Shawshank Redemption Deep-Dive: “No One’s At The Theatre” And The LA Times Hates It

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore. I'm a produced writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on the show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watch this tonight, there's always something good to watch. Let's get started. Today on the show, I'm doing one of my deep dives into the making of The Shawshank Redemption.

0:44 I found some really cool stuff and researching this, including a review of the film by very prominent critic that is one of the great It's up there with the Unforgiven Reader's Memo in terms of just wow that. So I'm really excited to share that with you. A lot of also interesting stuff about some tension in the making of the film in different ways it could have been made, and the initial sort of belly flop when it was first released, and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of cool stuff here. There's been a good amount of reporting. I used the sources for this, Wikipedia, Vanity Fair, Business Insider, and the Los Angeles Times. So Shawshank Redemption obviously one of the greatest movies ever made. I think it's still today the number one movie by user rating on IMDb, which is an amazing accomplishment. Seven Oscar nominations. Library of Congress initially only made sixteen million dollars at the box office, was considered a flop, ended up doing three hundred and twenty thousand VHS rentals, where it made an insane amount of money, and then even more in ancillary and television and stuff like that. But it all started with Frank Darbat buying the right to the short story in nineteen eighty seven. Five years later, writes the script and it's to cass Rock gets twenty five million on our budget, makes the movie. What I didn't know was that behind the scenes, even though there's a movie with no women in it, there was a female producer named Liz Glotzer who was essential to the

2:15 success of this movie and had like critical roles in it getting made and the quality of it pretty much all the way through. So we're going to get to her and her involvement. Daribond first connected with Stephen King by doing his Dollar Babies thing. So Stephen King has this thing where if you want to get the right to one of his short stories. He will essentially allow you to make a movie out of it for a dollar, and you can make it as a short film. So it's like a way to showcase yourself if you're an inspiring filmmaker. My cousin actually did this. There's somewhere out there where we made a film based on one of Stephen King's short stories, and that exists, so we know, I know for sure it's real thing because we actually did it. So first Deibond does that, and then four years later he buys the rights to Ria Hayworth and the Shaw Shank Redemption. There are differing sources on how much he paid. Wikipedia says five grand, screen Rand says one thousand. Either way, King never used the money, He didn't cash it. He just kept it, and then later he framed it and returned it to Frank Darabot with a note that said, in case you ever need bail money, love Steve Now. At the time, prison movies were supposed to be unlikely to be successful with the box office. Darabont's script was first read by Castle Rock Entertainment producer Liz Gotser, who loved prison movies and she loved his script so much she threatened to quit Castle Rock if they did not make the Shaw Shank Redemption. Obviously, Rob Reyner of Castle Rock had previously adapted King's nineteen eighty two novella The Body and to Stand By Me.

3:46 He wanted to do it with Tom Cruise as Andy and Harrison Ford as read. The reason that Morgan Freeman was cast was because Liz Gotser ignored the novella's description of a white guy, a white irishman named Red. And you know, basically I guess one in Freeman for it. So again, think about how critical her involvement that right away, that's like half of the successive movie. Basically. Dary Bond initially looked at some of his favorite actors like Gene Hackman and Albert Duval for the role of Andy Dufraine, but they were unavailable. I would have loved to see this with Duval, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, and Kevin Costner were offered and passed on the role. But in Cruise's case, he attended table readings in the script and he just didn't want to work for Darrebon because Darrebont was not an experienced director. Now, at one point, and again according to different sources on the Internet, it's between two and three million dollars. Rob Ryner goes to Dary Bond and he says, if you let me make the movie with Cruise like I'll direct the Cruisal starring it, I'll give you three million bucks. Dere Bond's like, no, pretty remarkable. Brad Pitt was initially cast in the role of Tommy, but he dropped out after his success in Delma Louise and his was kind of a rising star and that kind of thing. James Genelfini passed on portraying Bogs. In terms of the production, Morgan Freeman was pretty candid about Darbot being a pain in the ass. He said, 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. He went on to say, the answer was no. In reference to doing a lot of takes, I

5:19 don't want to be chewing the scenery. Acting itself as indifficult, but having to do something again and again for no discernible reason tends to be a bit debilitating to the energy. Interestingly enough, Morgan Freeman obviously was in seven David Fitcher film, So be interested to know what do you thinks about David Fincher. But apparently it took nine hours to film the part when Andy first approaches Read to procure a rock hammer. They did so many takes that Freeman came to set the next day it was his arm to sling and refused to do any indial takes. Darbot looking back, and it kind of has some quotes to suggest that he learned from it. He said, a director really needs to have an internal brometer to measure what any of an actor needs. You know, as far as I start what I mean, Darbot is one of the great writer, director, creative people in the history of Hollywood. So it sounds like he learned from it and probably made him a better director.

6:14 But I mean, you know what he said. I mean, the movie is amazing. It was it was worth it. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't sound like he was abusive or anything. It sounds like he just did a lot of takes. During the iconic scene of Andy escaping your two freedom through a sewer pipe described as a river of shit, Robin's crawled through a mixture of water, chocolate syrup, and sawdust. The stream that he emerged into was certified toxic by a chemist and they had to damn the stream and use chlorination to partially decontaminate it. Robins said, when you're doing a film, you want to be a good soldier. You don't want to be the one who gets in the way, so you will do things as an actor that are compromising to your physical health and safety. We've gotten a lot better about that, said Roger. Deakins said that the scene is one of his least favorite. He says he overlid it. So this is scene when Robinson gets out of the sewer pipe and all that. Darabont said that they had to be precisely what they could film, so they had a limited filming schedule. He said he regretted that he could not film a close up of Robin's face as he climbed down out of the hole from his cell. So again, it just shows you that no matter what you do, no matter how great of a thing you're creating your life, you're always going to be like, oh man, I could have been a better if I just did.

7:34 It's amazing. That part's great, Like what this like iconic said about It's just this is what I love about doing these. One scripted scene, which Darabont described as his best work, was left unfilmed because of the shooting schedule, and the scene a dreaming Red is sucked into the poster of Rita Hayworth to find himself alone and insignificant on the Pacific shore, saying I am terrified. There's no way home. Darabont said that you were gretted being unable to capture the scene that actually would have been kind of cool, especially considering the ending. In Darabon's original vision for the end of the film, Red is seen riding a bus towards the Mexican border, leaving his fate ambiguous. Glotser insisted on including the scene of Red and Andy reuniting and Zewatanejo, she said. Dara Bond felt this was a commercial, sappy ending, but Glotser one of the audiences season together again. Can you imagine it's the difference if that was not there. It was decided to mostly omit Stephen King's name from the advertising because the studio wanted to attract a more prestigious audience who might reject a film from the writer of The Shining and Kujoe Following a Hollywood tradition of visiting different theaters and opening night to see the audience few their film live, Dara Bonning Lotser went to the Cinerama Dome, so which is here, actually was down the street from where used to live, but they found no one there. Glotzer claimed that the pair actually sold two tickets outside the theater, with the promise that if the buyers did not like the film, they could ask Castle Rock for a refund. Quote. That was our big opening night, Glasser said dryly. While critics praise the film, Glotser believed that a lackluster review from the Los Angeles Times pushed crowds away. And here is that

9:07 review from Kenneth Duran nineteen ninety four. This is what he said. Awash in a bad news culture where horrors compete for media attention, America's appetite for feel good movies is all but insatiable. How else to explain The Shawshank Redemption, a film that hides a warm and cuddly fantasy about prison life behind sleek brutality. So much the better to convince us that even inside those walls, life can be grand. Starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman is two lifers who demonstrate the great things prison can do for you. Shawshanks sense mentality is of a new Hollywood variety. Its message of hope and friendship comes premixed to the sizeable ballop of unappetizing violence, intended to convince audiences that what they're watching is in a big love of cotton candy after all. Adapted from a Steve that just keeps going Like This, adapted from a Stephen King novella. Shawshank also labors under its literary origins, with many of its situations feeling like thin doodles blown up to big screen size, and its entire last section has the kind of serious pausibility problems that are early apparent when the written word takes physical form.

10:09 Paradoxically, it is shaw shanks zealousness in trying to cast a rosy glow over the prison experience that makes us feel we're doing harder time than the folks inside. So Keath Duran basically thought this movie sucked. He thought watching this movie was like being in prison. He said, in fact, it was worse to be a prison. We're doing harder time than the folks inside. I wonder if when Keneth Turan, you know, Keneth Duran was obviously a very well known critic, retired from Los Angeles Times at seventy three years old and twenty twenty. Do you think when Keath Duran like hangs out with the other film critics, they give him shit for this because there are I mean, when you go to press screenings, it's there, there's all the different critics are invited and they all go and you see each other again. You know, I did this in college, and I have to imagine that at least once or twice in his life. There must have been another critic was like, yeah, Shaw, Shank really sucked huck Ken and really gave him for it. After bombing initially, the movie did so well on television that, according to Business Insider, the actor who plays the warden he said, he still gets residual payments, not huge, but steady close to six figures.

11:18 And even you know, this goes all the way we're talking about like two thousand and four, like like well after the movie is released. He even said, I suspect my daughter years from now will still be getting checks. And then lastly, I thought Tim Robbins kind of said it best the enduring power of the movie. He said that I believe part of the reason the movie is so important to people is that, in a way it works as a whole for whatever your life is. That no matter what your prison is, whether it's a job you hate, a bad relationship that you're slogging through, whether your warden is a terrible boss or a wife or a husband, it holds out the possibility that there is freedom inside you and that at some point in life there was a warm spot in the beach and that we can all get there, but sometimes it takes a while. How beautifully sad about Tim Robbins. So that's Shaw shank Man. It's so great to see Tim and Silo. I don't know what the hell they're doing with this character.

12:13 I feel like they haven't given him enough to do. I sincerely hope he is like way more prominent in the rest of it. He's so good. It's like I talked about this when I do the Silo episode. It just feels like, for whatever reason, they haven't figured out another role like that to give him. You know, he's he's so great if you can find the right thing to plug him into and he's still relatively young, you know. I mean, there's still time for him to have another sort of career defining role. And when you think about Shaws Shank, you think about him and it Man. So that's the making of the Shaw Shank redemption. With apologies to Kenneth Duran, that is the show for today. I should no knock on wood. That's me knocking on wood. I should have to really cools interviews as the next two episodes. If all goes well, if something goes catastrophically wrong, you'll probably just hear a regular episode M. But that's it for now. Thank you so much as always for listening. Until next time, Bye bye, m M.