Movies - TV
The True Stories That Inspired Forrest Gump
By JOSHUA MEYER
The film won six Oscars and is endlessly quotable, but what you might not know is that the main character of “Forrest Gump” was loosely inspired by three real men.
Nicknamed "the real Forrest Gump," Sammy Lee Davis was at the film's anniversary screening on the National Mall in Washington.
Like Forrest, Davis was shot in the buttocks and back over thirty times by friendly fire. The moment where Forrest shows his butt wound was invented for the film.
Screenwriter Eric Roth adapted Winston Groom's novel, "Forrest Gump," for the big screen. Groom dedicated the book to Jimbo Meador and George Radcliff, who were childhood friends.
The Bubba Gump Seafood Company is now a real restaurant chain. The idea for that stemmed from conversations that Groom had with Meador — appropriately, at lunch.
Radcliff appears to have partly inspired Forrest's journey through history. He once beat Paul McCartney at arm-wrestling without knowing who "that little drunk English guy" was.