The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is Directed by visionaryFrank Darabont and originally written by Stephen King.Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins are in the lead role. The movie is the story of two imprisoned men, who bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was nominated for 7 Oscars but didn’t actually won any of them. The movie stands at #1 on IMDb Top 250 Movies of all time.
There are movies which we can never have enough of and this is surely one of them. Let’s look at some of the Super Interesting Facts About The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
1. Andy and Red’s opening chat in the prison yard – in which Red is pitching a baseball – took 9 hours to shoot. Morgan Freeman pitched that baseball for the entire 9 hours without a word of complaint. He showed up for work the next day with his arm in a sling.
2. In the scene with Andy arriving in the library as Brooks’ assistant while Brooks’ crow Jake is squawking, Tim Robbins had to time his line, “Hey, Jake. Where’s Brooks?”, so that the crow wouldn’t squawk over him since the bird could not be trained to squawk on cue. Robbins was able to adapt to this and time his line perfectly by learning the bird’s squawking patterns, for which Director Frank Darabont praised him. Robbins’ improvisation is noticeable as he watches the bird carefully while approaching it, waiting for it to squawk, and doesn’t begin his line until after it does so.
3. Stephen King sold the film rights for his novella, Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption, for $5,000. He never cashed the check. Years after Shawshank came out, the author got the check framed and mailed it back to the director Frank Darabont with a note inscribed: “In case you ever need bail money. Love, Steve.”
4. Director Frank Darabont decided not to have the deleted scenes on the DVD release of the film because he’s embarrassed by them and doesn’t want them to be seen publicly.
5. The Shawshank Redemption initial gross of $18 million didn’t even cover the cost of its production. It did another $10 million in the wake of its Oscar nominations but the film was still deemed to be a box office flop.
6. Rob Reiner loved Frank Darabont’s script so much that he offered $2.5 million for the rights to the script so he could direct it. Darabont seriously considered Reiner’s offer but ultimately decided that it was his “chance to do something really great” by directing the movie himself. Reiner wanted Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise to play Red and Andy respectively.
7. The American Humane Association monitored the filming of scenes involving Brooks’ crow. During the scene where he fed it a maggot, the AHA objected on the grounds that it was cruel to the maggot, and required that they use a maggot that had died from natural causes. One was found, and the scene was filmed.
8. In the closeup of Andy’s hands loading the revolver in the opening scenes, the hands are actually those of Frank Darabont. Later in the film, while Andy carves his name into his cell wall (seen twice in the film), Darabont’s hands are used again for the insert shot. These closeups were filmed during post production, notably because Darabont felt that only he could do exactly what he wanted in the closeups.
9. One of the reasons why they didn’t employ the full title of the Stephen King novella – “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” – was because there was a perception in Hollywood that this was actually going to be a biopic of Rita Hayworth. Indeed, Frank Darabont even received solicitations of audition request from several actresses and supermodels and their agents about playing the lead.
10. The role of Andy Dufresne was originally offered to Tom Hanks, who couldn’t accept due to scheduling conflicts with Forrest Gump(1994). Hanks did, however, work on Frank Darabont’s next film, The Green Mile (1999).
11. Frank Darabont wrote the script in eight weeks.
12. Every picture, except for the big posters, in Andy’s cell were all hand picked by actor Tim Robbins himself.
13. The exteriors were filmed at the defunct Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. The prison was in such poor condition, renovations had to be made prior to filming. However, most of the interiors were shot on a sound stage, because they determined it would be cheaper to build duplicates of the interiors rather than renovating the interiors of Mansfield.
14. Both Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman won Best Supporting Actor Oscars for films directed by Clint Eastwood: Robbins in Mystic River(2003) and Freeman in Million Dollar Baby(2004).
15. Red says that Andy broke out in 1966. This was the same year as the landmark Miranda v. Arizona case before the Supreme Court, where it was decided a defendant must be informed of their rights (i.e. right to remain silent, right to an attorney, etc.), when put under police custody. That’s why at the end of the film, when they arrest Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown), the officer is reading the Miranda rights from a piece of paper.
16. Frank Darabont preferred to end the film with Red searching for Andy. In fact, if he had been allowed to shoot the ending as he wanted, the closing shot would have been Red on the bus heading for the field. Darabont wanted to end on an open, ambiguous note. But Castle Rock insisted on a reunion between the two to please audiences. So instead of showing us a teary reunion, the film observes it from a distance. Darabont’s response to Castle Rock’s demands.
17. The $370,000 Andy stole from the Warden in 1966 may not seem a huge amount for 20 years incarceration but adjusted for inflation to 2014, Andy stole the equivalent of $2,703,466.67.
18. There are several similarities to the Alexandre Dumas père novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo” (which is also mentioned during the film). The Dumas novel involved a man falsely imprisoned for a crime, who later makes a daring escape. After escaping, he acquired hidden treasure which he learned about in jail, and executed a plan of revenge against those who imprisoned him.
19. In 2007, two inmates of Union County Prison escaped from their prison using similar techniques to those featured in the movie. Their (partially) successful escape led to the suicide of prison guard Rudolph Zurick. When the two convicts were recaptured, they denied responsibility for Zurick’s death.
20. Red describes Andy’s dream as a “shitty pipe dream”. During his escape to live that dream, Andy crawls through the sewer pipe of the prison, literally a “shitty pipe”.
21. There are only two women with speaking roles in the film: the customer who complains about Brooks’ service at the grocery store, and the lady who attends to Andy at the bank following his escape.
22. The inmates are seen watching Gilda (1946). In the novella, the prisoners watched The Lost Weekend(1945). Because the rights to this were owned by a different studio, Darabont looked to see which old films he could show without incurring costs. He was delighted to see that one that he was able to use was Gilda, one of the greatest hits of Rita Hayworth whose image plays a pivotal role in the story.
23. The final scene was filmed on the U.S. Virgin islands in the Caribbean, but in the film it is supposed to be the Pacific Ocean.
Red says he has no idea what the ladies in The Marriage of Figaro are singing about. Actually, they’re composing a letter to the husband of one of them inviting him to an assignation with the other in order to expose his infidelity.
24. Beer bottles didn’t have screw tops in 1949.
25. Despite its box office failure, Warner Brothers shipped 320,000 rental copies to US video stores, a figure a spokesman freely admitted was “out of whack” with the film’s performance in the theaters.
26. Clancy Brown said that he received several offers from real-life corrections officers to work with him to make his portrayal of Captain Hadley more realistic. He turned them all down because Hadley was an evil character and he didn’t want to misrepresent real corrections officers.
27. In the movie Red says “I committed murder.” when Andy asks him what he’s in Shawshank for. The source novella explains in detail: Red is serving three life sentences for murdering his wife, his neighbor’s wife and his neighbor’s son. Red disconnected the brakes on his car in order to kill his wife to collect on an insurance policy, he did not plan on two other people joining his wife for her ill-fated drive.
28. Although a very modest hit in theaters, it became one of the highest grossing video rentals of all time.
AVJ
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