This is part two. If you missed part one, you should correct that: Regret.
In 1993, Tom Hanks was coming off some well-received films. A League of Their Own, Joe Versus the Volcano, and Turner & Hooch had him on the cusp of superstardom.
Hanks was a big name in Hollywood, but not the biggest name. Not yet.
Behind the scenes, he was working to change his image, working towards more dramatic roles. Away from the comedic characters we loved in big and The ‘Burbs, towards what he’d become.
Before the successful summer release of Sleepless in Seattle, and before the critical acclaim of Philadelphia, Hanks got another big break.
What Hanks needed was more than a good audition. He needed a different actor, one that was about to begin his own second act, to take a career-defining role.
That same year, John Travolta was stuck in actor’s purgatory: The Look Who’s Talking franchise.
And even with that blemish on his record, Travolta still had the imagination of directors and studio executives that wanted to catch Greased Lightning in a bottle. Because of his success in the 70s, he had options. He had choices to make. And that’s a good thing.
The choices we make are what shape our careers. Our lives. What we choose to do, and on the flip side, what we choose not to do.
In 1993, John Travolta made the choice to turn down Forrest Gump.
That opened the door for Hanks, who happily accepted, and went on to win Best Actor for his portrayal of a dim-witted kid from Greenbow, Alabama. The character that just couldn’t help but find himself in the biggest events of his generation, had become an icon.
Why would Travolta turn down Forrest Gump and Robert Zemeckis?
He’d been in conversations with Quenton Tarantino who also had a role for him. Alongside Samuel L. Jackson, Travolta took the role of Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction.
The Cost of a Choice
In economics, the value of the next best thing is called opportunity cost. Every choice we make carries this cost, whether we realize it or not.
In isolation, passing on Forrest Gump is a career defining lapse in judgment. But who could have guessed that it would be such a hit? And who is to say it reaches the same heights with Travolta as the lead?
Travolta said he has no regrets about his decision. Declining Forrest Gump let him pursue a project he felt more strongly about. It also allowed another actor, Hanks, to thrive in the cutthroat film industry.
He felt good for Hanks, not bad for himself.
This concept of opportunity cost isn’t limited to middle-aged actors in Hollywood.
Consider, if you will, Bitcoin Pizza Day.
Bitcoin Pizza Day
On May 22, 2010, Jeremy Sturdivant noticed an interesting post on an internet forum. A man named Laszlo Hanyecz was looking to purchase some pizza for his family, and he wanted to pay for it using a new currency, bitcoin. The problem? Pizza places didn’t accept bitcoin. They still don’t.
Sturdivant decided to help by playing the middleman. He placed the order at Hanyecz’s neighborhood Papa John’s, paid for the transaction with his credit card, and then collected the bitcoin from Hanyecz.
What was the going rate for two large pizzas in 2010?
10,000 bitcoins.
Estimated value at the time?
$41.00 USD.
Today, that bitcoin is worth $1,034,147,000.00, a nice little profit for the 19-year-old Sturdivant.
Except he didn’t keep the bitcoin. Sturdivant spent all of it on a road trip with his girlfriend, and he doesn’t regret any of it.
Must have been quite a lady!
He and Hanyecz have said they are just happy to have their place in bitcoin history.
As a matter of fact, because Hanyecz had earned the bitcoin as payment for an open-source project, something that typically paid nothing at all, he felt like the pizza was free. But was it free of regret? According to the New York Post, Hanyecz spent a total of 100,000 bitcoin on pizza in the summer of 2010 alone.
The dude was spending bitcoin like it was play money.
Because it was.
And now, every year on May 22, the Bitcoin community celebrates Bitcoin Pizza Day.
What would you prefer, a billion in the bank, or a national holiday in your honor?
As the Germans say, “your last shirt has no pockets.” Can’t take it with you. It was a financial catastrophe. One that would be hard to get over. It was also awesome. And it’s hard to put a price on awesome.
Because it’s not all about the numbers. The value of something has more than financial criteria, right?
Adam Nayman weighed in on the Pulp Fiction debate in his article for The Ringer, saying, “Forrest Gump Won the Battle, but ‘Pulp Fiction’ Won the War.”
But how?
Forrest Gump out-earned Pulp Fiction at the box office by a factor of three.
Forrest Gump also ended up sweeping the Academy Awards—sucking up six wins in total, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Visual Effects in addition to Zemeckis’s Academy Award for Best Director.
But Forrest Gump cost seven times as much to make. It returned 12 times its cost, and Pulp Fiction returned 26 times its cost.
Economist Ronald Coase said, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” But do those numbers help you decipher what movie is the best? What choice is the best?
And with that perspective, maybe we can wrap our arms around these decisions, from bitcoin pizza to Travolta’s career vision.
Of course…that vision is clouded.
Hindsight and The Cost of a Choice
Hindsight bias is the tendency to perceive past events as more predictable than they were.
That goes for movies and pizza too.
20/20 vision is used to describe clear seeing, and figuratively, clear thinking. But to say hindsight is 20/20 would be giving your memory and your bias more credit than they deserve. Your hindsight is anything but clear and judging yourself based on outcomes that nobody could have seen, is either egotistical, cruel, or both.
Probably both.
A generation of kids yelling “Run Forrest run!” at their cross-country team must have been a shock to everyone involved.
An internet currency, created by a mythical blockchain developer, gives birth to an industry.
The success of both seemed as farfetched as anything portrayed in Forrest Gump.
So, you make a choice. Bitcoin or pizza, Pulp Fiction or Forrest Gump, The Beatles or Elvis.
Beatles people and Elvis people
There is a deleted scene in Pulp Fiction that captures the idea. Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) asks Vincent Vega (Travolta) a simple question: The Beatles or Elvis? But it’s about more than music. “There are only two kinds of people in the world,” she said. “Beatles people and Elvis people. Now Beatles people can like Elvis and Elvis people can like The Beatles, but nobody likes them both equally. Somewhere you have to make a choice. And that choice, tells you who you are.”
The all-or-nothing aspect of the question goes hand in hand with the real-world attitudes about the films: You can like Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction, but nobody likes them equally.
The opportunity cost of Forrest Gump was Pulp Fiction, and vice versa. For Travolta, that was a clear choice.
He didn’t fear missing out. You’re always missing out, but thankfully, you get to choose what you miss out on.
“Somewhere you have to make a choice. And that choice, tells you who you are.”
Mia Wallace was close.
The truth is, those choices tell you who you were, at that moment, not who you are, at this moment.
John Travolta choosing Pulp Fiction over Forrest Gump wasn’t just about two movies; it was about who Travolta was in 1993. An actor, working to get out of purgatory.
And he succeeded.
Over time, our knowledge expands, and our values shift. That’s why this regret thing can be tricky.
Every choice comes with a cost, yes. But the real value of our choices isn’t just in their measurable outcomes, but in how they shape us.
And for the record, it’s The Beatles and Pulp Fiction. All day.
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