Actors, director reflect the oldest film of all time
Actor Frank Darabont, who directed and wrote the movie “The Shawshank Redemption,” was right at home in Mansfield on Friday afternoon as he talked about his film that was made in the summer of 1993.
Darabont, who is in Mansfield this weekend for “Shawshank’s” 30th anniversary events and celebration, talked about the script and more with reporters in the dank downstairs of the Renaissance Theatre.
“This feels like our hometown, it really is,” he said as he and his wife discussed it. “I grew up in L.A. … I’ve always had a thing for small towns, and for some reason, this movie brought us here in a way that we can relate to in a way that I can’t. do. explain, but it’s always amazing when we come here.”
Darabont spent Friday in Upper Sandusky at the Shawshank Woodshop and Wyandot County Courthouse, where scenes were filmed with Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding) and Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne), respectively. His handprints were cast in a woodshop during his visit with Bill and April Mullen, owners of the woodshop-turned-film.
Darabont says the power of the film is really about the hope that the audience can create their own lives.
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Darabont wrote his own screenplay based on Steven King’s book, “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” He said that in his quest to find the right filming location for the movie, he went to the Show Biz Expo in Los Angeles to talk to all the movie commission people.
He said: “I knew we were going to need a big empty prison, an old one, something very visible, something very beautiful. Someone told him to “speak and Ohio” (Ohio Film Commission) .
When he saw an aerial photo of the Ohio State Reformatory, he knew he wanted to do “Shawshank Redemption” in a reformatory.
“I thought, it will be like that. It will be like that,” Darabont said.
“I knew that OSR and Mansfield would be the location for this film. It’s a great location for this story, and I don’t know where we would have shot this if it wasn’t for it,” said Darabont.
“Shawshank” was released in 1994. The Internet Movie Database lists it as the best movie ever made.
The late Eve Lapolla, then director of the Ohio Film Commission and the person who showed Darabont the OSR photo, told the press during the film’s 20th anniversary, “When ‘The ‘Shawshank Redemption’ is here, the prison was over in a few days. Now it’s the place you go because of this movie.”
The OSR attracts thousands of visitors each year to the prison-turned-museum in the northeast of the city. The prison is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The development center has the world’s longest freestanding steel cell, with six tiers, 12 levels and 600 cells.
Bob Gunton, who portrayed Warden Norton, said every time he returns to OSR it’s fun and refreshing but he can still recognize the warden’s office from the filming days.
He said: “I am surprised.” “I like to come back because it’s my way of paying for the movie. … It was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
Gunton said he never thought the OSR would become a tourist destination for film fans.
“I wandered off before we started shooting and I went to one of the cellblocks and you could smell a terrible smell of sadness and violence in there,” he said. “I’d peek into the cells and there’d be writing on the walls and it wasn’t the men’s room stuff. It was like, ‘I miss you mom’ and stuff like that, and I’d look at the walls .and it looked like there were scratches from the hand and looking at the Furnace field gave me the impression that it is a terrible place of tragedy and loss by the actor of the film It affects many things and how it works, the way it ends up killing all these things.
Gil Bellows, who played inmate Tommy Williams, said the film opened up opportunities for him to be considered a good career.
Bellows, who lives in Vancouver, returned to OSR because of the connection he has with the film and his fellow actors.
“It’s mind-blowing. When you do what we do, you want to be a part of movies or television shows or dramas that touch people’s lives and have a purpose for them,” he said.
He said that the film has stood for a long time and is loved around the world.
“I’m very proud to be a part if that’s the case,” Bellows added.
Benjamin Mankiewicz, The Turner Classic Movies host, who moderated a cast/director interview Friday at the theater, said that like any great piece of art or great film, there’s no time limit on its success.
“This is a love story that we don’t see very often, between two men, not physical but no one is more important in each other’s life,” he said.
Mankiewicz pointed out that the film was well received when it was first released, and received an Oscar nomination, but it did not go well with critics and lost money.
“Like ‘The Wizard of Oz,'” and like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” TV told people how special this movie was.
Turner Classic Movies helped make the film what it was today and he feels very proud to be a network that saw the importance of this film, Mankiewicz said.
He watched the film again on Friday, he said, remembering two events: when a rock was thrown into Raquel Welch’s image and a huge sound that could be heard, combined with the expression on the face of the guard looking down through the hole through which Andy escaped. ; and Andy went to the bank to fulfill his plan.
And Mankiewicz says that he is also inspired by the scene where Brooks (James Whitmore) gets out of prison after being an institution for a long time and is lonely in the world.
“That little scene of four minutes. It breaks your heart every time you see it. He’s not sad anymore,” Mankiewicz said. “He’s making up his mind. He’s not going to hang around. … That was all Frank. … That’s not in the book.”
The media opportunity with the cast and crew felt like the movie was made yesterday from everyone’s vivid imaginations.
Actor William Sadler, who portrayed inmate Heywood, said he will never forget the scene in the prison library where Brooks holds a blunt knife to his throat.
“He (Whitmore) was refusing to bring the knife to my throat,” she said, noting that Whitmore was worried he might accidentally injure Heywood.
Sadler summed up the film: “The script was great, and when you’re starring with James Whitmire, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, they all bring their A-game. I think that’s what happened. . We were sitting around that dinner table. It was like you could point a camera at any face and everybody was on board,” Sadler said.
Alfonso Freeman (little Red), Freeman’s real-life son, said his role in the film was eight words, “New fish today.
Alfonso Freeman said his father told him he was in a movie on the level of “The Godfather” or “Casablanca,” which he said was important to the American public.
“Now I can tell people I was in this movie, and it’s fun and important to people,” he says. “It was powerful. It’s part of the legacy.” His face was also used as a young Morgan Freeman in the paper in the parole board scene where Red is turned down for parole.
He said he made many good friends at OSR.
“I don’t think any of us knew what it was,” he said.
It was his first time making a film and his first time working on a set. He was 33 years old.
“I’ve been in the business for 30 years now because of that. So thank you, ‘Shawshank.’ Thank you Frank,” she said, adding that she lives in South Carolina. “Being in Mansfield was really my first time in small-town America.”
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