Bubba Gump

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a screen door, a harbour bell, a kitchen ticket printer)
Two hundred and fifty people work here.
The founder is not a person.

[Verse 1]
There is a film about a man who is not a man,
who had a friend who is not a friend, who had a dream
about a shrimping boat, and the friend does not survive it,
and the man builds the company in the dead friend's name.
That is a story. That is entirely a story.
And then in ninety-six, somebody built the restaurant.

[Chorus]
Bubba Gump! It's a real place! You can go and eat there!
There's a hostess and a kitchen and a payroll and a lease!
There are people with careers inside a company
that was founded by a character who never drew a breath!
Bubba Gump. Named for a man who isn't.
In memory of a death that never happened.

[Verse 2]
And the staff will do the bit — they've got the licence plates,
"Run Forrest Run" on one side, "Stop Forrest Stop" on the other,
and you flip it when you want your waiter, and it's charming,
and it's genuinely charming, I'm not being sour about it.
It's just: somebody's rent is paid, this month, in actual money,
by a shrimp company invented for a movie about a fiction.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Here's what I think is beautiful about it, honestly:
the fictional man built the company to honour his fictional friend,
and the real people who work there are honouring that too,
without ever saying so, by simply turning up.
A memorial to nobody, staffed entirely by somebodies.
That's a strange and lovely thing to have built by accident.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the ticket printer again, an order coming in)
Table nine.
Real table. Real nine.