Life Is Not A Box Of Chocolates
This week's writing
Breanna Banaciski, who’s simultaneously a comedian and realtor in Florida, posted a video this week that ends with a reference to Forrest Gump, specifically the classic line “life is like a box of chocolates” but she also mentions Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise). So, she’s probably seen the whole movie beyond YouTube clips. She’s 30, so she could’ve been conceived after her parents went on a date to see Forrest Gump (not that it’s a particularly sexy movie, but sometimes the popcorn and fountain soda are enough to put you in the mood).
Two years after Forrest Gump’s release, The X-Files spoofed the “box of chocolates” monologue in its fourth season episode “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man,” which reveals the shadowy origins of the series villain (though perhaps “antagonist” is a fairer description). Like Forrest, the smoking man (William B. Davis) plays a role in key historical events, and the episode lampshades this similarity when he sits down on a bench and rants about chocolates to a homeless man.
“Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So you're stuck with this undefinable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while there’s a peanut butter cup or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast and the taste is... fleeting. So, you end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. And if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers.”
X-Files creator Chris Carter said that while actor William B. Davis was pleased to have an episode focused on his character, he worried that the script made the smoking man something that he wasn’t. The episode reveals that the 1990s Darth Vader, the mastermind behind political assassinations and domestic instability, is at his core a pathetic man who consistently fails to achieve his dream of becoming a published writer.
Carter said in an interview, “I think [script writers James Wong and Glen Morgan] were trying to express, that even if your mission in life is a destroyer, that you still have some hope in the back of your mind that you can be a creator — and that this all of a sudden, this vanity, is his vanity. And we see that so clearly here and it makes him sort of a silly person.”
The past year in particular has proven that Wong and Morgan were right. “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
Oh, although most people say “life is like a box of chocolates,” the actual line from the film is “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” The use of past tense is relevant here, as it speaks to the finality of our existence. Life isn’t like the box of chocolates we’re about to open and consume. It was like the box we already experienced. We should live our lives so we don’t regret the empty box.
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This Monday was Dr. Martin Luther King Day, which the current White House occupant acknowledged at the last possible moment.
Then I offered a deep dive into the progressive politics of Star Trek, which obviously people like Elon Musk and Stephen Miller can’t possibly understand.
Some excerpts from Josh Shapiro’s upcoming memoir read like a Veep spec script. He does not think much of Kamala Harris.
I explain why Republican Sen. Thom Tillis keeps talking about Donald Trump as if he’s King Henry VIII
That’s it for this week. I’ll see you on Monday.
Lotta great stuff this week!