FAIREST SHLUMP

FORREST GUMP (1994)
dir: Robert Zemeckis

FAIREST SHLUMP
MAD #332, December 1994
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), the story of a simple man who tells his life story to anyone else waiting at his bus stop in Savannah, GA, and they all politely listen.

Zelig was another movie from years earlier that was also about a man who was present throughout significant moments in the twentieth century. And Hanks did win the Academy Award for best actor in this.

Forrest is not smart enough to get into a regular public school until his mother (Sally Field) has sex with the principal to get him in. She runs a boarding house, and one of the guests is Elvis Presley, who uses Forrest's wobbly stance as his trademark hip-shaking act. When he goes to school, nobody will share a seat on the bus except Jenny (Robin Wright), who ends up being his friend for life. Later, when he's being picked on by other children for being disabled, he runs from them, out of his leg braces, and onto a football field. The coach is so impresses by his running they make him a football star, despite him not knowing how to play the game.

Not shown: When he wins the football championship, he gets to meet JFK and has had so many sodas all he can say is that he has to pee.

He goes to a high school Gov. George Wallace has tried to segregate and ends up on the news in the background. Jenny tries to take his virginity before he goes off to Vietnam. At Vietnam, his best friend is Bubba Blue (Mykelti Williamson), an equally simple man who he plans to go into the shrimp business with. Their commanding officer is Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise), whose life he saves even though Dan wanted to die with honor. When Forrest gets out of the army, he finds Jenny is a stripper and beats up guys who make unwanted sexual advances, which she tells him she can handle herself. In Washington, he ends up in a line with vets against the war and is invited to speak for them. He has no idea what it's about, and as he's about to deliver a speech to a mass audience, military men cut off his mic and we don't hear what he really says. He's also reunited with Jenny after many years.

They also cut out the part where as a war hero, he gets the medal of freedom from President Johnson and shows his butt to show where he was wounded, probably a nod to LBJ showing everyone his surgical scar. They leave out the best parts.

Forrest has a talent for ping-pong and the military continues to use him as the ping-pong champion. He gets reunited with Lt. Dan and ends up living with him in a seedy Times Square hotel, though Dan initially hates him for rescuing him in Vietnam and leaving him legless. Forrest buys a shrimping boat to honor Bubba, who he lost in the war, and Dan joins him because he promised to, thinking Forrest would never follow through with it. They catch nothing, then a storm wrecks every boat but theirs, making them the only remaining and therefore most successful shrimp company in the world. Then Forrest's mother dies.

Jenny comes back into his life and comes to live with him, and finally taking his virginity. She leaves again while he's sleeping and when he notices she's gone, he runs across the country to find her and becomes a prominent long-distance runner, picking up a large following.

For the sake of a punchline, they don't include the real ending of Jenny coming back in his life and revealing they have a son, they get married, she dies of an illness, and life goes on with him raising the son.

"Weird Al" Yankovic did a parody of The Presidents of the United States of America's Lump as Gump, making it a twofer parody.


There was a porno parody of this movie, appropriately titled Forrest Hump.

UPDATE:
MAD INTERVIEWS THE TOBACCO EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR
MAD #341, December 1995
w: Chris Hart
a: Mort Drucker

Usually the people doing interviews were celebrities who weren't necessarily actors, and they never were the roles they played, but I guess Forrest Gump was popular that year.

THE FORREST GUMP SCRAPBOOK
Cracked #296, January 1995
w: Mike Mikula
a: Randy Jones

APPALLING 13

APOLLO 13 (1995)
dir: Ron Howard

APPALLING 13
MAD #341, December 1995
w:Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres

Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) is having a party to watch the moon landing. Here it is just him and his wife, probably because it was easier to draw only two people. He is also an astronaut and has been chosen for their next flight to the moon.

Other characters in the theater are the apteryx and Tom Servo and Crow from Mystery Science Theater 3000. The button on the wife refers to The Right Stuff, another film about astronauts. “Max Korn” was one of the background gags they used in the 90s similar to “axolotl”. I didn't find it as funny, probably because I'm older.

There are problems with the flight. They have to make cutbacks and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) has come down with jock itch (actually the measles but I guess jock itch is funnier to them).

His wife Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) loses her wedding ring in the shower, symbolizing predictions of dangers to come.

His family is worried the landing won't be successful as they watch news about the flight on television.

In space, the other astronauts Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) don't get along.

MAD would use any excuse they could to use Richard Nixon, well into the 90s (I don't blame them). Though if they are to be accurate about 1970, it's kind of out of place for Dan Rather and Ted Koppel to be prominent reporters.

Mattingly, since his illness removed him from the flight, was re-assigned to simulate the conditions on Earth and command the ship from the ground. Here's how MADended their version.


APOLLOGY 13
Cracked #302, October 1995
w: Lou Silverstone
a: John Severin

They make a few references to Hanks' previous film Forrest Gump (which also co-incidentally co-starred Gary Sinise).

Like this reference to his “Life is like a box of chocolates” line in the first panel with Tom Hanks.

The newscaster is Walter Cronkite.

Energizer batteries had a campaign with a drumming rabbit.

UPDATE:
Cover to Mexican edition. They liked to do their own covers.