In a 2019 Yahoo.com interview whilst celebrating 25 years of the film, screenwriter Eric Roth spoke about how he ended up writing the film. According to the interview Producer, Wendy Finerman is the one who suggested that Roth should adopt novelist Winston Groom’s 1986 novel of the same title. In the novel Jenny’s character suffers the same fate, however, unlike in the film, the illness from which she dies from is written to be Hepatitis C. According to the Centre for Disease Control Hepatitis C, a liver infection caused by the Hepatitis C virus can be spread through contact with blood from an infected person. Hence sharing needles used to inject and prepare drugs would be a cause of infection. Jenny’s arc in the book and film has her struggle with substance abuse and thus it is plausible to conclude that Jenny’s death could have been caused by hepatitis C as well.
However, the film’s failure to explicitly mention the cause of death has also led others to speculate other diseases as a result of Jenny’s arc in the film. At some points in the film, Jenny is seen to embrace the hippie-party girl lifestyle which largely contributed to the drug use. The sexual-carefree nature of this lifestyle has also led many to conclude that Jenny could have died from HIV/AIDS and or complications resulting from the virus. In an interview with Yahoo.com screenwriter Eric Roth, whilst addressing modern-day criticism of Jenny’s character he deemed “unfair,” Roth pointed out that Jenny could have gotten HIV from the sexual-carefree lifestyle coupled with drug use shown in the film. Jenny is shown to be part of Movements such as The Free love movement in the film. The movement despite having brought along with it social change notably carried on by Feminists and Gay liberation movements was unfortunately also characterized by care-free sexual behavior and drug use up until 1976 when she goes back to Greenbow, Alabama to visit Forrest. According to Centers for Disease Control on History of HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS has existed in United States since mid-to-late 1970s. ..
In the Yahoo.com interview, Mr. Roth also spoke about a sequel for the film that was supposed to air but didn’t after 9/11. In the interview, the screenwriter talks about the details of the sequel which was supposed to open with the news of Forrest Gump Jr having late-stage HIV as a result of having contracted the disease from his mother. According to the interview, according to screenwriter Roth, Jenny had indeed contracted and died from the virus. This reveals that Jenny had indeed contracted and died from Forrest’s virus and not just from Forrest’s cold.
In “Forrest Gump,” the Hepatitis C virus was not mentioned as a possible cause of death. This omission could have been for many reasons, including the film’s genre being drama and romance, Forrest Gump’s historical events being infused into the narrative, and the on-and-off engagement between reality and fiction. ..
Forrest is presented with many goals throughout the film, like setting up the shrimp company he promised his friend Bubba. Only many of these goals have presented Jenny as the main goal of Forrest’s entire arc. Hence the decision to not focus on the cause of death which would add tragedy to the already tragic end of the story isn’t one that many fans would take issue with, after all, who wishes for more tragedy? ..
