Shit, Actually

by Lindy West

  WELL, GUESS WHAT, WAYNE? IT HAS NOT BEEN WORTH IT.

  YOU SHRUNK THE KIDS.

  YOU SHRUNK ’EM.

  And now, I’m sorry, you want me to what? Climb into this harness so you can dangle me over our lawn with a magnifying glass in hopes of saving our only two living children—whom I fed with my blood and pushed out of my body and WHOM YOU SHRUNK—from being killed by a scorpion?? Why do we even have scorpions in our lawn, Wayne? WHERE THE FUCK DO WE LIVE????

  It’s survivable, though. Again, this is the work of love. Any good couples therapist will tell you: sometimes the dork you married accidentally shrinks the kids and they get imprisoned in a Lego by a scorpion and their pet ant sacrifices himself to save them and they ride the dog into the house and then your son falls into the Cheerios and your husband almost eats him for breakfast and then your husband reverses the shrink ray and re-biggens them all again and you all eat a big turkey.

  She could do it. They could make it.

  But now imagine.

  Now imagine.

  You’ve gone through the Herculean task of forgiving your husband for all of that. You’ve healed, slowly, with trepidation but also with grace. You’ve made it through. You’ve moved to a new town, had a new baby, found a fresh start. Parts of you are still raw, but you know that forgiveness is growth and those scars will make the pair of you stronger than before. This is your person, and he’s worth it, and he’s learned.

  And then. After all that. Just three years later. Only three! Your husband comes to you.

  Again.

  “Honey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Honey.”

  “…”

  “I blew up the baby.”

  RATING: 3/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.

  Dude, You Gotta Stop Listening to Your Mom

  We open with a feather, which is a metaphor. You see, because it’s white, like Tom Hanks, and you want it to stay away from you, like the Vietnam War. Also this feather shot JFK.

  After falling off a disgusting bird somewhere, the feather floats over and lands on Tom Hanks’s foot. Tom Hanks plays Forrest Gump, our hero, currently waiting for the bus with childlike wonder and also bothering this elderly woman who is just trying to live. Gump picks up the feather (UGH, DON’T TOUCH IT) and presses it between the pages of Curious George, his favorite book. Congrats. Now your suitcase has bird mites.

  “Hello!” Gump says to the lady. “My name’s Forrest. Forrest Gump. You want a chock-lit? I could eat about a million of these. My momma always said life is like a box of chock-lits. You never know what you’re gonna get.” I mean, you mostly know. They write it on the lid.

  Then the lady tells Gump that her feet hurt and she JUST WANTS TO GO HOME, so, naturally, he launches into his entire life story.

  Small Gump goes to the doctor with his mom (Sally Field, who apparently gave birth to him when she was ten) to get fitted with some leg braces because “his back’s as crooked as a politician.” Gump reminisces about his ancestral namesake, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Fortunately, Gump, much like that filthy feather, is too pure to understand what racism is, so he thinks that the Klan was a sort of slumber party club where “they’d even put bedsheets on they horses and ride around.”

  Now, I guess that little rhetorical loophole (which serves the twofold goals of emphasizing Gump’s naivete and keeping this feel-good movie max digestible) is better than just not addressing how fucking racist Alabama was in the 1950s, but I can’t help feeling like Gump was AGGRESSIVELY failed by the system. Like, he’s no brainiac, but he’s capable of understanding basic concepts! If he can follow the rules of Ping-Pong to the letter, he can grasp the idea that some white people think they’re better than Black people. Instead, apparently everyone just tapped out hard on Forrest’s education, like, “Oh, he’s a little slow. Let’s NEVER TELL HIM ANYTHING.”

  Then, the worst character from Lost (FUCKING BERNARD) shows up (WILL YOU NEVER LEAVE ME BE, FELL GHOUL?) and tells Sally Field that if she wants Gump to go to his school, she’s going to have to build a giant SOS sign out of rocks…IN HIS PANTS.

  Actually, the interaction goes like this:

  Bernard: Is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?

  Sally Field: He’s on vacation.

  Bernard: [SEXUAL GRUNTING THAT WILL HAUNT LINDY WEST TO THE GRAVE]

  Later, Forrest is like, “Mom, what’s ‘vacation’ mean? Where Daddy went?” and Sally Field goes, “Vacation’s where you go somewhere and you don’t ever come back.”

  Again. Um. Respectfully, maybe the issue here isn’t that Forrest is a bumbling simpleton, it’s that his mom keeps telling him that life is chocolate and vacation means that you never come back??? Maybe he’s just an average dude who’s spent his whole life being lied to by freaks about the definitions of basic words.

  On the first day of school, Gump meets his school bus driver:

  Gump: Mama said not to be taking rides from strangers.

  Bus Driver: This is the bus to school.

  Gump: I’m Forrest, Forrest Gump.

  Bus Driver: I’m Dorothy Harris.

  Gump: Well, now we ain’t strangers anymore. [gets on bus]

  I think I see a couple of holes in your security system there, Mrs. Gump, but okeydokey.

  Once aboard the school bus, Gump becomes acquainted with a great Southern tradition: white people being territorial about bus seats. “This seeeyit’s taayyykuuhn.” “Cayn’t sit heeeeyuuuhhhhh.” But like a bolt from the heavens, Jennay appears with a fateful scooch. She lets Forrest sit by her, and, kicking off their “adorable” decades-long abuse pattern of Jennay being a complete dickhead and Forrest accepting it because he feels like he has no other options, she immediately goes, “Are you stupid or something?”

  “Mama says stupid is as stupid does.”

  YO. GUMP. WHAT does that mean.

  Dude, you gotta stop listening to your mom.

  One day, some mean kids on bikes start throwing rocks at Gump because of his leg braces, so Jennay’s like, “Run, Forrest! Ruuuuuuunnn!!!” (The fact that this took off as a catchphrase means we should all be in prison.) Forrest runs so hard that his LEGS EXPLODE and his leg braces scatter all over the road, which I guess is supposed to be triumphant even though I’m pretty sure those things are expensive and it’s not like Mrs. Gump is flush with leg-brace cash (or, as she calls it, “green chocolate”).

  “From that day on,” Gump says, “if I was going somewhere, I was running.”

  Then miniature Forrest and Jennay shape-shift into Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and then those same shithead kids come to throw rocks at Forrest again, only their bikes have shape-shifted into a truck!!! So Jennay’s like, “Run, Forrest, ruuuuuuuuuuun!” again, and I guess you’re supposed to be like “CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP OH HO HO A PHRASE I HAVE HEARD BEFORE! DEE-LIGHTFUL!!!”

  Forrest run-Forrest-runs right through a college football game and the football coaches are like, “Gwuuuuuhhhhhh!???!!?!?!” and they hire him to play football for their college even though he is clearly forty-five years old. There’s a brief Mr. Ernst cameo, Forrest invents desegregation, and then Forrest uses punching to save Jennay from intercourse. Gump: The College Years.

  Jennay takes Forrest to her dorm room for sexual gratitude and is like, “I want to be famous. I want to be a singer like Joan Baez.” And Forrest is like, “Is Joan Baez a kind of chock-lit?” And then Jennay’s like, CHECK OUT THESE CANS, and Forrest loses consciousness due to the cans (and probably control of his bladder on Jennay’s bed if we’re being honest?).

  Speaking of bladders, Forrest gets to meet JFK because he’s so good at football-running, and tells the president that he is full up with urine. “Sometime later,” Gump says, “for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young president when he was riding in his car.”

  HOW DID YOU GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE? Also, could somebody answer, like, ONE of Forrest’s questions? You’re a college
.

  Then Gump joins the army, but on the army bus, eh-vuh-rayyee see-yuhht’s tayyy-kuhhhn UH-GEEEEE-YIN!!!!! That’s when Gump meets Bubba. Literally the only thing Bubba does is list different shrimp preparations, which Forrest interprets as “best friendship.”

  One day, in the army, someone throws a dirty magazine at Forrest and goes, “Hey, Gump! Get a load of the tits on her!”

  Gump gets a load.

  OH NO! IT’S JENNAY! THOSE ARE JENNAY’S TITS UPON WHICH GUMP IS GETTING A LOAD!!!

  Clearly, Jennay needs Forrest’s help. He finds her doing naked Joan Baez at a strip club, which is not going over that well because the patrons came to get a load of the tits on her, not listen to mediocre folk covers. So Forrest punches everyone and Jennay is, again, a real dick about it. “You can’t keep doing this, Forrest. You can’t keep trying to rescue me all the time.”

  Then Forrest is like, “Say bye-bye, Jennay. They sending me to Vietnam. It’s this whole other country.” And Jennay is like, awwww, bye!

  So Forrest goes to Vietnam. Right away, Gump and Bubba meet Lieutenant Dan “The Toolman” Taylor, an irascible shithead who will literally follow Gump around being awful until death. Lieutenant Dan tells Bubba not to get his lip caught on a trip wire, which is racist. Then he delivers his signature Lieutenant Dan socks lecture. LIEUTENANT DAN LOVES SOCKS. This becomes something of a tragic irony later.

  The only thing Lieutenant Dan loves more than socks is getting blown up in a war. “Somebody in his family had fought and died in every single American war. I guess you could say he had a lot to live up to.” (Again, I kind of feel like Forrest’s problem isn’t that he’s stupid, it’s that literally everyone he ever meets is a fucking weirdo who makes no sense.)

  One day, everybody blows up, and Forrest finds Bubba dying in the jungle.

  Bubba: Forrest. I got one last thing to say.

  Forrest: What is it, Bubba?

  Bubba: I forgot…shrimp…ceviche.

  Forrest: Bubba, please don’t die!

  Bubba: Camarones…del…diablo.

  Then Forrest goes, “Bubba was going to be a shrimpin’ boat captain, but instead he died right there by that river in Vietnam,” and if you claim you didn’t squeeze out at least ONE TEAR at that moment, then you’re a lying sack of shrimp! Sorry!!!

  Gump gets shot in the butt while rescuing all his army friends from the exploding jungle, so he gets to go live in the hospital and eat ice cream 24-7. Turns out, Lieutenant Dan is in the bed next to him! (“FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!”—Lieutenant Dan.) Lieutenant Dan may have lost his legs, but he didn’t lose his horrible attitude! He mostly hangs around and verbally abuses Forrest for being an eternally optimistic font of pure joy.

  One day, Jennay sends back all the letters Gump wrote her from Vietnam in one huge bundle. Like, Jennay, you didn’t need to SEND THEM BACK. You could have just thrown them in the garbage. You literally went to extra effort just to be a dickhead. Jennay sucks.

  Gump picks up Ping-Pong while trying to kill time in the hospital, and it turns out he is a Ping-Pong wizard. Lieutenant Dan is so proud of Gump’s Pong skills that he throws him out of bed in the middle of the night to scream in his face about how much he wants to die. And it’s all Gump’s fault: “You cheated me! I had a destiny. I was supposed to die in the field, with honor.”

  “This movie’s kinda weird.”—my kid.

  Gump wins the Medal of Honor, affording him the opportunity to show Lyndon Johnson his ass wound. Because talking to American presidents about his genitals1 is kind of his thing.

  Then Gump accidentally wanders into an anti-war rally on the Mall in Washington, and Jennay is at the protest OF COURSE and she’s like, “Forrest! Forrest!” and he’s like, “Jennay!” and they run out into that stank duck pond and hug. Then Jennay takes Gump to a Black Panther meeting, where her boyfriend Wesley (DIFFERENT WESLEY) slaps her in the face for no reason, so Gump is like GUUUUUUMP ATTAAAACK and punches him. Wesley explains that it’s actually Lyndon Johnson’s fault that he is violent toward women, so Jennay forgives him and goes off with him in a bus.

  Forrest becomes an incredibly famous international Ping-Pong star (yes, a thing, I’m sure) and goes on Dick Cavett, where he meets John Lennon.

  Gump: In the land of China, people hardly got nothing at all.

  Lennon: No possessions?

  Gump: And in China, they never go to church.

  Lennon: No religion too?

  Cavett: Wow, hard to imagine.

  Lennon: Well, it’s easy if you try, Dick.

  This is the most terrible scene ever to appear in any film.

  Gump reunites with Lieutenant Dan and vows to use his Ping-Pong endorsement money to fulfill Bubba’s dream of being a shrimp boat captain. Lieutenant Dan, for some reason, is EXTREMELY SKEPTICAL that this dude who’s already met three presidents, won a Congressional Medal of Honor, wrote John Lennon’s “Imagine,” blew the whistle on Watergate, and made tens of thousands of dollars PLAYING PING-PONG could possibly achieve the famously insurmountable dream of buying a medium-size boat in Alabama and riding around on it looking for shrimp. “If you’re ever a shrimp boat captain, that’s the day I’m an astronaut.”

  DUDE. HE IS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MAN IN THE WORLD.

  Meanwhile, Jennay is off somewhere having a shitty vibe because of the ’70s.

  So, Gump moves back to Alabama to do the shrimp-boat thing, but it turns out that catching shrimp is his only weakness. He fucking sucks at it. He mostly catches garbage. But then, one day, there’s Lieutenant Dan sitting on the dock! He wants to join the shrimpin’ crew! Gump gets so excited that he jumps from the helm into the water, allowing the boat to run rogue and destroy the entire marina. This is never spoken of again.

  Lieutenant Dan doesn’t turn out to be much help with catching shrimp, so Gump starts going to church every Sunday while Lieutenant Dan sits in the back glaring at people and drinking whiskey. Then, one day, Gump’s prayers are answered! An ENORMOUS HURRICANE comes and destroys the entire Louisiana shrimping industry!!!!! EXCEPT FOR THEIR BOAT!

  YAY! YAY! YAY FOR IMPOVERISHED BLACK PEOPLE WHOSE HOMES, LIVELIHOODS, AND FUTURES HAVE BEEN OBLITERATED BECAUSE NOW THESE TWO RANDOM WHITE DUDES WHO ARE LITERALLY JUST DOING THIS AS A HOBBY CAN BECOME FUCKING MILLIONAIRES! YAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!

  Then Lieutenant Dan finally becomes nice and thanks Forrest for saving him from blowing up to death in Vietnam. Then Forrest gets a call that his mom is dying, so he swims home. Then she dies. Then Lieutenant Dan invests the Bubba Gump Shrimp money in Apple Computers, so Forrest is able to buy his church a funky new bass player and Bubba’s mom gets a white slave. Then Jennay comes home to visit, buys him new shoes, does sex with him, and then leaves again. So Forrest runs back and forth across the country a few times.

  And then we’re caught up!!! We’re back on the bus bench! Forrest is like, “Yep, I got this letter that I should come visit Jennay, so I’m on my way to her apartment,” and the people on the bench are like, “FUCKING FINALLY, MY FAMILY THINKS I’M DEAD,” and then some old lady gives him directions and it’s denouement o’clock.

  He shows up at Jennay’s house and she introduces him to her new kid.

  Jennay: His name’s Forrest.

  Forrest: Like me!

  Jennay: I named him after his daddy.

  Forrest: He got a daddy named Forrest too?

  Jennay: You’re his daddy, Forrest.

  Not the coolest way to deliver that news, but I get it. You’re Jennay.

  They get married and she wears the worst wedding dress I’ve ever seen and she tells Forrest she has HIV. But they don’t say HIV. They just say “a virus.”

  And then they have this Meaningful Conversation about life’s majesty:

  Forrest: And then, in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It was so beautiful.

  Jennay: I wish I could have been there with you.

  Forrest: You were. [But you were really hi
gh and you don’t remember.]

  Then Jennay dies and turns into a feather and THE WHOLE MOVIE STARTS OVER AGAIN FROM THE BEGINNING.

  RATING: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.

  Footnotes

  1 Butts are genitals! Change my mind!!!

  Literally a Bird’s Diary

  We open at some kind of fancy old folks’ convalescence palace. “Simple guy” James Garner shows up to read out loud to senile silver fox Gena Rowlands, but Gena Rowlands’s nurse is like, “She’s really not into it today. Thanks anyway.” Kicking off a trend of men-Red-Rovering-through-women’s-boundaries-like-Ram-Man-but-horny that will come to define the entire film, James Garner is like, “SUCKS 2 SUCK,” and barges in there anyway. He begins reading some of his Ryan Gosling fanfic out of a notebook (that’s a reference), and it goes a little something like this:

  It’s June 6, 1940, in Seabrook Island, South Carolina, and Ryan Gosling is at a carnival. Suddenly, he spots a sexy babe on the bumper cars and his nostrils flare so wide you can see his brain.

  She’s perfect! She’s so beautiful! She’s said, like, four syllables so far and none of them have been just a faucet of hot drool! She probably has other qualities that are also valuable in a woman and I will get back to you ASAP as soon as I think of any! He has got to have her. (Literally. He literally says, “When I see something that I like, I gotta have it.”) Unfortunately, the lady—Rachel McAdams—turns out to be a human being, kind of, so she’s like, “Get away from me, weirdly aggressive nostril man.”

  Goz, like all red-blooded Real American alpha males, is allergic to the Friendzone, so he comes up with a charming scheme to win McAdams over. Approach #47, the Untreated Personality Disorder Gambit: he simply climbs on to the spokes of a moving Ferris wheel and threatens to throw himself into the deadly, grinding machinery unless she agrees to go on a date with him! Cute!!! Instead of fucking screaming in terror at the unhinged stranger coercing her into touching his penis by blaming her for his imminent gory public suicide (THE ULTIMATE NEG) and then waiting for the police to arrive after which Gosling can hopefully get the psychiatric and emotional help he needs, Rachel McAdams is like, “Okeydokey! But I’m getting an appeteaser AND an entree!!!”