On The Road to Wellville

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Virginia (Camryn Manheim): The fresh air, the exercise and the pleasure of a leather saddle between one's thighs.

Eleanor (Bridget Fonda): Why, Virginia, what do you mean?

Virginia: Bicycle smile, I believe they call it.

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"The Road to Wellville," which premiered 20 years ago today, reminded everyone that every generation must deal with issues of bowel regularity. It is a normal biological function that no one seems to have fully mastered.

It was also a reminder that, while every generation may think it discovered sex, that is also a normal biological function that, in all of human history, no one seems to have fully mastered.

Consequently, there are always people whose mission in life it is to help those who struggle with such normal biological functions.

Such a person was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who ran a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Mich., preaching the benefits of diet, nutrition, exercise and enemas. He also advocated sexual abstinence.

If Battle Creek sounds familiar, it should. It has been the world headquarters of the Kellogg Company (founded by Dr. Kellogg's brother) for more than a century. Dr. Kellogg and his brother had a falling out over cereal recipes.

While it was based in fact, it is important to remember that "The Road to Wellville" was a fictional account of both Kellogg and his facility.

Dr. Kellogg was portrayed in "The Road to Wellville" by one of my favorite contemporary actors, Anthony Hopkins. He gave his usual stellar performance — but it just wasn't my favorite Hopkins role.

The character was a little too over the top for me, I guess. Maybe that's how Kellogg really was. Maybe it wasn't merely an artistic decision that Hopkins made.

If it wasn't an exaggeration, though, I have a strong feeling that Dr. Kellogg and I wouldn't have agreed on much.

Bridget Fonda and Matthew Broderick played a young married couple (with the delicious surname Lightbody) who came to Kellogg's sanatorium for help. They had been struggling with health issues since the death of their child.

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The movie followed them — and several others like them — in their journey to pure thoughts and clean living.

All Broderick really needed was some intimacy with his wife, and he knew it, but Kellogg's facility separated husbands and wives. He had a hard time coping with that. His wife, meanwhile, was becoming a devoted disciple of Kellogg's teachings, especially his stance against killing animals for food.

Broderick was forced to give his lustful attention to more accessible targets — a nurse (Traci Lind) and a fellow patient (Lara Flynn Boyle) — both of whom he imagined minus their layers of 19th–century clothes.

He did more than imagine with Boyle. That was against Kellogg's policy. In addition to being a vegetarian, Kellogg was opposed to sex other than for procreational purposes, and he forbade masturbation.

Dr. Kellogg obviously had some unorthodox ideas about good health — but, just as obviously, there must have been something to them if he followed his own advice. He lived to be nearly 92.

Of course, he may just have been a quack who got lucky and lived a longer life than most in spite of himself.

I didn't particularly care for "The Road to Wellville." It wasn't the people who were in it. As I say, I like Hopkins. I like all of the Fondas. I like Broderick. I haven't seen much of Lind or Boyle, but they were pleasant enough.

I guess it was the nature of the humor. Scatalogical humor is great when you're 7, but no 7–year–olds were allowed to see this movie without an adult when it ran at the theaters.

And that may go a long way toward explaining the indifferent response the movie received at the box office. It cost $25 million to make. It made $6.5 million in the theaters.

The Paradox of 'Pulp Fiction'

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Vincent (John Travolta): And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

Jules (Samuel L. Jackson): They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

Vincent: No, man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.

Jules: Then what do they call it?

Vincent: They call it a Royale with Cheese.

Jules: A Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?

Vincent: Well, a Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it le Big Mac.

Jules: Le Big Mac. Ha ha ha ha. What do they call a Whopper?

Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King.

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I don't know precisely when I got wise to the fact that, if I was going to watch a Quentin Tarantino movie, I had to be prepared for the likelihood that the story would not be told chronologically.

And sometimes he throws in stuff that has no real meaning to the story. Just to make sure you're paying attention, I suppose.

Roger Ebert really liked the dialogue in "Pulp Fiction," which premiered 20 years ago today. So did I — and for pretty much the same reason. Ebert just expressed it better than I could.

"Dialogue drives Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction,'" he wrote, "dialogue of such high quality it deserves comparison with other masters of spare, hard–boiled prose, from Raymond Chandler to Elmore Leonard. Like them, QT finds a way to make the words humorous without ever seeming to ask for a laugh. Like them, he combines utilitarian prose with flights of rough poetry and wicked fancy."

That is the intriguing paradox of "Pulp Fiction," isn't it? A movie that is, ostensibly, about action is, as Ebert put it, driven by dialogue.

The conversation between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson about Quarter Pounders and what they are called in France is my favorite example. Ebert cites his own, which is just as valid. There are many examples in "Pulp Fiction." The dialogue really is what makes the movie work.

It could have clashed with Tarantino's non–linear style of story telling, but it didn't because, as Ebert wrote, his was a utilitarian prose. There was purpose in each thing that was said, even if it wasn't readily apparent. And when the movie was over, the viewer felt as if he/she had been told the whole story and understood it as if it had been told in a more traditionally linear fashion.

The story began and ended with the same holdup in the same restaurant pulled off by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer. By the time the robbery was seen for a second time, everything had fallen into place.

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It was the dialogue that made the movie the black comedy that it was. I guess that is always the case, but the subject matter in this movie was really pretty brutal. If the words prompted laughter "without ever seeming to ask for a laugh" — and they often did — that is why it is remembered as a great black comedy.

Of course, there was more of a purpose to the dialogue, as Ebert observed. "[T]here is a chronology in the dialogue," Ebert wrote, "in the sense that what is said before invariably sets up or enriches what comes after." In other words, the dialogue provided a context.

It was the movie that resurrected Travolta's career. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor (but lost to Tom Hanks for "Forrest Gump") and was in some pretty good movies in the years that immediately followed "Pulp Fiction," but his career seems to have slipped from the radar again.

Seems to me I could almost say the same thing about Uma Thurman, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (but lost to Dianne Wiest in "Bullets Over Broadway"). She's made some noteworthy movies in the last 20 years — the "Kill Bill" movies come to mind — but she has mostly dropped out of sight lately, too.

In all, "Pulp Fiction" received seven Oscar nominations and won for Best Original Screenplay.

"It's all in the dialogue," Ebert wrote, and I really have to agree. Tarantino richly deserved the Oscar he shared with Roger Avary for the original screenplay — and he also deserved his nomination for Best Director.

Celebrating the Worst of the Worst

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Dolores (Sarah Jessica Parker): How can you walk around like that in front of all these people?

Ed (Johnny Depp): Well, hon, look around. Nobody's bothered but you.

Dolores: Ed, this isn't the real world. You've surrounded yourself with a bunch of weirdos.

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I've never been a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker, but I have to admit that I felt a certain empathy for her character in "Ed Wood."

She was Ed's long–suffering, nearly endlessly supportive (and painfully naive) girlfriend, Dolores — and like the enablers you hear about in tales of addiction, she made excuses for his often inexplicable behavior and found ways to justify the unjustifiable.

Ed's addiction wasn't to alcohol or pills, though. It was to the make–believe world of movies.

Dolores was into that stuff, too, although not quite to the extent Ed was. I think my favorite scene with her was early in the movie, when Ed and his gang of "misfits and dope addicts," as Dolores called them, were waiting for the first press run of reviews of a play they were staging. They all read in a silence that was broken first by Bill Murray, who disparaged the reviewer.

Parker glanced up from the review with a stricken look on her face. "Do I really have the face of a horse?" she asked no one in particular — which was good because no one replied.

(My answer to that question, had I been there, would have been, "Well, yes, dear, but don't concern yourself with it. It isn't so noticeable in profile, and it is not a deal breaker.")

Her character stayed with Ed — who, in real life, directed movies that were so bad that people actually remembered them because they were so bad. I know I remembered them. Of course, I was probably about 5 or 6 years old when I first saw one of his movies on TV, but they sure did make an impression on me. Many of the sci–fi images I've been carrying around in my head most of my life are due to Mr. Wood's work — characterized by cliche–ridden scripts and tacky special effects.

Ed Wood (Johnny Depp in the movie) became synonymous with cheap, trashy filmmaking. When I first heard that a movie based on his life was being made, I figured it had to be some kind of goofy spoof on his life — especially when I learned it would be directed by Tim Burton. But it was, in the words of film critic Roger Ebert, "a film which celebrates Wood more than it mocks him, and which celebrates, too, the zany spirit of 1950s exploitation films."

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That was kind of unfortunate, I guess, for Parker. Her character lived with Wood in the early '50s and provided tons of material to be scoffed. From what I have read, the movie apparently told the truth about her, too.

Dolores tolerated all kinds of quirks in Wood's personality and encouraged his often nutty movie ideas — but never managed to put two and two together concerning his transvestism. Wood's character, at one point, acknowledged that he frequently wore Dolores' sweaters, and she never figured out why they were always stretched out of shape.

She finally found out before she was cast in Wood's "Glen or Glenda?" She went ahead and appeared in his movie even though he popped up on the set wearing women's clothing.

Anyway, Burton's movie premiered 20 years ago today. I liked it, but it wasn't what I expected. Like Ebert, I suppose I expected "a camp sendup, maybe a cross between 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' and 'Sunset Boulevard.'"

To my great surprise, it wasn't like that at all.

I watched it again this summer — first time I had seen it in years. And, once again, I felt that empathy for Parker's character. If it was true to life, Dolores must have really had it bad for Ed — and that wasn't good. Because when you've got it that bad for someone, you're more likely to ignore things that should set off alarms in your head.

Those bells must have been ringing louder and louder because Dolores finally gave up on Ed — when he cast someone else as the female lead in his movie "Bride of the Monster" and relegated Dolores to a small part. That's when she left him.

She needn't have taken it personally. Most of Wood's filmmaking decisions were determined not by talent but by financial considerations, and he thought the actress, Loretta King (played by Juliet Landau), was going to provide money to produce his movie; it turned out she had already given him her life savings, $300, when he was expecting tens of thousands.

Wood was very flexible about everything if it meant money for one of his movie projects. If a backer was willing to finance a movie, the backer could pick the stars — and that could usually be described in a single word: nepotism.

(One of my favorite scenes showed Wood trying to get backing from a meat packer, played by Ron Howard's father, who said he would finance Wood's movie only if his son played the lead and the movie ended with an explosion.)

For her part, Dolores claimed she couldn't handle Wood's transvestism, and that is how Burton's movie presented their breakup. (Don't feel too badly for her, though. She went on to enjoy some success as a songwriter, writing songs that were recorded by Elvis Presley, Nat "King" Cole, Peggy Lee and others.)

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Wood's deep love for movies was clear, and Burton treated it with respect. Wood just never had the talent to make his dreams and ambitions become realities.

Wood's tendency to use stock film footage of any and all types in his movies was handled with a kind of gentle deference — wholly unexpected from the guy who brought us "Beetlejuice" and "Batman."

But Wood's filmography was so bizarre that Burton needed only tell the truth — for it really was stranger than fiction.

I haven't seen them all, but, judging from the Ed Wood movies I have seen, he did surround himself with a genuine freak show. Astonishingly, they were all real people. Burton didn't have to make up any of them, nor did he have to embellish their stories.

Purely by chance (at least, in the movie — and, perhaps, in real life), Wood met Bela Lugosi, who became his friend and participant in three of his movies. Lugosi (Martin Landau in the movie) was the only one who had any sort of fame beyond the Los Angeles city limits when he hooked up with Wood; the rest were unknown and probably would have remained so if Wood had not been recognized as the worst director of all time, fueling a cult–like interest in his movies.

Wood also met — at least in the movie — his idol, Orson Welles, and, for a second or two, as Wood and Welles compared notes about the movie business, it was tempting to regard Wood as a man of integrity. Except he had none. Only a childlike faith in the magic of the movies — not unlike a child's innocent belief in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny.

Among Wood's entourage were Vampira, the hostess of a local horror movie TV program (she once sued Elvira for stealing her act); Tor Johnson (George Steele), a pro wrestler who was persuaded by Wood to appear in a couple of his movies, including the widely panned "Plan 9 From Outer Space"; The Amazing Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), a psychic who had earned a reputation for making predictions that were always way off the mark.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie came when Wood, to appease financial backers from a Baptist church, agreed to have everyone in the company get baptized. The ceremony was held in a swimming pool.

"Why couldn't we do this in the church?" Vampira asked Criswell.

"Because Brother Tor wouldn't fit in the sacred tub," he replied.

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They all had their moments, but I must make special mention of Bill Murray, who played Bunny Breckenridge, another real person who tried unsuccessfully to have a sex–change operation.

Bunny was openly gay and descended from some prominent figures in American history — John Breckinridge, attorney general under Thomas Jefferson, was his great–great–great–grandfather, and John C. Breckinridge, vice president under James Buchanan, was his great–grandfather.

I thought Murray did an especially good job of playing Bunny. He could have given in to the temptation to really ham it up — but that would have been hard to do, considering how flamboyant the real Bunny was.

When he grieved his failure to acquire a sex change in Mexico, the viewer empathized — even if he/she had less in common with his character than with Parker's. Bunny's grief seemed sincere.

For a movie about the worst director of all time, it was successful. "Ed Wood" won both of the Oscars for which it was nominated — for Best Supporting Actor (Martin Landau) and Best Makeup.

But, fittingly, given the subject of the movie, it lost money — grossing about one–third of what it cost to make.

Riddle Me This

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Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes): I've stood on the shoulders of life, and I've never gotten down into the dirt to build, to erect a foundation of my own. I've flown too high on borrowed wings. Everything came too easy.

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I guess I am something of an amateur historian. I minored in history in college, but it has mostly been a recreational interest for me. When a topic from the past intrigues me, it's like an addiction. I have no choice but to read whatever I can on the topic until all my questions have been answered.

The quiz show scandals of the late 1950s came along well before my birth so I had no memory of them. In fact, I hadn't read much about them before I saw "Quiz Show," which premiered on this date in 1994.

After I saw the movie, I felt compelled to read everything I could about the subject — and I found that Robert Redford had directed a movie that was almost entirely faithful to the actual story.

On the surface, the premise may seem preposterously elementary to folks in the 21st century, but things really were different in the '50s. TV was going through what were probably the inevitable growing pains of a developing medium — but it was also a morality tale that is relevant to any age.

"Any so–called material thing that you want is merely a symbol," Mark Twain wrote. "You want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment."

Was that why Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) went along with the folks at Twenty One? Because he was greedy? Maybe. But I think there was more to it than that. Sure, he received a lot of money along with the answers, but you have to remember that he came from a patrician family of high achievers. His father and uncle both won Pulitzer Prizes. His mother was a noted novelist. The Van Dorens were so intellectual, they played Shakespeare trivia at a family gathering, according to the movie — and few, if any, of them appear to have owned a television set before Charles' success on Twenty One.

I have heard conflicting accounts on Charles' television ownership and exposure to the television programming of the day. On the one hand, I have heard that he didn't own a television before he went on Twenty One, which suggests a certain amount of naivete about TV. On the other, I have heard that he approached another quiz show about being a contestant before he was approached by Twenty One. Considering the level of the general public's ownership of TVs, exposure to TV programming was not nearly as extensive in the 1950s as it is today. It required owning a device that was still priced far beyond the budget limitations of many American households.

Folks who didn't have TVs in those days went someplace public, like a bar, or stood on sidewalks outside department stores and watched the TVs in the display windows when some kind of event was taking place. The Van Dorens don't strike me as being the sort to do that, particularly not for something as mundane as a quiz show. Charles could have learned about the quiz shows by reading articles in journals — he was known to have considerable curiosity about a variety of subjects — but it seems more likely to me that, if he did apply to another game show, he had to have gained much of his knowledge through personal ownership of the emerging technology of television.

Was Charles Van Doren motivated by money? Mr. Bernstein in "Citizen Kane" may have been speaking about Charles long before the quiz show scandals when he said, "It's no trick to make a lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money."

After conducting my own research into this story, I don't think it was money that he wanted — although he enjoyed what affluence brought him. I became convinced that Van Doren's motivation was not money but to distinguish himself in a way that no one else in his family ever had.

If I am right, he succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

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In a way, I'm inclined to say that Charles Van Doren recognized the wave of the future. Prior to the quiz show scandals, people were rewarded on television for their knowledge. Every family has that one person who knows a lot of generally useless information, right? Such people thrived in the TV quiz show environment.

After the scandals, quiz shows became game shows, in which you needed a certain amount of knowledge, but you needed a gracious helping of luck, too. That promoted the idea that you could succeed even if you weren't particularly smart. It's the same mindset that compels people to buy lottery tickets or place bets on longshots at the race track. On any given day ...

Van Doren wasn't the first one to get the answers ahead of time. The guy he replaced, Herb Stempel (played by John Turturro), got the answers until the execs at NBC decided his time had run its course — and the person he replaced probably got the answers, too. I honestly don't know how far back it went. Ostensibly, the motivation was to give the viewers the entertainment they desired (at one point, a network exec protested, "We're in show business") — but there was clearly a profit motive. As long as the winner was popular with the viewers, everyone was happy. But when the champ lost his/her appeal and ratings started to go down, it was time to find a new champ. That was what happened to Stempel; he rode the gravy train until it came to a stop, then he blew the whistle when the network didn't give him a show of his own.

I've never really reached a conclusion on the movie's take on Stempel — in the movie, he felt he had been ridiculed by having to take a dive on a question about his favorite movie, and he blamed anti–semitism for the bum's rush he felt he had been given by the execs at NBC.

"Don't do this to me," he pleaded with Dan Enright (David Paymer), "it's humiliating."

"For seventy grand, Herb, you can afford to be humiliated," Enright replied.

Van Doren was popular, and ratings soared. No one really wanted to hear Stempel's story — until investigator Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow) started poking around.

And it kind of served as the starting point for a general erosion of standards, the fruits of which we see around us today.

Image Management: Van Doren was really an early practitioner of public spin. More than half a century after the quiz show scandals, he is remembered as the guy who cheated — but, mostly, he is remembered as the guy who was on the TV show that cheated.

Blaming Others: Van Doren received applause at the House committee hearings in which he testified that he had "flown too high on borrowed wings." Things had come to him too easily, he said.

The audience saved its most enthusiastic applause, though, for the one member of the committee who did not fawn over Van Doren and said he saw no reason to commend Van Doren for telling the truth.

I doubt that such a scene would be duplicated today.

"Quiz Show" received four Oscar nominations — including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Paul Scofield) — but won none.

'Wagons East' Was Candy's Least

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"Wagons East" premiered 20 years ago today, a fact that undoubtedly would not be noteworthy if not for one thing — it was John Candy's final movie role. He died while it was being filmed.

"It is possible he never appeared in a worse [movie]," wrote Roger Ebert. "The producers claim he finished all his key scenes before his unexpected death on the location, but that's hard to believe because his character is an undefined, vague figure and isn't even required to be funny most of the time.

"That's easy in this film," Ebert observed, "which is one of the least amusing comedies I've ever seen."

I haven't seen all of his movies, but I feel safe in saying "Wagons East" was Candy's least in every sense of the word.

Clearly, I'm in Ebert's camp on this. I didn't see the movie at the movie theater. I saw it on a rented video with some friends of mine. There were occasional polite (even nervous) chuckles but no real belly laughs, you know?

Boy, was I glad I didn't blow a lot more money just to see it on the big screen.

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I suppose the humor — if it can be called that — had its audience. My best guess was that it was trying to duplicate "Blazing Saddles," but it achieved only a faint copy at best.

There were a lot of jokes about gays and hookers, physical humor, pratfalls, that kind of stuff. No humor that required any real thought — to execute or comprehend. We get it, I wanted to say. It just isn't funny.

The premise was that a group of settlers had decided to return East, and they hired Candy to be their wagonmaster. Comedian Richard Lewis played a banker who was tired of being robbed in the lawless old West. John C. McGinley played a gay bookseller. Ellen Greene, who first drew attention in "Little Shop of Horrors," played a hooker.

You get the idea, I am sure, what kind of folks made up the wagon party — and, consequently, the kind of humor it inspired.

As I say, it just wasn't funny.

Through the Eyes of Forrest Gump

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"I don't know if Momma was right or if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental–like on a breeze, but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time."

Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)

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I didn't go to see Robert Zemeckis' "Forrest Gump" when it was showing at the theaters. In fact, I don't think its debut, 20 years ago today, made much of a ripple in my personal radar.

That isn't surprising, I guess. I only vaguely remembered the book upon which it was based.

I still remember the tagline of the movie: "The world will never be the same once you've seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump." When I finally got around to seeing it, I had to admit that was true.

But, although I really enjoyed the movie, when I think of "Forrest Gump," I am reminded of grim periods in my life.

I was teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, which included teaching a writing lab, and one day in the fall of 1994, I got into a discussion with my writing lab students about "Forrest Gump," which had turned into a box–office blockbuster.

I remarked that I thought I was the only person left who had not seen it, and one of my students, Jason, said that he had not seen it, either. Jason wasn't the best writer I ever had in one of my classes, but he was a hard worker, and that means something to me. I have known several people who succeeded at what they did — not because they were the best at it but because they gave the most effort. I thought Jason was one of those people.

I don't know if Jason ever saw "Forrest Gump." Jason lived in one of the frathouses on the OU campus, and, near the end of that semester, he and his frathouse brothers participated in an end–of–the–semester ritual that involved shaking a flagpole outside the house. They had been doing this for years, perhaps decades, without incident, but, on this particular occasion, the flagpole snapped and fell on Jason, crushing his skull.

He was rushed to the hospital, where he was kept alive for a few hours, but he died the next day.

About five months later, my mother and father were having dinner with friends on a Friday night when what is known as a supercell storm came through the Dallas–Fort Worth area, dumping a lot of water in an area that was already saturated from unusually heavy spring rains. There was no place for the water to go, creating a flash flood situation.

On their way home from dinner, my parents' car stalled in the rapidly rising water, and they got out to look for higher ground. Mom was swept away in the flood waters and drowned. Dad was pinned between the guardrail and the car, which probably saved his life but left him with a pinched nerve in his left arm. Dad is left–handed, and his injury left him without the use of his dominant arm — until his physical therapist was able to restore much of it.

That summer, I stayed with Dad and helped him do the things he really wasn't capable of doing for himself — like cooking his meals, doing his laundry, even helping him dress. We watched a lot of movies on video tape that summer, one of which was "Forrest Gump." Turned out Dad had not seen it, either, which made me wonder if Mom ever did. They almost always went to movies together.

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I really enjoyed the movie. I'm a history buff — as regular readers of my blogs no doubt know — so I enjoyed the way that Forrest wound up being in the vicinity of — if not directly involved in — most of the significant events in American history in the latter 20th century.

I particularly enjoyed the scene in which he was a guest at the Watergate Hotel and called security to complain about the flashlights shining in a suite of offices across from his room. The lights were keeping him awake. Of course, the flashlights belonged to the burglars in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, and the very next thing that was shown was the familiar tape of Richard Nixon announcing his resignation two years later.

(As a history buff, I appreciated one of the little touches in that scene. When Forrest called security, the person on the other end identified himself as Frank Wills. That was the real name of the security guard who discovered the Watergate break–in.)

According to Forrest Gump's account, he had been a pretty influential fellow, sometimes deliberately, usually unintentionally. He met presidents, he was on hand for major historic events, like George Wallace's famed stand in the schoolhouse door (while Gump was a student at the University of Alabama), and he delivered what came to be known as Gumpisms, pearls of wisdom expressed as only Gump could.

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Every time I watch it, I ask myself, Could anyone other than Tom Hanks have played Forrest nearly as well? It's hard to imagine, but the role might have been played by John Travolta or Bill Murray. Would either have been better? I don't know, but I do know it would have been much different.

Gump, of course, was regarded as slow. Early in the movie, his mother (Sally Field) was told that her son was "different" and would need special schooling, but she didn't accept that. "You have to do the best with what God gave you," she told him.

Of course, you can't mention "Forrest Gump" without mentioning "My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." The American Film Institute rated it the #40 movie quote of all time.

Forrest always sought to please his mother so he didn't focus on the negative. Most of the time, he focused on the positive, even when he was in pain. Even when it made no sense.

"Mama always said dying was a part of life," he said. "I sure wish it wasn't."

Initially, I guess that was my favorite Gumpism, which isn't surprising, given what I had been through in the weeks and months before I finally saw "Forrest Gump."

But, after repeated viewings of the movie, I decided that my favorite Gumpism came when Forrest and Jenny (Robin Wright) were walking together and came upon the house where she had been abused as a child. She started throwing rock after rock at the house, some bouncing off the wall, others shattering the glass in the windows, before she collapsed in a heap on the ground.

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"Sometimes," Gump the narrator said, "there aren't enough rocks."

"Forrest Gump" introduced me to two actors I didn't recall seeing before.

One was Gary Sinise (Lieutenant Dan), who had been in movies for nearly 10 years when "Forest Gump" made its debut. I had seen some of his movies, but I had no memory of seeing him in them. He made quite an impression on me in "Forrest Gump," though, and I followed his career closely in the years that followed.

Lieutenant Dan was one of those guys who came from a long line of soldiers who gave their lives in service to the nation. Forrest saved his life during a battle, and Dan resented it, believing that Forrest deprived him of the glorious combat death his ancestors had.

Back stateside, Dan, who lost both of his legs, encountered Gump and demanded to know what people were always asking him. "Have you found Jesus yet?" he asked.

"I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him," Gump replied.

As Forrest later observed, Lieutenant Dan "made his peace with God" — and he made his peace with Forrest, too. By the end of the movie, they were close friends.

The other actor was Haley Joel Osment.

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"Forrest Gump" was only his second movie, but he did a good job as Forrest Jr. The next few years saw him appearing mostly on TV shows, but, in 1999, he was in one of the best supernatural flicks ever made — "The Sixth Sense."

Few careers have begun so well.

"Forrest Gump" won six of 13 Oscars for which it was nominated, including Best Picture, Best Director (Zemeckis) and Best Actor (Hanks).

Frasier's Pursuit of Happiness

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Frasier (Kelsey Grammer): I suppose the situation you're in is you'd like to stay with Maris, but you'd like to have an affair with Daphne.

Niles (David Hyde Pierce): Yes. Can I do that?

Frasier: No, you can't!

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I enjoyed the episode that closed Frasier's first season 20 years ago tonight.

It was a little talky, I suppose, but that didn't bother me. It isn't unusual for a sitcom episode to be dialogue driven. If it is action you're looking for, you'd be better off looking elsewhere.

The episode was done in real time and took what was already a familiar setting — the coffeehouse where Niles and Frasier met frequently during the series' 11–year run — and made it the only setting for the entire episode. All the primary characters — even Eddie the dog — came to Cafe Nervosa, where Niles and Frasier had been trying to have coffee together.

Initially, there were no tables available. "Well, Niles, it doesn't look like anybody is leaving," Frasier said. "Why don't we take a table outside?

"Why not?" Niles replied. "I'm feeling al Fresco."

In his geeky Crane–boys way, Frasier provided the punchline. "Oh, how does Mrs. Fresco feel about that?" They both giggled.

When seen in the context of the series' decade–plus on the air, that exchange really said a lot about their relationship. It was complex, as most sibling relationships seem to be. A certain amount of sibling rivalry always existed between them, but they were supportive and respectful of each other, too. They laughed at each other's jokes. They understood each other's references, all those things that went completely over other people's heads — like the time they reminisced about when they saw a picture in a family photo collection of themselves as children dressed for Halloween. They wore snouts and took a wading pool with them — they were dressed as the Bay of Pigs, but no one got it so they started saying they were Swine Lake. No one got that, either.

Frasier, as the older brother, took the lead, and Niles, as the dutiful younger brother, followed.

Viewers saw glimpses of the young Niles and Frasier over the years — and, as a consequence, gained some insight into how they developed into the men they became.

It was all out there on the table 20 years ago tonight.

The subject of each other's happiness came up while they were having their season–ending coffee. Niles was the first to ask the question, but Frasier turned it back on his brother, and Niles confessed that he was not happy, then tried to shift gears. Frasier had none of it.

"Let's not gloss over that," Frasier demanded. "You, my only brother, have just told me you're not happy, and it pains me to hear that. Why?"

Niles proceeded to tell Frasier a story about a segment from a documentary on the Depression that he had seen, about the joy on the face of a desperately poor boy upon being given a pair of new shoes. "I have never experienced that kind of happiness," Niles said. "Not in my whole life. Not even when I bought these $400 Bruno Maglis" and raised one foot for Frasier to see.

Niles observed that the shoes had tassels and asked Frasier if he liked them.

"I'm not really a tassels guy," Frasier replied (although Frasier had a different answer when asked about tassels on Cheers!).

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"Neither am I," Niles said. "Nevertheless, there they are."

The subject of happiness was pushed to the back burner — but only temporarily — by the arrival of Roz (Peri Gilpin) and the interruption of an increasingly annoyed waitress who couldn't quite manage to serve Frasier the cup of coffee he desired. Then rain began to fall, and Frasier and Niles were forced back inside.

Thanks to a little brotherly conspiracy, they grabbed a table. Not long after, they found themselves sharing it with Martin (John Mahoney) and Daphne (Jane Leeves) — with Eddie in tow. Martin was cranky for no clear reason.

The presence of their father made Frasier reflect on the problems he had forging a relationship with Martin. "Why is it always so difficult between me and Dad?" he asked. Niles pointed out that Martin's life had changed. "Railing against the world is his way of controlling his ever–shrinking sphere of influence."

They changed the subject again. Niles recommended "something light and frothy," so Frasier asked if he was in love with Daphne, and Niles spewed a mouthful of coffee.

"That's a little frothier than I had in mind," Frasier said.

Niles confessed that he didn't know, then asked, "Why did you have to hire Venus herself? Couldn't you find some beefy east European scrub woman who reeked of ammonia?"

"Well, I asked," Frasier replied, "but it was an Olympic year. The agency was fresh out."

Niles admitted that Daphne stirred "a passion in me I've never known before." Then, displaying footwork a boxer would envy, he tried once again to work the subject around to Frasier's happiness, but that went back to the back burner as Roz interrupted and then Martin returned to apologize for being cranky; he had observed a birthday recently, but no one mentioned it.

Eventually, the gathering broke up. Frasier and Niles said they would take Martin and Daphne to dinner, and everyone left — except Frasier, who finally got the cup of coffee he wanted.

"Are you happy?" asked his waitress.

"You know, in the greater scheme of things," Frasier replied, "yes, I'd say I am."

It was an introspective episode.

The Write Brothers

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Frasier (Kelsey Grammer): Niles, I would shave my head for you.

Niles (David Hyde Pierce): A gesture which becomes less significant with each passing year.

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There were several themes that the writers of Frasier explored repeatedly during the series' 11 seasons on the air.

One of the funniest — and, in my opinion, the most fertile when it came to inspiring comedic material — was the theme of the sibling rivalry between Frasier and Niles.

Through most of the series, the Crane brothers were exceptionally close. They shared the same tastes, the same interests. At times, they even finished each other's sentences. But they were also very competitive.

That had been implied in other episodes during Frasier's first season on the air, but the episode that aired 20 years ago tonight, "Author, Author," was the first to bring the message home.

In that first season of Frasier, the audience learned a lot more about Frasier than it had known during his Cheers! days — and became acquainted with his father and brother and his father's physical therapist.

By this point in the 1993–94 broadcast season, the audience knew of the tension between the elitist brothers and their blue–collar father. They had witnessed episodes in which the brothers pulled back the curtain and revealed an often turbulent relationship.

That relationship was the source of much humor over the next decade, but it truly was in "Author, Author" that the seeds were sown. The spotlight had never shone so brightly on the Cranes' sibling relationship as it did on this night in 1994.

Niles was trying to achieve a goal of writing a mental health book, but he had trouble coming up with a topic. He was about to tell his publisher that he had nothing when the publisher posed the idea of two psychiatrist brothers writing a book about sibling relationships — and Niles jumped at the idea without consulting Frasier.

That meant Niles had to persuade Frasier to write the book with him. Frasier didn't want to do it, but Niles talked him into it, reminding him of the success of their last collaboration in prep school.

And they embarked on a voyage of self–discovery — discovering in the process that they couldn't work together. (Turned out their father could have told them that and spared them a lot of grief.)

They conveniently forgot (or overlooked) that lesson in later episodes, and it was always funny, but it was never quite as funny as it was 20 years ago tonight, in my opinion.

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Frasier: Oh, so that's what this little tantrum is all about? You're jealous of my celebrity?

Niles: It's not a tantrum, and I'm not jealous. I'm just FED UP! I'm fed up with being second all the time. You know, I wanted to be a psychiatrist like Mom way before you did, but because you were older you got there first. You were first to get married. You were first to give Dad the grandchild he always wanted. By the time I get around to doing anything, it's all chewed meat!

Frasier: You're crying about something that we can't change.

Niles: Oh, you wouldn't change it if you could. You love it!

Frasier: Oh, let it go, Niles!

Niles: I can't let it go! My nose is rubbed in it every day! I'm the one on the board of the Psychiatric Association, my research is well–respected in academic circles, four of my patients have been elected to political office, but it's your big fat face they put on the side of buses!

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Later in the series, Niles and Frasier would try to work together as practicing psychiatrists and fledgling restaurant owners with disastrous (and hilarious) results. They were adversaries in the courtroom and competitors for corkmaster of their snooty wine club. A few times they were rivals for the affections of the same woman (or believed they were).

It was all funny — and it was all set up by the episode that premiered 20 years ago tonight.

Road Trippin'

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Martin (John Mahoney): Remember the old days, Niles? When they were kids, all they had in the back seat was a mayonnaise jar!

Frasier (Kelsey Grammer): Yes, it took quite a bit of skill to use it successfully at 70 miles per hour! Never really been fond of mayonnaise since.

Niles (David Hyde Pierce): Or speed bumps.

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"Travels With Martin," the episode of Frasier that first aired 20 years ago tonight, may be my favorite episode of the long–running series' first season.

And that really is saying a lot — because I like all the episodes in that first season. OK, I like just about all of the episodes in all 11 seasons, but "Travels With Martin" was special. Maybe that was because it reminded me of my childhood so much.

My family always went on road trips in the summer. My father was a college professor, and my mother was a stay–at–home mom until the economy forced her to return to the workplace.

(Actually, there may have been more to it than that. Mom was a teacher for several years before she started having children, but she stayed in the home to look after my brother and me; then, as my brother and I got into our teen years, she may have had a yearning to resume her teaching career.

(She went back to school, got her master's in education and taught until the day she died. Literally.

(But I digress.)

My father didn't teach during the summer (the small college where he worked didn't have summer classes in those days), so we always took advantage of the fact that everyone in the family was free in the summer and went on family trips, usually (but not always) to places where friends lived.

My parents had friends scattered all over the eastern United States, so I got to see a lot of interesting sights in that half of the country when I was young. I grew up in the heat of the South, but I spent many Fourth of July holidays in much cooler areas — Vermont, upstate New York, even Maine on one occasion. Looking back, I can probably count on one hand how many times I spent the Fourth of July in my hometown.

Consequently, when I saw that episode of Frasier 20 years ago tonight, it brought back many memories.

Frasier decided he wanted to bond with his father so he suggested that they go somewhere on his vacation. The destination, he said, was up to Martin, who said he wanted to see America first and he wanted to see it in a Winnebago. Niles turned down the offer to join them — until he found out that Daphne (Jane Leeves), their health care worker from Great Britain, would be going with them.

Of course, my family never traveled with a guest from another country who didn't have a green card yet and then took that guest across the border — which was precisely the problem the Cranes encountered.

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Mind you, we did travel with guests from other countries from time to time. My parents were missionaries in Africa early in their marriage, and there were friends with whom they worked in Africa who returned to the United States around the same time as my parents. We visited them.

And my parents had friends from the countries where they lived and worked who came to visit them in the United States from time to time. I don't think we ever took them across the border into Canada or Mexico, so the subject of whether they had their green cards never came up.

But it became an issue for the Cranes, who had gone on a road trip to Mount Rushmore with Daphne in tow. Martin, armed with the knowledge that they had a week off, had calculated that they could get to Mount Rushmore, look at the monument and then return to Seattle in seven days.

But after they embarked on their trip, they decided to just go where the wind took them. And, while Daphne was napping in the back of the Winnebago they had rented, the wind blew them across the border into Canada.

Daphne didn't have her green card, and she had been forbidden from leaving the country until she received it.

So the Cranes tried to smuggle her back across the border, but they were stopped and questioned by a border guard.

They got around that one and headed for home.

An Uneasy Alliance

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Tess (Shirley MacLaine): [in the grocery store] It's got no price at all.

Bob: Yes, ma'am. [over the radio] Uh, Doug, this is Bobby in canned goods, are you anywhere near the manager? I need a price check on Le Sueur baby peas, repeat, Le Sueur baby peas.

Doug (Nicolas Cage): Le Sueur baby peas.

Store Manager: They're on special today, two for .59.

Doug: They're on special today, two for .59.

Bob: Uh, copy that, it's two for .59.

Tess: But I only want one.

Bob: Uh, roger that, Doug, but she only wants one.

Doug: How much for just one?

Store Manager: The same. It's a two–for–one thing.

Doug: Uh, Bobby, it's a two–for–one thing so I suggest you go ahead and get both.

Bob: Uh, copy that, Doug, but I believe we've lost in interest in peas, repeat, lost interest in peas. Canned goods out.

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Tess Carlisle (Shirley MacLaine) was a demanding and stubborn woman, a former first lady who was "beloved" ... "as all first ladies of course are," wrote Roger Ebert, "with the possible exception of Nancy Reagan."

And it was the job of Secret Service agent Doug Chesnic (Nicolas Cage) to provide her with the protection to which she was entitled.

That job wasn't as easy as it might sound. Doug was intent on doing his job the way it was supposed to be done. Tess was intent on not allowing him to do his job the way it should be done.

I think Ebert made an astute observation when he said that Tess was "not elderly, or weak, or unintelligent, but she is lonely: During the film we see no friends, and her only relationships seem to be with her Service Service guards, her cooks, her secretary, her chauffeur and other employees."

Perhaps that explains a lot about her interaction with her protection detail. It was adversarial at times, but I always got the sense that Tess' relationship with her agents was special to her. In her own way, I think Tess was trying to prepare them for a world that she thought was more demanding than she was.

I found it intriguing that Ebert wrote of MacLaine, "I have never seen her in a role that I sense is closer to herself." He explained that he meant it in a complimentary sense, but he also spoke of Tess as a lonely, somewhat isolated and detached person, a micromanager.

I don't know if that really is an accurate description of MacLaine or not, but it is a good description of Tess.

Ebert made another interesting observation when he wrote that the relationship between Tess and Doug, the agent in charge, was not unlike the relationship in "Driving Miss Daisy."

"It isn't love, God forbid," he wrote, "but a certain respect for a tough opponent, and even some grudging affection."

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Ebert admitted, though, that the movie took "an unanticipated turn," which he refused to reveal to the readers.

He wrote only that it was "handled well enough that it doesn't break the earlier mood of the movie but only underlines it." That's a good description.

I won't reveal that "unanticipated turn," either, except to say that it led to a satisfying final scene in which Doug and Tess indicated they had reached a mutual understanding, implying that things would be much smoother between them in the future.

It would have to be smoother than the relationship Tess had with her son (played by Edward Albert), who approached her for her endorsement of his commercial venture and was turned down. But the audience was aware that, privately, Tess had watched old footage of her husband's funeral, focusing on Doug in the crowd, and perhaps the viewers sensed that she had a certain fondness for him and his loyalty to her husband.

Personally, I enjoyed Cage's performance. I guess my favorite Cage performance will always be the one he gave in "Raising Arizona," but the one he gave in "Guarding Tess" ranks second with me.

Ebert concluded that MacLaine and Cage were quite good in their respective roles. "We feel for this man who has no life of his own — except to guard a woman who has no life of her own," he wrote.

Well said.

Niles Crane's Honor

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I've always enjoyed the episode of Frasier that made its debut 20 years ago tonight.

Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and Maris' marriage was beginning to show signs of the cracks that would lead to a full–scale breakup a few years later. Acting on his brother's advice (which was actually inspired by a conversation with Roz), Niles tried to spice up his love life with a little sexual role playing.

Niles chose to dress as a swashbuckling pirate — wearing pantaloons that looked like they might have been worn by the mascot for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He had been chased from the house after an unpleasant confrontation with the maid that was witnessed by Maris, then, after spending the night at Frasier's, he called Maris to try to reconcile. But it turned out she had been "so shattered by the experience she had to fly to her favorite spa to contemplate the future of our marriage," Niles reported.

Acting on his father's advice, Niles decided to make a romantic dinner to make up with Maris — and Daphne (Jane Leeves) volunteered to help — but the fates conspired to mess things up. When Daphne arrived, she had just broken up with her boyfriend, and Maris was being detained by a storm.

Niles and Daphne were alone together in Niles' sprawling mansion.

It was still fairly early in the series, but folks who had been watching it already knew that Niles had feelings for Daphne, feelings of which Daphne would remain unaware for several years. They were feelings that had largely been confined to relatively harmless flirtation in previous episodes; it seems to me this was the first time that Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) actually believed those feelings might really bubble over from worship from afar into something else.

"It's a recipe for disaster!" Frasier told his father. "You've got a vulnerable woman and an unstable man in a Gothic mansion on a rainy night. The only thing missing is someone shouting 'Heathcliff!' across the moor."

So Frasier and his father went out into the storm to rescue Daphne.

Meanwhile, Niles and Daphne were having a heart–to–heart talk that was really quite deep and profound — even if their conversation was being conducted on two different levels.

"Love is a funny thing, isn't it?" Niles said to Daphne. "Sometimes it's exciting and passionate, and sometimes it's something else, something comfortable and familiar — that newly exfoliated little face staring up at you from across the breakfast table, sharing a laugh together when you see someone wearing white after Labor Day."

Frasier didn't know that Niles had managed to keep his behavior under control, and he burst in on them, intent on preventing the disaster he anticipated. Daphne was offended.

"You have some nerve to imply that your brother would do anything so deplorable!" Daphne scolded Frasier, explaining that Niles had just made "a beautiful speech about how much he loves his wife, how he cherishes her excruciating little face and how they laugh at white people."

Well, it was something like that.

As Frasier fans know, Niles and Daphne ended up together later in the series. If you allow your mind to wander to those later years when you watch this episode today, you will miss the point — that Niles was committed to his relationships. He was dedicated to it even though he longed for Daphne.

By the time TV audiences met him, Niles' marriage probably was already doomed to fail. The unseen Maris was a spoiled wealthy woman, selfish and demanding. She was the subject of many jokes, and she was a source of endless anxiety for him, but Niles was true to her until it was clear that she was no longer committed to him.

Niles had his own share of problems, but infidelity was not one of them. He deserves credit for being a positive role model. We have so few today.

Lilith's First Trip-Up in Seattle

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Frasier Kelsey Grammer): Hello, you're on the line.

Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth): Congratulations, Frasier, you've done it again. You've led another unsuspecting innocent down one of your dark, dead–end Freudian hallways.

Frasier: Lilith?

Lilith: Overeating is very simply a behavioral problem caused by negative reinforcement. It can be cured quite readily by behavior modification.

Frasier: I see. Well, Seattle, we have a celebrity of sorts on the line. This is my ex–wife Lilith.

Lilith: What do you mean by celebrity?

Frasier: Oh, they know you.

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Some of my favorite Frasier episodes involved the folks from Cheers. Maybe it was because the running gags about each one — Sam's sexual compulsion, Woody's idiocy, Cliff's verbosity — were well established. The laughs came much more easily.

So it was, certainly, with Frasier's ex–wife Lilith.

Bebe Neuwirth made several appearances on the Frasier show during its 11–year run, giving the writers additional opportunities to write jokes about her icy personality, her unusually pale skin, etc.

The Frasier episodes with Lilith were always good. But I always thought some of the best stuff came in her first visit to Seattle — when the affair that had preceded the breakup of their marriage had unraveled and a despondent Lilith had come to Seattle seeking reconciliation with Frasier after finding a note he had left for her in Boston.

The note was a year old, though, and had fallen behind the dresser.

That part of the story came later. First was an uneasy (to say the least) reunion with Lilith and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and Martin (John Mahoney). The Crane men weren't keen on seeing her again — and, of course, Daphne (Jane Leeves) had never met her.

But Daphne's psychic powers proved too sensitive to Lilith's dark aura, and Daphne suffered excruciating headaches while Lilith was in town.

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Martin insisted that Lilith was "weird." Frasier tried to blunt that by suggesting an alternative word — "strange."

Martin didn't go along with that. "Maris (Niles' wife) is strange," he said. "Lilith is weird."

And Niles held a grudge against Lilith for her behavior at Niles' and Maris' wedding.

It added up to a very entertaining dinner at Frasier's apartment — and some of my favorite lines.

After Daphne shook Lilith's hand upon their introduction, she told Frasier, "When I shook hands with that woman, I lost all feeling in my arm."

Frasier asked Lilith for an update on their son, and Lilith said she had enrolled him in a chess camp in the mountains. Martin asked if he got to spend any time outdoors, and Lilith replied that they went on nature walks after lunch every day.

"Unfortunately," she continued, "Frederick is allergic to seven different kinds of ivy so he has to wear long sleeves and long pants, a bonnet with a net on it."

"I sure hope the other campers don't make fun of him," Frasier said.

"Oh, I'm sure they don't," Martin said. "You know how kind kids can be. Hell, all he needs is a birthmark on his forehead, and they'd beat him to death with a shovel."

I could always count on Martin for great lines.

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After Martin had gone to bed and Niles had left the apartment, Frasier and the viewers learned the real reason for Lilith's visit.

And Frasier had to confess that the letter was old. Lilith left, but the two agreed to get together for dinner the next night. When Frasier arrived at Lilith's hotel room, the two were so driven by sexual desire that they fell into bed together, leading to an honest conversation the next morning. Neither was in love with the other.

Countless couples must have had similar experiences. I always thought it was one of the more honest episodes in the Frasier series.

A Box of Chocolates

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I don't watch the Academy Awards much anymore.

I did when I was a teenager. In those days, I tended to see every movie that was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and I always had my personal choices for each one.

For many reasons, I haven't continued to do that as an adult.

But, in 1995, when "Forrest Gump" was nominated for 13 Oscars, I remember watching the broadcast.

At the time, I hadn't seen the film. In fact, I often felt like I was the only person in America who hadn't seen it by the time Oscar Night rolled around. But I liked Tom Hanks, who was cast in the title role, and I was familiar with the slogans that had rapidly become cliches — "life is like a box of chocolates," "stupid is as stupid does," etc.

Such phrases came to be known as "Gumpisms" — and, ever since that film was released in July 1994, I've heard them spoken or seen them written in all sorts of settings.

What is your favorite Gumpism? If you're not sure, may I recommend that you watch the film when Turner Classic Movies shows it tonight as part of its annual "31 Days of Oscar" celebration? You can see it at 9 p.m. (Central).

Anyway, on Oscar Night, I remember seeing one of the people who won an Academy Award for his contribution to the picture (at present, I forget who it was) and observed that everyone had his or her particular favorite line from the film — and he said his favorite line was "Sometimes, there aren't enough rocks."

As I said, I still hadn't seen the movie at the time, and I didn't know which scene he was talking about. Now, of course, I know that it was Forrest's observation about watching Jenny fling rock after rock at the long–abandoned home of her abusive father and then fall to the ground sobbing.

Once I had seen the movie, I had to agree that it was a great line. But, unlike "life is like a box of chocolates" or "stupid is as stupid does," it had to be understood in the context of the rest of the film, in the context of the characters' life experiences.

You had to see the movie to get it.

As a writer, I appreciated the great lines, especially the ones that made sense only within the context of the story. But, as a student of history, I think I was attracted from the start by the way the film wove important events into the narrative and inserted Gump, Zelig style, into archival film footage of famous people — presidents, other politicians, social and cultural icons — and events.

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As a fan of the Beatles and John Lennon, for example, I liked the way Gump and Lennon were featured in a scene from the Dick Cavett Show.

Similarly, I liked the scene in which Elvis Presley, in his days before he hit it big as a performer, was presented as a boarder in Forrest's mother's home in Alabama. I don't know if Elvis, in his short career as a truck driver, ever hauled anything through Alabama and had to spend the night there, but I guess it's possible.

Elvis, after all, was born in Mississippi. He grew up there. And it is possible that, in the course of his work, he drove trucks through neighboring Southern states, like Alabama. If that happened, he may have needed to spend the night in Alabama on occasion.

So Forrest's suggestion that he taught Elvis to dance was plausible.

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Those are the kinds of moments that I enjoy. They're sort of like "So that is how that came to be!" revelations — like when you first learned the natural laws that made the formations of clouds possible or when you discovered that a rainbow is an optical phenomenon.

Even though you knew, on a deeper level, that what was being presented in "Forrest Gump" wasn't the real story. It was fiction.

But that is what I always enjoyed about "Forrest Gump." I liked the one–liners, but I really liked the way legitimate history was told through Forrest's experiences.

In the alternate universe of that movie, Forrest was always connected, in one way or another, with the people and the events that shaped America and the world in the second half of the 20th century.

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OK, it would have been over the top to have him land on the moon, whether on Apollo 11 or one of the missions that followed.

But it was logical to think that he might have been in the Watergate Hotel the night the burglars were arrested in the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

And that, I would say, is my favorite moment in "Forrest Gump."

But I also liked the way he, with Beverly Hillbillies logic, dealt with things. I loved the moment when Lt. Dan asked him if he had found Jesus.

Gump replied, "I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him."

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According to Gump, he was where history was made.

He played football for Bear Bryant, influenced musical icons Elvis Presley and John Lennon, met JFK and LBJ at the White House and played a role in the toppling of the Nixon presidency, among other things.

I've never read the book upon which it was based, but the movie was a great ride and I urge you to watch it again.

Or for the first time, if you've never seen it before.

Even if you've seen it before, there are things you probably missed.

Have a box of chocolates. It's nearly Valentine's Day.