On May 9, 2023, actor Tom Hanks released his own novel called The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece: A novel. Hanks has spent decades acting and has countless awards to his name, so his book sought to pull back the curtains on the movie-making process. As part of releasing the book, Hanks hit the road for a while and did some interviews. Of course, those invariably detoured into discussions about his long and illustrious career.
From Philadelphia and Big to Cast Away and Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks has been a part of so many successful movies. Yet, Forrest Gump might be his most well-known role and that’s the one that everyone wants to know about. Interestingly, making Forrest Gump wasn’t a walk in the park. The bigger surprise is that it might have never been made without I Love Lucy’s influence on the world of cinema.
Making Forrest Gump Was a Brutal Experience for Tom Hanks
In the same month of his book’s release, Hanks was interviewed by The New Yorker in front of a large crowd when the interviewer asked if he knew when he was acting well. Hanks simply said that he couldn’t and proceeded to talk about the unpredictability of acting. He said that he might show up to set happy and be expected to film a depressing scene. On the flip side, he said there were times when he was in an awful headspace, and a director would have an upbeat scene to film. The latter was what happened with Forrest Gump.
Unfortunately for Hanks, Forrest Gump had a lot of different settings. After all, Forrest literally ran across the country, and that meant the actor had to go across country and film for 27 days straight. He remembered how he would “fly to [each] goddam place, put on the costume, run for an hour and a half, then go back, get on the plane, and then fly to [another place] and do it all over again.” The problem was after those 27 days, director Robert Zemeckis wanted to film all of Forrest Gump’s park bench scenes — which included the box of chocolates scene — in a day and a half. To make it all work, Zemeckis decided to film in I Love Lucy’s multi-cam setup.
What Was the Benefit of I Love Lucy’s Multi-Cam Setup?
Evidence seems to suggest that Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball weren’t the ones to invent the multi-cam filming setup, but they definitely improved and popularized it. The technique allowed the I Love Lucy actors to respond to the audience’s natural reactions while avoiding interruptions. That way, all the film and all the different camera angles would line up, amidst a single take. Many sitcoms still use the multi-cam setup today, and that’s what Robert Zemeckis did for Forrest Gump’s park bench scenes.
The reason Zemeckis filmed the park bench scenes in that style was simple: anyone who’s seen Forrest Gump knows that those particular scenes feature a heap of dialogue. After traveling and filming for 27 days straight, Hanks simply didn’t think he could do it. He was simply too exhausted and frazzled to remember his lines. However, using the multi-cam setup would allow Hanks to read lines off of cards, and it would give Zemeckis multiple angles to work with while having to do fewer takes. Thus, Zemeckis used four cameras and cue cards, which all added to the tone of the movie. It’s all thanks to the filming techniques of I Love Lucy that Tom Hanks was able to finish Forrest Gump.
