Director Ed Zwick Released ‘Forrest Gump’: ‘I Didn’t Get It’

Director Ed Zwick was shaking things up in Hollywood with his new showbiz story – and during a recent conversation about the book, he continued to tread on toes, even criticizing Matthew Broderick’s mom.

Zwick has he told stories outside of school in “Hits, flops and other illusions: my forty-something years in Hollywood” about actors such as Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts and more.

When Zwick was interviewed by Ankler’s Janice Min in Los Angeles, he revealed some details he left on the cutting room floor.

When Min mentioned a passage in Zwick’s book in which Matthew Broderick’s mother told Zwick that the script for the 1989 Civil War film “Glory” was “limp as a penis” – we hear Zwick interjected and added, “She actually said,” limp like a penis” pink penis. I thought I’d do the decent thing and skip this part.

The director – who produced the Oscar-winning ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and co-created TV’s ‘Thirty-Year-Old’ – also revealed that he mistakenly passed on another Oscar-winning classic, ‘Forrest Gump’, because… he didn’t understand.

“I remember passing ‘Forrest Gump.’ I didn’t understand,” he said about the 1994 film with Tom Hanks. – I mean Eric Roth [whose recent credits include ‘Dune’ and ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’] he’s such a good writer” — but “I remember reading it at the beginning and saying, ‘What? It’s there and then it’s there and where’s the dramatic arc? I mean, I’ve made such stupid mistakes.

Zwick and Min’s conversation took place in front of an audience including “Erin Brockovich” producer Michael Shamberg at Zibby’s Bookshop, a Santa Monica store owned by Zibby Owens, the daughter of New York billionaire Steve Schwarzman.

The store was a favorite of celebrities such as Larry David, Jennifer Garner and Reese Witherspoon.

As for the future of Hollywood studios, which are in shambles with Paramount up for sale and Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are struggling financially, Zwick told Min: “I’m not optimistic. I mean, it won’t go away. You just have to hope that it doesn’t become an opera, some kind of privileged, expensive experience. You know, that’s such a nice touch.

In his book, Zwick also gushed about how Julia Roberts left 1998’s Shakespeare in Love before Gwyneth Paltrow took over the role.

He wrote in a recent essay for Air Mail that Roberts failed to create chemistry with any of the proposed male actors and that “The problem wasn’t the script… It was Julia. From the moment she started speaking, it was clear that she hadn’t worked on her accent.

He too writes about how Harvey Weinstein threatened him over the film when they later argued over the end credits. Zwick reports that Weinstein – who now of course is imprisoned without connection — I once told him, “I’ll kill your whole family, you little bastard!”

Among other devastating observations, Zwick mentions in his book that Pitt “appears calm at first, but when he gets angry he can become unstable.”

They both had epic fights on the set of “Legends of the Fall” and Zwick revealed in his book about the actor: “I don’t know who screamed first, who swore first, or who threw the chair first. Maybe me? But when we looked up, the crew was gone.

Although he praised Pitt as an actor and said it was all to the film’s benefit.

A source familiar with Pitt previously told Page Six of Zwick that “he’s an asshole” and then claimed that in the same film “Anthony Hopkins [who played Pitt’s dad] I got very sick [Zwick] that one day he just got in his car and drove to the airport.

During Zwick’s lecture in Los Angeles, we hear that during the event, former “SNL” star Amy Poehler was spotted looking in the door and asking an employee what was going on and why it was so busy.

After Zwick’s honest talk about actors, maybe she should have covered her ears.