Stupid Is as Stupid Does - The Unlikely Journey of a Producer on Forrest Gump

by Steve Starkey, Tom Hanks (foreword)

In the summer of 1993, an army of filmmakers arrived in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and began work on the groundbreaking film Forrest Gump. Led by visionary director Robert Zemeckis and the extraordinary Tom Hanks, the team didn't know at the time that the film would make cinematic history. They were challenged by the complicated details of the production on a movie that depicted a turbulent time in American history in places that ranged from backroads of South Carolina and the bayous of Louisiana to the jungles of Vietnam and the Washington, D.C., Mall. In these pages, Steve Starkey, one of the producers of the film, takes you behind the scenes and shares his memories of the unlikely journey to make the Oscar-winning film.

Beginning when his filmmaking partner, Robert Zemeckis, dropped the script on his desk and continuing to the film's release to critical and popular success, Starkey reveals the magic of the filmmaking discovering the locations for the film, including the Gump house; figuring out how to shoot Gump's transcontinental runs; and, especially, creating the extraordinary visual effects that, among other things, allowed Forrest to interact with several presidents of the United States.

He also relates the difficulties of working with Paramount Pictures, a reluctant partner on the film, and how the filmmaking team was eventually able to overcome all obstacles and make the film of their dreams. Illustrated by a large number of film stills taken during the making of the film, Stupid Is as Stupid Does brings to life an iconic, beloved movie.

252 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2024

Reviews

[Tim McGirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book. If you’re at all keen on movies, Tom Hanks and Director Robert Zemeckis and the making of the epoch-encapsulating “Forrest Gump,” I repeat, read this. As producer, author Steve Starkey take you through the mad scramble that starts with getting a leery Hollywood studio to sign off on an improbable Eric Roth script about a hapless and, well, dumb, young man who blunders through the great political and social upheavals that shook America in the 60s and 70s.

Starkey’s prose is crisp and deftly captures the bittersweet humor of the film itself. He helps put together everything from Vietnam battle scenes, a storm, a massive Washington DC protest, to squeezing out fake dog shit so that Forrest can trod in it, uttering the immortal words ‘Shit Happens.’ But Starkey’s primary job was to shield Zemeckis from the studio – the cost-slashers wanted to gut ‘Forrest Gump’s’ best scenes.
Starkey writes that the pace of shooting was so frantic, it wasn’t until Zemeckis and Hanks saw the final cut that they knew they had a gem. It won the Oscar in 1994 for Best Picture, and Starkey’s fond, behind-the-scenes telling of how ‘Forrest Gump’ came to be is also a gem in itself.