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Dana07620 t1_je78ut6 wrote

That it's an instance of the movie being better than the book. For all its comedic moments, the movie had a lot of heart. While the book was comedy and the moments got unbelievably ridiculous when it hit the space scene.

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Purple1829 OP t1_je793tj wrote

I think that’s kind of what I enjoyed about it. The movie was ridiculous as well, just more grounded. I kind of liked how insane it got toward the end.

Maybe I liked the book more because I didn’t like the movie as much as others. I thought the book was hilarious

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Dana07620 t1_je7ax39 wrote

You know that he wrote a sequel?

And you never have to worry about it being made into a movie. Winston Groom never wants to be associated with a financial failure again. FG wasn't a financial failure, but the studio claimed it never made money in order to cheat Groom. It's called Hollywood bookkeeping and they've used it to cheat many people. (Poor David Prowse [Darth Vadar] would regularly get letters telling him how The Return of the Jedi still hadn't made any money.) In this case, they screwed themselves out of the sequel because Groom won't license the book because of how they cheated him with the first movie.

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Purple1829 OP t1_je7b6yr wrote

Hollywood Accounting is such bullshit.

Did you read the second one? I saw it was rated much lower so hadn’t planned on checking it out.

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FireLucid t1_je7ep9r wrote

I heard that he made it shit or crazy on purpose so it wouldn't become a movie.

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TheChocolateMelted t1_je93a9s wrote

Gump & Co? Read it many years ago. The actual story itself seemed a bit subdued compared to the original. However, I'll immediately recommend it for the way novel Forrest refers to the Forrest Gump movie infiltrating and messing up his life, even meeting Tom Hanks at one point. Wonderful approach by Groom that I never would have expected.

You might also want to check out The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. Only read the first one (there's a sequel), but it's possibly even more satisfying than Forrest Gump. Lots of fun.

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Dana07620 t1_je7bd8d wrote

I wasn't crazy about the first one. So, no, I didn't read the second one. But since you liked the first one, I thought you might like the second one.

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chocoboat t1_jed8ukp wrote

While I hate that they did that, I don't think anyone was screwed by the lack of a Forrest Gump movie sequel.

The book is a kind of a mess, just more of the same adventures but worse and even more contrived. At best the movie sequel would have been forgettable, but there's a good chance it would just been terrible and felt like a parody of the original. I will say that Forrest creating New Coke was a good idea, that's the kind of thing that would have fit well into a movie.

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OptimalAd204 t1_jeayiva wrote

The movie was so different from the book they are only tangentially the same story. If you read the book thinking it would expand on the movie, I expect you are disappointed. If you read the book expecting a comic spoof on American life, you were probably pleased.

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