Some Shawshank facts on its anniversary:
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Shawshank Redemption
carrybuh — 1 year ago(September 27, 2024 06:25 AM)
Some Shawshank facts on its anniversary:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/shawshank-redemption-movie-b2616095.html
Screenwriter Frank Darabont bought the rights to the movie from Steven King for only $5000.
It was something of a redemption story for Darabont, too. At the time, he was a jobbing screenwriter whose biggest credits included A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and The Fly II. He’d previously adapted one of King’s stories, The Woman in the Room, for a 1983 short. Darabont had bought the rights to that story for just $1 (King had a longstanding offer that allowed aspiring filmmakers to adapt his short stories for a single dollar), and came back to King to purchase the rights – this time for a reported $5,000 (£3,750) – to Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The novella was a part of King’s Different Seasons collection that also included The Body, which was adapted as the nostalgic favourite, Stand by Me.
The cast knew the movie was going to be great as soon as they read the script and producer Rob Reiner thought it was so brilliant he offered Darabont $3 million if Reiner could direct it himself. Darabont turned it down because he wanted to direct it.
The cast and crew, of course, knew how good it was from Darabont’s script alone. “It’s really quite a remarkable piece,” Lester says, talking from Los Angeles via Zoom. “I never read a better script in my life, right from the jump.”
King himself was unsure about how Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption could work as a movie. Filmmaker Rob Reiner, though, knew exactly what Darabont had achieved when the script landed on the desk of his production company, Castle Rock. Reiner – who directed Stand by Me and another previous King adaptation, Misery – offered Darabont a rumoured $3m if Reiner could direct it himself.
Tom Cruise was the first choice for Andy Dufresne:
Reiner had Tom Cruise in mind for the role of Andy Dufresne. But eventual stars Robbins and Freeman are so integral to the film – the heart and soul of Shawshank State Prison. “Neither one of them I could find fault with,” says Lester. “And I looked at every second of the dailies.” It’s one of the films that made Freeman an elder statesman of Oscar-worthy Hollywood fare.
"Brooks" the elderly prisoner who is released and then commits suicide was not part of the original Steven King story:
Brooks (James Whitmore), can’t cope with the outside world when he’s released and takes his own life – this was one of Darabont’s additions to King’s story.
The prison the movie was filmed in was built in 1886 and was still in use only a few years before the movie was made:
Shawshank itself is crucial to the film. The prison is set in Maine, though they filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield. The prison began construction in 1886 and was in use until 1990. “It was worse than foreboding,” says Lester. “The courts closed it a few years before for inhumane conditions. Then it had been left to Ohio’s winters. It was a devastating environment when we looked at it – already one of the most depressing pieces of architecture conceivable, and completely in ruin inside. I walked around, contemplating what it would take just to get it back to being a s****y prison.”
The cinematographer hates the escape scene in the rain because he thinks it was lit too brightly:
In terms of the film’s legacy, its most obviously iconic moment comes when Andy (30-year spoiler warning incoming) escapes. He crawls through a 500-yard sewage pipe, spills out into a creek, and – with his arms out Christ-like – stands in the rain a free man. Cinematographer Roger Deakins has claimed to “hate” the scene because he lit it too brightly. That image, however, stands triumphantly. Not just as a great movie moment, but a cinematic goliath – instantly recognisable as the summation of everything that’s made The Shawshank Redemption resonate for 30 years. A massive helping of hope and sentimentality.
It only made $18 million when it was first released, $7 million dollars below its budget. The title of the movie was blamed:
The Shawshank Redemption opened on 23 September 1994. Test screening reactions and reviews were strong but – from a budget of $25m – made a measly $18m in its first run. The film’s title, which now rolls off the tongue as a well-recognised classic – like Citizen Kane or It’s a Wonderful Life – has often been blamed for the film’s initial failure.
“Castle Rock wanted to put on a contest for anyone who worked at the company to come up with a better name for the movie – and nobody could, nobody won the prize!” says Lester, laughing. -