Daily Dialogue — December 9, 2014

Forrest Gump: [running] Anyway, as I was saying, I had a lot of company. My Mama always said, You got to put the past behind you before you can move on. And I think that’s what my running was all about. I had run for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours.

He stops and turns around.

Young Man Running: Quiet, quiet! He’s gonna say something!
Forrest Gump: [pause] I’m pretty tired… I think I’ll go home now.
Young Man Running: Now what are we supposed to do?
Forrest Gump: And just like that, my runnin’ days was over.

— Forrest Gump (1994), screenplay by Eric Roth, book by Winston Groom

Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Quitting. Today’s suggestion by James Schramm.

Trivia: Robert Zemeckis decided to leave out several planned effects shots. One shot in particular involved Forrest running into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters. Forrest distracts several dogs trying to attack King and his supporters by playing fetch with them and rendering them harmless to King and himself as well as his supporters.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from James: “This whole movie is a visual metaphor and this is another example; someone literally running to escape all the unhappy things in his life and then quitting when he has run far enough. And he doesn’t quit when he reaches home or a coast, he quits in the middle of a desert, when he decides he is done running.”

If you have a suggestion for this week’s theme, please post in comments.