Why Yellowstone Creator Taylor Sheridan Hates A Tom Hanks Classic With Passion

Taylor Sheridan's array of TV shows like "Yellowstone" and "Landman" and movies like the Denis Villeneuve-directed "Sicario" have made him one of the hottest creators in Hollywood, which means the wildly successful actor-writer-director-producer can afford to speak his mind on many things. As it turns out, some of his stances are so bold that they're bordering on controversial — at least, when it comes to one particular (and particularly beloved) Tom Hanks movie. 

The film in question is "Forrest Gump," the warm-hearted 1994 comedy-drama that gave Hanks his second Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar and truly cemented his status as one of America's all-time acting greats. During a 2024 appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience" (via Dexerto), Sheridan revealed that he deeply despises the movie due to the way its portrayal of the titular character differs from his own storytelling sensibilities:    

"For me, the holy grail as a storyteller is entertain, educate, and enlighten. Don't give anybody answers, just lots of questions to think about — that's my job. Because I can't stand to pay money to have someone preach to me their ideas. That's the reason I hated 'Forrest Gump' ... this doddering f****** idiot is the only guy who can figure out the world? Everybody else around him ... he's just gonna go on a f****** run across America and everyone's gonna follow him and that's gonna heal the country? I just was like, 'What is this s***?'"

Taylor Sheridan's profane tirade against "Forrest Gump" focused on the movie's famous running arc, in which Gump spends three years running across the country to cope with Jenny Curran (Robin Wright) once again leaving him, and attracts a loyal group of followers who treat him as a guru. It's a pivotal late-game moment in the movie, and though Sheridan doesn't appreciate it, Tom Hanks certainly does. In fact, Hanks personally funded the all-time classic scene with director Robert Zemeckis after they learned that Paramount Pictures was planning to drop the expensive sequence from the movie entirely. 

Whether you love "Forrest Gump" (like I do) or hate it with vitriol (like Sheridan does), it's pretty easy to see that the movie needs to depict this particular part of Gump's life to work as well as it does. It's impossible to tell whether "Forrest Gump" would have won six Academy Awards without the running part, but in my opinion, omitting this exploration of the human tendency to blindly follow perceived authority figures would definitely have hurt the film.        

Despite Sheridan's vocal dislike of "Forrest Gump" and the scene that was so important to Hanks that he was prepared to pour his own money into filming it, the two men don't seem to be on particularly hostile terms. As a matter of fact, Hanks even had a cameo in the "Yellowstone" prequel "1883," playing General George Meade.