Thanks to Brian Tanner for his defense of GUMP (too long to reprint here). I can agree with the theme of destiny and a number of the other points he made but not others (during the running scenes, I thought I was falling into a trance--"This could be a Warhol film," I thought. "The hero now just keeps running back and forth in a continual loop.") Anyway, even though I still think the film is a piece of cheese (and feel much closer to the writers who have noted the lack of development), Brian's post is exactly the kind of discourse that we should be having, rather than responding to each other's lack of--or surplus of--"political correct- ness" or whatever. --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN