Shawshank prison

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Walking north along the road full of yellow leaves, I passed highway 30 and saw the tower with soaring guard posts, exactly as I saw in the movie.

This prison was built in late 19th century and closed down in 1990 after a nearly-centurial operation. While "Shawshank Redemption" was filmed here in summer 1994, some cells were accommodating inmates who probably were waiting for transfers. The prison itself had long been reclassified as "minimum/low security level". Some prison guards even played themselves or prisoners in the movie.

Since not being repaired and renovated for a long time, many buildings were actually potential danger to people. Most prison buildings and cells were removed not long after the final shot. Only the castle-like front building and some walls remained, but the walls didn't survive too much longer. They built a new but extremely ugly prison right behind for new prisoners, and renovated remained Shawshank prison as a tourist spot with some occasion festival decorations and theme tours implemented. These days they are busy decorating for Holloween and, as a result, not opened to tourists. I was reading a tour brochure titled "Haunted Prison" in a cafe downtown Mansfield, feeling like the time when I heard Michael Jackson was accused as a pedophile. However, Kate told me that there are indeed some ghost stories spreading out from that prison.

So, although this remained prison still has a name "Ohio State Reformatory" on the paper, it has been out of service for a very long time. In practical, the state reformatory is the ugly building behind Shawshank prison. I try to walk a circle along the prison. It's forbidden to take photos near the reformatory, so I just got some pictures from the front. The remains behind the castle are still like just coming out from the movie. Some window railings, panes and most rocks look like actors premiering in the movie and never left the stage.

I've been waiting to see the prison all my life, and I also understood that it would be very different from the movie. Maybe I want to remind myself of the stunning inspiration the film had given to me, maybe I want to meet myself in teenage, or maybe there's no reason at all. That was the summer in 1995, Guo Bao theater with 3 films for $5 promotion, in the Fei-Cuei room full of weird smell insufficiently covered by perfume. That was the first time I couldn't stand up with my numb legs after the last line of cast&crew disappeared. As I just reached the finishing line of a 30-km marathon, or concluded a decade-long task with nothing but exhaustion left, I took a very, very long deep breath. I was so confident, at that moment, that I will never have such kind of movie encounter in this life; as much as I believed I will never have such a chance to commence this journey when I decided to quit my job. Do it now, or don't ever think about it.

There is no best movie, only best encounter timing. A film could only be eternal or perfect to you when you meet it at the right moment. It's always my fortune to meet "Shawshank Redemption" at my sixteen. It opened a gate and directed me to a new world. No matter how far I'd been traveling ever since, I would never forget the shock and touch it has given to me. Along with those great instructors and friends I met in my life journey, the film would forever stay by the gate it opened for me, stay at the moment it inspired me, and stay whatever it looked like at that time. Even if those figures were changed, gone or passed away in the real world, they never leave me in my mind. And those moments of inspiration would never altered or discolored, not even a single pixel.

Many things cannot be taken away; not by the prison, not by the disaster, not by the war, not even by the time. They always stay in your mind and in your memory. They fuel you when you want to move on, and comfort you when you are tired. They can neither be seen nor be touched, but sometimes they are more concrete than yourself. When you think of someone, sometimes his/her missions, words, personality, likes and dislikes would come out prior to his/her looks. Maybe this is the true meaning of life. After centuries and generations, those metaphysic stuffs would still tell great stories via people, paper, music and other medias, and would still be remembered as they were.

"One day, I think, they might remove the rest of prison. If that happened, please let me know if you are still here." I asked Kate to do me this favor before I left her place.
"Why?"
"Why..., maybe there's no why. I just want to know, that the prison would only exist in the movie hereafter."

Finally I met Shawshank prison, and was able to tell it proudly that I've been carrying hope to live my life for those years and never regret.

● Facts about U.S. prisoners:

(1) Nowadays, U.S. prisoners have much better lives than before (e.g. in the movie). They could buy every unharmful stuff from outside as straightforward as you and me could do, including some unnecessary items. They watch TV everyday, and might have feasts and beers when some ball teams win. Outdoor details have become routine, though it still depends on luck to get easy ones.

(2) The comment about institutionalization is undoubtedly correct. Many parolees–who had spent ten or twenty something years in jails–would intentionally commit crimes in order to return to those walls. They ain't a thing in the outside world, even McDonald's have no preference to hire them. Not to mention someone like Brooks who had celebrated his 50-year anniversary. They can see the outside world from TV, but that doesn't easy their immeasurable pressure and fear from being left behind for decades. The only people they can, and they want to rely on are their families. Only families who are still alive and not so affectionally far away could accompany them for a while and somehow encourage them to live on. As for freedom, well, it might just be a noun in the dictionary indicating something they used to yearn for as much as they understand in mind that they had lost forever.

● Facts about "Shawshank Redemption":

(1) The man in the picture of Red's parole papers is Alfonso Freeman, son of Morgan Freeman. People used to say he looks exactly like teenager Morgan. Alfonso also participated in Shawshank's shooting. Later on, he acted with Morgan in "Se7en" (1995), "Nurse Betty" (2000) and "The Bucket List" (2008). Alfonso seems to have lots of supports from his famous dad.  

(2) While shooting Brooks feeding Jack (a crow) with a wriggling worm, a lady from ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was there (for kind of supervision) and insisted that they should not put a living innocent worm into a crow's beak. They should, instead, use a naturally died worm. Since no one had got any funeral notice from a worm family, the crew had to spent some time trying to find a worm that looked like peacefully died (or rather saying nobody knew how it died) for Brooks to feed Jack. So actually, the fat, greasy wriggling worm Andy picked up from his plate didn't go to Jack's beak. I wonder if it went to that lady's coffee.
  

(3) The scene of the first time Andy tried to talk to Red while they were playing baseball in the yard took more than nine hours to conclude. Morgan Freeman had thrown baseballs for more than nine hours without a single complain. Next morning, he showed up on time with a sling.

(4) Only two female spoke in this 2h22m movie: The lady in the supermarket read two lines to ask Red double-bag her stuffs. The bank staff read four lines before Andy went to Mexico.

(5) The fiction had mentioned some parts of Red's crime. For getting his wife's insurance money, Red did something to her car's brakes in order to make some accidents happen to her. Unfortunately the accident also involved another innocent woman and her kid.

(6) Tim Robbins chose and settled every item in Andy's cell in person, a bit picky as I heard. In addition to Rita Hayworth, Tim picked up the posters of Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch. In the fiction, Andy posted Jayne Mansfield, Linda Ronstadt and Hazel Court. Apparently Tim loves big ones... I mean the height.

(7) Shawshank had taken $28 million at the box office, just covered its production expenses according to the media. Yet, more than $0.32 million copies had been sold all over U.S. after it left theaters, which made it a blockbuster in 1995. Later on, TNT conducted a pay-TV-right buyout with a pretty good (low) price. Since then, people around U.S. could watch this prison story being played on TNT channel again and again and again and again till maybe forever.

(8) This fictitious story is actually a combination of all the prison movies Stephen King had watched in his childhood. However, not sure if it's an internet rumor, a woman in Zihuatanejo (where Andy went to after prison break) had claimed to be Andy's second wife.

(9) During the tea break, the director Frank Darabont asked Morgan Freeman: "Why don't you take some commercial ads offers? I'm sure those business men would love to have an excellent and convincing actor like you to promote their products." Morgan said no. Too many people would believe what he said. This fact raised his concern, and made him hesitate to provide credits to someone he didn't know and ask people to buy something they didn't need.

Surprisingly to me, Morgan just had five Oscar nominations so far in his career: three for best actor and two for best supporting actor. And he only won once, best supporting actor by playing in "Million Dollar Baby" (2004). No best actor ever.

(10) Candidates for Andy Dufresne were top ranked actors: Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Charlie Sheen, Jeff Bridges and Nicolas Cage. Tom Hanks was director's favorite, but he had contracted with "Forrest Gump". Kevin Costner showed great intention to play this role, but he had involved in "Waterworld", one of the worst in that century. Next year in 1995, Shawshank got seven nominations in the 67th Academy Awards but failed to win any one of them. Four awards went to "Forrest Gump" including "the best actor". Tom Hanks (as Forrest) had defeated Morgan Freeman (as Red) and took the little golden statue. Personally I believe Morgan played better than Tom based on these two roles in their stories respectively.

(11) Candidates for Red were as shiny as Andy: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood. The director thought an African American would provide good distinction by a handsome tall white guy, so he ended up casting Morgan Freeman.

(12) Tommy was favored to be played by Brad Pitt at the beginning. In a film budgeted about $28 million dollars, we could estimate casting cost of those prospective stars–Tim Robinson, Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt–in mid 90s. Later the role was given to Gil Bellows and allowed him to appear in the big screen for the first time. The film was shot in sequence of the story. Gil joined the crew at the bottom half where all other roles/actors knew each other very well and there were experienced actors all around. It made Gil super nervous in the acts. "like a stranger being asked to live with a big family", he described.

(13) Jon Favreau was invited to perform an audition for "Fat Ass" who would be brutally beaten to death. He failed, and then he asked himself: "Why would people think of me when they need a fat guy who would be brutally beaten to death?" He decided to lose some weight and indeed looked quite fit in "Ruby" (1993) and "Swingers" (1996), so fit that his mom cannot recognize. Unfortunately he got some weight back no much later. Instead of "see, so many fat guys in the audition", I believe his thought is very positive and worthy of spreading.

(14) This film was adapted from "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption", one of the novellas in Stephen King's "Different Seasons". The great writer gives full admiration to this film adaption with only one dissatisfaction: the tunnel Andy crawled through was too round. However, probably because not everyone had read this book, the original title made it look like Rita Hayworth's biographical film to many people. The crew got so many applications asking for the audition of Rita Hayworth herself, including ranked actresses and a tall pretty ladyboy. For not making misunderstanding, they removed the name of the beautiful star from movie title.

(15) For encouraging new, young and student film producers, Stephen King applied a "Dollar Baby Program": For some of King's works, people could pay just one dollar for the authorization to make the stories into films. That's how Frank Darabont got the authorization of "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and made it into a script. This was the second time Frank got Stephen's authorized works to make into movies. The first time was "The Woman in the Room" as a short film, and the third time was "The Green Mile" (1999).

Another story was saying that Stephen got a $1,000 cheque from Frank but he never cashed it. A few year after the movie, Stephen mailed that cheque back to Frank with a lovely note: "In case you ever need bail money. Love, Steve." In Taiwan, we'd say "in case you need some medicines".

(16) At the beginning, Frank Darabont just want to make the story into a script and sell it to some directors. But he hesitated and thought it over when Rob Reiner gave him a quote of $2.5 million. Frank ended up making himself as the director of this film. People said Rob Reiner wanted to cast Tom Cruise to play Andy and Harrison Ford as Red. It's our great fortune not having Rob Reiner direct this film.

(17) After the film was wildly spread out and favored, Tim Robinson and Morgan Freeman used to have fan's compliments saying "Oh, I really love the "Sh^$#^#@%%#ion" you played." But many people couldn't spell the title correctly and ended up like "Shoeshine Redemption".

(18) In Taiwan, the Chinese title of a foreign film was usually decided by the agent. Uxxxx agented "The Sting" in 1994 and renamed it as "刺激" (excitement). Next year, they introduced "Shawshank Redemption" and renamed it as "刺激1995" (excitement 1995) for I don't actually know why. Maybe because smart guys defeated bad guys with super impressive ways in both films, or they just ran out of creativity. It's been decades since they put a shit name on such a classic movie, I really want to forgive them for doing such a dumb crap, but I just can't. WTF is that Chinese title!

(19) This prison was also casted in following movies in only a few shots:

1975, Harry and Walter Go to New York

1989, Tango & Cash

1997, Air Force One

2006, Fallen Angels
and in some documentaries, TV series, music videos and photography artworks/posters, kind of a super star among prisons. They should place its rock or something on Hollywood Boulevard after completely removing it.

(20) Morgan Freeman mentioned something negative about shooting this film in 2001 while being interviewed by Entertainment Weekly: "That was a strange production. There were moments of extreme tension on the set. Between the producers and actors, between the director and actors, between everybody. Just this personality stuff between different groups. Very strange. Let’s stop talking about that one."

pictures from: video clips
Thanks to Linda and Kate.