Voiceover & narration

You know, Tom said, this is like, he said, this is like taking a warm bath. It's like, I'm so comfortable in this character. He was at a point where he got the character, he narrated the entire movie, and I shot every line of narration on film because we were there for, I think, three days, just doing him narrate, doing the bench. And, of course, those big shots and stuff. But I knew that if we didn't shoot every line on film,

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it would sound more read than performed. It would sound narrated. So he performed every line of narration. And then after that, we just, you know, completely powered through Forrest. He just had it down for the rest of the movie. And then, of course, those were all the heavy scenes we had to do came after we were done. When we were on the stages here, we were done with On Location. I think the other thing that happened on this movie as a process was...

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The narration worked like this. There were obvious pieces of it that were scripted very early on. They were always in the script. We recorded all the narration that was scripted ahead of time before we shot the movie. And I had it with me on a little cassette player that I gave to the script supervisor. Because I had to build these pauses into...

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through the voiceover, and then I started making pictures through the voiceover, and Nick would work out the scene that the voiceover, that another part of the book described, and I would say, but that's so wonderful in the description of the voiceover, let's use that voiceover over that scene, etc. And so it was very clearly constructed that way, every shot. Because he knew what the movie looked like, he would say, now this scene, I want this, think window, think we're in a window, because I want the scene to be in a window, I want to be looking out the window at something.

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I wanted the soundtrack to the voiceover to become, especially by that point, the last day as a wise guy, by that point to become almost like a piece of music. It even doesn't matter what he's saying anymore. It's just rattling words, rattling words until finally the cop

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policeman holds a gun in his head and says, don't move, I'll blow your brains out. And the most unexpected thing comes out of his mouth and voiceover. He says, I knew it had to be cops, because if it was wise guys, I'd be dead. They don't tell you. They just shoot. So he was relieved. And the relief on his face is a relief of the whole film, really. His whole life, in a way. If they had been wise guys, I wouldn't have heard a thing.

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It all affects one side of your body, so he had to flip-flop, and then the lighter, which was a right-handed lighter, he had to learn how to operate with his left hand once his hand was to unfold. I'm assuming you've seen the movie already, so I'm not spoiling anything for you with this narration. I'd say if you're listening to this track now, having seen the film for the first time, then we haven't done our job keeping your interest. And what you're going to see now...

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This voiceover was actually written standing on the set of... Standing on the set, standing on the...

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...Disney lot, when I got a call from John Ottman saying that we needed a new voiceover... ...and I was on a cellular phone trying to make it make sense. There's another scene in the apartment here, which wasn't really necessary... ...and I shot a bit of with Edie, but... It came just prior to this. Yeah, but I removed it and went for the voiceover instead. It seemed more punctual this way.

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I don't really know what happened with it, but in 2011, he had made a statement that it was 20 years ahead of its time, so he felt like it should be ready now. So I don't know where it is now, but I would like to hear it. And he was also doing voiceovers for commercials, which was pretty early. I mean, again, usually that's for somebody who's like a statesman. His father was doing them. Charlie, out of the gate, was like, no, I'm doing those. And...

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worth checking out if you can find it anywhere. We're about to get to Dennis Haysbert's death, which might be a good time to talk about Dennis Haysbert, who, speaking of the voiceover work, usually being from elder statesmen, we hear him practically every day as the spokesman for all state insurance. You hear his such a recognizable voice. But he was born in California, the son of a sheriff.

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Darren Aronofsky

The shot was actually shot without our makeup artist. She had to leave early and it required some makeup because I had to put blood onto Max Cohen's nose and I was convinced that Ariella was gonna beat me up the next day, but she turned out to be real nice about it. And the voiceover you're hearing was written by me and Sean. It was a collaboration that we started about eight months

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Darren Aronofsky

I bought the ants. He still doesn't know what they mean. So this little voiceover segment was written by Sean. Here we have the tree that I was telling you to look out for if you remember what it looked like in the first act. It was a little bit more contrasty. This we wanted to go for a lot more moody, and we also changed the frame rate. He's moving a lot slower, and the tree itself is moving a lot quicker and a lot more manically.

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Tony Scott

My last note on the music, I think, more than anything, perfectly captures Patricia's character, Alabama, because she's got this childish innocence. And really, the movie is the movie seen from her point of view as we open with her voiceover. It is Patricia's movie. You know, what was unique for this script with me was that I went out to...

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Alexander Payne

This scene of Tracy pogoing in the hall had been accompanied by voiceover, and quite good voiceover, voiceover taken largely from the novel. And it was in the film right up to the final mix, but Tracy's jumping is so adorable, and Rolf's music was so good that I decided to drop it at the last minute. It's just unnecessary.

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