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

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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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  (#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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  (#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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  (#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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  (#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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