Forrest Gump (film)

The film begins with a white feather falling to the feet of Forrest Gump, who is sitting at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia. Forrest picks up the feather and puts it in the book Curious George, then tells the story of his life to a woman seated next to him. The listeners at the bus stop change regularly throughout his narration, each showing a different reaction to his narration ranging from disbelief and indifference to rapt veneration.

His mother runs a boarding house in Alabama. One guest, a musician, picks up his own style of dancing from watching Forrest's shaky movements caused by his leg braces. He is later revealed to be Elvis Presley. To get Forrest into a normal school, Forrest's mother bribes the school's Principal with sexual favors. On his first day of school, he meets a girl named Jenny Curran, who, according to Forrest, has the most beautiful name in the world. Jenny and her sisters are abused by her father. Her life is followed in parallel to Forrest's at times. One day after school, Forrest is being threatened by a group of bullies because of his leg braces. Jenny tells him to run, and so he does, losing his leg braces in the process. Having discarded his leg braces, his fast running ability becomes his favored method of travel. During his senior year in high school, threatened by the same group of bullies, he runs through a football field and it gets him into college on a football scholarship playing for Paul "Bear" Bryant at the University of Alabama. He excels at football so much that he becomes an All-American, and meets President John F. Kennedy.

After his college graduation, he enlists in the United States Army. In boot camp, Forrest makes friends with a man named Benjamin Buford Blue or "Bubba" (Mykelti Williamson), who convinces Forrest to go into the shrimping business with him when war is over. Forrest excels in training and after finishing boot camp, Bubba and Forrest are assigned to the same platoon in Vietnam. As soon as they arrive with their new platoon, they meet their new platoon leader, Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). Dan comes from a military family and has lost an ancestor in every American war. Later while on patrol, Forrest's platoon is ambushed. Though Forrest rescues many of the men including Dan, whose legs were severely injured and are later amputated, Bubba is killed in action, dying in Forrest's arms.

Forrest is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism during the ambush, is promoted to Sergeant, and meets President Lyndon B. Johnson at his award ceremony. During the ceremony, President Johnson sarcastically remarks to Forrest that he'd like to see where Forrest was wounded. In response, Forrest pulls down his pants to show the president, to the shock of his mother, the crowd and people viewing the ceremony on television.

After meeting Abbie Hoffman at an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., Forrest reunites with Jenny, who has been living a hippie counterculture life. He also encounters Dan, who has become a bitter alcoholic, having felt that it was his destiny to die as a war hero on the battlefield in Vietnam. Forrest celebrates New Year's Eve with Dan, who is initially hostile and uses Forrest as a means of obtaining alcohol. When Forrest tells of his and Bubba's plan to buy a shrimping boat, Dan mocks Forrest and sarcastically promises that he will become first mate of the ship. However, Dan later finds empathy with the fact that Forrest has been discriminated against in the past because of his perceived low I.Q., likening it to his own experience of disability.

While Forrest is in recovery for a bullet wound in his "but-tox", he discovers his uncanny ability for ping-pong, eventually gaining popularity and rising to celebrity status; later playing ping-pong in China. After meeting with President Richard M. Nixon, Forrest inadvertently triggers the Watergate scandal. He is honorably discharged from the army and returns home to Alabama. He finds that his mother has endorsed a company that makes ping-pong paddles, earning himself $25,000, which, after getting a new hair cut, a new suit, fancy dinner for his mother, a bus ticket and three Dr Pepper soft drinks, he uses to buy a shrimping boat, fulfilling his promise to Bubba. Dan returns to fulfill his earlier promise and becomes first mate of the boat. Forrest and Dan fail to pull in much shrimp at first. During Hurricane Carmen, both men stay out in the middle of the ocean with the boat, and in an act of God, theirs is the only shrimping boat in the area to survive. The lack of competition helps Dan and Forrest to catch huge amounts of shrimp. Dan invests the money in Apple Computer, "some kind of fruit company", and Forrest is financially secure for the rest of his life. Forrest names his company Bubba Gump, which has inspired an actual shrimp restaurant, and gives half of the proceeds to Bubba's family. One day, Forrest is told on the telephone that his mother is ill. He returns home immediately and sits down beside her. She tells him that she is going to die and consoles him by saying it was her destiny and that they all had one destiny. She "got the cancer, and died on a Tuesday".

One day, while Forrest is mowing the lawn, Jenny returns to visit Forrest, and he proposes marriage to her. She declines, though feels obliged to prove her love to him by sleeping with him. She leaves early the next morning. On a whim, Forrest elects to go for a run. Seemingly capriciously, he decides to keep running across the country several times, over three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours, becoming famous in the process. During his run, Forrest unwittingly inspires two separate entrepreneurs to create Smiley Face/"Have a Nice Day" T-shirts and "Shit Happens" bumper stickers.

In the present, Forrest reveals that he is waiting at the bus stop, because he had received a letter from Jenny, who, having seen him run on television, had asked him to visit her. Once he is reunited with Jenny, Forrest discovers that she has a young son, of whom Forrest is the father. At first, he expresses fear that his son may suffer from a low I.Q. as he does, but she relieves him by explaining that he is exceptionally intelligent. Jenny tells Forrest she is suffering from an unknown illness. Together the three move back to Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny and Forrest finally marry, with Dan arriving for the wedding (now able to walk with the use of prosthetic limbs) along with his fiancée, Susan. Dan says that his legs were made out of the same material as the space shuttle. Jenny dies soon afterward.

The film ends with father and son waiting for the school bus on little Forrest's first day of school. Opening the book his son is taking to school, the white feather from the beginning of the movie is seen to fall from within the pages. As the bus pulls away, the white feather is caught on a breeze and drifts skyward.