7. Zemeckis wasn’t Paramount’s first choice to direct the film. The project was offered to Monty Python troupe member Terry Gilliam, who passed, and Barry Sonnenfeld, who signed on only to depart to direct Addams Family Values instead.
8. While the film has great fun placing Forrest right at the center of some rather monumental moments in history, like having him be the one to unwittingly expose the Watergate scandal, one planned moment turned out to be a bit too much for Zemeckis. Originally, it was intended for Forrest to come across Martin Luther King, Jr. and his supporters as riot police were releasing German shepherds on them. Forrest was to jump in and distract the dogs with a game of fetch. Considering the scene to be in poor taste, as it trivialized the violence King and his supporters did face, the director left it out.
9. Though he was uncredited, the voice of the young Elvis Presley who rents a room from Forrest’s mom was provided by Kurt Russell, who’d previously played the rocker in the 1979 TV-movie biopic Elvis.
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