The boat hurricane scene was taken from the Port Royal S.C Ports Authority. Hurricane Carmen was an actual major Atlantic hurricane that made landfall on the U.S coast of the Gulf of Mexico in early September 1974 In the film, the hurricane destroys the shrimping industry of Bayou La Batre.
Forrest Gump’s boat, Jenny was at sea during the hurricane. While it suffered a blow, it wasn’t thrown to land like other boats and therefore, Forrest’s business started to prosper due to a lack of other competition following the hurricane.
Bubba Gump Shrimp
The film was a cultural phenomenon for America that inspired so many things. One of them was the restaurant chain, Bubba Gump. The shrimp restaurant franchise opened in 1996, just a couple of years after the film was released. While there is no connection to the film other than the characters' names Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue and Forrest Gump.
Since opening, the restaurant chain Bubba has grown considerably and has been serving customers across the U.S and around the globe including locations in Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Indonesia, and China.
Scripts That Went Un-Used
The producers initially intended to use Groom’s script since he was the one who wrote the book. Unfortunately for him, in the end, it was scrapped, and they went with a version written by an actual screenwriter. And that writer was the incredibly Eric Roth.
Roth, with the help of some additional screenwriters, wrote the final script for which he ended up winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Roth later co-wrote screenplays for The Insider, Munich, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The Original Book
While the movie was a huge success, the original book written by Winston Groom wasn't quite in that league in terms of numbers. The book originally only sold 30,000 copies. As we know, the film ended up making a pretty, pretty penny.
Following the release of the movie, 1.6 million copies were sold. Groom felt that he was cheated out of money. The company eventually agreed to pay Groom more than $1 million for the rights to the book’s sequel, Gump & Co.
Mixed Reviews
After the film was released, there were both fans and critics. While many people praised the movie for capturing such great historical milestones and how they connected to the loveable character of Gump, as well as the way it pulled on our heartstrings, many people were pretty against it.
There were critics out there who felt that film was overly sentimental, that it was filled with too many cheesy catchphrases. Some felt that it was a symbol of privilege, and some people simply hated it because inspired the name of a shrimp chain. Still, even with some backlash, on the whole, most people loved the film.