An early directorial effort from The Walking Dead’s Frank Darabont, 1994’s The Shawshank
Redemption didn’t perform as expected upon release but has slowly but surely risen in
stature to become a modern classic.
There are many cool facts about the movie that fans might not know, including that it
was based on a novella by Stephen King.
Not only that, but Stephen sold the rights to the novella for only $1,000!
Join Facts Verse as this scene wasn’t edited, look closer at the Shawshank Redemption blooper.
A Different Kind of Stephen King Adaptation By the time the 1990s rolled around, there
had already been many Hollywood adaptations of hit horror author Stephen King’s novels.
From Salem’s Lot to Misery, it had been proven that Stephen’s works translated well
to the screen.
However, Stephen wasn’t all too happy with a lot of these adaptations.
When an up-and-coming filmmaker expressed interest in adapting one of Stephen’s rare
non-horror works, the author took a liking to him.
The filmmaker was a young Frank Darabonte, and he assured Stephen that he intended to
more accurately translate the author’s works to the screen than any filmmaker had done
before.
Because of this, Stephen sold Frank the rights he wanted for only $1,000.
The Stephen King property that Frank Darabont was so keen on adapting wasn’t a horror
story like the kind that had helped the author become a phenomenon.
Instead, Frank expressed interest in adapting one of Stephen’s more slice-of-life works.
Stephen had already seen one of his slice-of-life novellas brought to the big screen during
the 1980s with Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me.
The novella that Frank was interested in adapting was one by the name of Rita Hayworth and the
Shawshank Redemption.
Though the film ended up being a nearly perfect adaptation of the source material, the “Rita
Hayworth” part of the title was dropped before it hit the screens.
The reason for this was that Frank didn’t want people to think the film was a biopic
telling the story of Rita Hayworth.
As it stood, several actresses had already shown up to audition for the part of Rita
Hayworth while the film was still being cast only to be disappointed.
Of course, there was no role of Rita Hayworth to be cast in the film adaptation of Rita
Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.
The Golden Age actress’s name in the title refers to a poster that the main character
Andy Dufresne uses to cover up a hole that he is chiseling away at in his prison cell.
This hole then provides the character’s climatic means of escape.
Not only was Rita Hayworth’s name dropped from the title of the film adaptation, but
so was the whole concept of the actress’s poster.
Instead, the poster that Andy uses in the film to cover up the hole that he is making
in his cell is the iconic poster for the film One Million Years B.C., which featured the
sex symbol Raquel Welch very scantily clad.
Small Changes Were Made from Novella to Film The poster for One Million Years B.C. worked
well in The Shawshank Redemption, even if the inclusion of the poster can technically
be considered an anachronism given that the poster was a few months short of being released
at the time that the film supposedly takes place.
Despite the fact that some minor changes were made to his source material when it came to
the adaptation, Stephen King was very impressed with the film.
He was so impressed, in fact, that he ended up returning the $1,000 that Frank Darabont
had paid him for the rights to his original novella.
It turns out that Stephen had never actually cashed the check that Frank had given him.
When Stephen saw the premiere of the film and immensely enjoyed it, he had the check
framed.
He adorned the framed check for Frank with the inscription “if you ever need bail money…”,
which perfectly fits with the film’s theme.
The story of how The Shawshank Redemption came to be is interesting enough, but there
are also plenty of fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes from over the course of the film’s production.
The most ludicrous of these may very well be one involving a maggot and the American
Human Society.
As more Hollywood-savvy viewers may already know, representatives from the American Human
Society have to be present during the filming of major Hollywood productions to ensure that
no animals are harmed over the course of it.
Ensuring that no animal cruelty went down on the set of The Shawshank Redemption wasn’t
much of a problem, as there aren’t a whole lot of animals in the picture.
However, there was one scene involving a maggot that did raise an issue.
Those that know The Shawshank Redemption well will have no trouble recalling the scene where
main character Andy finds a maggot in his prison food only for another prisoner to take
the maggot and feed it to his pet crow.
When it came time to film the scene, Frank Darabonte and the rest of the cast and crew
of the movie had assumed that they were simply going to be able to feed the crow an actual,
live maggot.
Of course, the phenomenon of birds eating live insects is something that happens all
the time in nature.
However, the representative of the American Humane Society that was on the set of the
film had a problem.
According to him, feeding the live maggot to the crow would constitute unnecessary cruelty
to said maggot.
Because of this, Frank and his crew had go out of their way to sort through the maggots
and find one that had already passed away of natural causes before feeding it to the
crow.
Frank Darabont Was Inspired by GoodFellas Besides the planned death of a poor maggot,
there wasn’t a whole lot of darkness that went into the making of The Shawshank Redemption.
Though the film, and the novella upon which it was based, is about a convicted murderer,
it actually stands as one of the more heartwarming tales from the mind of Stephen King.
Even so, Frank Darabont took directorial inspiration from a surprisingly sinister work during the
production of the film.
The movie that Frank claimed to be most inspired by while he was filming his first Stephen
King adaptation wasn’t Rob Reiner’s Misery or Stand By Me, but was instead the Martin
Scorsese film GoodFellas.
GoodFellas is a dark mob epic that had been a major hit just a few years before The Shawshank
Redemption went into production.
Frank Darabont wasn’t inspired by the dark or salacious elements of GoodFellas but was
instead fascinated by the way that the film depicted the passage of time.
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption was a story that took place over the course
of two decades in a prison, and Frank wanted to use the same tricks as Martin Scorsese
did on GoodFellas to bring the film an epic scope.
Frank paid particular attention to the way Martin had lead actor Ray Liotta do his voiceovers
for the film.
Of course, voiceovers would become an integral part of Frank’s own.
The person tasked with doing the voiceover work for The Shawshank Redemption was Tim
Robbins, who had been cast in the lead role of Andy Dufresne.
Frank Darabont had originally eyed Tom Hanks for the role, but the actor was too busy filming
Forrest Gump.
Frank and Tom would get to work together on a subsequent adaptation of a Stephen King
novel The Green Mile.
Tim proved a great choice for the character of Andy, though the actor’s immense height
of 6’ 5” meant that Frank had to take special care to make sure that the other actors
he cast in the film were pretty tall, as well.
Morgan Freeman Had Never Done Voiceover Before Besides Tim Robbins, the other main actor
in The Shawshank Redemption is Morgan Freeman.
Morgan plays the character of Ellis Body Redding in the film, or “Red” for short.
In the Stephen King novella, the character of Red had been a red-haired Irishman.
Despite this, Frank had always envisioned Morgan in the role.
Stephen agreed with the casting choice, and the rest is history!
If Morgan had turned the role down, other casting choices that Frank had considered
for the part of Red included Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford.
Morgan Freeman’s real-life son can also be seen in the move, portraying a younger
Red on his mugshot.
Frank Darabonte cast Morgan Freeman because of the actor’s deep and commanding voice,
but The Shawshank Redemption was actually the first movie that the actor had ever recorded
voiceover narration for.
Apparently, Morgan recorded all of his narration in under an hour before Frank realized that
there was a hissing noise that made the audio footage unusable.
The actor then had to go about recording the narration all over again.
This second time, the recording process took a great deal longer.
It was said that it took three weeks in total for the narration to be how Frank had wanted.
Another element of the film that both took a surprisingly long amount of time and involved
Morgan Freeman was the sequence in which the characters of Andy and Red are talking to
one another outside while throwing a baseball back and forth.
Shockingly, this scene was said to have taken nine hours to film.
Not only that, but it allegedly made Morgan’s arm so tired that he had to show up in a sling
the next day.
These facts about The Shawshank Redemption will likely put the film in a different perspective
next time you watch it!
Now it’s time to hear from you: did you know that The Shawshank Redemption was based
upon a novella by Stephen King, and that the author let director Frank Darabonte adapt
said novella essentially for free?
Comment down below!