Rewatchables Reference

• Bill's dad: Andy on the roof, getting beers for the guys – the best scene in the movie.
• CR: The last 3 minutes – Red on the bus, walking to the field in Buxton, finding Andy's letter, and the beach reunion.
• Bill: The last 45 minutes starting from Andy and Red's final conversation in the yard. 'Get busy living, or get busy dying.'

• Morgan Freeman's narration – possibly the best movie narration ever, competing only with 'Goodfellas'.
• Thomas Newman's score – gorgeous, understated, and perfectly complementing every scene.
• Roger Deakins's overhead prison yard shots – instantly iconic cinematography.
• The movie is completely timeless – no period-specific behavior dates it.
• The 'fresh fish' gambling pool when new prisoners arrive.
• Tommy Williams's character and arc.
• Andy telling Hadley he's being obtuse.

• Andy's passivity during his own legal defense – he barely tries to argue his innocence at trial.
• The Gil Bellows/Tommy convoluted storyline section.
• The 'we were telling Andy stories' scene.

• Tom Hanks was offered Andy but had a scheduling conflict with 'Forrest Gump'.
• Kevin Costner was offered Andy.
• Tom Cruise attended table readings for Andy but declined because Frank Darabont was an inexperienced director.
• Rob Reiner offered Darabont $3 million to let him direct with Tom Cruise as Andy and Harrison Ford as Red.
• Brad Pitt was supposed to play Tommy Williams but dropped out after Thelma & Louise.
• James Gandolfini was supposed to play Boggs but had to do 'True Romance' instead.
• Johnny Depp and Nicolas Cage were also considered for Andy.

• Elmo Blatch – 'She's fucking this prick, see, this golf pro.'
• Gil Bellows when Tommy finishes his GED.

• Bob Gunton as Warden Norton – still earning six-figure residuals 10 years after release.
• William Sadler as Heywood.
• David Proval (Richie Aprile from The Sopranos).

• Clancy Brown as Captain Hadley – only in about 6 scenes but has an outsized presence.
• Bogs – only in about 3 scenes but so menacing you never forget him.
• Brooks – the knife scene against Heywood.

• Filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio – which now gets 18,000 visitors a year and generates $3 million for the local economy.
• Roger Deakins was the 'Susan Lucci of cinematography' – nominated 12 times for an Oscar at the time of this episode.
• Stephen King sold the film rights for $5,000 and never cashed the check. He framed it with a note: 'In case you ever need bail money. Love, Steve.'
• Filming was legendarily tense – Morgan Freeman said 'most of the time that tension was between the cast and the director.'
• Freeman threw out his arm from Darabont demanding too many takes.
• They recorded Freeman's voiceover narration before filming and played it on set.
• Red's prison ID was 37927. Andy stole $370,000 from the warden ($3.7 million in 2019 dollars).
• There are only two women with speaking roles in the entire film.
• The mugshots of young Red are actually Morgan Freeman's son, Alfonso Freeman.
• The beach scene was shot in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.
• The 'sewage' in the pipe was a mixture of water, chocolate syrup, and sawdust.
• The movie is dedicated to Allen Greene, Darabont's agent who died of AIDS complications during filming.
• The iconic oak tree was split by lightning in 2011 and knocked over in 2016 – the remains were turned into memorabilia.
• Bombed at the box office with $16 million on a $25 million budget, then re-released after 7 Oscar nominations to reach $58 million.
• Became a VHS blockbuster with 320,000 copies shipped, then Turner (who bought Castle Rock) played it on TNT almost daily starting in 1997.
• Currently ranked #1 on IMDB's all-time list.

• Morgan Freeman: Yes – this plus 'Unforgiven' plus Seven.
• Tim Robbins: Yes, no question.
• Prison movies: Yes.
• Frank Darabont: Yes – either this or developing The Walking Dead.

• What if there's no thunderstorm the night Andy escapes?
• Why doesn't Andy crawl further down the pipe before breaking through?
• How does Andy know which direction to go inside the sewage pipe?
• There's no air in a sewage pipe – how does he breathe?
• How does Andy not reek of sewage 8 hours later when he walks into the bank?
• The Ziploc bag working perfectly after going through 500 yards of raw sewage.
• How does Andy reattach the poster to the wall from inside the tunnel?
• What's in Andy's bed during bed checks when he's in solitary?
• The prison sound system playing opera in the 1940s wouldn't have sounded that good.
• Would the state really have given Andy all that library funding?
• Red gets assigned the exact same room as Brooks.
• The 'Brooks was here' carving would have been painted over long before Red arrives.

They wouldn't support remaking it, but you could do individual character episodes – a Tommy episode, a Heywood episode, a Hadley home life episode.

• What did Andy do for those 8 hours between escaping the pipe and walking into the bank the next morning?
• Where did Andy get a suit pressed and ready after crawling through sewage?
• How did the Ziploc bag survive 500 yards of sewage completely intact?

Morgan Freeman, unanimously.