“Why… didn’t they use my line?” Groom posited after the film’s release. People laugh, lose patience, treat you shabby.” Groom’s version was somewhat more poignant and reflective-“Let me say this: bein a idiot is no box of chocolates. While one of the more memorable lines said on screen, the words were not written by Groom but by screenwriter Eric Roth. The author noted that not a week would go by without strangers approaching him and quoting lines from the film-especially the line “Life is like a box of chocolates.” The film release of “Forrest Gump” catapulted Groom into the public eye. I’d be too embarrassed to go back to the newspaper.” And I thought that was rather brave, because that sort of burned my bridges. “So I announced that I was going to resign to write a book. “I thought, ‘Well, if I don’t get out of here to do this now, I’ll never do it,’” he told C-SPAN. After working for nearly a decade at the Star, Groom left the paper in 1976 to follow his dream of being a novelist. After graduating from the University of Alabama, Groom entered the Army in 1965 and served as an infantry officer in Vietnam.Īfter his discharge, Groom briefly worked in a box factory back in Alabama before landing a role as a reporter for the now-defunct Washington Star. Groom’s father was a lawyer and his mother an English teacher. To write about men in war.”īorn on March 23, 1943, in Washington, D.C., Winston Groom and his family moved to Mobile, Alabama, shortly after his birth. “It’s something that was very impressed on me. Groom told C-SPAN “you write what you know…I’d never done anything worth a hoot in my life except that,” Groom said in describing his service in Vietnam and what propelled him to write his novel. The novel sold respectably, garnering decent reviews, but it wasn’t until the 1994 movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis, that Groom’s character Forrest became a beloved American figure-with his “Gumpisms” becoming entrenched in the American lexicon. “I didn’t have any notes, I didn’t have any research…what’s he going to do today?” “It was like it was writing itself,” Groom said in the interview with C-SPAN. It took Groom a mere six weeks to complete Forrest Gump. The story piqued Groom’s interest and once the budding novelist began to write, the words seemingly poured out of him. Frequently picked on, the young boy began to make friends due to his musical abilities. While out with his father for lunch, Groom told C-SPAN in 2014, his dad began to describe how there was once a young, intellectually disabled boy with a savant-like ability to play the piano in his neighborhood. It was in 1986, however, that Groom’s most beloved character took form. The book was a nonfiction finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1983 Groom, alongside journalist Duncan Spencer, published Conversations with the Enemy: The Story of PFC Robert Garwood, the harrowing account of the longest-held U.S. Prior to finding fame with Forrest Gump, Groom had already published three novels: Better Times Than These, As Summers Die, and Only. His death, reports the Washington Post, was unexpected, with his wife Susan Groom adding that they “believe it was a heart issue.” Winston Groom, Vietnam veteran and famed author of the novel Forrest Gump, which was later the basis for the beloved film starring Tom Hanks, died at his home in Fairhope, Alabama on September 17. Winston Groom, Famed Author of Forrest Gump, Dies at 77 Close
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