Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman starrer The Shawshank Redemption has gained the status of a classic over time. Based on Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption the film went on to collect several accolades after its release in 1994.
However, despite huge critical appreciation, the prison drama failed to score higher numbers at the box office in the initial theatrical run, collecting only $16 million while the movie was made with $25 million. The re-release combined with the total earning of $73.3 million somehow secured the movie. But the making of the movie, as the director stated, owes a great deal to a Martin Scorsese movie.
Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas Inspired The Shawshank Redemption
Martin Scorsese’s 1990 $47 million gangster classic Goodfellas is one of the most acclaimed movies of the director, a true classic depicting the crime empire of the gangster. Of course, many Scorsese movies are sources of inspiration for a lot of filmmakers but The Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont went deep into the movie finding inspiration for his 1994 jailbreak movie. While writing the narration part for the movie, the director was stuck and Goodfellas rescued his vision for his movie. “As if a sign from God, I turned on cable that night and it’s the premiere of Goodfellas,” Darabont told Creative Screenwring.
“And I thought, this is a really great movie and it has a lot of voice-over. It had been about a year since I had seen it in the theaters, and I sat and watched it again. And I thought ‘I’m a piker, man, I’m a stingy little bastard when it comes to narration compared to these guys’ [Nicholas Pilleggi and Martin Scorcese]. There are no rules, and as soon as you think there are, you’re f*cked. Because it all comes from the heart, from the instinct, and if it feels right, it probably is right. So, my talisman in Ohio was my tape of Goodfellas. I took it with me, and on weekends—my weekend was Sunday—I’d sit there totally blown-out and depressed, and I’d pop in Goodfellas and get inspired again.”
The director further stated that Goodfellas is a “great movie” and he has lost count of how many times he watched the movie.
Frank Darabont Explained the Violence in The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption is quite different from Stephen King’s book as the movie took the liberty to enhance violence to a new height. The director killed off Gil Bellows’ character Tommy and Frank Medrano’s Fat Ass. Also, the warden committed suicide. That was not really “an effort to spice the movie up with violence, which is something I don’t believe in,” Darabont explained. “So much as it was an attempt to create more dramatic closure for these characters,” he added.
“It was really an attempt to make a dramatic turn more precise and satisfying. The same thing with Fat Ass. You can tell people all you want that this is a terrible place. They see a guy being beaten to death the first night in, they know it’s a terrible place. But I don’t think the violence that was added to the narrative of the movie was glamorized. I remember sitting there, tapping my head, asking myself: how do we do this scene where Fat Ass gets beaten to death? Do we do the obvious, do we do the sort of erotic close-up, big blurry quick-cut shots of some guy getting beat up and blood hitting the wall?”
The director’s intention was to tighten the dramatic screws. “Where you’re looking at figures in the environment. It’s not about violence, it’s about the place,” he explained further. Of course, prison is not a soft place and the director’s liberty perhaps added more depth to the violence-infested plot. The Shawshank Redemption is considered one of the best movies ever produced, the movie received seven Oscar nominations.
Also read: Morgan Freeman’s Soul-Wrenching Words For ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ Would Move You to Tears!
Source: Creative Screenwriting.
