Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed Tom Cruise in Magnolia in ‘99, and Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood (2007), spoke a lot about his early inspiration from p-rn films in an interview in 1998.
Anderson had come out with the second film of his career – Boogie Nights starring Mark Wahlberg in ‘97, as he told Mike Figgis, who conducted the interview.
Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump (1994) came out only four years before his interview and he revealed his ideas about how director Robert Zemeckis could have delved deeper into Hanks’ character development.
Anderson said that Tom Hanks should have been given the opportunity to have s-x with co-star Robin Wright (House of Cards), which he felt might have been a great addition to the $678 million film.
Paul Thomas Anderson On Forrest Gump’s S-x Scene
Paul Thomas Anderson explained to Figgis that he grew up in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles which was the location where p-rn films were made; he went to high school there.
He said that he wanted to collide the two worlds from a filmmaker’s perspective. Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump came to his mind to explain his idea.
“An example I’ve used before, and I’m not doing it to be salacious or anything like that. How interesting would it have been to have Forrest Gump and that Robin Wright character make that baby that we see at the end.”
Anderson, talking about Boogie Nights, said that he even wrote a scene for Don Cheadle’s character to have real s-x. The controversial film was all about the p-rn world.
Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump And The P-rno Effect
Forrest Gump was a character that was written as a vulnerable, strong-willed, and soft-hearted individual. The Robert Zemeckis directorial was, in fact, a family film.
Paul Thomas Anderson had hoped that Gump’s character explored the s-xual territory as well which would have revealed how human he is, thereby taking away the film’s family theme.
“How does Forrest Gump have s-x?” – he questioned. “That’s a great character, I think, and it’s not sort of trying to just give you a bon-r to show you Tom Hanks and Robin Wright and see her t-ts in bed. It’s going, ‘What could be more human, what could be more of a revelation of a character than watching them have s-x?’ I mean, that says a lot about someone I think, is how they touch another person in bed.”
The film, though without the s-x scene, became a global phenomenon and landed Tom Hanks in the league of hyper-successful actors of his generation. Forrest Gump starred Gary Sinise and Sally Field in supporting roles.
Tom Hanks, Robert Zemeckis, and Robin Wright are set to reunite in 2022’s Here. The release date is under wraps.
Source: Youtube
