe our freedom to those who first struggle for it and led us to ultimate sacrifice in order for us to get hold of the right of every citizen—to vote and make our elected officials work for all of us for the change and for the better of all the nations in the world.