Episode 121: Robert Zemeckis On The Music Of Welcome To Marwen, Back To The Future, Forrest Gump & More

Robert Zemeckis is an absolute legend. From Back To The Future to Polar Express and Forrest Gump, he makes the kind of movies you can watch over and over again. So it's a great honour to welcome him to Soundtracking for our very last show of 2018. Robert's collaborator-in-chief is composer Alan Silvestri, who has scored every one of his films since Romancing The Stone, which came out in 1984\. And yes, we will be playing the theme from that, as well as a couple of classic tunes from Forrest Gump and plenty more besides. But we begin with their latest project, Welcome To Marwen. Starring Steve Carrell, it's based on a documentary about artist Mark Hogencamp, who in 2000 was brutally attacked by five men after he told them he was a cross-dresser. Following nine days in a coma, Mark suffered brain damage that left him little memory of his previous life. By way of therapy, he built a model World War II–era Belgian town in his yard and populated it with dolls representing himself, his friends, and even his attackers. Mark called the town Merwencol, and this episode begins with Alan's cue of the same name.