Random Behind Scenes Of 'Shawshank Redemption,' And Making Of An Unlikely Classic (15 items)

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  (#1) Stephen King Sold Frank Darabont The Rights For $1K And Never Cashed The Check

  Stephen King is one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature. His source material clearly makes for excellent silver screen adaptations, with over 50 films having been made from his work. The horror author is also generous. In 1976, he established something called "The Dollar Baby," which gives students or young filmmakers permission to adapt one of his short stories for just $1.

  Frank Darabont became an official Stephen King Dollar Baby when he adapted King's 1978 short story The Woman in the Room. Darabont's 30-minute film was a success, even making it to the semi-finals for Academy Award consideration. More importantly, Darabont's writing and directing impressed King enough that he was willing to basically make a "handshake deal" with Darabont for the rights to his 1982 non-horror novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

  Darabont approached King about acquiring the film rights to the novella, and King agreed to the request. King described the conversation the two men had about the novella's rights:

  I said, "Sure, Frank, I'd love it." He said, "Well, OK, how much?" I said, "Well, I don't know, man. Send me a check for $1,000 and write the screenplay and if something happens with it, maybe we'll all make a little money, and if nothing happens with it, I'll send your check back."

  Even after The Shawshank Redemption became a critical success and earned seven Oscar nominations, King decided not to cash Darabont's check. "Everybody made a lot of money, and I had Frank's $1,000 check framed and sent it back to him," King revealed.

  Darabont and King have teamed up two additional times. The former Dollar Baby also directed adaptations of King's The Mist and The Green Mile.
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  (#2) The Actors Actually Had To Tar The Rooftop Themselves

  Andy Dufresne works out a deal with a prison guard that he will help him save money on his tax inheritance if the guard will get beers for the inmates working on the roof of the prison license plate factory. To hear it from Red's voiceover narration (from the smooth delivery of Morgan Freeman), drinking cold beer on a hot roof may be the most incredible experience of his entire life:

  And that's how it came to pass, that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of '49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning, drinking icy cold Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison... The colossal pr*ck even managed to sound magnanimous. We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the Lords of all Creation. As for Andy, he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer...You could argue he'd done it to curry favor with the guards, or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me? I think he did it just to feel normal again, if only for a short while.

  For the actual cast and crew, that scene became a nightmare to film. Freeman described how laborious it turned out to be for the actors:

  The scene was shot over a hard, hard day. We were actually tarring that roof. And tar doesn't stay hot and viscous long. It tends to dry and harden, so you’re really working. For the different setups you had to keep doing it over and over and over and over and over.

  Darabont added that the scene was especially complicated and required multiple takes in order to match Freeman's narration. "Then I remember we got a nice take," Darabont said. "I turned around, and somebody behind me had tears rolling down their face, and I thought, okay, good, that one worked."
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  (#3) Morgan Freeman Injured His Arm Throwing Too Many Baseballs

  Red and Andy first meet out in the prison yard. Red is throwing a baseball with another inmate while he chats with Andy. The scene reportedly took nine hours to film thanks to Darabont's meticulous nature and desire for multiple takes. Freeman kept tossing the baseball for the duration of the scene. 

  Freeman was a somewhat older gentleman at this point - well into his 50s - and certainly not used to having a catch for hours on end. But Freeman is also a professional actor not likely to complain just because his arm hurt.

  The actor's heroics cost him. Freeman showed up to work the next day with his throwing arm in a sling. Or perhaps, Freeman was just making a point to Darabont?
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  (#4) The Original Ending Was More Ambiguous

  The Shawshank Redemption features plenty of heavy drama and heartbreak. Thankfully, for movie audiences who like stories to end well, Darabont's script concludes with two separate moments to cheer. Audiences first get to watch in pure delight as Andy outsmarts the prison system and escapes from Shawshank State Penitentiary. The second happy ending is watching Red and Andy reunite as free men on a sunny beach in Mexico. 

  Darabont almost didn't give spectators the satisfaction of seeing the two old friends meet in paradise. He initially wanted to conclude the 1994 drama the same way Stephen King ended his novella. Darabont revealed: 

  The original script ended with Red on the bus, uncertain but hopeful about the future; that's the way the [King] story ended. But [studio executives told me], "After two-plus hours of hell, you might owe them that reunion."
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  (#5) Rob Reiner Wanted To Direct, With Tom Cruise In The Lead Role

  Castle Rock Entertainment (named after the fictional town in Stand by Me) was totally on board for producing Darabont's screenplay. Rob Reiner, a founder of the production company, was one of the hottest directors in the business in the early 1990s with a string of massive hits for Castle Rock, including A Few Good Men, Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally..., and Misery. 

  Reiner loved Darabont's screenplay so much that he reportedly wanted to take it on behind the camera himself and offered Darabont an unprecedented $3 million. Reiner had a vision that Tom Cruise would take on the character of Andy Dufresne.

  Darabont's own backstory involves growing up as a poor Hungarian refugee in Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, he was still a struggling writer. Selling his screenplay for an amount of money writers almost never receive, plus the prestige that comes with such a deal, would have catapulted Darabont into rarified scribe air in Tinseltown. He labored over the decision, which was made even more difficult when Castle Rock said it would finance and allow him to direct a different movie of his choice if he signed the Shawshank rights over to Reiner.

  Despite the risks and despite the assured payday, Darabont held onto his convictions. He reasoned: "You can continue to defer your dreams in exchange for money and, you know, die without ever having done the thing you set out to do."

  Reiner graciously stayed on to serve as Darabont's mentor.
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  (#6) It Was Filmed At A Notorious Former Prison Nicknamed ‘Dracula’s Castle’

  Most of The Shawshank Redemption was filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, OH. The prison's exterior featured a Gothic facade; some prisoners had taken to calling it "Dracula's Castle."

  "You could feel the pain," Robbins said of the prison. "It was the pain of thousands of people,"  

  The 100 plus-year-old prison lost its funding in the 1960s and subsequently fell into tremendous disrepair. Conditions got so bad that inmates sued the state of Ohio, and actually won the lawsuit. The facility shut down in 1990 and prisoners were transferred out of the facility. Following the film's success, the prison officially got a new lease on life, getting sold to the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society. Fans of Shawshank can tour the facility. A local bakery in Mansfield even sells Bundt-cakes that depict the now-famous Gothic prison.
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  (#7) The Location Manager Got Stranded In Mexico After His Car And Passport Were Swiped

  The final scene of The Shawshank Redemption, when Red and Andy joyously reunite, took place at Sandy Point, St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands. In the movie, the location is said to be Mexico. The movie's location manager Kokayi Ampah was sent to Mexico to scout out the beach before the crew had settled upon St. Croix.

  It turned out to be an unpleasant trip. Ampah's passport and car were both stolen. Thankfully, the police were able to locate the missing vehicle so Ampah could fly back to the United States.
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  (#8) King Wasn’t Sure How A Movie Could Be Made From This Particular Story

  Frank Darabont received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Shawshank Redemption. The Academy Award ultimately went to Eric Roth's script for Forrest Gump. However, Darabont's script is a textbook example of how to do everything right on the page, from character development to structure to pacing to dialogue.

  Stephen King may primarily be known as a novelist, but he has adapted his own work several times. King gave the go-ahead to Darabont to adapt his non-horror novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption despite believing the story could not be told cinematically. The novella predominantly features Red talking about Andy. Despite King's reservations, Darabont saw something different and successfully translated the story from page to screen.

  Even after King read Darabont's completed screenplay, he did not think it was going to get the green light:

  I thought, "Oh man, no chance they're going to make a movie out of this puppy. It's too talky. It's great, but it's too much talking."
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  (#9) Many Believe The Film’s Unwieldy Title Was The Reason It Flopped At The Box Office

  On paper, The Shawshank Redemption should have been a big hit. Critics gave the movie mostly positive reviews, it starred two well-known actors in Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, and it was a Stephen King adaptation. But when the movie hit theaters in the fall of 1994, it made only about $16 million in its initial run, off a $25 million production budget.

  As to why such a well-regarded movie could be such a massive box office flop, there's been plenty of speculation. Freeman, for his part, thinks the title could have been to blame:

  Nobody could say, "Shawshank Redemption." What sells anything is word of mouth. Now, your friends say, "Ah, man, I saw this movie, The... what was it? Shank, Sham, Shim? Something like that. Anyways, terrific." Well, that doesn't sell you.

  "Sometimes they don't get anything right," added Robbins. "It's just a garble of syllables."

  After the film came away with seven Oscar nominations, Columbia re-released Shawshank and brought in an additional $12 million or so, bringing its domestic total to over $28 million.

  The drama ultimately went on to turn a respectable profit. Ted Turner acquired the cable broadcast rights to The Shawshank Redemption in 1997. His cable network TNT took to constantly airing the film. As of 2014, it was tied with Scarface for being the most re-run movie on television. The film also earned an additional $80 million in revenue from video rentals and sales.
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  (#10) Freeman Butted Heads With The Director Over All The Repeated Takes

  When The Shawshank Redemption went into production, Frank Darabont had never directed a feature-length film. On the other hand, Morgan Freeman was a two-time Oscar nominee with dozens of film credits to his name. The actor had also just completed Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood behind the camera. Eastwood is notoriously known around Hollywood as a "one-take" director who likes to work at a swift pace. Eastwood won an Academy Award for directing the 1992 western.

  Filming Shawshank proved to be especially laborious due to its 15-to-18-hour workdays, with the cast and crew only getting Sundays off. Adding to the cast's misery was that the relatively inexperienced Darabont kept asking for multiple takes.

  Freeman talked about the tension created by Darabont's meticulous nature. "Most of the time, the tension was between the cast and director. I remember having a bad moment with the director, had a few of those."

  The veteran actor was not willing to do as many additional takes as Darabont sometimes wanted. "The answer [I'd give him] was no," recalled Freeman. "I don't want to be chewing the scenery. Acting itself isn't difficult. But having to do something again and again for no discernible reason tends to be a bit debilitating to the energy."

  Darabont admits that his first time behind the camera was an educational experience. "I learned a lot," he said. "A director really needs to have an internal barometer to measure what any given actor needs."
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  (#11) Brad Pitt Was Originally Cast As Tommy

  In the early 1990s, Brad Pitt was still working his way from small screen roles like in Growing Pains to feature film parts. Shawshank producers cast the handsome actor to play Tommy Williams, the young inmate Andy takes under his wing and teaches to read. Tommy is later shot to death because he has information that could get Andy released from his prison sentence.

  Thelma & Louise was released in 1991. Pitt has a brief but memorable (and shirtless) role in the Geena Davis/Susan Sarandon buddy picture. Perhaps no actor has profited so much from such a small role. Pitt's turn as the young stud took him from relative obscurity to in-demand Hollywood leading man in the flash of a second.

  Following his overnight success, Pitt dropped the small role of Tommy and went on to legendary Hollywood stardom. Gil Bellows was cast to play in his place.
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  (#12) Opening Night Was A Disaster

  Prior to The Shawshank Redemption opening in theaters on September 23, 1994, advance screenings and critical reviews were largely positive. However, there was that hefty 142-minute runtime, plus a negative Los Angeles Times review by Kenneth Turan calling the movie out for being too sentimental: "Its message of hope and friendship comes premixed with a sizable dollop of unappetizing violence, intended to convince audiences that what they're watching isn't a big glob of cotton candy after all."

  Producer Liz Glotzer and Darabont set out together to fulfill an old Hollywood rite of passage, visiting multiple Los Angeles theaters on opening night. The idea was for filmmakers to watch from the back of a hopefully crowded theater to bask in the glory of an audience's emotional journey. Glotzer was especially hopeful for sold-out venues after the producer said the film's test audience reviews were "the best screenings ever."

  Unfortunately, there wasn't much of an audience on Shawshank's opening night. Glotzer and Darabont went to a popular 900-seat theater on Sunset Boulevard. There was literally no one there. It got bad enough that they had to convince two girls to buy tickets to the movie under the condition they could get their money back if they weren't satisfied with the film.
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  (#13) Tim Robbins Called Darabont's Screenplay The Best Script He'd Ever Read 

  Tim Robbins was unequivocal in his feelings about Darabont's Shawshank screenplay: "It was the best script I've ever read. Ever."

  Freeman immediately thought so much of the script that he didn't even care about his role in the movie: "When I read it, I called my agent and said, 'Whatever.' It didn't really matter [which role]," he said. "When I did know [which character], I was like, 'OK, I own this.'"

  Producer Liz Glotzer knew that prison films were generally bad investments for filmmakers, but she told Castle Rock executives that if they didn't make Shawshank, she would quit.
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  (#14) The Creek That Robbins Falls Into Turned Out To Be Toxic

  Andy Dufresne's daring nighttime escape entailed crawling through 500 yards of pipe and then falling headfirst into a creek. The memorable scene culminates with the now-free inmate ripping off his soggy shirt, triumphantly raising his arms above his head, and letting the rain wash away what turned out to be toxic muck.

  The creek that Robbins falls into was actually river water from a nearby farm. The actor said of the less than sanitary conditions, "It was pretty toxic. It was funny because when I was [in] the pipe itself, that was super taken care of and healthy. The prop dirt they use, it's sanitary actually. The muck I was traveling through was sanitary but when I got the freedom it was toxic. So, go figure."
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  (#15) Producer Liz Glotzer Had The Idea To Cast Freeman To Play Red

  There's a seemingly weird line of dialogue in the Shawshank script where Red, when asked about where he got his nickname, answers: "Maybe it's because I'm Irish." It's a funny nod to King's novella. In the source material, Red is a white Irishman. 

  When it came time to cast for Red, Darabont thought about all the intriguing possibilities. "My brain went to some of my all-time favorite actors like Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall," explained Darabont. "For one reason or another, they weren't available."

  Glotzer was able to look past the confines of the novella to come up with Freeman. He certainly had the perfect voice to serve as the narrator of the movie. Freeman liked the idea of playing the person in charge of telling the story. "And I thought, Wow, I control the movie! I was flabbergasted by that."

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