Stephen King. When we think of him we think of the “horror” genre. And that generally conveys something in the way of the “supernatural”. But from time to time he has also written stuff in which the “horror” is anything but supernatural. Instead, the locus tends to be aimed more in the direction of the human mind. The manner in which actual flesh and blood folks like you and I are capable of doing all sorts of terrible things. To each other for example.
And it is not just through the written word that he shines. So many of his books [novels, short stories] have been translated into film as well. Sometimes the big screen, sometimes the small.
Consider: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ad … ephen_King
But the ones I am always drawn to are the later: to the man-made monsters.
Which brings us to Warden Norton and Captain Hadley and a Sister named Boggs. Monsters if there every were ones. And when the monsters run prisons those in their charge can truly have hell to pay. Especially around the time Andy Dufresne was doing time.
Of course you’re always wondering how close to or far away from “reality” prison films like this are. This one unfolded starting 70 odd years ago. And, according to IMDb, Stephen King has said that his original novella was a culmination of all the memories he had from watching prison movies when he was a child.
So, who is to say? Watch enough docs from the Lockup and/or Lockdown series, and you know how in some respects a lot has changed. But there are prisons here and prisons there. And depending of which one you wind up in the experience is probably rather unique. But there will always be monsters. And some will be the prisoners and some will be the guards.
IMDb
[b]Andy and Red’s opening chat in the prison yard - in which Red is pitching a baseball - took 9 hours to shoot. Morgan Freeman pitched that baseball for the entire 9 hours without a word of complaint. He showed up for work the next day with his arm in a sling.
The film’s initial gross of $18 million didn’t even cover the cost of its production. It did another $10 million in the wake of its Oscar nominations but the film was still deemed to be a box office flop.
Although a very modest hit in theaters, it became one of the highest grossing video rentals of all time.
In Stephen King’s original story, Red was written as a white Irishman. In the movie, they left the line, “Maybe it’s 'cause I’m Irish”, in as a joke, even after they had cast Morgan Freeman as Red.[/b]
FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0111161/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shawshank_Redemption
trailer: youtu.be/6hB3S9bIaco
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION [1994]
Written and directed by Frank Darabont
[b]Prisoner: Hey Red, how did it go?
Red [after being rejected again for parole]: Same old shit, different day.
…
Red [voiceover]: There must be a con like me in every prison in America, I guess. I’m the guy who can get it for you. Cigarettes, a bag of reefer if that’s your thing, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your kid’s high school graduation. Damn near anything, within reason. Yes sir, I’m a regular Sears & Roebuck. So when Andy Dufresne came to me in 1949 and asked me to smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison for him, I told him no problem.
…
Red [voiceover]: I must admit I didn’t think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him. Looked like a stiff breeze could blow him over. That was my first impression of the man.
…
Norton [warden]: I believe in two things. Discipline and the Bible. Here, you’ll receive both.
(he holds up a Bible)
Norton: Put your faith in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.
…
Red [voiceover]: The first night’s the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell…and those bars slam home…that’s when you know it’s for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.
…
Andy: Hello. I’m Andy Dufresne.
Red: The wife-killin’ banker. Why’d you do it?
Andy: I didn’t, since you ask.
Red : You’re gonna fit right in. Everyone in here is innocent, you know that? Heywood, what you in here for?
Heywood: Didn’t do it. Lawyer fucked me.
…
Andy [to Red]: I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things.
…
Red [voiceover]: I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn’t normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say…I liked Andy from the start.
…
Andy: What about you? What are you in here for?
Red: Murder, same as you.
Andy: Innocent?
Red [shakes his head]: Only guilty man in Shawshank.
…
Boggs: Now, I’m gonna open my fly and you’re gonna swallow what I give ya to swallow. And after you swallow mine you’re gonna swallow Rooster’s cause ya done broke his nose and I think he oughta have something to show for it.
Andy: Anything you put in my mouth you’re gonna lose.
Boggs: Naw, you don’t understand. You do that and I’ll put all eight inches of steel in your ear.
Andy: All right. But you should know that sudden serious brain injury causes the victim to bite down hard. In fact, I hear the bite reflex is so strong they have to pry the victims jaws open with a crowbar.
Boggs: Where do you get this shit?
Andy: I read it. You know how to read, you ignorant fuck?
…
Norton [handing Andy his Bible]: Salvation lies within.
…
Brooks [to Andy]: Son, six wardens have been through here in my tenure, and I’ve learned one immutable, universal truth: Not one of them born whose asshole wouldn’t pucker up tighter than a snare drum when you ask them for funds.
…
Red [voiceover]: The following April Andy did tax returns for half the guards at Shawshank. Year after that he did them all including the warden’s. Year after that they rescheduled the start of the intra-mural season to coincide with tax season. The guards on the opposing teams all remembered to bring their W2s.
…
Andy [about writing to the prison board for funds to expand the library]: They can’t ignore me forever.
Norton: Sure can.
…
Red: Ain’t nothing wrong with Brooksie. He’s just institutionalized, that’s all.
Heywood: Institutionalized, my ass.
Red: The man’s been here fifty years. This place is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, an educated man. A librarian. Out there, he’s nothing but a used-up old con with arthritis in both hands. Couldn’t even get a library card if he applied. You see what I’m saying?
Floyd: Red, I do believe you’re talking out of your ass.
Red: You believe what you want. But these walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.
…
Red [after learning that Brooks hung himself]: He should have died in here.
…
Red [voiceover]: I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.[/b]
Actually: Red says he has no idea what the ladies in The Marriage of Figaro are singing about. Actually, they’re composing a letter to the husband of one of them inviting him to an assignation with the other in order to expose his infidelity. IMDb
[b]Andy: That’s the beauty of music. They can’t get that from you… Haven’t you ever felt that way about music?
Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn’t make much sense in here.
Andy: Here’s where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don’t forget.
Red: Forget?
Andy: Forget that…that there are places in this world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. That’s yours.
Red: What’re you talking about?
Andy: Hope.
Red: Hope? Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
…
Andy [to Red]: You know, the funny thing is on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook.
…
Andy [to Norton]: How can you be so obtuse?
…
Heywood: Red? You saying Andy’s innocent? I mean for real innocent?
Red: Yeah, it looks that way.
Heywood: Sweet Jesus. How long’s he been in here?
Red: Since '47, what is that…19 years.
…
Norton [visiting Andy’s cell in the hole]: I’m sure by now you’ve heard. Terrible thing. Man that young, less than a year to go, trying to escape…Broke Captain Hadley’s heart to shoot him, truly it did. We just have to put it behind us…move on.
Andy: I’m done. Everything stops. Get someone else to run your scams.
Norton [acidly]: Nothing stops. Nothing…or you will do the hardest time there is. No more protection from the guards. I’ll pull you out of that one-bunk Hilton and cast you down with the Sodomites. You’ll think you’ve been fucked by a train! And the library? Gone…sealed off, brick-by-brick. We’ll have us a little book barbecue in the yard. They’ll see the flames for miles. We’ll dance around it like wild Injuns! You understand me? Catching my drift?..Or am I being obtuse?
[pause]
Norton [to Hadley]: Give him another month to think about it.
…
Andy: My wife used to say I’m a hard man to know. Like a closed book. Complained about it all the time…She was beautiful. I loved her. But I guess I couldn’t show it enough. I killed her, Red…I didn’t pull the trigger. But I drove her away. That’s why she died. Because of me, the way I am.
Red: That don’t make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe. Feel bad about it if you want. But you didn’t pull the trigger.
Andy: No. I didn’t. Someone else did, and I wound up here. Bad luck, I guess…It floats around. Has to land on somebody. I was in the path of the tornado. I just didn’t expect the storm would last as long as it has.
…
Red: Jesus, Andy. I couldn’t hack it on the outside. Been in here too long. I’m an institutional man now. Like old Brooks Hatlen was.
Andy: You underestimate yourself.
Red: I don’t think so. In here I’m the guy who can get it for you. Out there, all you need are Yellow Pages. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Pacific Ocean? Shit, like to scare me to death, somethin’ that big.
Andy: Not me. I didn’t shoot my wife and I didn’t shoot her lover, and whatever mistakes I made I’ve paid for and then some. That hotel and that boat…I don’t think it’s too much to ask.
Red: I don’t think you ought to be doing this to yourself, Andy. Talking shitty pipedreams! I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there, and you’re in here, and that’s the way it is!
Andy: You’re right. It’s down there, and I’m in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice – get busy living, or get busy dying.
…
Red [about the possibility of Andy hanging himself]: I don’t know; every man has his breaking point.
…
Red [voiceover thinking about Andy and that rope]: I have had some long nights in stir. Alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts, time can draw out like a blade…That was the longest night of my life…
…
Norton [in Andy’s empty cell]: Lord! It’s a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind! Nothin’ left but some damn rocks on the windowsill and that cupcake on the wall! Let’s ask her! Maybe she knows! What say there, Fuzzy Britches? Feel like talking? Guess not. Why should you be different?!
…
Red [voiceover]: In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty.
…
Red [voiceover]: Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big goddamn poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied. Turns out Andy’s favorite hobby was totin’ his wall out into the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he’d been here just about long enough…Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guards simply didn’t notice. Neither did I…I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can’t even imagine, or maybe I just don’t want to. Five hundred yards… that’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.
…
[Warden Norton finds the Bible in his safe after Andy escapes and finds the message Andy left for him]
Andy: “Dear Warden, You were right. Salvation lay within.”
[Norton flips through a couple of pages to find the outline of the rock hammer that was hidden in the Book of Exodus within the Bible, and then drops it on the floor in shock]
…
Red [voiceover]: I’d like to think that the last thing that went through Norton’s head, other than that bullet, was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him.
…
Red [voiceover]: There is a harsh truth to face. No way I’m gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole. Terrible thing, to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won’t have to be afraid all the time. Only one thing stops me. A promise I made to Andy.
…
Red [voiceover]: Get busy living or get busy dying. That is goddamn right. [/b]