Like many people, you have probably seen the movie, Shawshank Redemption. I, for one, not only watched it but I have seen it multiple times because I absolutely love it.
What many people didn’t realize is the fact that there are some things about the movie that took place behind the scenes and nobody knew it. These included some Shawshank redemption plot holes, bloopers, and mistakes.
Here’s something that flies under the radar for most fans of the movie. When Andy and Red first met in the prison yard and chatted, Red was tossing a baseball. Freeman did more than act the part.
It took nine hours to film that particular shot and Freeman was throwing the baseball the entire time without complaining. The next day, he had his left arm in a sling when he arrived at the site.
Morgan Freeman may have played many different roles but the role of Red is one of his most iconic. It’s also something that he enjoyed playing, but he wasn’t the only person on the list. Other actors, including Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, and Robert Duvall had a shot at it.
In the book by Stephen King, Rita Haworth, and Shawshank Redemption, red is a red-haired Irishman. When interviewed in 2014, Freeman said that when he first read the book, he stopped and said: “I can’t play an Irishman.”
Now you know why, when Andy asked Red why he was called that name, he said, “Maybe it’s because I’m Irish.” It was an inside joke but it made the final cut.
Watch the background during the scene where Red is throwing a baseball for the extra. He is wearing a prison shirt but by the time the lines from Andy were shot, he had swapped into a different shirt. It’s a continuity mistake that was missed by the editors.
When the guards and prisoners figure out that Andy was able to escape, it was an unforgettable moment in the film. There is one detail, however, that has caused many people to wonder.
They are wondering how Andy put the poster back over the tunnel after crawling through it. The poster was attached in all four corners when the rock was thrown through it by the warden. That question is never been answered.
During the escape, Andy used a regular rock to break the sewage pipes and crawl it through them. This was a problem because sewage pipes are typically made of iron. There is no way that a simple rock could have broken through it or even made a scratch in the pipe.
Incidentally, Tim Robbins talked about the scene saying “It wasn’t actually human waste; it was cow dung. It was pretty toxic!”
The movie is not based on a real story what are some parallels that are worth considering. For one, Andy Dufresne is very similar to a man who was behind bars for manslaughter in 1957, Frank Freshwaters. He also got friendly with the prison staff, earned their trust, and tried to escape.
Nobody is sure how Frank was able to escape from prison but he had vanished for decades. He was working in Florida as a truck driver under a new identity and he wasn’t caught for 56 years.
Tim Robbins was very happy with the script but the film wasn’t as popular as it could’ve been when it was first released. He said: “When it came out, and was not well received at the box office, there were various reasons given: Well, it’s the title, no one can remember the title. And that makes sense too, because for years after that film came out, people would come up to me and say, ‘You know, I really liked you in that film Scrimshaw Reduction‘ or ‘Shimmy, Shimmy, Shake’ or ‘Shankshaw’” – talk about a title mix-up!”
I guess there’s more to this movie than we thought possible. We’ll have to watch it again.
