Dan Tayor, the character who loses two legs played by Gary Sinise

 Prior to beginning the exploration into connection between the character and Gary Sinie’s experience using wheelchairs, please take a moment to review the movie trailer. This helps viewers who have not seen the film get a sense of it and viewers who have seen the movie remember it. It would be particularly helpful to pay attention to the connection between Dan Tayor and the characters he interacts with throughout the trailer. 

Upon review of the trailer, one notices that there are only three brief moments of Dan Taylor with Forrest Gump. These moments are quick and busy as Forrest Gump pulls Dan Tayor out of the explosion site and carefully moves him out of the way. In one of the brief moments at 3:29 Forrest Gump is holding and comforting Dan Taylor as helicopters come to rescue the two of them. Unfortunately the major failure of the trailer is that it does not show the lieutenant legless and wheelchair bound. This is a disservice to the movie because it does not show its diversity as it features a character who becomes disabled over the course of the movie. 

One of the major reasons the directors of the film likely chose to leave out the detail of a character who becomes wheelchair bound during the course of the movie is because the actor who plays that role is unauthentic. This is to say that Gary Sinise is not a wheelchair user and only temporarily learns how to be one to fit the role.

One major challenge of this film, is that the character Lt. Dan Taylor is able-bodied for some of the scenes and wheelchair bound for later scenes. Essentially this means that whether the directors cast an individual in a wheelchair or not, the actor would have to be an able-bodied person for some of the senses. So in this case it is logical to contract an able-bodied actor and use effects when the character becomes wheelchair bound in the movie. The mere fact that the character is not wheelchair bound in every scene makes it a challenge to find an actor well-suited to play this role.

The best practice given the role would be to have two actors who look similar and have one play the abled-body scenes and the other play the wheelchaired bounded scenes, ideally someone familiar with wheelchairs. However, it is important to acknowledge that the directors of the film did the best they could given the limited resources.

Additionally it should be noted that Gary Sinise never served in the military. He is an honorary member of the U.S. Marine Corps for his role in Forrest Gump.

A major concerned with having able-bodied actor Gary Sinise continue to play Lt. Dan Taylor during the scenes when he was wheelchair bound is that Gary Sinise has legs when the character he plays does not. The way the directors handle this, is that in the scenes when Lt. Dan Taylor is missing his legs the directors used a wheelchair that was specially made to hide Gary Sinise’s legs (source). What was still visible of his legs despite the specially made wheelchair was cared for by the practical and special effects of presenting material on screen.

After examining the situation and the way it was handled I am not sure if this is an ethical dilemma for individuals in the wheelchair bound community. It would be hard to say how I feel about it because I myself am not a wheelchair user. However, I do know a few wheelchair users and I feel like they would acknowledge the complicated nature of trying to cast this role. Either way, it still produced a complicated feeling to know that the way they handled it was through a specially designed wheelchair to hide the legs of the actor Gary Sinise. Readers, what do you think? Are you a wheelchair user, if so how does the way the directors of the film handled the role of Lt. Does Dan Taylor’s character make you feel? If you are not a wheelchair user, how does the director handle the role of Lt. Does the Dan Taylor character make you feel? What is the boundary and duty of directors to have actors that are wheelchair bound when the character is only wheelchair bound for part of the scenes?